CGNK Supports Gandhi Peace Mission 2015
On behalf of the worldwide associates of the Center for Global Nonkilling, it is a privilege to felicitate the organizers, sponsors, and participants in the 2015 Gandhi Peace Mission to commemorate Gandhiji’s courageous mission to stop communal killing in Noakhali from November 7, 1946 to February 4, 1947. Gandhi’s mission included walking barefoot for up to 4 miles per day with overnight stays in 47 villages. It had to be abandoned when the Government of British India called for his withdrawal amid increasing threats to his life.
Conditions today are somewhat improved compared with the massacres and revenge killings that preceded, prevailed, and continued in Noakhali and elsewhere accompanying the Partition of India. Nevertheless atrocities and killings observed then continue to strike fear among peoples of South Asia and variously in other parts of the world.
Thus much remains to be done to actualize the Gandhian agenda for nonviolent conflict resolution and social change inspired by the spiritual-ethical force of God–Truth-Ahimsa compounded by Gandhiji from teachings of Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. This requires education and training for nonviolent social change at individual, community, national, regional and global levels. One task is to continue to develop Gandhiji’s proposal for a Shanti Sena (Peace Army) for security, conflict resolution, and humanitarian service. Pioneering models that can be creatively drawn upon are the Shanti Senas of Gandhigram Rural University and the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka. The earlier Islam-derived Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God) Movement led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan with parallel nonviolent military and civil government components that emerged in the violent Northwest Frontier Province of British India merits overdue worldwide rediscovery. A prime source is by Dr. Mukulika Banerjee, The Pathan Unarmed (2001).
Another task is to place the Gandhian nonviolent action agenda and other world peace agendas upon an interdisciplinary nonkilling scientific base. With seriousness no less than that which has produced nuclear weapons or landed a human on the moon. This is the mission of the fledgling Center for Global Nonkilling. It departs from the fact that from birth to natural death no human endeavor can be pursued if we killed. It gains confidence from the fact that the overwhelming majority humans who have ever lived have never killed anyone. It proceeds from the 21st century science-based assumption that it is possible for humans to stop killing each other. It is hoped that participants in the Gandhi Peace Mission, Gandhian workers, educators, students, policy makers, and the media will explore some initial discoveries in support of the Mission freely available on the website of the Center for Global Nonkilling.
Glenn D. Paige
January 10, 2015
