WHY DO NATIONS NEED AN ARMY??

On 30th JAN-the day Gandhi was martyred, I am forced to think on this issue-why do nations need an armed forces? Was Gandhi a fool to follow Non-violence to overthrow the British Empire?

All nations spend so much on their Defence Budget only because of a common psychological problem of the human beings-which is fear and disbelief.Fear of all other people-as if everyone else is conspiring to kill us-or to forciblytake the possesion of our property and rights.

It was this fear, I find, that generated the first of the world's armies.This fear-fear of not animals or of the almighty but of the fellow humans had already cost us enough to have made the whole world developed with no term of such weight as "The Third World". This ever growing mysery of this third world is a clear picture of the effects of the fear of the fellow beings. It was this fear that caused the first war and it was this same fear that led to the world wars and most recently the war on Iraq, and the Isreali attack on the Gaza strip.

I find that, despite so much development in Science & Technology, man leads a life more miserable than those animals who he considers very low.

God gave us the capability to think,to invent and discover, he gave us feelings and thoughts- just see how negatively we used it to have divided this one small world into so many countries with so many borders and bullets and shells being fired in the no-man's-land, to have developed the concept of fear, hatred and jeolousy rather than confidence, love and compassion, to have wasted more resources(of material and human capital) to destroy rather than to build, to have made more felow men cry rather than making them smile, to have metamorphically created more War Memorials than Art Museums. I feel pity and shame on thinking of this past of human beings and i think God must also be feeling sorry for why did he gave men these fabulous gifts. It was man's actions, which feared God enough to have not given these gifts to any other race, as he saw men killing men...and destruction taking over his beautiful earth.

No great man with an illuminated soul, I have found, ever talked in favour of a war.

I do agree that Evil is there on our planet and it is blossoming, leaps and bounds. The reason behind, according to my insight, is that we have, since long, been trying to destroy Evil by Evil. Which is, in all sense, wrong. The only way to triumph over evil is by good, only way to win over hatred is love and compassion, only way to kill anger is tolerance and i don't think its too hard a truth to embrace!! May be it's hard for men to be civilised, may be it is harder to live peacefully than to die fighting, may be the truth beyond the veild of ignorance is more currosive than the illusions of this world we have created so far.

Just think for a moment, so many men, who were indeed Good in their courage, valour commitment, leadreship, honour, and character lost their lives uselessly to mark the foolishness of the whole of mankind in the ages. So much of capital wasted on Bombs, Shells and Bullets. So much of time and creativity wasted in vein. Had all this been used in the way God had imagined before giving us the power of intellect-where we could have taken the world by now? I think, we could have well before achieved the ambition of wiping every tear off every eye!!
Even now, even after so many centuries of bloodshed, man has not confronted the truth about his existance. Still we have a lot of chauvinistic men who are adamant to continue on their path of violence to get their so called right to divide this already fragmented world , and to bring more misery and pain onto this this bleeding wound!!

I think it is our duty, duty of the people who inhibit the land of Gandhi, Tagore, Teresa, Budhdha, Mahavira and Ram, not only to shun violence themselves but also to make others shun it too. In Mahatma Gandhi's opinion-"Non-Cooperation with evel is as much a duty as is Cooperation with good".So, lets resolve from now, to make the term 'VIOLENCE'- a thing of past, lets make this 'BARBARIASM'-a thing of history. Lets make this world such that our children breath fearlessly in an environment of love, compassion, peace and tolerance.

Its only this birth and this life and this Earth- and it depends on us -weather we make it HEAVEN OR HELL.

Let's make a world, together, where there is no need of arms and armies, no need of violence, where the head is held high....!!