TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE We often talk of peace in the context of war. But this is a very narrow and restricted notion of peace. Peace is deeply linked with the entirety of human life. Peace is a complete ideology in itself. Peace is the only religion for both—man and the universe. It is the master-key that opens the doors to every success. Peace creates a favourable atmosphere for success in every endeavour. Without peace, no positive action—small or big—is possible. THREE AGES OF WAR M AN is by birth an egoist. He wants everything to happen his way. He wants the whole world to be just as he wants it to be. Acknowledging the rights and interests of others is against his instinctive way of thinking. It is this feature of man that is the fundamental cause of various forms of social conflict. When these conflicts assume a violent form, they become what is called ‘war’. Because of this mind-set of man, war has been a basic aspect of human history down the centuries, with history being characterized by a pervasive climate of war. Hate, violence and war—all these are different manifestations of man’s egoistic nature. Studied from this angle, history reveals itself to have passed through three periods of war. The first is what can be called ‘Political War’; the second, ‘Class War’; and the third, ‘Ideological War’. The long period of the ancient past was the Age of Political War. Political wars were basically waged in order to conquer territory. In the 19th century, in the name of Communism a new concept of war came into being—Class War. Communist thinkers developed a theory according to which there is one basic cause for every sort of evil, and that is, social divisions based on economic class. They claimed that by putting an end to these divisions and establishing a classless society, a society free from all evils would become a reality. This theory won considerable support among people. In 1917, the Communists got the opportunity to establish their first government—in Russia. Later, this