Extremism threatens peace in South Asia, world, speakers say
7/23/2003
WASHINGTON
(UMNS) - Religious extremism and the threat of nuclear war are two of
the biggest challenges to peace in South Asia, according to experts
familiar with that region.
"Exclusivism," by dividing humanity
into believers and non-believers, is "sowing the seeds of violence and
disharmony," said Admiral L. Ramdas, retired head of India's naval staff
and one of several prominent speakers at a July 18 symposium on South
Asia.
Many kinds of extremisms are at work in the world, and
many of them use violence, but the tendency since Sept. 11 has been to
treat virtually all terrorism as Islamic terrorism or Islamic
fundamentalism, he said. He urged the United States to be a "ringmaster
in the peace arena" by opening up discourse on historical, cultural,
religious, scientific and ecological realities, while resisting the
tendency to be a powerbroker.
Panels at the daylong symposium
addressed the nuclear threat, the role of religion, socioeconomic
development and trade relations in South Asia. About 700 people attended
the event, assembled by the Policy Institute for Religion and State, an
educational research organization. Co-sponsors included the United
Methodist Board of Church and Society and the National Council of
Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., along with the Ethics and Public
Policy Center; the Center for Religious Freedom, Freedom House; the
Institute for Religion in Public Policy; and the Apostolic Commission
for Ethics and Policy.
The tensions in the world today require
conversations among many groups, said U.S. Rep. Joseph R. Pitts (R-Pa.).
The international situation after Sept. 11 poses great challenges, he
noted, because terrorists believe all people must hold their worldview.
Too often, governments may fail to protect their people or may overreact
to the threats, he said. Intervention from outside may assist in
bringing peace.
"The international community must pay attention
to human rights," he said. "We must speak out against injustice." The
conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir affects the world, not
just people in those countries, he declared. Other countries can
intercede for peace, but military action will not resolve the conflict,
he said.
Human rights violations can be stopped, Pitts asserted.
He urged people of all nations to educate themselves about such issues
and about victims of human rights abuses, and to communicate their
concerns to their governments.
"None of us can accomplish much on our own," he said. "There is strength in working together."
Though
religion is one of the issues dividing South Asia, all major religions
offer a fundamental message of love, noted Swami Shri Adhok Shajanand
Dev Teerath Ji Maharj of Puri, one of the four supreme heads of
Hinduism. A minority of radical extremists has hijacked the Hindu
religion, he said.
Speaking through a translator, he said that
he wants those in power to stop misusing religion to promote political
agendas. Many of the crimes being committed in the name of religion have
nothing to do with the religion, he said. He urged the United States
and the world to reject groups that advocate violence.
He and
several other speakers accused the current government of India of
promoting bigotry and, if not instigating, at least failing to prevent
and prosecute those who persecute religious and other groups. Many
symposium speakers mentioned recent events in Gujarat, a state in
northwest India, when Muslims and their businesses were attacked by
mobs. The police and army did not stop the violence.
"The state
has become an accomplice" of the mobs that killed, raped, looted and
burned, said John Dayal, a founding member of the All India Christian
Council.
Religious fundamentalists who have been responsible for
14 years of violence are now in key posts in India's government, he
said. People cannot count on the state to protect them or to prosecute
crimes committed against them, he added.
"Religious communities
must be proactive agents of change," said Bruce C. Robertson, a faculty
member of the Johns Hopkins University and chairman of the South Asia
Area Studies at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of
State.
The son of Christian missionaries, Robertson was born and
lived in India until he left to attend college. He urged faith-based
and women-run non-governmental organizations to provide more of the
community services that governments are not providing in India. He also
cited the use of violence against religious minorities as an excuse for
violence against women and the group that was formerly known as the
Untouchables.
"Religious communities cannot afford to protest
only violence against their own group," Robertson concluded. "They will
gain credibility and empowerment when they speak out against all
violence and continue to risk coming to the aid of other minorities
under attack."
Lisa McKean, a social anthropologist who has
written a book about the Hindu Nationalist Movement of India, warned
that Hindu militants are a minority group claiming to represent the
majority and espousing Hindu supremacy. They are promoting hate against
Christians and Muslims and want to purge India of all non-Hindus, she
said.
K.P. Singh, who is on the faculty of the University of
Washington in Seattle and was born a Dalit, formerly the Untouchable
caste, in India, said that the Dalit people suffer great discrimination
because of who they are. He noted that it was missionaries who
challenged India's caste system. The system was abolished, but the
provisions of that law were not translated into reality.
Since
India became independent in 1947, about 3 million Dalit women have been
raped and 1 million Dalits have been killed, he said. He recommended the
creation of a truth and reconciliation commission such as South
Africa's.
Symposium speakers spent considerable time discussing
the threat of nuclear warfare in South Asia, and many noted that
diplomacy must be used to avert such a catastrophe.
"The United
States needs to be aggressively involved diplomatically" in South Asia,
which is experiencing a difficult time, said U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback
(R-Kan.), who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "How we
do that and what we do will be very important."
"Use of nuclear
weapons in South Asia constitutes an act of mass murder and genocide
against innocent civilian populations," warned Nayyer Ali, a physician
who is executive director of the Council of Pakistan American Affairs
and a board member of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
He
estimated that, because of the population density of Asian cities, a
single nuclear strike in any of the major cities of Pakistan or India
would kill hundreds of thousands of people and injure more than it would
kill.
Brigadier Feroz Hassan Kahn, former deputy director of the
strategic plans division of the Pakistan Army and now a fellow at the
Brookings Institution, stated that the nuclear threat in South Asia is a
great threat to world stability. The nuclear and military practices of
the governments involved must be addressed, as well as the need to
prevent accidents or theft of nuclear weapons, he said.
In terms
of the threat to world peace, Douglas Shaw of the Institute on Religion
and Public Policy, asserted, "Nuclear weapons are the problem because
they mix human fallibility with the most unforgiving technology ever
devised.
"Stable deterrence is difficult to achieve and does not
guarantee security," he said. Nuclear weapons "are inherently
dangerous." Nothing will make them safe, he insisted.
"The
civilized world has no higher security priority than preventing
terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons," Shaw said. "In keeping
nuclear materials secure, the devil is truly in the details.
"Ultimately,
nuclear disarmament is desirable not because it is possible but because
the permanent retention of nuclear weapons is ultimately incompatible
with human survival, " he said. "Nuclear arsenals - and each weapon
within them - and each year we retain them - constitute a terrible risk
undertaken for reasons that should be continuously and critically
re-examined."
Jonathan Glenn Granoff, president of the Global
Security Institute, outlined three actions the United States could take
toward defusing the threat: pledge never to use nuclear weapons first;
decouple nuclear warheads to reduce the possibility of an accident and
strictly control fissionable materials; and heed the moral imperative,
"nuclear weapons are simply morally indefensible."
He urged asking U.S. leaders to commit to a world without nuclear weapons.
Several
speakers said that trade might help reduce or end the conflict within
South Asia. Gautam Adhikari, a consultant at the Asian Center for
Democratic Governance, pointed out that the region is one of the few
that does not have a mutual free trade agreement. He expressed the
belief that open and free trade could work for stabilizing relations
among the nations there.
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