Needed: A New Satyagraha For Peace

Peace requires not just a constitution; it also requires a syllabus. It's not defined as the Trumpian world sees it. It's more about the universality Mahatma Gandhi exemplified

- SHIV VISVANATHAN

At a time when war seems to be a daily occurrence and an easy accompaniment to the nation state, thinking of peace is urgent. One has to begin with a set of indirect observations. Literary critics have mentioned that poetry sometimes not only provides an aesthetics of insights, but can capture the truth of an event in a way social science is rarely able to. One wants to echo, in particular, the words of Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who said, "Piecemeal peace is poor peace."

One has to, first of all, begin by understanding that peace is not a question of fragmentary understandings. It's in this context that one must begin by understanding what psychologist Ashis Nandy has repeatedly emphasized.

Nandy emphasized the impoverishment of international relations as a set of conceptual frameworks for capturing the idea of peace. He said international relations rely on fragmentary concepts like borders, securities, and contracts—none of which is able to create an organic sense of peace. It's like expecting a cost-benefit analysis to create a commons.

It's in this context that Ela Bhatt has argued that we have to go beyond dualism, particularly surrounding the idea of international relations. For this, we need to create a new kind of domesticity, one which encompasses international relations. She argued that being at home in domestic terms means being at home in the world—that the ideas of swadeshi and swaraj are both encompassed within the idea of peace. What is peaceful in the vernacular sense has also to be peaceful in the cosmopolitan sense.