The India’s leadership of G20 can catapult the country to prominence but more importantly give it a chance to work for lasting world peace
India is now the chairman of the G-20, which was formally handed to it at Bali by the previous incumbent Indonesia. The presidentship of the G-20 has the potential to catapult India to the degree of prominence the country has not experienced before. However, G-20 leadership would be for only one year. Thereafter, the dividend earned from the capital gained during this one year should accrue. Would not the most handsome divide be an ongoing world peace?
The spontaneous conviction of most countries might well be that the peace will be, let us say, eternal. The “non-era of war” would endure indefinitely, to borrow somewhat from Prime Minister Modi’s statement to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Thereafter, whether India becomes the world’s number one power or not would be less important; the country would enjoy diplomatic dominance at least as long as the peace lasts.
Every thinking person in the world today would be aware that the use of a thermonuclear weapon means widespread death and destruction. Yet, weaker or less responsible nations with nuclear weapons in their hands do not hesitate to threaten those countries of whom they are afraid, have ongoing issues or simply have scores to settle. It is not impossible that irresponsible leaders of such nations could well be tempted to use this weapon of mass destruction. Criminals realize their folly only after they are punished; otherwise, they are incorrigible.
One hears much that is spoken and written in favour of diplomacy and statesmanship. However, it is essential that one recognizes the historical fact that neither diplomacy nor strategy has prevented war. The proud Maginot Line of France failed to even obstruct the German invasion in the summer of 1940. The only factor that defeated but did not deter either the Swedish army in 1708, Napoleon’s invading army nor Hitler in 1941—the invasion of Russia—nature’s intervention in the form of snowfall on the Russian steppes. What else then can prevent war in the absolute?
Something reminiscent of dharma, its inspiration as well as its deterrence could perhaps help to keep nations away from thinking of war and destruction and in this age, thinking nuclear. That the use of nuclear weapons is not merely destructive but also an evil, needs to be driven into the vast masses of people all over the world. How Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rendered burning hells in 1945 needs to be captured in record and displayed to all coming generations, especially in countries boasting of their nuclear arsenals. How murdering innocent human beings in such a manner is the worst dushkarma (misdeed) anyone, group or nation can perpetrate, must be driven into the minds of people. How effective this conviction can be, has been demonstrated through history in India.
The subcontinent was invaded via the Hindu Kush down the Khyber Pass and across the seas for no less than a millennium. There have been innumerable episodes of retaliation in justifiable defence by the Hindus. Yet, they suffered enormously in these invasions by an alien ideology and way of life, bled badly; their temples were destroyed but they fought on and hoped that “it is darkest before dawn”, and that the morning wouldn’t be long in breaking. There are cultures that do not distinguish between killing the guilty and the innocent, but butchering human beings and animals; between destroying the sacred or the profane. Imagine desecrating a church or destroying cattle in an abattoir. Imagine inducing the birth of a baby lamb, feeding and fattening it merely to slaughter it for feasting on its meat. The spread of dharma and awakening the perpetrators to the consequences of dushkarma would be the call that an international body can give to the comity of nations.
The world has also toyed with organizations and blocs, all for the stated purpose of achieving world peace and preventing war, but all such attempts have proved mirages, as the history of the world shows. The League of Nations following the end of WWI and the United Nations Organization after WWII are examples that foremost come to the mind. Then there are organizations like the European Union, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and various regional blocs around the world, whose stated purpose is to influence geopolitics and geoeconomics by proactively promoting the interests of the regions these blocs represent. Global peace is ostensibly sought to be achieved through trade and economics.
The G-20 being essentially an economic forum, it would be its primary duty to also awaken, as many nations as possible, to the crime of destruction and not merely killing. For example, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, which was destroyed in a fire in 2020; the magnificent Temple of Somnath of the era of Bhimdev Solanki can never be brought back, as are many a rare factories or centres of manufacturing, which are irreplaceable. India under its current Prime Minister has a truly unprecedented opportunity to lead the world towards a lasting if not perennial peace. The country has already become the world’s fifth largest economy and is one of the world’s leading powers, though India does not seek to dominate others. Unless the hearts and minds of people are metamorphosed, the darkest chapters of history would be written again and again.
(The writer is a well-known columnist, an author and a former member of the Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal)