Peace is in peril. Freedom is fenced and curtailed. Cowardism is on the increase. Increasing number of terrorists and terrorism is the clear indication of this malignancy that has affected the humanity at large. What is the cure for this malignancy? Without care and cure this malignancy is bound to drift the universe to total destruction. Such a situation should be averted in the largest interest of humanity and all living beings. We older generation must leave behind for the younger generation a world worth living and they can ever be proud of. Let us not destroy the universe. Let us destroy all the weapons starting with nuclear weapons as well as remove from individual minds the hatred towards one another. Let the hate be converted into a heap of love and affection towards one another.

Pathetically modern man surrendered his freedom to his own created machine and lost the peace and harmony with his fellow human beings and all other living beings. Instead of the man controlling his own made machine, now we have the machines controlling the man.

The Supreme Creator God gave man the “higher faculty” for use and not for abuse and non-use. Such a higher faculty is not provided to other living beings. At the same time man inflict so much pain and sufferings to fellow human beings and other living beings which no living being does.

The people of the west, especially Europeans and Americans learnt their lessons from the writings of men of Greece or Rome, which exist no longer in their former glory. Rome went; Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan got westernized; China already on its way towards that and the present day India governed by the western educated leadership at all levels started helping India drift towards that.

India, the land of sages and seers, Vedas, Upanishads and Puranas, had little to learn from the west. Our ancestors set a limit to our indulgences as they knew that the mind is a restless bird; the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains unsatisfied. The more we indulge our passions the more unbridled they become. Our ancestors, therefore, set a limit to our indulgences. They strongly believed, practiced and advocated “simple living and high thinking”. Mahatma Gandhi was a living word.

Our ancestors saw that happiness was largely a mental condition. A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich or unhappy because he is poor. The rich are often seen to be unhappy, the poor to be happy. Millions will always remain poor in that way. Observing all this our ancestors dissuaded us from luxuries and pleasures.

As for machines, it was not that we did not know how to invent machinery, but our forefathers knew that, if we set our hearts after such things, we would become slaves and lose our moral fiber. Therefore, our ancestors decided that we should only do what we could with our hands and feet. They saw that our real happiness and health consisted in a proper use of our hands and feet. But for that we have still the same kind of plough as existed thousands of years ago. Also, we have retained the same kind of cottages that we had in former times and our indigenous education remained the same as before. We have had no system of life corroding competition. Our ancestors reasoned that large cities were a snare and a useless encumbrance and that people would not be happy in them, that there would be gangs of thieves and robbers, prostitution and vices flourishing in them and that poor men would be robbed by rich mean. They were, therefore, satisfied with small villages. These villages ever remained the live force of Indian Nation and the very key to open the door to spirituality, irrespective any religious bars.

The economic life of the village of old was a well-planned unit. The people were classified under four main castes – the Brahmin to be the spiritual leader of the commodity, having no property of his own, the Kshatriya to be the protector of the community for which he was to lay down his life, the Vaisya to acquire wealth through trade, and the Sudra to earn his daily bread through any service he could get. Each caste was necessary to the others and the whole was a closely-knit inter-dependent system. Instead of the Brahmin and Kshatriyas vying with Vaisyas and Sudras for lucrative jobs, as they did under the impact of western industrial civilization, each person in the village had his occupation determined by his caste, so that from generation to generation there was a properly proportioned distribution of labour according to the needs of the village. The Brahmin did not become a shoe-maker, nor the shoe-maker an agriculturist, throwing the village economy out of joint, but each did the work allotted to him to meet the needs of the village and in return his needs were met by his neighbours. Production was regulated by a known demand so that there was economic stability, contentment and employment for all.

The administration of the village was managed by the villagers themselves in the form of a council of trusted men of the village - the Panchayath. They looked after what affected the village as a whole, e.g. settlement of dispute, construction and maintenance of roads, water-supply, irrigation, sanitation, education, policing and such like.

There is no reason why such indigenous form of economic organization and of self-government cannot be resorted to to-day to make the villages again strong, self-governing units with spiritual vibration. The advantage of reverting to such indigenous methods is that they form part of the culture of our people, who will, therefore, take to them with ease like fish to water.

In such a village republic the villagers saw to it that kings and their swords were inferior to the sword of ethics and they, therefore, held the sovereigns of the earth to be inferior to the Rishis and the Fakirs.

A nation with a constitution as above is fitter to teach others than to learn from others. This nation had courts, lawyers and doctors, but they were all within bounds. Everybody know that these professions were not particularly superior; moreover these vakils and vaidyas did not rob people; they were considered people’s dependants, not their masters. Justice was tolerably fair. The ordinary rule was to avoid courts. There were no touts to lure people into them. This evil, too, was noticeable only in and around capitals. The common people lived independently and followed their agricultural occupation. The people enjoyed true Home Rule with peace and freedom.

The cursed modern industrial civilization and colonial rulers damaged this and deprived villagers of their Home Rule with peace and freedom. They have thrusted on the people an education system to lure people for cheap labour work in factories and offices of the colonial masters. The colonial masters deprived the people of their natural wealth and systematically planted their type of governance in the form of democracy i.e. a government of a few people, for a few people and by a few people. What actually required was a government of the people for the people and by the people with the art and science of mobilizing the entire physical, economic and spiritual sources of all the various sections of the people in the services of the common good of all existed once in the ancient village republics.

Modern governance lack this element of “common good of all” which is possible only when there is spirituality and there is spirituality in politics. This is what Mahatma Gandhi tried in vain to do. As assassin’s bullet took away from our midst the physical body of Mahatma Gandhi but his spirit is still there to guide mankind for generations after generations.

Mankind today badly need peace and freedom. Man is today the slave of his own found benign sciences and malignant technologies. Cowardism is on the increase. Naturally terrorists and terrorism are on the increase.

What is this freedom? Is this freedom to do anything one like including taking up arms and doing terrorism? Freedom can be better understood from the following words of Late Poet Rabindranath Tagore:

“Where the mind is without fear, the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection.”

The world today and the humanity badly need the above freedom as there is no such freedom anywhere in the world. Peace is bound to elude mankind without such freedom. We have had enough of wars and terrors. Let us have peace and freedom, without which all of material development is of no use to mankind.

Sarveshaam Swastir Bhavatu

Sarveshaam Shantir Bhavatu,

Sarveshaam Purnam Bhavatu,

Sarveshaam Mangalam Bhavau.