Building a New World Order

 

 

 

 

A tribute to Nehru on his death anniversary

Building a New World Order

Jawaharlal Nehru had a world view. This author’s research work Nehru and World Peace is a comprehensive assessment of his impact on the world.  And based on the book, this piece is a tribute to Nehru on his birth anniversary for his efforts to promote international understanding and to build a new world order.

Nehru’s vision of Building a New World Order would depend on realising his following ideas:

World Peace: Nehru believed in the dignity of man and the equality of all human beings. He considered racialism as a threat to international peace and harmony, as the racial discrimination invites strife and conflicts. To him, capitalism was the major cause of modern warfare. As Willard Range, in his book Jawaharlal Nehru’s World View: A Theory of International Relations’ said, it was “the economic factor that had produced Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement in thirties. Had Chamberlain been more concerned with the true interest of Great Britain and less concerned with saving British capitalism and imperialism, he would have cooperated with both Russia and the USA to check the fascist aggression and to maintain the peace.” In his Presidential address to the Indian National Congress at its Lahore Session 1929, when the historic declaration of Poorna Sward-complete independence for India- was adopted, Nehru asserted: “so long as there is domination of one country over another, or the exploitation of one class by another there will always be attempts to subvert the existing order and no stable equilibrium can endure.”

He wanted a world in which there is no appalling poverty and wherein every man, woman and child would enjoy a decent standard of living, and basic freedom. Poverty and economic exploitation would make people discontented and rebellious, undermining peace. And “peace can only come when nations are free and also when human beings everywhere have freedom and security and opportunity.” Addressing the Canadian Parliament on October 24, 1949, Nehru said: “There can be no security or real peace if vast number of people in various parts of the world live in poverty and misery. Nor, indeed can there be a balanced economy for the world as a whole if the underdeveloped parts, continue to upset that balance and to drag down even the more prosperous nations.”  Peace demands freedom from fear, because fear leads to violence and violence in turn invites violence.  Peace is not abstention from war.  As long as fear and hatred and mutual suspicion persist, we cannot create the climate of peace. And peace is necessary to preserve humankind, to extend the fruits of modern civilization, based on industrialization, science and technology, to the multitudes of humanity.

International Understanding:  if world peace is to be secured what is necessary is international understanding; end of hostile relations among nations. In a nuclear age, war would mean the extinction of all civilized values, nay civilization itself. The role of statesmen in this distraught world is to lessen tension and conflicts, as “a new world, a brave world, and a petty generation do not go together.” In his address to the UN General Assembly on November 10,1961, he said: “The great men of the world have been those who have fought hatred and violence and not those who have encouraged it…what shall it profit the world if it conquers the material ills and then commits suicide because it has not controlled its own mind? Therefore, we have to undertake the vast task of encouraging this new thinking, the new approach of cooperation, not on mere ideological basis but on a practical basis of sheer survival.”

The world is a divided house where men of straw carry the notions of racial superiority and religious pride and fight bitterly to settle the score. The spirit of inquiry should pervade all the nations and the search for truth is a never-ending process. Every nation must be open all times to persuasion to change its views in the face of evidence and to be persuaded that the opponents’ view is nearer the truth.

We must build a new civilization-a civilization that can put an end to all wars and conflicts.  For this the present system of profit making must be replaced by cooperative order. A new social order must be built  and the "acquisitive and competitive society must be ended and must give place to cooperative order, where individuals cooperate with each other and nations and peoples work in cooperation for human advancement; where human values count for more …” 

One World:  As a world statesman Prime Minister Nehru had visualized the ideal of one world. One world is a sine qua non for global cooperation. It meant establishing a world federation or a world state so as to dispense with huge military establishments of nation-states and to solve the problems of humanity collectively. Through his writings and speeches, Nehru projected India’s idealism to the world much before she gained independence. He felt that the present nation-states “simply cannot fit in the modern world and no amount of argument or soft words can change that fundamental fact.”  In a broadcast to the nation on September 2, 1946, shortly after the swearing in as the Head of the Interim Government, he said:"The world, in spite of its rivalries and hatreds and inner conflicts, moves inevitably towards closer cooperation and the building up of a world commonwealth.  It is for the One World that free India will work a world in which there is the free co-operation of free peoples.” If the world is to survive, the nations have got to learn to live together and cooperate with one another, based on the principles of freedom and equality and justice.

Nehru believed that a World State, having an organization similar to that of the UN, based on the fullest democracy and freedom, having no truck with imperialism or fascism, is inevitable. In his address to the World Federalists Conference held in New Delhi, September, 1963, he conceptualized the world state. The “world state, among other things, must have a world police force…the state must be based on more or less demilitarized humanity that is, the present approach to arms and building up of huge forces and armaments must go.” With demilitarization, the fear of military power subjugating a militarily weak nation would be removed. And the world state, based on the principle of co-existence and mutual-respect, “will have to work under planned and socialized economy in order to end the conflicts.”

This would mean the Western democratic states must learn to reconcile with planned economy as a means to improve the lot of the impoverished. The new nations of Asia and Africa cannot afford to opt for the laissez faire theory of economy, as these countries have unique problems of hunger, malnutrition, abject poverty, illiteracy, disease and the like which require state intervention in economy. If these countries opt for capitalist mode of development, it would only lead to concentration of economic power in the hands of few individuals or group of individuals, to the detriment of the common good, leading to economic exploitation. And the advanced countries should give massive economic aid to the poor countries without any strings attached, and help in their economic development. Similarly, the totalitarian communist countries must relax the state control over the individual. They must not stifle the individuality of a human being by denying him the basic political and civil rights. This is how Nehru hoped to reconcile the different social and economic systems, of the countries belonging to both the ‘free world’ and the ‘socialist world’.

The Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khrushchev wanted to know from Nehru the secret of his being friendly with western countries and asked him to help him befriend America and England, to which Nehru answered that if he wanted friendship with America and England he must not say things which infuriate them. To which Khrushchev responded: “do you realise that for 30 years or so, whatever the period, we have lived in Russia in a state of siege. We have lived in a state of siege with our enemies surrounding us and trying to put an end to us, crush us. We have fought and survived. But this state of siege has conditioned us.”

Nehru was of the opinion that we cannot afford to have a ‘regimented world, all thinking and functioning alike’. Today, the Communist Chinese expansionism; the rise of authoritarian regimes that concentrate and consolidate power, undermining the democratic principles; and growing social and economic inequalities and conflicts are a stumbling block to building a new world order, based on mutual cooperation and peaceful co-existence.