Perpetual Peace –Pride of a Nation
“Today, where the boundaries of economics, politics, and religion
have all but disappeared, we have to work towards building a holistic society which
simultaneously addresses individual growth and societal challenges.”
– H.H. Sri Ravi Shankar
What are the National Conflicts that we face?
In 2007 Wendi Cai was the winner of the first place in the “National Peace essay contest” and after analyzing the different national conflicts, she wrote about a significant holistic program for the implementation of peace education:
- Harmony-Oriented Participation and Education (HOPE)—that emphasizes youth participation, comprehensive education, and enhanced psychosocial support. Targeting the whole community, HOPE contains four components. Firstly, program management ensures HOPE’s success. It mainstreams HOPE among UN agencies, donors, and other stakeholders and establishes baselines and partnerships. Consulting with community leaders and youth representatives, management staff formulates a custom HOPE Curriculum that covers basic education, peace education, human rights advocacy, training, and psychosocial support. HOPE indicators—such as reintegration rate and youth crime rate—are used to evaluate progress and determine success.
- Secondly, reconciliation facilitation fosters community reconciliation. It sponsors ex-child soldiers to seek forgiveness through their own proposals. Peace education, outreach, exchange, and traditional culture play an active role in renewing family and communal relations.
- Thirdly, competence centers implement HOPE curricula to empower ex-child soldiers and other community members through courses, workshops, and other educational events. Based on market analyses and community development requirements, vocational training links livelihood to opportunities. Encouraging youth participation in community governance, these centers endorse youth-group activities. A fund called HOPE Entrepreneurship and Leadership Promotion (HELP) supports job creation and civil society reconstruction initiatives. Furthermore, HELP may be used as an incentive to reinforce peace education.
- Lastly, psychosocial assistance aids war-affected children to rebuild identity, self-esteem, value, and trust. It strengthens rehabilitation by galvanizing children to organize and participate in recreational and educational activities. Paying special attention to young women, it constructs a three-year psychosocial support network with follow-up and check-back services as suggested by Graça Machel. While the legacy of child soldiering challenges peacebuilding, youth reintegration creates a window of opportunity to reshape war-ravaged societies with a culture of peace, reconciliation, and cooperation. HOPE establishes an interactive platform that unifies and empowers the entire community towards a harmonious and self-sustaining society. By promoting peace education and youth participation, HOPE enables young generations to become both productive constructors and peace-torch carriers”.
The reason why I site this award winning paper is primarily to illustrate the importance of the role played by children and the youth in every Nation. They are the future of the Nation and the Nation belongs to them. Instead of turning young kids and youth into soldiers and terrorists, it is important that every Nation strives to educate their youth and children on peace and cooperation, as leaders with solid education, armed with skills to contribute to their nation’s economy and prosperity.
It is in the hands of the youth to transform a war torn nation into a nation that participates and flourishes as a globally connected nation, with its own identity and culture to be shared with visitors and its own unique contribution to the world. The beauty about this world (Nations are nothing but the rooms of the same mansion- earth), is that each Nation has its own unique qualities and characteristics, and we should learn to “Celebrate this Diversity” amongst nations and within the nation. This includes the color and the culture of the people, the language and lifestyles of different sects in the population, and more.
In the next 3 sections we’ll discuss these important strategies that His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar recommends for Perpetual Peace in a Nation, such as – Spiritualized Politics, Secularized Religion, and Socialize the Business, which we refer to as the 3S strategy.
Spiritualize Politics
In a conference on Peace held September 11 2006, Spiritual leaders and canonical scholars from around the world gathered in Montreal
Delegates met and discussed what impact the attacks on the U.S.
“ There's an urgent need to secularize religion and spiritualize politics, and, politicians should be more spiritual," said His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar during his opening remarks at the conference and "Spiritual means honoring the values of compassion and non-violence”. The best way to combat social forces that foment terrorism is to teach people about religious beliefs. People should learn about other religions the way they explore international cuisine. We go and eat food in a Chinese restaurant. You don't need to be Danish to eat Danish cookies. You don't need to be Canadian to eat maple syrup," said His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. "Why don't we allow our children to globalize wisdom? Learn a little bit from every other tradition."
Other participants at the conference included Deepak Chopra, and McGill University
A true spiritual person would have found peace within and will propagate nothing but peace in all cycles of life. Such spiritual persons are needed to act as political leaders of a Nation, or the politician leaders of a Nation should transform themselves into spiritual beings. Spiritualizing Politics will lead to peace and harmony within a Nation and between Nations lead by such spiritually inclined leaders.
Secularize Religion
Secularization or secularization generally refers to the process of transformation by which a society migrates from close identification with religious institutions to a more separated relationship. It is also the name given to a general belief about history, namely that the development of society progresses toward modernization and lessening dependence on religion as religion loses its position of authority.[
No Nation in this world can claim to be a “Christian Nation”, or “Islamic Nation” or “Hindu Nation” or a “Buddhist Nation”, the Nation and the Religions ought to be separated. Obviously there could potentially be a Nation with majority of the population practicing one form of religion, but that should not imply that the general public cannot follow the religion of choice. Great examples here are INDIA and the US
As a child growing up in Chennai my Dad had a huge number of friends who belonged to religions other than mine. This was indeed more fun since we had more occasions to celebrate – including Christmas and Ramzan, though I am a Hindu. Dr. Deepak Chopra in his latest book on the 3rd Jesus also describes his experiences in India
Living in the US my children have friends in the street who are African Americans, Indian Americans, Chinese, Latin Americans and folks from Canada all settled here where we live in the past decade, each following their own religious beliefs and living as THICK friends!!
This should be the norm across all nations all over the world, we need to secularize religion. Imagine if we had all secular Nations with Leaders that are spiritual in nature, harmony will prevail within and between nations, if we can achieve these two strategies.
True Secularism is one where every individual citizen who has found the inner peace to identify himself/herself as human first, as a citizen later and ultimately as one who belongs to a religion.
Socialize Business
The 3rd strategy for Sustained Peace in a Nation beyond spiritualizing politics and secularizing the religion is the notion of socializing the business. This is the idea behind businesses pursuing revenue and profits without harming individuals, animals, plants or mother nature, with corporate ethics. This 3rd concept is equally power full for peace within a nation for peace can be achieved when there is sustained prosperity. This includes businesses being transparent, ethical, sharing, giving, eco-friendly, and overall being constructive to society and the nation.
“One of the many challenges facing corporations and politicians today is to ensure that booming economies and profits do not weaken, but instead promote rising standards of ethical conduct and integrity”, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar told in a conference. He said that to achieve this we need to spiritualize politics, globalize wisdom, socialize business, and secularize religions! He pointed out that this globe is ours and we need to rise to this challenge, now.
Business instead of;
- Having processes that pollutes the environment can look into alternatives that are eco friendly
- Producing goods and services that are harm full (such as tobacco and alcohol) can focus on medicines and food
- Amassing wealth for a few executives can look into ways of disseminating funds to address poverty and educations (like the Gates foundation)
- Lobbying and handling corrupt practices can act as good corporate citizens by engaging in local community activities and constructive programs
- Producing low-quality harmful product can focus on high-quality nature products
Business in each nation has the power to tap in the nations people and natural resources in the most positive way so that energy and productivity is targeted towards the overall societies benefits while producing revenue and profits for the business entities as well. This is a new phenomenon that is catching up globally and similar concepts in Bhagvat Gita are taught at Business Schools for ethical and social business practices.
All 3 strategies when combined have tremendous impact on a NATION and its Nation building activities.
Peace leads to productivity and prosperity
When a secular nation is lead by political leaders spiritually inclined and with business that are socially conscious, the Nation can easily accomplish peace within communities, cities, states and all the regions. This peace within a nation results in productivity boosts, and prosperity within a decade or so. Good examples are post war Germany and Japan
If one takes Japan
Improved productivity in all sectors
When a nation is guided by spiritual leaders and practices secularism and business socialism, one is bound to achieve enormous productivity in all sectors. India India has quoted that in a thousand years India
This does not mean that a Nation should not have a defense budget or forces, they should have one and they must use the same for Peace Keeping and Defense purposes alone.
IAHV and AOL’s program for National Integration and Peace within India
Healing the Wounds of Hate
Initiatives to Reintegrate Terrorists in Society
Terrorism and Naxalism has increased on the Indian sub-continent in the last five years. Between January 2004 and March 2007, nearly 3,700 people died in terrorist attacks. There are 10 states with Naxalite activity in 2008, up from four in 1996.
Naxalites, militant communist groups that were born out of the Sino-Soviet split on the Indian subcontinent, run “parallel governments” in more than 180 districts by coercing people to adhere to their demands. Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh recently said, “It would not be an exaggeration to say that the problem of Naxalism is the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by the country. No single day passes by without their attack.”
In the last decade, Art of Living has worked in sensitive areas of the country to reinforce the path of non-violence through stress-elimination workshops, counseling, dialogue and the youth leadership training programs.
The Art of Living Foundation has been an agent of change in areas with terrorist and Naxalite areas such as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar , Chattisgarh, and the North East, where more than 11,000 Naxalites and terrorists have undergone its programs. Also, trauma-relief programs have been conducted for residents affected by the violence and unrest. For example, in Jharkhand, 20,000 people have benefited from trauma relief programs.
“We were indoctrinated with words of confrontation and hatred. Now, His Holiness Sri Sri |
More than 700 rebels surrender arms, pledge non-violence
At the height of the violence, schools were converted into military and police check posts. The educational system was in a state of disrepair, and social divisions and casteism was rife even among children. Children of different castes would not sit by each other, even in classrooms. Teachers lived in fear of violence.
His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s focus in Bihar has been to bridge the divisions between warring factions. He met with members of each faction in Rishikesh and convinced them to give up their weapons, adopt the path of non-violence and work to improve conditions in Bihar . About 700 rebels from rival groups surrendered their arms before His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and pledged to spread the message of love and peace.
In 2001, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar visited Masaudhi, a conflict-ridden region, and appealed to the audience of 50,000 people to give non-violence a chance. His volunteers worked with local leaders and youth to reestablish the human values of compassion and service.
Once the root cause of violence was addressed, life slowly returned to normalcy. His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar urged people to identify themselves with their humanity rather than identifying with a caste or religion. Art of Living volunteers convinced local youth with graduate degrees to teach in the schools. Several schools in Jahanabad, Arwal and Bhojpur resumed their normal activities – this time with children freely mingling with each other.
The Foundation has also built schools in Bihar for students who never had access to education. The schools provide uniforms, stationary and mid-day meals. Twenty-seven schools with 1,500 students are operating in Bihar . The schools are venues for adult education, community gatherings and other social activities after hours. In addition to reading, writing, and math, students learn about indigenous traditions and culture. In other areas of the state, the Foundation has built homes for widows and the homeless.
Alcoholism is another rampant social problem in Bihar . The Foundation held awareness workshops for about 35,000 people, who learned powerful breathing techniques and tools for a healthier way of life. As a result of these initiatives, women took on a more pro-active role in ensuring their husbands stay away from alcohol.
“I spent most of my time running from the law. I shifted drugs from one area to another. I made a lot of money, but I wasted it on alcohol. The Art of Living program gave me a new way to live my life. I am inspired to serve my community and make a better man of myself.” - Ram Kumar, Bihari youth |
In the Narhi village, where no social functions, marriages and other celebrations were held because of a fear of violence, the Foundation held a special event where warring rebels were brought together. The evening of music and meditation created such a shift in the rebel groups that they agreed to drop a legal suit they had filed against each other.
Tripura, India
His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar village: Landmarks - Zero-Terrorism, Harmonious Co-existence
Ethnic and religious divisions have fractured Tripura, which has been mire in violence since the late 1970s. A small village called Mandahi suffered great losses, and became a hub of terrorist activity.
In 2001, the Foundation built homes, conducted trauma relief programs and opened two schools in the village, providing students with an atmosphere of love, security and non-violence. Twenty-four schools have been built across the state.
His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s efforts are giving students safe and happy learning environments. By rehabilitating those who had estranged from society and comforting those affected by terrorist activities, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has given them peace and a sense of being looked after.
Coming Back to Life
Vidarbha – Maharashtra , India
Vidarbha is a chiefly agricultural region in central Maharashtra . Recent droughts and economic woes have drive many farmers to committing suicide. More than 1,900 farmers ended their lives between January 1, 2001 and August 19, 2006, according to official figures. The mental despair and helplessness escalated in 2006 – a year that witnessed one suicide every eight hours. According to local media sources, fifty percent of the farmers who committed suicide in 2005 were between the ages of 20 and 45. This tragedy has taken a great toll on the community.
The Art of Living Foundation has prepared a comprehensive action plan called “Project Vidarbha - Swavalamban Program.” Under this program, local youth leaders are trained, and then work with their team of volunteers toaddress the problems of one or more villages. About 3,725 youth have been trained to implement the project at two crucial levels. The first is to help people overcome emotions such as fear and depression and instil confidence in them to become the solution. This is achieved through stress-elimination programs like the YLTP, The Art of Living Part I course and the Samagra Arogya Shibirs (trauma relief workshops). Once that is achieved then volunteers train the residents in organic farming techniques and other alternatives. The Foundation has also provided training in zero-budget farming to the farming communities in Vidarbha. The volunteers have also assisted in the construction of rainwater harvesting projects and soak pits to help overcome water shortages. There is also an emphasis on the importance of healthy living habits to improve the quality of life for residents of these rural areas.
“Before undergoing the Art of Living program, I was in a state depression and worried about my debts. Now, I feel confident that with the breathing techniques and zero-budget farming methods, I will be able to improve my outcomes and repay my debts. I am grateful for this new hope in life.” - Devendra Borde, Vidarbha farmer |
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The Foundation’s programs have conducted by its youth leaders since August 4, 2006. Over 11,198 villagers have learned the Sudarshan kriya. Traumatized families of farmers have also participated in the courses. Many young people, have given up alcohol and tobacco after participating in the program. Twenty-two year old Pravin Thakre, who used to lease his three acres of land to other farmers now says, “The skills I have learnt have given me the confidence to cultivate my own land instead of giving it out to others.”
The courses have been well received and over 16,000 residents from Morshi Taluka, Amravati Amravati , Wardha, Washim, Akola
“There has not been a single instance of suicide in the 509 villages we have worked so far. There are about 1,000 villages in the |
His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s initiatives have been received with much appreciation from the state government, which has invited The Art of Living Foundation to expand its intervention programs.
“The Art of Living has given a new lease of life and stopped the suicides. This is what Guruji (His Holiness Sri Sri |
In November 2007, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar visited Yavatmal, where he addressed a gathering of 200,000 farmers and their families. He also visited the Bodhbudan area, which has been the worst hit by the suicides. More than 250 officials from six districts of Amravati
Progress in Vidarbha Villages reached by volunteers 509 Farmers and residents who have benefited from the programs 2,00,000 Trees planted 9,300 Soak pits built 61 Farmers who have learned organic farming methods 16,312 |
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