Let a peace culture bloom

The Living Stream

In the last week of February, as the Russian troops were being mobilised on the Ukraine border, leaders of the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths in the US held an online vigil to pray for a peaceful resolution of the heightening tensions between Russia and Ukraine. They sought to convey that “the members of their traditions dream of and work for a world without war.” Two weeks later, when Russia had already attacked Ukraine with bombs and missiles, Pope Francis used the occasion of the Sunday service at the Vatican to plead for ending war: “This is not a military operation but a war which brings death, destruction and sorrow.” All along, the US and Western European powers only spoke of economic sanctions and military action to deter Russia. None of them have responded as if peace needed to be protected at any cost, using all means necessary to resolve the conflict through negotiations.

Russia’s strategic relevance has held India back from criticising the invasion of Ukraine. Its suggestion that the conflict be resolved through talks lacks a deep care for securing peace. The missing concern for peace in the op-eds and other mainstream commentaries is even more striking. The rationale of India’s diplomatic response, the measures to evacuate Indian students from Ukraine, the culpability of Putin or the Western powers have mostly preoccupied the commentariat.

Some 1.5 million Ukrainians are known to have fled their country. A few thousand civilians have already died from Russia’s military attacks. The bombings have brought down homes, offices and hospital buildings. If Russia doesn’t halt its offensive, the war could draw in other countries and spiral outwards. With this evolving tragedy in our midst, it is saddening that the war with Ukraine only finds a daily reportage in the news media, without eliciting discussions of war as a form of evil. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had been viewed matter-of-factly too.

Nehru had sought to create a political culture that disapproved of military conflict. Elaborating his ideal that India stay non-aligned between any power blocks, he had laid out a magnanimous policy vision: “The objectives of our foreign policy are the preservation of world peace and enlargement of human freedom.” Recognising India’s freedom struggle and Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings behind this policy, he explained that even when India’s military power didn’t match those of some other countries, the country was “old in thought and experience” and had always “stood for peace and every prayer that an Indian raises ends with an invocation to peace.”

Nehru’s humane vision of non-alignment and world peace generated idealism both outside and inside the country. Civil society forums demanding a peaceful settlement of tensions between India and Pakistan and the elimination of nuclear weapons stayed active in the country for decades, even as the Chinese and Pakistani military offensives against India whittled away at the foreign policy idealism. It is this tradition that seems to have evaporated in recent years.

Realpolitik reasoning threatens to make political idealism seem naïve and irrelevant. But a sole focus on national safety, it should be easy to see, diminishes one’s sense of belonging in the world. Dreams of a peaceful world make for the richer moral stance: social interdependence goes beyond national territories and a future for humanity is inconceivable without worldwide cooperation.

Peace is not the absence of war, but that of violence: it is an everyday affair. If existing moralities in the country cannot grasp the violence of modern wars or that of capitalism, religious fundamentalism and authoritarian politics, the custodians of religious traditions, which offer distinct visions of non-violence, writers, film-makers, artists, and teachers and indeed anyone with moral seriousness are obliged to help renew them, to nourish the imagination of peace in India.