Political Theory Chapter 9 Peace

The contemporary preoccupation with peace can be traced to the attrocities of the twentieth century which resulted in the death of millions of human beings:

(i)The rise of Fascism in Italy, the rise of Nazism in Germany and the World Wars. Closer home in India and Pakistan the human beings have experienced directly or indirectly the horror of Pakistan (1947).

(ii)Many of the aforesaid calamities involved the use of advanced technology to wreak havoc on an unprecedented scale.

(iii)Thus, Germany Carpet-bombed, London during the Second World War 1000-bomber raids to attack German cities. The war ended with the USA dropping atom bombs on the Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

(iv)At least 1,20,000 people died immediately from two attacks and many more died later due to the effects of nuclear radiation. About 95 per cent of the casualities were civilians.

The global community has failed to curb the rapacity of the domineering powers and the guerrilla tactics of the terrorists: 

(i)It has also often served as a mute spectator of genocide — the systematic massacre of an entire group of people.

(ii)This became particularly evident in Rwanda — an African country that witnessed the murder of nearly half a million Tutsis by Hutus during 1994.

(iii)Despite the availability of intelligence before the killing began and subsequent international media coverage of the genocide as it unfolded, there was no international intervention.

(iv)The UN refused to authorise its peace-keeping operation in Rwanda to stop the carnage.

Gandhi had rejected the established understanding of non-violence and articulated an altogether different philosophy of non-violence.

(i)Gandhi changed the  meaning in two fundamental ways. For him non-violence meant not just refraining from causing physical harm, mental harm or loss of livelihood. It also meant giving up even the thought of harming someone. For him ‘causing’ did not mean doing the harm oneself.

(ii)For Gandhi, “He would be guilty of violence, if he helped someone in harming someone else or if he benefited from a harmful act.” In this sense Gandhi’s notion of violence was close to ‘structural violence’.

(iii)The second major change that Gandhi introduced was to give the idea of nonviolence a positive meaning. Not causing harm was not enough.

(iv)Ahimsa required an element of conscious compassion. Gandhi was opposed to passive spiritualism. For him non-violence meant a positive and active pursuit of well-being and goodness.

(v)Therefore those who practise nonviolence must exercise physical and mental restraint under the gravest provocation. Nonviolence is an extremely active force that has no room for cowardice or weakness.

(vi)Gandhi in fact went to the extent of stating that if non-violence were inadequate to defend oneself, then it would be better to resort to violence than take refuge in passivity in the name of non-violence.

Civil disobedience is a major mode of struggle:

(i)It has been successfully used to make a dent in structures of oppression. 

(ii)A prominent instance being Gandhi’s deployment of satyagraha during the Indian Freedom Movement. Gandhi took his stand on justice and appealed to the conscience of the British rulers.

(iii)If that did not work, he put moral and political pressure on them by launching a mass movement involving open but non-violent breaking of the unjust laws.

(iv)Drawing inspiration from him, Martin Luther King waged a similar battle in the 1960s against anti-Black racial discrimination in the USA.

Different strategies have been used for the pursuit and maintenance of peace. These have been shaped by three distinct approaches.


(i)The first approach accords centrality to states, respects their sovereignty, and treats competition among them as a fact of life. Its main concern is with the proper management of this competition, and with the containment of possible conflict through inter-state arrangements like ‘balance of power’. Such a balance is said to have prevailed in the nineteenth century when the major European countries fine-tuned their struggle for power by forming alliances that deterred potential aggressors and prevented the outbreak of a large-scale war.

(ii)The second approach too grants the deep-rooted nature of interstate rivalry. But it stresses the positive presence and possibilities of interdependence. It underscores the growing social and economic cooperation among nations. Such cooperation is expected to temper state sovereignty and promote international understanding. Consequently global conflict would be reduced, leading to better prospects of peace. An example frequently cited by advocates of this approach is that of post-World War II Europe which secured durable peace by graduating from economic integration to political unification.

(ii)The third considers the state system to be a passing phase of human history. It envisages the emergence of a supra-national order and sees the fostering of a global community as the surest guarantee of peace. The seeds of such a community are found in the expanding interactions and coalitions across state boundaries that involve diverse non-governmental actors like multinational corporations and people’s movements.

Pacifism:

(i)Pacifism preaches opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes.

(ii)It covers a spectrum of views ranging from a preference for diplomacy in resolving international disputes to absolute opposition to the use of violence, or even force, in any circumstance.

(iii)Pacifism may be based on principle or pragmatism. Principled pacifism springs from the belief that war, deliberate lethal force, violence or any form of coercion is morally wrong.

(iv)Pragmatic pacifism does not adhere to such an absolute principle but holds that there are better ways of resolving a dispute than war, or considers the benefits of a war to be outweighed by the costs.‘Dove’ or ‘dovish’ are informal terms used to describe people who seek to avoid war. The terms allude to the placid nature of the dove.

The different forms of Structural Violence:

(i)The traditional caste system treated certain groups of people as asprishya or untouchable. Till it was outlawed by the Constitution of independent India, the practice of untouchability subjected them to social exclusion and deprivation of the worst sort. The country is still struggling to erase the scars and relics of this ugly custom. While a social order based on class appears to be more flexible, it too generates a great deal of inequality and oppression.

(ii)Patriarchy entails a form of social organisation that results in the systematic subordination of, and discrimination against, women. Its manifestations include selective abortion of female foetuses, denial of adequate nourishment and education to the girl-child, child-marriage, wife battering, dowry-related crimes, sexual harassment at the workplace, rape, and honour killing.

(iii)Colonialism in the sense of prolonged and direct subjection of a people to alien rule is now a rare phenomenon. But the ongoing Palestinian struggle against Israeli domination shows that it has not disappeared completely. Besides, the former colonies of European imperialist countries are yet to recover completely from the forms of manifold exploitation they suffered during the colonial era.

(iv)Racism and communalism involve the stigmatisation and oppression of an entire racial group or community. Racial discrimination still continues covertly in the West and is now often directed against immigrants from countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Communalism may be seen as the South Asian counterpart of racism where the victims tend to be minority religious groups.

It is true that peace can best be realised in the presence of freedom, equality and justice. Freedom allows people to express themselves freely, while equality and justice help in removing the grounds for conflict. Justice ensures the prevention of oppression of individuals and groups based on class, gender,  religion, colur and etc.