Some eight years ago in the city of Johannesburg, after the Apartheid ended, there were a lot of problems. Many black young people were unemployed, like in our own country, so mugging was common. In fact, when I entered the hotel in Johannesburg, the Manager told us, “Don’t go out alone after 6 o’clock in the evening, take a few people with you, because you may be mugged.” One British lady went out, saying, “No, I want to go out and see… it’s a beautiful town,” and she was mugged. What impressed me was her letter to the London Times in response to the news report about the mugging. She said that when she was being mugged and her wallet was being taken away, she looked at that young boy who was doing the mugging and she saw that he didn’t like what he was doing. In other words, he had no option for getting his daily bread other than taking away her wallet. How many of us will think that way? Nowadays, we immediately use the word “terrorist”, and say put him in prison or torture him. We divide the world into terrorist and non-terrorist: the poor are the terrorists and the rich non-terrorists. I think this is when we must say, Look at it another way, there’s “another way of looking at things”. I think each one of us can find many examples of that kind of thing. It is important that Dr Ikeda’s major message is “Education”. He believes in conversation and dialogue. In fact, one of his famous exhortations is, “Extinguish the flames of hatred with the flood of dialogues.” That is very good and beautiful. He also says, “Peace is born from a willingness to hear, to listen, to see, to hear” — and that is what I saw in this film.
I have seen Dr Ikeda at close quarters, and had the benefit of listening to him and learning about his philosophy of life, which is a very simple one. In fact, the greatest masters of the world give very simple messages, whether it is Ramana Maharshi or Mahatma Gandhi. Their messages are simple, very straightforward; there is nothing convoluted or complicated about those messages. Dr Ikeda’s message is to listen, to understand, to have a sense of compassion; it means to understand the other person’s point of view and then try to assimilate it. He supports the UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, which started this year, saying that education must further peace, and for that a large number of people should understand his philosophy. Look at all the fights shown in the film, and at what is happening every day in parts of Sudan. Tremendous tragedies are taking place in many places. We thought that after Hitler the words “ethnic cleansing” had disappeared, but today, every day, “ethnic cleansing” is mentioned. What is ethnic cleansing? I am geneticist, and many of you know, if you have read about the human genome, that 99.9 per cent of the genome of all persons, whether Christian, Muslim or Hindu, black, white or yellow, is all the same. In fact, we have started Genome Clubs in several schools in Chennai and the adjoining areas, just for everyone to understand that all these barriers that we are erecting between peoples are purely artificial. They have no validity in science, no validity in biology, they are simply a product of our own minds, our own prejudices. And that is why I think it is important to continue along this path of education, and also develop methods of education for young people who can bring about more cohesion, more unity. Jawaharlal Nehru’s concept of unity and diversity is what Genetics also says. Look at the enormous diversity we have. With the exception of some identical twins, all of us are somewhat different. Life is such a beautiful thing. Such enormous diversity is a strength. We have a global convention on biological diversity. We also have a bio-diversity act of the government of India to conserve biological diversity. But when it comes to human diversity, we don’t want to be tolerant. Are we not part of the biological kingdom? Whether it is Greenpeace or the other many environmentalists, I don’t hear them talking about the need for human diversity. I think we should also have a convention on human diversity — diversity in terms of culture, religion is as important as biological diversity. It is important to understand the weaknesses and strengths of different people. So I think this is a great challenge for education, for understanding, and today, with modern technologies of communication, it is possible to do this. In fact, we have a programme for this, but I will come to it a little later.
Let me first speak on the topic under discussion, the whole question of inner transformation and of creating a global groundswell for peace. Dr Ikeda has rightly said that 2005 mark important anniversaries. The year saw the 60th anniversary of the United Nations. Also, the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; fortunately, these are the only two places which experienced what an atom bomb was like. If any of you have visited the Nagasaki or Hiroshima museum, you will have seen what kind of suffering they had. The year 2005 saw the launch of the UN Millennium Development Goals – eight goals agreed to by all the world’s countries to meet the needs of the world’s poorest. Also, 2005 marks the centenary of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and the 50th anniversary of his death, and also the 35th anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT is coming up for review. So, I think, 2005 is a good year to start thinking seriously about some of these issues.
It is important for media to play a very important role. Dr Ikeda has also mentioned this point, that ultimately media influences public opinion enormously. That is why I am waiting to hear Mr Kuldip Nayar. I think the role of media in this area is very important. Let me take the three major groups of issues which Dr Ikeda has mentioned in building up the groundswell of peace.
The first is, to strengthen and reform the United Nations. There are greater experts here than I on the United Nations. We all recognise that multilateral systems are far better than bilateral systems: multilateral negotiations, multilateral forums, particularly based on the one-country-one-vote principle that says all of us have equal rights. There is a fundamental principle for lasting peace and harmony in the world and, therefore, for strengthening the UN — our commitment to multilateral systems of governance, of behaviour, of dialogue. I think there is lot of scope for strengthening the UN. Secretary General Kofi Annan himself pushed hard for reforming the UN, including the Security Council. As you all know, there is a debate in our country about the representative nature of the Security Council and the five permanent members of the Security Council. All five of these member-nations have nuclear weapons, and so some countries question their authority to specify who can or cannot have nuclear weapons.
That brings us to the second major group of issues raised by Dr Ikeda: nuclear disarmament and progress towards their ultimate abolition. About 1990, after the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the thaw, then ending of the Cold War, there was a feeling that there would be lot of peace dividend, that money would shift from defence to development. I was asked to chair the International Commission on Peace and Food, the idea being that if there is going to be a peace dividend, then the first charge on that dividend must be to end poverty and hunger. These are also the first two of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals. Dr Ikeda has quoted the World Bank, the UN, to say that if all the countries of the world reduced their defence expenditures — cut out just expenditure on defence for just four days — there would be enough money for primary education for everyone in the world. We have many such examples, there are a number of permutations and combinations to save something. My own commission showed that hunger can become a problem of the past if even a small peace dividend — of 10 to 15 per cent of the defence expenditure — is diverted from so-called defence to food security, which is really another form of security and fundamental to human security. But that has not happened. Since we submitted our report in 1994, not only has there been no peace dividend, so-called defence expenditures have grown and grown, and mini-wars have replaced maxi-wars. I was amused to read that when Mikhail Kalashnikov, who designed the famous AK47, was told, “Your gun is doing so much damage in the world,” he said, “I never thought it will be misused by people, I designed it for fighting in the wars but not for fighting with each other.” The main thing is about the ethical responsibility of scientists for the consequences of their work. I am a geneticist, I can do some little genetic engineering. Say, if somebody offers me $10 million to prepare a new kind of smallpox — theoretically, it can be done in the laboratory, anything can be done, just as we can produce new rice varieties. But then where is my ethical responsibility if I agree? Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell started the Pugwash movement to reduce the danger of armed conflict. Among those who signed the famous Russell-Einstein Manifesto was Józef Rotblat, one of the physicists on the team that developed the atomic bomb. Joe Rotblat was the only physicist who left the bomb project. He said, “I cannot be a party to using my knowledge for this purpose.” That’s why he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He had a moral conscience and advocated a code of moral conduct for scientists. I think today this dilemma is increasingly arising because the power of modern sciences has grown enormously in every area, particularly in the biological area. You are now God: you can be Brahma, the lord of creation; you can create organisms which didn’t exist before; you can create plants; you can create animals. So, this question of how do we develop in the UN a peace mechanism which can tell people that none of have to each depend upon large armies, a huge arsenal, and that is why in our 1994 report of the International Commission on Peace and Food, ‘Uncommon opportunities: an agenda for peace and equitable development’, we recommended what has been suggested by many, many people before, some kind of a global army under the UN upon which everybody can depend. A number of changes will have to be made. We will have to have a common security of all nations instead of individual national security, so that all of us need not spend so much money. Therefore, I think, the first item of Dr Ikeda’s agenda, strengthening and reforming the UN and all its organisations, must include personnel reform. For example, I don’t think the Secretary General or the Director Generals of various UN organisations should have more than one term of six years. You find that if there is a second term, then there is a tendency to ignore their own inner principles “just for the next term”. I have seen this downfall in many cases within the UN system. Therefore, there is a need for reform at every level, so that the top authorities in the UN are also able to stick to their moral and ethical principles and not compromise them for short-term personal advantages. I think this agenda is an important one. The second item on Dr Ikeda’s three-point agenda is nuclear disarmament and progress towards abolition of nuclear weapons. This has been the stand at the Pugwash movement. In fact, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto says, Remember your humanity and forget everything else, then this will be a great world. If you do not do that, you can be sure of destruction. What Einstein has also said, in other words, is that if the products of your brain are not used for the purpose of common good, they will be a curse rather than a blessing. There is a beautiful statue of Einstein outside the US National Academy of Sciences — Mr Lalit Mansingh must have seen it many times — that has quotations about how should we use the brain, to do harm or to do good.
[As long as I have any choice in the matter, I shall live only in a country where civil liberty, tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law prevail.
Joy and amazement of the beauty and grandeur of this world of which man can just form a faint notion ...
The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.]
Nuclear disarmament is a very important issue. The global community has identified the methods of reviewing the NPT; there are a number of methods. But all the countries must have the will to ratify it; first of all, the five permanent members of the Security Council, plus three more members of the Nuclear Club — India, Pakistan and Israel — and, potentially, North Korea of course though I don’t think at the moment it has that capacity. At least these eight are clear. They should get together and sit around the table, as at the Pope’s election, and until they come to an agreement they should not leave the room. I think we have to have some mechanism to make it work. Unless these eight countries can give do this, other nations will say, “If so-and-so nation has got a nuclear bomb, then I should also have one. I possess this weapon for my defence and not for offence.” But whether the arms are for offence or defence, in hands of people who can abuse them this is a dangerous thing, and sure to lead to total annihilation. I think humankind deserves a nuclear-peril-free world, and I think it should be, can be done. Where there is a will, it can be done.
[Editorial comment: The 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was to be held from 2 to 27 May 2005 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.]
The third important item on Dr Ikeda’s agenda is the expansion and enhancement of human security. The late Mahbub ul Haq who started the UN Human Development Report also spoke about human security and not only food security, as a total concept: security from all angles, different forms of security, different forms of freedom, including the famous four freedoms of Franklin Roosevelt: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Many of these freedoms have been described from time to time as essential components of human security. But I would like to speak about only one of these fundamental requirements: human security. From early times, wise men and philosophers have agreed that “while hunger rules, peace cannot prevail.” [words of the late German Chancellor Willy Brandt, quote from the report North/South] As the Roman philosopher Seneca says, “A hungry person listens neither to religion nor reason, nor is bent by prayers.” That is why I started by saying there is another way of looking at things, from the perspective of hunger. I think it is a fundamental duty in our country to recognise the problem of hunger. We cannot avoid it by looking the other way when somebody is suffering. We just want to close our eyes and pass on. That tendency in our country has grown partially out of necessity: there is too much suffering, too much poverty. Inner transformation has to come from our resolve not to be silent spectators of the suffering of our fellow human beings. The cruellest form of suffering is hunger. All of us are assembled here in this beautiful hall with beautiful paintings. When I visit Dr Ikeda’s building, it’s really a paradise on earth, it’s so beautiful, so well kept. There is so much beauty, because beauty is also important; I think a dirty atmosphere creates dirty thoughts. But when we sit down to dinner, at the same time nearly 220 to 230 million of our fellow country people — children, women and men — will go to bed partially hungry tonight. There is no famine in the country, but there is chronic under-nourishment.
Almost every third child in this country is born under-weight, less than 2.2 kilo, largely because of maternal and foetal under-nutrition. There could be a number of reasons for under-weight babies, but the common reason here is — and this is happening in this advanced age of knowledge, the information age — lack of nutrition for the mother. Such children are denied the opportunity for the full expression of their innate genetic potential, for mental and physical development — at birth. It is within our capacity to see that every pregnant woman has the nutrition necessary for her child to be delivered with proper foetal nutrition. This is why I will end by saying that we have been promoting what I call Mission 2007, moving towards 15th August 2007, the 60th anniversary of our independence. You may all remember Mahatma Gandhi’s famous words which he spoke in Noakhali, now in Bangladesh, just before India’s Independence, where he went to help restore communal harmony. He said “There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” God is bread, he said, the first and foremost duty of independent India is to ensure that this God prevails in every home and hut of this country. In other words, the God of bread must be there in every one.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of our independence, on the night of 14th August 15th 1997, the then President Mr K.R. Narayanan mentioned two important achievements of independent India. One was that we have stuck to democratic systems of governance, except for the small aberration of the Emergency, during which time Mr Kuldip Nayar and others fought valiantly against it. We are proud of the fact that our country, by and large in the recent elections, has confirmed our democratic systems of governance. We must have the political will to strengthen our democratic systems of governance from the village upwards. We do already have the panchayats which have given one-third representation to women, but these institutions must be given the responsibilities contained in the constitutional amendment. The second thing President Narayanan mentioned was our progress in agriculture production. Most countries felt that we will not be able to produce enough food, that our farmers will not produce the output needed. Some writers said that India has no other prospect but starvation and death. One author even compared us with sheep going to the slaughter-house; it was said we will all die like sheep going to slaughter house. I hope, however, that in 2007 we will be able to notch up successes in agriculture and in truly democratic systems of governance, and also in becoming a land free of hunger, of extreme poverty, extreme deprivation, extreme inequity at all levels —because it can be done if we have the will. But we must all work for it. This is what I call Mission 2007. In other words, by August 2007, we may not be able to remove poverty and inequity in one sweep, but we can take a very bold food guarantee initiative — what I call a food guarantee initiative. That is within our own capacity. It can be done. I will end by discussing how we can achieve all this. Dr Ikeda’s faith in education is something I share: primary education, purposeful education. He says we need education for human peace — and he has called the coming decade the decade of human rights education for peace. Something of that kind can be done, but education of all kinds — education of economic value, education for health, education for livelihoods, education for everything else — is what we are trying to launch. We must make a national alliance, a national coalition, and provide a platform for a symbiotic partnership in order to take the benefits of the information communication technology to every village. We can say that every one of the 600,000 villages in our country will be a knowledge centre, connected by internet and community radio. That would be a very powerful combination of. I think Lalita mentioned earlier some examples of the work we have done. So, ladies and gentlemen, all the three items on Dr Ikeda’s agenda strengthen multilateral systems of governance. One, we can strengthen the UN: we must have faith in the UN, renew it, reform it, adapt it to the 21st century, and support the UN Millennium Development Goals, starting with ending hunger and poverty, with gender equity, IMR, MMR, environment and so on. Two, by 2015, if we have a common programme, we can get rid of all the nuclear weapons in the world, many of which are useless anyway. And three, we can expand and strengthen human security, particularly in the aspect of hunger and extreme poverty, extreme deprivation. Our country is predominantly young, and more than half the Indians are below the age of 22; 16 to 18 million children are born every year. We have the capacity to overcome hunger. We have the institutional strength, we have the intellectual strength, and, I think, we also have the economic strength, we don’t have to depend on others. Only, we should determine to adopt, as the film told us, another way of seeing things so that we will not despair, thinking, “No, no I am a small man, what can I do?” That is just not on. Each one of us will have to do something about it. If we change our way of seeing things, if we can see that our country is a great nation, with a great heritage, we can become a country that does not have the “distinction” of having the largest number of hungry persons. I think we can do it. I think that’s what I would like to see: everyone looking at another way, the way of hope, the way of determination.
You know, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Ikeda are being talked about together. Some time ago there was an exhibition about all three of them. Martin Luther King said he derived inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi. Then there was an article by Dr Ikeda on Mahatma Gandhi, and he said how much inspiration he had derived from Gandhiji. Why can’t we all also derive inspiration from them? Martin Luther King said we shall overcome. We can overcome if we want to.
So, ladies and gentlemen, we can overcome our own problems. We can also make a great contribution to fighting global problems because our people have been playing a very important role in the global arena. And, above all, if each of us as an individual can learn to admire, appreciate and love diversity among human beings —cultural, ethnic, religious and so on — then, I think, the world will become a wonderful place. We must set up national parks to protect bio-diversity. As I said earlier, we must have a convention on human diversity: all of us share the same human genome, whether you like it or not; all of us in this room have more or less the same human genome, except some genes. So we are all related in one respect. That is also the message of our own forefathers. I want to once again thank this wonderful centre, this beautiful centre, for giving me an opportunity to share some of my thoughts with you all. I hope we will all go to bed tonight thinking that each of us must always be in competition with ourselves. I never try to compete with somebody else. I ask myself whether the Swaminathan of today can be better than the Swaminathan of yesterday. I think of one way of seeing, then I think of another way of seeing things. We should each try to reform ourselves, compete with ourselves — in our compassion for others, our concern for others.
We must ensure that India is not only a country with a proud past heritage but a country with a present heritage, that we have something to offer to ourselves and to the world. Thank you very much.
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