CULTURE OF PEACE www.ignca.gov.in CULTURE OF PEACE Edited by BAIDYANATH SARASWATI 1999, xvii+262pp. ISBN 81-246-0124-0, Rs. 600(HB) CONTENTS Is peace a dream? A Utopian abstraction in a Foreword (Kapila Vatsyayan) dehumanized, fragmented Prologue world, stockpiling all- Introduction ( Baidyanath Saraswati) devastating war machines? And can we possibly uphold the culture of peace amidst PART-I SHARING THE EXPERIENCE OF BEAUTY AND PEACE the growing cult of violence and blind consumerism, or in 1. The Cosmos and Humanity as a Healing Family (Minoru Kasai) a climate of distrust, 2. The True Meaning of Peace from the Chinese Literary acrimony and intolerance? Perspective (Tan Chung) Embodying the presentations 3. Buddhist Art, The Mission of Harmonious Culture (Jin Weinuo) of an Asian Conference: 25- 4. Satyam, Sivam, Sundaram (Natalia Kravtchenko & Vladimir 29 November 1996 in New Zaitsev) Delhi on "The Culture of 5. Creative Hence a Peaceful Society (Devi Prasad) Peace: the Experiences and 6. Peace as Theatrical Experience (Bharat Gupt) the Experiments", this volume addresses these and PART-II EXAMINING THE EMPERICAL REALITY OF BEAUTY AND other kindred questions, with PEACE a rare insightfulness. 7. A Dehumanized Environment (Keshav Malik) Cutting across narrow compartmentalizations of 8. Modernity and Individual Responsibility (M M Agrawal) disciplines, some of the best 9. The Illusion of Seeking Peace (S C Malik) minds from Asian countries 10. Man in his becoming : A change of perspective (Mira Aster Patel) here share, with wider audiences, their concern for 1 CULTURE OF PEACE www.ignca.gov.in PART-III WORKING TOWARDS THE RESTORATION OF PEACE peace, situating their sensuous/intellectual/spiritual 11. Vipassana and the Art of Peaceful Living ( S N Goenka) experiences in a culture of peace. Also identifying Buddhist Doctrine and the culture of peace (Pataraporn 12. specificities in terms of Sirikanchana) peace-threatening issues, 13. Buddhism as a Contribution to peace in Vietnam (Cao Xuan Pho) situations, geographical 14. Buddhism and Peace: A Personal view (Sirima K. Goonesinghe) zones, the volume attempts 15. The Sufi Paradigm of Peace-making (Mohammad Reza to show how education, Rikhtehgaran) individual responsibility, 16. The Contribution of Indian Sufis to Peace and Amity (K A Nizami) philosophy, ethics, artistic 17. The Call of the Forest (Som Raj Gupta) creativity, collective spirituality, Gandhian non- 18. The Culture of Peace: Experiment and Expectation (Biswanarayan violence, Sufis universal Shastri) love, and the Buddhist 19. Creativity, Pax Mundi and Gandhi (Ramjee Singh) message of compassion and 20. The Culture of Peace versus Materialism and Consumerism (N. equnimity can reinforce the Radhakrishnan) culture of peace even in the face of despair. PART-IV FORMING THE NETWORK OF ACTORS IN PEACE 21. Experiencing Peace while engaging in experiments based on moral principles (A T Ariyaratne) 22. Working together for Peace: The Asian perspective (M Aram) 23. Public opinion and the movement for Peace (Ali Aksad) 24. An Odyssey of Peace (Angelo Fernandes) 25. Bahai principles of Education and World Peace (Dwight W. Allen) 26. The United national and permanent Peace in the 21st century (A K Merchant) 27. An international network of Peace (M. Ishaq Jamkhanawala) 28. Self-Organizing centres and networks of Peace (Baidyanath Saraswati) List of Contributors All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior written permission of both the copyright owner, and the publisher. The views expressed in this volume are those of Participants, and are not necessarily those of Editors or the Publishers. First published in India, 1999 Copyright: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts Co-published: IGNCA and D. K. Printworld Pvt. Ltd., F-52, Bali Nagar, New Delhi - 110 015. 2 CULTURE OF PEACE www.ignca.gov.in Foreword Kapila Vatsyayan Perhaps one of man’s earliest awareness was the need for a harmonious peaceful life with all living beings. In India the Vedic seers evoked ‘peace’ (santi) in many hymns. They inchanted the verses, invoking peace on earth, with the vegetative, the animal and the human world. Over the millenniums, the more strife man creates, the more he (she) calls out for peace. Modern civilisation lives in the paradox of ever increasing capacity of man to comprehend the universe ascend to spaces unknown and the imminent threat of total annihilation. The late Mrs. Indira Gandhi had eloquently summed it up: Development, independence, disarmament and peace are closely inter-related. Can there be peace alongside nuclear weapons? Without peace, all our dreams of development turn to ashes. No peace today, no life tomorrow. The interface of development and peace, and of course disarmament has been the subject of many international conferences and global debates. The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) cannot address the question of nuclear weapons and non-proliferation, but it is concerned with the cultural fabric of societies, life-styles and their interface with development models which create disharmony and ruptures at the human level. On the occasion of Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s martyrdom anniversary, the Centre considered it appropriate to hold an international conference on the Culture of Peace, as a tribute to her. The volume is dedicated to her memory. The conference was also in continuation of other initiatives taken by the Centre to study the interface of culture with other domains of life. Three conferences and seminars and workshops addressed a variety of issues, such as identity, indigenous knowledge system, the interface of culture and ecology, culture and education. As early as 1989 an international workshop on Cross-cultural Lifestyle Studies with Multimedia Computerizable Documentation was organised under the aegis of UNESCO. The proceedings of the Workshop have been published in two volumes. The deliberations on general concepts, theories and methods were followed by a series of pilot studies of various cohesive communities in different parts of India. In 1993, the UNESCO responded again to this concern of the IGNCA and facilitated another international seminar which went a little further in exploring the Interface of Cultural Identity and Development. The proceedings of this seminar constituted the First Volume of the IGNCA’s Culture and Development Series. The Second Volume,Integration of Endogenous Cultural Dimension into Development, aimed at suggesting positive strategies for intergrating all that could be understood by the term ‘indigenous cultural knowledge’. The Third Volume, the Cultural Dimension of Education, addressed itself to a cross-cultural comparison and assessment of problems involved in the modern system of education. The Fourth Volume, the Cultural Dimension of Ecology, devoted itself to critical issued pertaining to the natural environment. The Fifth Volume, Lifestyle and Ecology, emerged as an outcome of some pilot studies on the inter-relationship of nature, social structure, world view, cosmology, daily routine, lifecycle, annual calendar, knowledge, skills and traditional technologies. Closely linked with the fluid dynamics of a culture is the issue of peace. The Sixth Volume presents the proceedings of the Asian conference on the Culture of Peace, held in 1996. I must hasten to acknowledge that in organising this conference we have received moral support and encouragement from H.E. Dr. Felix Marti Ambel, Director of the UNESCO de Catalunya, Barcelona, who has pioneered a series of dialogues on ‘The Contribution by Religions to the Culture of Peace’. Professor B.N. Saraswati is associated with this dialogue since its beginning in 1993. Dr. Marti could not attend our conference, but I am indeed very gald that he has contributed to this volume a very valuable prologue which brings to light the importance of making such dialogue a fundamental practice and a living part of all traditions. The fact that six participants of the Barcelona dialogue took part in the IGNCA conference 3 CULTURE OF PEACE www.ignca.gov.in clearly shows that we have moved a step further towards realising this goal. Although in a certain sense this conference was a renewal of the Barcelona dialogue, its framework was different in so far as it did not aim at evaluating the role of the religion in building a culture of peace. It was planned with intention of sharing the experience of beauty and peace and working toward the moral basis of experiments in peace as reflected in the wisdom tradition of Asian peoples and cultures. The distinctive nature of the culture of peace in the present volume is treated at several different levels by eminent peace researchers, educators and actors in peace, Gandhian scholars, religious leaders, spiritual luminaries, philosophers, poets painters, artists, choreographers, musicologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, indologists, doctors, and other professionals coming from different cultural traditions and background. The presence of this impressive group of participants, who came from Bangladesh, China, India, Iran, Japan, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the USA and Vietnam, was the proof and the confirmation that this world driven with war and violence is in need of a new culture of peace. While addressing themselves to various themes of the conference, the participants came out with