7 November 2001, 02:41am IST
Janina Gomes.
In the midst of conflict and with the harsh sounds and jargon of war, do we dare to dream of a world without conflict, a world filled with mutual understanding and compassion, a world where wounds are healed and where according to the biblical vision, swords are turned into ploughshares. it seems that human beings go from one state of conflict to another, from one bitter experience to another. we have barely got over the disasters of world wars i and ii when the us and the uk seem to have launched what is being described as the first world war of the new millennium. granted that terrorists need to be brought to justice and that those who have so inhumanly targeted innocent people need to be chastised and punished. but in the name of this very justice, is it at all appropriate to use all the weapons in one's arsenal against one's enemies, when one realises that these attacks could result in the loss of lives, homes and livelihoods of many innocent people. peace indeed is an elusive dream unless we first look into ourselves and introspect on what has gone wrong in our own personal lives or national lives that in the first place gave rise to such violence as the september 11 events. perhaps if we look first into ourselves, we will come up with more appropriate responses than if we concentrate all our energies and venom on those responsible for the attacks against us. the process of peace is indeed paradoxical. sometimes, in order to establish true peace, a certain degree of force may have to be applied against a recalcitrant disruptor of the process. but we know from experience that violence begets violence. there is also a difference between the calculated use of force in self-defence and the indiscriminate use of force against an enemy. we know that in all wars, it is not only the guilty who pay with their lives, but mostly the innocent and the uninvolved. it is our fathers, brothers, sisters and our children who pay with either their lives or their normalcy. the fears and the hallucinations of the affected live on much longer than the limited duration in which wars are fought and won or lost. religion is also meant to be an advocate of peace. but we know that the biggest of wars have been fought in the name of religion. it might not be appropriate to label the present crisis as a confrontation between christianity and islam but osama bin laden has definitely tried to make it a religious war by calling on his fellow muslims to fight the infidels. similarly, us president george bush in labelling it as a crusade may have unwittingly made it sound like a war of christians against muslims. yet, we know that thousands of protestors in america and around the world have pleaded against a violent retaliation, pointing out that the present situation needs to be handled with methods of peace and confidence building and not war. there are many who still dare to dream of a world that is not partitioned on the lines of religions, creed, castes and money. such a world of peace demands an attitudinal change. in such a world, the strong will not exploit the weak, the rich harm the poor, and the privileged ignore the underprivileged. the protests of such minorities may not be heard in the din and noise of war. but their voices create a pocket of sanity in the world which could then absorb the shocks and calamities of the world such as the september 11 events. sometimes, these protests are mistakenly labelled as pacifism. but such resistance to outright violence does not spring from cowardice, but from deeper motives of wisdom and forgiveness. it is only when people of goodwill come together that compromises can be worked out, conflicts resolved and peace established. that sometimes requires that we give up something and trade a small loss for a bigger gain. peace is sometimes only established at a cost. sometimes, the peace process requires self-sacrifice. it sometimes means that we sacrifice our todays to safeguard the tomorrows of the future generations. peace is finally not merely a fight against the forces of evil, but also sometimes a giving up of a certain good, in order to achieve a greater good. in history, we have the great inspirational models of mahatma gandhi who brought the british government to its knees through non-violent methods and martin luther king who paid with his life to establish a nation where african americans would be treated as equals. they dared to dream of achieving their goals through methods that defied the 'logic' of military might and conflict.
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