VALEDICTORY ADDRESS BY SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF INDIA, AT THE RAJIV GANDHI MEMORIAL INITIATIVE FOR THE ADVANCE OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION.
MAY 2, 1993
It is high honour for me to participate in this Conference, one of the most important gatherings to be held in our country in terms of its purpose and composition. Eminent men and women who have shaped the destinies of their countries and contributed to the history of our times have met here and drawn up a Declaration for the Advancement of Human Civilization.
Rajiv Gandhi was one of those figures of history who brought certain freshness into the jaded business of politics and a new streak of hope for millions of mankind. I recall how the people of India felt when he was elected as Prime Minister less than a decade ago. They knew that he was Jawaharlal Nehru's grandson and Indira Gandhi's son but, in his own right, he was something of an unknown quantity. But so swiftly did he evolve a vision of his own and stamp his dynamism on the nation's affairs that even skeptics conceded that he brought credit not only to his ancestry but to the great heritage of our land. Most people hoped that just as Jawaharlal Nehru had presided over the transition of India from a subject country to an independent and vibrant democracy in the middle of the century, Rajiv Gandhi would preside over India's passage from this century to the 21st century and enable our people to partake of the full opportunities of modernity.
Rajiv Gandhi is no longer with us, but he has left behind for us an initiative for peace and disarmament that has become the beckoning call of the 21st century. It might be argued that in the short time of less than two years since Rajiv Gandhi's death, the world has changed dramatically and that with the cold war ending and a super-power disintegrating, we need not any longer fear a nuclear holocaust. Indeed everyone will welcome the end of the nightmare of the cold war. And everyone will welcome the agreement that has been concluded between the Presidents of the United States and Russia for a reduction of nuclear war heads and delivery systems. It is of far-reaching importance to world peace. But it is a beginning only. All the nuclear powers are not yet involved in the process. And there are still nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the great powers enough to blow up the world several times over. Besides, sophistication and miniaturisation of these weapons and the idea of their inter-planetary deployment have not yet been abandoned. There is also the danger of nuclear proliferation. The world is, therefore, far from being out of the woods as far as the nuclear threat to mankind is concerned.
What I find even more disturbing is the residual belief in the efficacy of the nuclear factor as the ultimate keeper of peace in the world. I have heard it argued that it was nuclear weapons that, in fact kept the peace of the world during the last half century. There also seems to exist an assumption that in order to keep the peace in the new world order such awesome power must remain in the hands of some reliable guarantor or guardian nations. This, to my mind, is a tragic illusion.
The existence of nuclear weapons is in itself an ever-present threat to peace and to mankind. At the anguished moment of Hiroshima Mahatma Gandhi had said "unless the world now adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind". Since then during the triumphant years of post-war peace mankind had stood more than once at the knife-edge of total destruction. The existence of such weapons had acted and still does act as a radiating centre for fear, anxiety and insecurity in the minds of humanity undermining all hope for a future and the moral order of the world, if I may use such a phrase. That is why Rajiv Gandhi had projected the vision of "a non-violent world order." That is why he had presented to the United Nations a meticulously worked out and time-bound Action Plan for complete and comprehensive nuclear disarmament, a plan that embodied the spirit of the Five Continent Six Nation Initiative and that articulated the aspirations of millions of common people in the world and the philosophy and approach of Mahatma Gandhi. There is, in my opinion, no half-way house between the elimination of all nuclear weapons and sustainable world peace.
With the current lifting of the nuclear specter from the minds of people as a result of the end of the cold war and the collapse of Soviet power we tend to ignore the long-term danger. It is not only the danger of total annihilation that faces mankind. This possibility of total annihilation had set in motion profound cultural and psychological consequences affecting the individual human being as well as world society as a whole. We have seen how in the 1970's the youth of the world had rebelled against the whole system, adopting a hedonistic, almost nihilistic attitude of instant Paradise, "Paradise Now". This has got linked up in an inextricable chain of drugs, violence and terrorism. This unholy combination is eating into the vitals of human society and into the underlying, indefinable moral order that upholds human civilization.
The extent to which the nuclear fear had sunk into the consciousness of the common man was revealed to me by a simple incident when I was Ambassador in the United States of America ten years ago. A student organization wrote to me, as they must have written to other Ambassadors, :- "This letter is to inform you that we, the students of Marquetee University, through a general election have declared the University Campus a Nuclear Free Zone..... In view of this we respectfully ask that the above named location be removed from any nuclear target lists." In another letter a lady, Elizabeth A. Crom wrote:- "I am writing to inform you that 2726 Sommers Avenue, Apartment - 1, Madison, W1, has been declared a Nuclear Free Zone. I am declaring myself a Nuclear Free Zone. I do not wish to be defended by the use or threatened use of nuclear weapons as I do not believe it to be a defence against perceived or actual threats from other governments -only the most extreme and violent method we have for extinguishing life on earth."
Such appeals from ordinary people are touching examples of their yearning for a way out of nuclear disaster. Their appeals are pathetic as well as naive because the brutal fact is that be they homes, campuses, or regions there is no immunity from the danger of nuclear weapons until and unless the central and massive stock of such weapons and fissionable materials are eliminated from the arsenals of the great powers, and other countries prevented from developing them. Mankind has to be liberated from this ultimate fear of extinction for the advancement of civilization on earth.
One of the ways in which the march of human civilization can be interpreted is as the progressive withdrawal of violence and hatred in human affairs and in the relations among nations. If human beings and nations hate each other and organize their resources and ingenuity to kill one another how can such a state of affairs be called civilization? The Indian concept of civilization has been one in which peace and non-violence prevailed. From Gautama the Buddha, Mahavira and Mahatma Gandhi we had dreamt the dream of non-violence. Jawaharlal Nehru had tried to propagate and practice it in the difficult and complicated field of international politics. Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi had followed the same path. By saying this I am not claiming for a moment that we in India have been or are more peaceful than other peoples. Deplorable departures into outbreaks of maddening hatred and bloodshed have occurred in our ancient as well as modern history. But the dream of non-violence had haunted us throughout the night of time and we have been trying to pursue that dream. I believe that both India and the world are moving in the direction of peace and towards a one world inspite of all the hatreds and tensions that bedevil our efforts, and all the barbaric internecine and local conflicts and wars that rage in different parts of the world.
Years ago Mahatma Gandhi had declared, in that quiet and confident voice of his: "The world of to-morrow will be, must be, a society based on non-violence. This is the first law; out of it all other blessings will follow." The advancement of civilization is marked by peaceful co-operaton and love, and not by conflicts and bloodshed. As Rajiv Gandhi put it: "Non-violence in international relations cannot be considered an Utopian ideal. It is the only available basis for civilized survival...."
Excellencies and distinguished delegates, I am grateful to you for participating in the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Initiative for the Advancement of Human Civilization. It is a tribute to a radiant young man who has also been a dynamic and thoughtful leader. The Declaration that has just been released is the ripened fruit of your deliberations and collective wisdom. I thank you profoundly and sincerely for sharing with us your luminous thoughts and your wisdom, and for making this Rajiv Gandhi Initiative a memorable event.
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