wfn.org | Extremism threatens peace in South Asia, world, speakers say

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

July 23, 2002  News media contact: Joretta Purdue7(202) 546-87227Washington
10-71B{308}

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.), a United Methodist 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.

# # #

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org