This anti-nuclear arms convention is convened to express the deep concern of the peoples of the world at the growing competition in nuclear weapons, which may, by accident if not by design, destroy nearly everything we hold dear, and reduce this world to ashes. The present balance of nuclear power, when a pilot in panic may press a button and end the human race, is a state of precarious peace. This is a cold, hard fact of contemporary life.
The testing of nuclear weapons, as going on today, has not only immediate but long-term effects. It causes untold damage to unborn generations. Our invitation letter stresses this aspect: "Give our children a chance to grow up as we did". This is possible only if there is complete nuclear disarmament.
The world is full of tensions arsing from the growth of new nations, from the passion for independence of non-self-governing peoples, from the demand of less advanced people for a larger share in the world's goods, from the racial policies adopted by certain States and from the inequalities between the rich and the poor nations. The most acute and urgent problem is the cold war between the two blocks which are piling up vast destructive nuclear power. In this explosive condition of international deterioration any miscalculation may lead to a catastrophe.
The Convention is not only against the testing of nuclear weapons but against their use in any war. Even if we ban the testing of nuclear weapons, destroy the nuclear armaments, stop their production, we cannot erase the knowledge of nuclear know-how from men's minds. As soon as hostilities break out, nuclear weapons will be produced and used. Military researchers are planning deadlier weapons at lower cost. A time will come when almost all nations will have the knowledge and the power to make nuclear weapons. We must, therefore, assume that in another war on a large scale, if the present condition continues, nuclear weapons will be used, resulting in the obliteration of our enemies as well as of ourselves.
So long as we retain war as a method of settling international disputes and include nuclear weapons in our armoury, they will be used at some stage. There is now no alternative to a powerful settlement of even the most intricate international problems. If we wish to abolish the use of nuclear weapons, we must work for the abolition of war itself as an instrument for settling international disputes.
The resources, natural and human, which we now have, if uncontrolled, may lead to disaster; if controlled and properly directed, they may lead to a better world than we had before. The future is in our hands. The passions, the illusions and the tensions which provoked wars in the past cannot be allowed to persist in the future. We will survive or perish together by the choice we now make. History must take a new direction if man's deepest desire for peace s to endure and prevail.
It is unfortunate that man is losing faith in himself. We suffer from a feeling of utter helplessness. We seem to have lost our initiative and judgment. We live in an age which seems to be purposeless, which is greatly concerned but unconvinced, which hesitates between the past and the future. The human mind is at conflict with itself. We do not choose evil and accept it but it chooses us, enters us slowly and consumes us. This is because man has ceased to be a creative person. He is reduced to the status of an object shaped by impersonal forces. This is man's self-defeat.
Our excuse is that other people are doing the same thing. Living in this world we have to behave like others, sastram sastrenasamyati, arms are overcome by arms.
We should realise that the progress hitherto achieved is due to the free spirit of man which fights all closed societies and rebels against the rigidity of the past. The inspiration of the infinitely improbable has been the impetus to all progress. In any society, a small minority overcomes spiritual inertia and asserts the force of spirit which is unconquerable. It resists the status quo. If we care for the sick, the weak, the old, the decrepit; if we have abandoned the beliefs that the Gods would be pleased by the burning alive of children, witches, and our enemies; if we abolished duelling and slavery; if the rack, the stake and the Inquisition are relics of the past, it is because of the force of spirit.
The absence of any preconceived pattern in history, the contingency, the unforeseeability, the haphazardness of history point to the intervention of the free spirit of man. The future of mankind is wide open. There is nothing inevitable about it.
It is wrong to assume that human nature is static and unchanging. Man's sensitivity to evil has increased. Many beliefs and practices which we once adopted are now discarded. What we once regarded as right are now discarded as wrong. Human nature has changed in the past and will change in the future. In this world of mortal peril, that is the immortal hope that sustains us. We should realise that behind the hand that releases the bomb is the heart that sets the hand in motion. If the finer feelings of man are deadened, it is because we have been trained to look upon evil as inevitable--"Evil, be thou my good". Man can grow in mind and great deal. Human nature has changed a great deal, and by a determined effort we can bring about other changes.
The first change to be effected is our attitude to the nation-State. A nation as an experiment in social living with its graces and values has a place, but as an instrument of power and exploitation it has been ruinous. Nations should not be causes of irritation to one another. They should be sources of blessing. If we have a proper perspective of history, we will realise that many great nations and civilisations have disappeared. Their days are over and their altars smoke no more. We need not assume that will nation will endure, though others may pass out. A nation will endure only if it conforms to the law of love, of co-operation. Belief in complete unqualified national sovereignty is out of date in the present world. The future sends our minds back into the past, the recent past. When the United States entered the First World War, President Wilson, in his speech to the Congress on 02nd April, 1917, indicated the conditions of stable peace. He was convinced that neutrality was impossible for the United States when major aggressions occurred. He made out that the United States should co-operate with others in the system of collective defence against aggression. He outlined the plan of the League of Nations but it did not get the support of the Congress.
In 1932, the Disarmament Conference was held at Geneva. I had the honour of being present at a few meetings as I was then a member of the International Committee of Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations. In June of that year, President Hoover put forward a plan for a general treaty, suggesting a large reduction in armaments, naval and military, the abolition of lethal weapons that helped attack, and all bombing aircraft. The plan was received with great enthusiasm throughout the world and in the Conference itself the smaller nations were in its favour. Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union supported the plan. The Soviet representative, Litinov, proposed full inspection and control of armaments. The Governments that hesitated and held back were those of Great Britain and France. Though the British people supported it, the British cabinet was divided. Baldwin was defeated by a narrow margin in the cabinet. The Hoover plan was killed. A frezied arms race started. The Governments went back to power policies. The choice then was world disarmament or German rearmament. The former was set aside, the latter was adopted; and Hitler came to power. The League broke up. The Second World War was the result. Staying out of the League of Nations did not keep the United States out of the Second World War.
All through we assumed that national independence for all peoples was the basic condition of peace. We now know that national independence, however, desirable and necessary, does not by itself make for peace. The major combatants in the two wars were completely independent. They did not suffer from any colonial status. They were so independent that they would not combine for any defensive action.
The disarmament negotiations have been facing heavy weather since 1955. The Governments have been suspicious of one another. If nuclear weapons were to be abolished, some disloyal Government may retain secret stock. Only last week, the British delegate, Mr. Joseph Godber, who is the British Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, said at the Disarmament Conference at Geneva in regard to nuclear weapons that "in a totally disarmed world one irresponsible nation which had manged to manufacture, or to withhold from destruction only a few of these weapons, could easily establish overwhelming supremacy". These suspicions are the cause of the armaments race, intelligence services, mass hysteria and violent propaganda. National leaders feel free to dirupt human society on arguable grounds of power, pride, honour and security. When we justify the cold war and the armaments race we argue that there is no use sacrificing the good life for the sake of life, that we should not surrender the human rights of freedom and dignity for the sake of mere existence. It is hardly realised that no material or spiritual benefit can be of any use if we all perish. We recognise in theory but do not adopt in practice that no nation is safe until the world is safe. The alternatives are disarmament or destruction. Though we are members of the United Nations, we operate within the framework of old institutions and diplomatic channels. Even when we are aware that the new world requires new methods, we are inhibited by the practices and conventions of the past.
The conflicts between the two blocks in which mutual distrust and suspicion are pronounced remind us of the conflicts of previous ages. We have had conflicts between the Jews and the Gentiles, between the Greeks and the Barbarians, between the Romans and the Provincials, between the Teutons and the Slavs, between the Christians and the Muslims, between the Catholics and the Protestants, between the Allies and the Axis powers. In the cold war, the Communists and the anti-communists suffer from what the psychologists call the sense of being persecuted. They complain against each other that one group is lacking in freedom and the other in social justice. In all these conflicts, we believe that we are the chosen ones and that what we do is right. Blind confidence in one's own State and morbid suspicion of the other characterise us all. No nation is free from this national egotism. All of us are the victims of pride, passion and prejudice, and suffer from Pharisaism.
Human beings who are civilised as individuals behave differently as citizens of States. They fear and suspect members of other States and are on their guard in their behaviour towards them. We do not judge them by their character but by their belonging to a particular State. Already in ancient Rome, long before the advent of technology, it was said: "Senatores boni, senatus bestia", which freely translated means, "The individual senator may be an honourable man but the Senate as an institution is a beast". When we judge others, we judge them by the society, religion or nation to which they belong and not on their merits. Our group attachments dictate our behaviour and not our conscience which is the sole source of universality of judgment. We allow the sacred flame of spirit to be smothered by the exigencies of the social situation, and banish feelings of humanity from our hearts. The ruling motives of our behaviour do not have that integrity which is characteristic of a truly civilised human being. We are not the doctors; we are the disease. The English poet Auden says somewhere that "intellectual disgrace stares from every human face". We need urgently an improvement in the quality of human beings.
This means by which different religious groups have settled down in peace are the only means left to us in the nuclear age for bringing about peace between rival political groups or societies. The doctrinal rigidities which exaggerate differences are now relaxed. We are inclined to believe those who are seeking truth rather than those who claim to have found it. Many fanatics, religious and political, sought to reach heaven by creating hell on earth. The Supreme, Who sees into all hearts, Who knows all desire, from Whom no secret is hidden, accepts all who trust Him and dedicate their lives to the carrying out of His Will. All those who speak or write of the Great Mystery which is the source of all life and beauty, are like those who point to a pilgrim the road to the shrine that he would visit. To use the words of Plotinus: "The teaching is only of whither and how to go, the vision itself is the work of him who hath willed to see". This is the teaching of the Buddha, of the Upanishads, of the great religious seers.
We repeat in different accents what has been our age-old tradition when we call for love and co-operation, tolerance and understanding. We were able to reconcile diverse views, seeing the human in all of them. We must see the human underneath the two rival groups. The world is intended to become the abode of the family of man. It is the intention of nature. It is in the mind of events. The scientific, the technological and the atomic revolutions have made the world into a single unit. In the last five thousand years, we have moved on from the tribal to the national phase of history. Today, we have to move on to an effective, adequate and inclusive United Nations where the nations co-operate for the common heritage of all peoples, an awareness of the growing inter-dependence of the world, a sense of the indivisibility of the freedom and well-being of all people and an abandonment of the faith in the unqualified freedom of nations, will help to build up an international society.
