Subhash Chandra
Many thinkers looking into the post cold war scenario thought that conflicts have ended; the world would be a very peaceful planet to live for the humanity. But, later everyone realized and saw the re-emergence of violent conflicts in the world in many places perhaps in much more numbers than up to the era of cold-war.
In the backdrop, quite a lot of thinkers from across the globe gathered on 31st December of 2005 in Ahmedabad. They deliberated the issues for three continuous days . Unfortunately, I was not able to be part of that. They deliberated on the situation emerging in the global civilizational disharmony, I would say, the conflicts of different faiths, societies and leaderships and thought that they should take initiative to form an organization, such as GFCH (India).
I went to Israel once, almost two years back, on the invitation of one of the very renowned business houses there. My arrangements were made to go to the hills. There, I could assimilate the reasons of the conflict existing in that small place. I came back in the evening and had dinner with the host. My host narrated with great emotions, again the story of World War, when his grandparents were ill-treated. But then he said one thing which touched my heart. He said that if we keep reminding ourselves of the bad memories of the conquerors of this country, then we will be in conflicts with the rest of the world throughout our life. In this context, Indian civilization has certainly decided not to remember the past or what was done by conquerors to this society. Rather, they decided to move on with their lives and look at the future, avoiding conflicts and working in harmony with those people. So, may I request you all the same - that please spread the message of forgetting what happened to your fore-fathers in the past, so that the world goes on.
However, then some of the participants of December, 2005 meeting narrated something which took me back to my childhood, where we were living in a small town of India. In my mohalla, there were Hindus, Muslims and Christians; the Thakur who was an ex-serviceman, a barber family and others, all co-existed with peace, harmony and tranquility. However, what happened later on? The material gains, the desire to be supreme, to be politically important, all these aspects started making the society to disconnect with each other and started fighting against each other. Later, one of them moved to the West to live there. There, he realized that the Western society was more in disarray. They were more in conflict with the rest of the world.
The western forces wanted globalization but they still wanted to pursue their egoism. They wanted globalism yet they wanted exclusivism. They wanted globalization but with narrowness. Hence, I came to the conclusion that we as humans are pursuing a course of self destruction. Three-fourth of the global savings are in Asia, half of the world's production is in Asia, yet they were not participating in any of the global dialogue on the issue of civilizational harmony or they were not in dialogue to pursue what should be done to bring peace to this humanity. Because, the West was thinking that we, in the east, are involved in conflicts between ourselves, probably we cannot give any solution. On the other hand, the east was believing that, rather intimidated by western power, money, technological supremacy and military power, the east was not able to put its voice forth into the whole global community.
Hence, the founders of GFCH decided to bring this initiative. They have been working since past two years. Our people from GFCH have been in touch with the United Nations' sponsored Alliance of Civilizations. And, if we look at their discussions, they had been talking about only one conflict whereas we believe that there are lots of conflicts existing in the world across different civilizations. It is not only conflict with one particular area. They have admitted, the people who participated in Madrid, and number of historians of 20th century has said that it is the eastern, especially Indian civilization, which will show us the way to avoid those conflicts. Or rather, conflicts started by the west will find solution in the eastern civilization.
GFCH has been conceived primarily with the four objectives :
1. A platform to network diverse religions and civilizational forces in India and later expand the network to other Asian faiths of the east and then to go to global civilizations.
2. To ensure the participation of all the Asian faiths and civilizations wherever they are surviving in the world in a comprehensive, transparent and honest way so that a paradigm shift from present assumption that mere tolerance among people, organizations, faiths, cultures, civilizations and traditions is adequate. The founders of GFCH believe that in a post modernization scenario that acceptance and celebration of endless diversities of the people, faiths,organizations, cultures, civilizations and traditions need to be celebrated by the global society and civilization so that there is a mutual respect and acceptance which becomes future paradigm.
3. To ensure and create research & development facilities to study all traditions and draw appropriate lessons out of known conflicting traditions and beliefs and collectively through the network created, speed up spreading of these lessons to all who are concerned and willing to come to conflict resolution.
4. The research & development will also extend deeper studies in the areas of conflicts between the secular modernity and modernization on the one hand and traditional faiths and civilizations on the other, so as to sensitize the modern thinkers, intellectuals and institutions to factor in the sensibilities and sensitivities of all such faiths, beliefs and civilizations to encourage a dialogue among themselves.
And of course any other direction which today or time to come which may emerge from spiritual leaders, all intellectuals and others, GFCH would like to include these issues as well.
I hope that with the blessings of all the dignitaries who were present at our launch on January 22, 2009 as also other spiritual and intellectual leaders, this initiative will go a long way to provide peace and harmony to the world.
The search field cannot be empty 