PARAS RA­MOUTAR

paras_ra­moutar@ya­hoo.com

The world needs a par­a­digm shift to­ward uni­ver­sal peace.

The col­lapse of our civil­i­sa­tion demon­strates that we have lost the "rev­er­ence for life" and val­ues. Eth­i­cal, moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues have been re­placed with vi­o­lence, mil­i­tarism, greed, anger, hate, ter­ror­ism, and psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al war­fare.

There is a need for a new phi­los­o­phy based on com­mit­ted so­cial ac­tion and a mass spir­i­tu­al trans­for­ma­tion ac­com­pa­nied by an in­tel­lec­tu­al process of a par­a­digm shift. We have to re­turn to our moor­ings.

We have heard of eco­nom­ic, so­cial and cul­tur­al par­a­digms. But not a par­a­digm of peace. This is the way hu­man­i­ty has to tra­verse if we want to save mankind from fur­ther an­ni­hi­la­tion and war­fare.

One such hu­man be­ing whose work and phi­los­o­phy and who re­mains one of the most dom­i­nant his­tor­i­cal fig­ure in the 21st cen­tu­ry: Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi.

Jan­u­ary 30 marks his 71st death an­niver­sary and the world should stand still in a mo­ment of si­lence and rev­er­ence to his pos­ture as an "apos­tle of peace".

Gand­hi's name would linger in the minds of hu­man­i­ty for sev­er­al more cen­turies be­cause of his deep com­mit­ment and firm con­vic­tion to­wards a world free of nu­clear war­fare, peace­ful co-ex­is­tence, law, or­der, hu­man hap­pi­ness, and sta­bil­i­ty.

This would be so un­less we are graced with an­oth­er in­car­na­tion of a Christ, Bud­dha or Kr­ish­na.

We can steer away from our civil­i­sa­tion­al cri­sis. We have to do that right away.

The world needs peace more than ever now. Look around in the Mid­dle East, the Unit­ed States, Asia, Eu­rope, In­dia, Pak­istan, and our own T&T, where mur­ders and kid­nap­pings are the or­der of the day.

Our es­cape route is to fol­low the Gand­hi­an ap­proach as it has the ca­pac­i­ty of in­te­grat­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and eth­i­cal as­pects of our so­cial sys­tem.

T&T's first prime min­is­ter, the late Dr Er­ic Williams, in a speech mark­ing Gand­hi's 90th birth an­niver­sary on Oc­to­ber 2,1959, not­ed that "it will take many years be­fore the world gets a tru­ly ad­e­quate and com­pre­hen­sive con­cep­tion of the stature as a hu­man be­ing as Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi...un­der­stand­ing the range and scope of one of the most gift­ed hu­man be­ings who has ever lived".

Gand­hi was a mas­ter of spir­i­tu­al tech­niques. He de­vel­oped po­lit­i­cal and so­cial the­o­ries dur­ing his 21 years of ac­tive po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties in South Africa. This prac­tice and ex­pe­ri­ence pre­pared him for his 34-year strug­gle against the British for In­di­an In­de­pen­dence.

He called this ini­tia­tive "Satya­gra­ha". This he de­fined as TRUTH FORCE and LOVE FORCE. "The soul of the Satya­gra­ha strat­e­gy was ac­tive re­sis­tance—re­sis­tance which found an out­let, not in vi­o­lence, but in the ac­tive force of love, faith, and sac­ri­fice," he wrote.

Aris­ing out of his South African and lat­er his In­di­an ex­pe­ri­ences, he pos­tu­lat­ed sev­er­al spe­cif­ic moral and eth­i­cal pil­lars for hu­man sur­vival in a di­vid­ed world. He de­fined them as: the equal­i­ty of man, the dig­ni­ty of the hu­man per­son, the tran­scen­den­tal na­ture of the soul of man, the su­prema­cy of the spir­i­tu­al over the ma­te­r­i­al, the ul­ti­mate vic­to­ry of truth over false­hood, the ul­ti­mate de­feat of brute force by the all-per­vad­ing strength of the in­ner moral force of man.

In­dia's first prime min­is­ter, Jawa­har­lal Nehru, wrote: "Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi showed us that the hu­man spir­it is more pow­er­ful than the might­i­est of ar­ma­ments. He ap­plied moral val­ues to po­lit­i­cal ac­tion and point­ed out that ends and means could nev­er be sep­a­rat­ed, for the means ul­ti­mate­ly gov­erns the end. If the means are evil, then the end it­self be­comes dis­tort­ed and at last par­tial­ly evil."

Great lead­ers of men fall in­to two cat­e­gories.

First­ly, they be­long to those who af­fect the life and thought of their con­tem­po­raries in vary­ing de­grees, but whose in­flu­ence steadi­ly fades away af­ter their death.

Sec­ond­ly, these men are a few who con­tin­ue to in­flu­ence hu­man­i­ty through their life and mes­sage long af­ter death. The lat­ter phe­nom­e­non be­speaks a type of great­ness ca­pa­ble of de­fy­ing time it­self which dis­solves every­thing else in its re­lent­less flow.

Such great­ness dis­clos­es some­thing per­ma­nent and abid­ing in the midst of much that is tem­po­rary and fleet­ing in the ideas and val­ues ra­di­at­ed by the leader by his life and mes­sage. We must re­mem­ber that Oc­to­ber 2 , his birth­day, is the In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Peace, as pro­nounced by the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly of the Unit­ed Na­tions.