SHEETAL KANWAR
Over hundreds and hundreds years, the world civilization has witnessed countless instances of warfare, battles, and conflicts duly capable of employing the power of transmuting the human kind into forms what the emperors and rulers had never thought of. There existed peerless and rarest men among the human species who preached and practiced theories of peace that made the human race to evolve into a more enlightened genre living of what he is today on this planet. Rashtrapita Mahatma Gandhi is the greatest apostle of peace the world has seen after Mahatma Buddha and Jesus Christ. His notion of peace is centered on nonviolence, individualism, soul force and forgiveness.
Most of the people have understood Gandhi in a rather narrow sense. They have seen his non-violence, his Satyagraha and his pacifism in terms of war and resistance. They have ignored a very important section of his philosophy which is about the reconstruction of a peaceful society. War to him was only a by-product of our economic and political systems, a symptom of wrong relationships among human communities. There is no point in resisting war if we do not remove the causes of war. Therefore he gave a twelve point plan for reconstructing violence-free India. Resistance was only a very small part of his struggle. The major part of his work was devoted to the discovery of a relationship in which people do not want to dominate each other and resort to violence.
He was the pioneer in India’s struggle for achieving freedom from British rule. Gandhi did not see the British as enemies and that is why he was able to win their minds and change their hearts. The British put him in prison, still he saw God in them and loved them. That is why the British celebrate Gandhi. We cannot make peace with our opponents if we see them as our enemies. This is the Gandhian way to peace.
Being the country of Mahatma Gandhi, India has a huge legacy of contributing to world peace. In a world troubled with conflict, a day dedicated to peace reminds us of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of Ahimsa or non-violence. International Day of Peace is observed every year on September 21. It is a United Nations-designated day, established in 1981. The theme for International Day of Peace 2020 is “Shaping Peace Together.” The world body encourages people to “celebrate the day by spreading compassion, kindness and hope in the face of the (COVID-19) pandemic.” The pandemic has emerged as a common enemy of the world today. The world is celebrating the 151st birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi this year. His birthday is marked as the International Day of Non-Violence.
Gandhi would not have wanted to be only remembered in history books. He would not want to be remembered only as the politician who led India to independence. He would want his message to live on; he would want his yagna to continue burning, to continue bringing light and warmth to the entire world. In fact, when someone once asked him for a message, he replied, “my life is my message.”
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