No one professes belief in the perfectibility of man, or in future paradise on earth. To this extent, one would agree with theologians and the mystics who assert that perfection is not realizable in history. Historical events too cannot be judged by erecting an absolute standard of value outside history and independent of it. The concept of absolute truth, is thus neither appropriate to the world of history nor to the world of science. The Cambridge Modern History referred to history as “a progressive science”. Precisely for this consideration, historians, like the scientists, who contest the verdict of their predecessors, will normally condemn it, not as an absolute false, but as an inadequate or one-sided or misleading, or the product of a point of view which has been rendered irrelevant or obsolete.
The task of the scientists is to liberate the energies. The task of the historian is to liberate and organise human energies in the present with a view to future to benefit the statesmen, economists and social reformers, how to benefit from these energies through the progressive and dynamic process. The social revolutions, the scientific revolutions and the technological revolutions are part of the same process.
What fitted one epoch had become a solecism in another and is condemned on that account. We saw what fitted Russia in the 1917 was condemned in the late 1980s. Concrete historical situations appeared to bring about the change. Bismark was praised as a genius, a greatest example in the last century of a politician of the highest powers of political judgement. Historians believed later on, that the eventual destruction of Germany was in fact caused due to hidden flaws that existed in the structure of Reich during Bismark’s time. On this hypothesis those Germans who followed Bismark cannot be held responsible for the disaster. Thus, it goes to strengthen the belief that objectivity in history does not and cannot rest on some fixed and immovable standard of judgement, existing here and now, but only on a standard which is laid up in the future and is evolved, as the course of history advances. History acquires meaning and objectivity only when it establishes a coherent relation between past and the future. Thus it can be said: “when eras are on the decline, all tendencies are subjective, but when matters are ripening for a new epoch, all tendencies are objective”.
What emerged in the form of UN in 1945, has been superseded by the touchstone, for distinguishing between the real and the accidental. The criterion of judgement in history is not some principle claiming universal validity, but that which works best. Six scores and seven years ago Lincoln’s words conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men were equal, suggested a unique event, when men deliberately and consciously formed themselves into nation-states. Man became fully conscious of his power over his environment and over himself, and of his rights to make the laws under which he would live. But US did not join The League of Nations that was supposed to guard the very rights of the individuals and the nation-states. When that organisation failed to restrain aggression in China and Ethiopia, it collapsed. The member nations could not agree on the application of sanctions against the aggressors. So, League perished, for it had possessed no authority / no power.
In 1945, two months after the tragic birth of nuclear age, broad outlines for UNO were developed, by USA, UK, Soviet Union and Nationalist-China. Many of the principles were agreed upon at Tehran and Yalta by Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. The leader faced serious historical dilemma. As time passed, UNO turned clearly an instrument to serve the powerful and the wealthy – not a world authority to serve the earth’s peoples. Today, therefore, the UNO has virtually ceased to exist, courtesy the sole super power. Only multilaterism can save it, if it happens to be soon enough. US, having destroyed Japan, the entire Far East, South Asia, West Asia, parts of Africa, is bound to repeat its practices to destroy India and Central Asia accordingly for the same reasons. Israel and India following the example of US, since September 11, 2001, without even caring to obtain UN approval and without forming the world coalition to smash the terrorism of their own imaginations, in order to defy the UNSC’s resolutions of 1948, 1949 and 1967 (unlike the USA), are trying to absolve themselves of all the international commitments, particularly the UNSC’s aforesaid resolutions. All kinds of equivocations are being aired out to belittle the UN resolutions in order to get rid of them once for all, while hiding behind the US coalition that was formed by that country after the UN resolution passed by her to smash the terrorism. Strange, Israel and India both, probably with the covert encouragement of the US, are using their might against the liberators/the freedom fighters, who are getting killed at their hands day and night for struggling to free their lands from these usurpers. The fault lies with the UN which has not come out with the definition of the terrorist/terrorism. It should in fact have been done before allowing US to proceed to hunt for the terrorists. US, Israel and India, can, because of this lapse on the part of UN, term anybody as terrorist. This unprecedentedly powerful licence placed in the hands of US, by all probability, marks a formal end of this organisation, which will cease to practically as well as physically exist, like its predecessor – The League of Nations. However, I can suggest a definition, even at this late hour, if it could be of some help: “An act of threat of violence against non-combatants, with the objective of exacting revenge, intimidating, or otherwise influencing an audience or audiences. Dread is essential feature of terrorism: While terrorists have a variety of putatives, nearly all use dread as an instrument for achieving their goal. Usurpers of others territories and resources, the UN defiant states, being the root cause of terrorism, must be forcibly made to abide by the spirit of the resolutions and during the intervening period, until the implementation of the UN resolutions, if such states resort to killing, genocide and all other conceivable methods that might constitute ‘dread’, the tyrant state be declared as terrorist”. UN has remained static, has not advanced, it has become irrelevant and obsolete. History has discarded such entities in the past.
As a result of the dread unleashed by the tyrant states, many seers have predicted that the world will end around the year 2000, and some 350 organizations subscribe to this view, according to recent study. Those who have foreseen the world’s demise include, Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce (a famous American clairvoyant), Our Lady of Fatima, The twelfth – century Irish seer saint Malachy, and the seventh day Adventists. But seer Walter Laquer notes, do not agree on the exact day the world will end: “Some have opted for the 1990s, others 1999, yet others 2000 or 2001; to be on the safe side, some give a vaguer, later date”. Nor is there consensus on the exact circumstances or location of the apocalypse. Some foresee floods or conflagration, others epidemics, while others predict nuclear terrorism will bring about the end of the world. Then there are “Millenariam Movements” who predict the end of the world. These movements almost entirely consist of the Christian and the Jewish organisations.
What happened during the last over two decades has led many to disbelieve either in the future of history or in the future of society. It is possible that our society might be destroyed or perish, the history may relapse into theology – that is to say, a study of not human achievements, but of Divine purpose – or into literature – that is to say, a telling of stories and legends (like the ones that Americans might have found in ‘Tora Bora’, left behind by the desperadoes), without purpose or significance. But this is not the history in the sense we have been reading about. What now, when the UN seems to have lost its raison d’etre and when the world is waiting for the doomsday?
One can only possibly offer certain solutions to avert the catastrophe. UN Charter should be revised soon enough, doing away with the Veto power system, and empowering the UN General Assembly to decide on the basis of majority vote system. I need not go into the merit of the majority vote system. Global democracy does not tolerate the role of Veto Power.
Global frustration over elusiveness of peace, the growth of terrorism, widespread hunger and poverty, troubled domestic economies, lagging development, and trampling of human rights push most governments towards defensiveness. This frame of mind encourages tension; scapegoats must be found and blamed. All these factors encourage nations to bypass the international organization.
Among other measures, a form of optional associate membership in the UN for mini-states might be worth considering. The world organization would also benefit from developing independent sources of revenue and from a special UN peace-keeping fund, allowing advance accumulation of voluntary contributions.
To make UN more effective, its basic emphasis, in practice as well as in theory, must be shifted from serving nation-states to serving the world community. It must be more able to make things happen; it must be able to act, not react. Such a shift in emphasis and in priority may appear to be trivial matter of semantics because nation-states will still exist and contribute significantly to the global organization. Nevertheless, change in priority to place the interests of the world community first is fundamental. It is first key to effective management of critical world issues.
The world community must now find ways to pool sovereignty equitably and minimize the potentials for intervention in domestic matters and encroachment upon national independence. Concern about urgency is spreading. Recognition of the magnitude and scope of change is growing. More peoples understand that the commonsense approach is the only way to avoid dangers. Time is short; the potential consequences of procrastination and failure to act are overwhelming.
Without delay now, a clear-cut definition of terrorism/the state terrorism be taken out by the UN. States confusing state terrorism with freedom struggles that emanated from prolonged denial of basic human rights to the liberators of their territories, who want to ensure the implementation of long overdue process for the purpose under the UN auspices, must be indicted by the world tribunal, especially set up to deal with terrorists of sorts, expeditiously.
Civilisations that followed – Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Carthage, Rome, all the Empires of the Ottomans, the Colonial outposts of the British and the French, Nazi Germany, were made to be the part of the same drama that the ‘Money Changer’ that was spotted by the Jesus of Nazreth, had organized across the world, to enrich itself and to subjugate the Gentiles. The Circus continues with ever more vigor and now the world finances and trade are being controlled by the ‘Money Lender’ through the IMF, World – Bank and the WTO. The resources and production of the Third World are being valued by an element named gold, of which about 85% deposited in the reserve Bank of America, belongs to the Jews – the money lenders. This metal – gold, determines the amount of currency that a country can have. The money that is kept in the ‘Safe’ or Bank, establishes the value of the real production. The Third World provides the resources of as well as the real production to the Group of the 7 richest nations, who establish its value in terms of money. The real production for its value is dependent on the money value of it, determined by the rich nations, operating on the economic system engineered by the old money lender. What an irony! Can’t the Third World, like the old group of the 77 of it, pick up courage enough to get rid of the Jewish economic system which is capitalistic and colonialistic, by facing the Group of these 7? The Third World must establish the value of money in the hands of the rich ones, on the basis of real production, instead. The root cause of all maladies, terrorism of one kind or the other, is mainly this iron clad economic system which is strangulating the entire world by its vicious-ruthless shackles stemming from its genetic psyche. The Third World, in view of the long term benefits, might go for barter system at least amongst itself, in order to make a beginning towards establishing the reign of the ‘Real Production’.
Coming back to the main concern of this article, India is advised to look into mirror of history of the world and its own history. India must stop looking towards Israel for guidance, disregarding the imperatives obligated by its geographical location and dictated by centuries old evolutionary process. The partition of India, on the basis of two nation theory was the outcome of a prolonged evolutionary process. Our aspirations and anxieties about the path ahead should quicken our insight into what lies behind. Past, present and future are linked together in the endless chain of history. Let us learn to live as mutually useful neighbours. Let us remember that failure comes from resisting that which works best at a given time. Threat to Indus Water Treaty hurled at Pakistan by Mr. Advani is not more harmful and devastating than the usurpation of the Muslim Kashmir itself is. Pakistan was never oblivious of India’s malicious designs. India is undoubtedly past master of creating fantasy. The world watched with amazement, how the camera men positioned around the parliament house were indeed more alert and vigilant than the hundreds of men that were guarding the parliament/parliament house of India!
