We have four pieces of good news for you: Nonviolence Forum on our site, training with the Tibetan exile government in Dharamsala in India, an exploratory travel in Gandhi’s footsteps and the proposal of a three-year research program on reconciliation and forgiveness for which we seek funding.
M. K. Gandhi’s warned us all against seven social sins: politics without principle, wealth without work, commerce without morality, education without character, pleasure without conscience, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. Hardly without relevance today…
Nonviolent thinking and politics and Gandhian thinking are themes at the heart of the foundation’s work. But we have not done as much as we think we should around this theme. Like others, TFF tends to get bogged down in day-to-day events in a world spinning faster and faster. We hardly get enough time to think of why we do what we do and what we must do tomorrow – – or a decade from now.
Peace thinking and Gandhi’s contemporary relevance are themes on TFF’s program. Together with reconciliation, they will take centre stage. “We must be the change we wish to see,” to use another famous Gandhian expression.
1. Nonviolence Forum at our website
Our new website section, Nonviolence Forum, which we launch today marks an intensification of that focus. It’s a very modest beginning with articles, most of them written by TFF Associates, others by colleagues and friends; and you have links to the best nonviolence sites at your fingertips. Nonviolence Forum is a deliberate mixture of approaches: philosophical, theoretical and historical combined with nonviolent policy proposals. Please alert us to more good stuff you come across!
The spirit of TFF and this section is simple: remember there is a tremendous reservoir of nonviolent approaches and there are always alternatives to violence if we choose to look for them. Remember Solidarnosc, the Catholic nuns in front of Marcos’ tanks (and now the end of Mr. Estrada), the civil rights movement, and the West European women for peace and the Eastern human rights dissidents who tore down the Berlin Wall? Recently, there were the 2000 local Somali peace-makers meeting in Eritrea, and there were the hundreds of thousands who shaped the nonviolent October Revolution in Serbia, achieving what neither demonisation, isolation, sanctions or NATO bombs could: ending an authoritarian regime and opening up for democracy.
In none of these cases did mainstream media point out that they were the result of nonviolence. But they cringe to military power and propaganda.
Perhaps mainstream media, schoolbooks and people in power prevent us from seeing nonviolent alternatives? And no one struggles for something he or she cannot see or even imagine. TFF visitors! Help make Nonviolence Forum the largest collection of nonviolent resources, ideas and proposals on the net.
“There is no road to peace, peace is the road,” said the Mahatma. Be sure your next click is to Nonviolence Forum, the place with the white lilies…
2. Training with the Dalai Lama exile government in Dharamsala, India
TFF has been invited to participate in a program conducted by the Danish Centre for Conflict Resolution. It’s founder is Else Hammerich who is also a TFF associate and dear friend. We assisted in giving birth to this flourishing Centre years ago and they now help us getting in contact with Tibetan Buddhism and Buddhist thinking about conflict-resolution. The long-term aim for the Tibetans is to prepare themselves for the establishment of a NGO conflict-resolution centre. Read more on our site about the Dharamsala project.
3. Exploring Gandhi’s relevance today, beginning in India
In February and March founder Jan Oberg will follow the footsteps of Gandhi, in India, simple living on foot and trains, to reflect on what it means to submerge oneself in another civilisation, see Sweden, Europe and the rest of the West from that culturally rich and nonviolent vantage point – – and come back with ideas on how to promote nonviolent thinking, speaking and acting in the next 15 years of TFF – – which happened to come to life 15 years ago.
4. Supporting Reconciliation and Forgiveness
Last year we developed a comprehensive international three-year research project: Supporting Reconciliation and Forgiveness with the subtitle “A Study of Processes and Policies and the Feasibility of Developing Action Research Networks in Conflict Regions.”
We will tell you more in a forthcoming PressInfo.
Peace is the road
To make nonviolence visible, to imagine nonviolent politics and development, to make concrete proposals which reduce violence to a minimum for all humanity is right, it’s necessary and – – revolutionary.
Gandhi argued that the coward should take to violence because nonviolence requires a lot of courage. One could add that the intellectually lazy fellow chooses violence before even thinking of nonviolent options.
Thus, in the spirit of nonviolence and service to the community, we want TFF to be a place for our readers and visitors to search for themselves. One meaning of peace is: solving conflict with as little violence and as much nonviolence as possible. Indeed, it is a civilisational challenge we must all take up.
Can you magine a policy study on nonviolence entitled, say, “A Less Violent America: Domestic and Global Agenda” sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace, Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie Corporation, MacArthur or Soros and creating a global debate?
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the self-appointed leader of human civilisation, the United States of America, has missed the opportunity to lead the world towards true peace. Just a few days ago President Clinton handed over a 300 billion dollar military budget to George Walker Bush who has pledged to boost it to even more insane levels.
Peace is the road!
© TFF 2001
