Peace Please

I almost couldn’t believe it when Aditidi told me about TIPs.

The idea that one day peace would prevail in the world is a utopian dream that many of us nurture. There are those of us who do not understand why or how humanity, gifted with the faculty of reason, can engage a plethora of their limited time in this world to causing destruction and waging wars. It seems a ridiculously futile pursuit to try to grab everything for oneself when we can really take nothing with us when we go. I have always coveted the freedom of birds to fly high in the sky and float away into other lands. The freedom of rivers to flow through countless countries. And the freedom of the fish which dwell in these to go, literally, with the flow.

Advertisement

Why can’t we humans do that? I used to wonder.

Oh but wait. Humans have actually done exactly the opposite. We have stifled nature’s spontaneity. We have strewn her path with the debris of our destructive proclivities. We have caught the birds and put them in cages. We have caught fish before they can swim to their spawning pools and put them in frying pans. We have stopped rivers from flowing into other nations so that our bitter enemies cannot drink from its sweet waters.

Ironic that only destruction knows no bounds. I have always been awestruck by cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons because they can twirl all over the ocean and without so much as a by-your-leave, bulldoze through borders and rampage passport-less from one land to another, wreaking havoc irrespective of race, religion.

Cannot peace do that?

“Peace needs to be waged, just like wars are,” my friend journalist Sujan Dutta says when I ask his views on the current scenario playing out in the middle of the world. He is a war correspondent who has, for over two decades, covered conflicts and wars in India and different parts of the world including Iran, Iraq, Palestine, the Gaza strip, not to mention the Kargil War of 1999. I have asked him to write an essay on what he means by that and I am going to share it with our readers here. To me it would seem that we need to inculcate values of peace into younger generations.

Therefore, in a moment of serendipitous synchronicity, I was struck by what Aditidi said one day recently. The veteran journalist told me that she has joined The Tagore Institute of Peace Studies as its Dean. In her inimitable style she told me with a cryptic smile, “Yes, there is such a thing now.” Clearly, she read my mind.

Founded by Sitaram Sharma, TIPs as it is also known as, comes as a breath of fresh air at a time when the air, globally, is filled with the reek of gunpowder. TIPs is an appropriate acronym for an organization that is trying to usher in not just peace in the world but which is endeavoring to inculcate values of common good. It is the need of the hour.

Sharma, who has had a decades-long association with the United Nations including as Chairman of IFUNA (Indian Federation of United Nations Associations) and really whose achievements are too many to list in a single column, has always envisaged the creation of such an institute. In an interview, which I am going to share extracts of in a subsequent edition, he said that he had to surmount a great deal of cynicism but had persevered in his dream of founding TIPs. An articulate orator, Sharma’s speeches are sprinkled with generous dozes of humor. “We intend to give ‘tips’ to those who need it most on how to be peaceful,” he said tongue-in-cheek during a recent event at the institute’s office in South Kolkata.

Tips, which is also a think tank, has been organizing a host of innovative programs. One of Aditi Di’s ideas was to discuss amongst schoolchildren the ways of dealing with the issue of war through dialogue and diplomacy with a unique game. The kids had to device strategies around an impending Kurukshetra War in which they played characters from the epic Mahabharat and were engaged in a roundtable discussion. Whether war ensued or peace, the youngsters got thinking about the idea….of war and ways of averting it.

The writer is Editor, Features