Yesterday I wrote about the catastrophe in Japan and about how much loss is there of people and material. There are still explosions in the nuclear power stations and the danger of radiation is not banned. This is the same Japan that had to suffer from nuclear bombs in the Second World War.
At the side of this news, further information caught my attention: India has surpassed China if you look at the countries’ amount of weapon imports. 9% of global arm imports go to India!
It is the same country in which farmers commit suicide because they don’t have food to eat. I have written so often about how many children never in their lives see a school. It is the same country in which children are seriously ill because of malnourishment.
I just read:
“A 2007 report by the state-run National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) found that 77% of Indians, or 836 million people, lived on less than 20 rupees per day (USD 0.50 nominal, USD 2.0 in PPP), with most working in ‘informal labour sector with no job or social security, living in abject poverty.’” Source: Wikipedia
When you hear that our country is the biggest buyer of arms in the world, you can only shake your head and wonder. How many people’s lives could you save with this money? We don’t spend enough money for their welfare but we can afford to buy those weapons?
Being Indian, I am of course also concerned about the security of our country. The Indian government says they see risks and danger from their neighbours China and Pakistan. They could be trying to acquire land that is now Indian at some time in future, as it happened before in history, so the military needs arms to protect the country. I don’t want to say that our military should not have arms and we do not need protection. I am thankful that there are people who fight and even give their lives for the rest of the country and I don’t think this protection can be achieved by throwing flowers and singing Mantras.
What I criticize and believe is a wrong concept is that competition of buying weapons between these countries. When China announced their budget on how many weapons they will buy, India looked at it and decided to buy more! This is what I don’t approve of. China is getting more powerful and India wants to be, too. It is a striving for power with a view of the future that is everything else than peaceful. There are of course countries that sell the weapons and thus earn money with it. These companies approve of the increased export of arms. They get rich by selling war. It is going towards war and bloodshed and there is a whole industry behind this. We should not be living our lives for war and arms, and should not strive to be the biggest power and those with most weapons. We should strive for peace and seek love and for this the whole world has to leave the competition and change their attitude. Otherwise every country will keep an arms race and in the end every country will have nuclear weapons and threaten each other. If this kind of war starts, it will simply extinguish all life on earth. Then for whom do you do this?
The power that you think you get by buying arms, is only an illusion. Look at Japan and what happened there! They are a powerful country, the third biggest economy of the world. They are just a small country but a very powerful one. Still however, nature is more powerful than human and you can see what happened. Do you still think human is powerful? No, whatever you will do, this earth will survive us.
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Swami ji,
This is the excellent piece of writing. So true and yet not followed. Unfortunately reality is different from how world thinks. We were a nation of spiritual people( there still are many of them). However 1000 years of rule has taught us one thing, need to defend ourselves. We cannot even imagine what external forces would do to us once they conquer us. So yes it is a sad thing that we have to buy so much arms but that is how things are playing out. Either we are in the game or we are not.
I can take examples of astro turf field in hockey. India has totally lost( though not only because of the turf but also because of the politics). SO we either stay in the game or bow out.
Once we reach the position of strength we can actually become a shining light once again. Till then we have to play to win 🙁
Dear Ashvini,Thank you for your nice comment. I think there is no possibility not to be in the game. You are forced to be in the game, in the system if you exist. I just think how the consciousness of human kind can change so that it can affect the system and finally the game too.