On International Understanding

Speech delivered by Vyôm Akhil, Guest Speaker, Rotary Club Sambalpur (Main), February 28, 2003

Thank you for having me as your chief guest today. I am to talk to you on International Understanding.

Friends, International Understandings are badly needed today. I wish you would not construe this cliché as a set-piece sentence. We have a major crisis staring at us. Its specifics have inter-related components. India’s Finance Minister who is busy presenting his budget right now, says, we have a sluggish GDP growth rate. Oil prices, if they should rise, will upset the apple cart further. And that depends on THE DESIRE OF THE UNITED STATES TO LAUNCH A WAR AGAINST IRAQ.

This morning I heard three news items:
(1) Saddam Hussein has agreed to dismantle the long-range missiles per the suggestions of the U.N. Chief Inspector Hans Blix.
(2) U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfledt says Saddam should not be believed.
(3) Hans Blix is under further pressure to present a report that will facilitate a war.

Since it would be counterproductive to line up the good guys on the one side and the baddies on the other, what are the key elements of understanding from these items? Furthermore, must one not have an alternate format from what the media usually dish out?

Asking and answering a set of questions can aid this: For instance,

• For how long have Saddam and George Walker Bush been presidents of their respective countries?
• Who was elected and how? For how long will they be in office?
• How much propaganda from either side should be given credibility and how much of it discounted?
• What are the real, personal, domestic compulsions driving their behavior?

I am sure all of you remember that the evidence for going to war - touted to have been gathered by spy satellites, presented with fanfare in the British Parliament, and later used by Secretary Colin Powell in the United Nations Security Council - was quickly found to have been plagiarized from an old research paper submitted at the Oxford University and, actually published in Jane’s Defense Weekly. Not even a comma or a full stop was altered.

If you remember, the last time a U.S. president attacked a country in Asia without any immediate provocation, he had a domestic scandal on his hands. I allude to President Clinton’s decision to rocket positions in Afghanistan. And it is possible 9/11 was Al Quaida-Taliban’s angry retaliation.

But that is just one reason why the U.S. naval taskforce gets ordered into international waters. The so-called ‘gunboat diplomacy’ is an old one and is named after a so-called doctrine is named after U.S. President James Monroe. In fact, it would be plainer if we called the doctrine or policy by its ancient name: “Have muscle. Shall bully.” A couple of years ago, BBC’s Christopher Gunness interviewed the U.S. intellectual, Gore Vidal, a cousin to the then U.S. vice president Al Gore. At one point during the interview, Mr. Vidal quoted former U.S. president Richard Nixon, who, having had the insider’s experience after having been vice-president for eight years, had this amazing thing to say, and I paraphrase: The United States does not really need a president because it runs by itself. Mr. Vidal, then explained, that the U.S. president has chiefly a foreign policy role, where he has to safeguard U.S. national interest.

One can ask, which part of the U.S. economy has a major interest abroad? So that U.S. multinationals can operate in foreign countries, U.S. Government’s foreign policy must have pliant governments in those lands. This is usually achieved by diplomacy, and aid and advice of dubious value because it is based on the most superficial and cursory understanding of those lands, its people and their problems. But the aid money is “easy money” and it attracts and seduces the dominant elite in those countries to be amenable and agreeable and compliant.

When diplomacy and aid fail, then comes war. And months before it is actually executed, details are prepared as to who will benefit from them and how. For instance, after being World War II’s hero and serving the United States for eight years as president, Dwight Eisenhower, warned the people of his country against the threat to them from “The Military Industrial Complex” of their own country.

As someone who has first hand experience of all this, thanks to my decade-long stay in Los Angeles, after having completed and returned back to India my Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship for International Goodwill, I can vouch for this. The day the Soviet Union broke up, people working for defense contractors – they, not Hollywood, are the major employer in the State of California - were thrown out their jobs. But soon, there was Desert Storm and the rehiring began.

And about Desert Storm – George Bush senior, had advisors who helped him circumvent Congressional approval. I remember that period very well. At 9:30 that morning, on D-Day, he had gone on record saying there would be no attack on Iraq. But at approximately 6 pm, after a 4:30 meeting with Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister of U.K., he had changed his mind and launched a 32-day long carpet-bombing campaign against Iraq.

The next day I called into a talk show and brought this up but was politely hushed up. From then on, whenever, my North American wife, who used to teach at the UCLA, and I had an argument that entailed calling each other names, we would say, “You are George Bush, You are George Bush.”

Part II

Friends, as my topic is International Understanding, I have to cut short my thoughts on the current crisis and share with you what I think the nature of Understanding is.

This part of my speech will force me to become somewhat theoretical and speculative and I hope you will bear with me. I beg for your sustained attention because I believe my comments and thoughts could be of assistance to you both in your fields of classification as well as your duties and functions as Rotarians of this premier Club in this region.

Given that over a millennia-spanning period, our species has consistently demonstrated that it will unerringly choose to be silly, stupid, selfish, dangerous, vindictive, arrogant, jealous - the list is as long as you wish to stretch it - one may ask why do we need to understand anything at all? The insects and animals - not to mention all that is inanimate - do very well in the surviving-&-thriving game without, apparently, understanding a thing. In fact a saint had gone so far as to say ‘happy and content are those who are not bothered by the conditions and problems of the world’.

During a previous visit to your Club, I had spoken of the stage-related origins of the word "understanding". Someone had to stand under the stage and hand up the props, such as a bouquet, to a Romeo who would use it then as a love-vehicle and give it to the actress playing Juliet.

The word originally meant, "to be supportive". That is not the same as “being wise and full of insights."

Understanding is a first but not the final step towards an accommodative, mutually beneficial sustainable co-existence. Without this goal at the end, an ocean full of understanding cannot, with any reliable degree of certainty, prevent aggression and attack, cruelty, violence, destruction and tragedy.

Resolving existing conflicts is laudable and that is what negotiators skilled in the use of facts and their effective communication try to do. But this heroic act is akin to performing a life-saving surgery on an old and malignant tumor that has brought the body to the verge of death. To this extent conflict-resolution is the next thankless step in the vocabulary of crisis management. Frequently, the high-pressured process of resolving conflicts, reasonable dialogue has to be set aside because there are deadlines to meet and innocent lives might be lost. Often negotiators have to go into what I call the deal-making mode.

Friends, it is obvious that understanding is multidimensional. From an individual wrestling with the essential nature of Being and Becoming, to a group that may be as small as a nuclear, or, even a single-parent family of two, or a tribe, a community, a village, a region, a nation, all the way up to the global level of international understanding, there are events and on-going processes that first need an understanding and then a comfortable accommodation. Beyond the international, we need understandings and accommodation with nature and our physical space - with those creatures, whether plant, insect or animal. And this needs to occur both at the local as well as global level. But as we explore outwards from this planet, there are understandings that challenge our notions of time and space, of the meaning of life and intelligence. Called by the National Geographic Society in 1976 to look at the future, the late R. Buckminster Fuller observed that after having traveled 39 times around the world and actually feeling it to be a tiny planet of a tiny star, he was convinced no one out there in the Universe was dying to know who would be the next president of the United States. We can also appreciate the fact that partial understandings in one domain affect the processes in the other. That, at every level, there has to be a good fit to build upon. In some respects the nature of understanding is like those in fractals. For instance, there is the oft-quoted Sanskrit aphorism, “Yathä-piñdé tathä-brahmäñdé”. One can looslely translate this to say, ‘as the point, so the Universe.’ Today, understanding is when you say, "I see!" or "I got it!" or even more colloquially "Bingo!" or, Jackpot!"

Clearly, this is more than being supportive. It means to be able to figure out something, to know its nuts and bolts, its P's and Q's. And It's time, therefore, we revert to the intent of the original Sanskrit word, "Antarsthäna". For what is really occurring when you understand something today is a mental process.

But how does the human - perhaps all mammalian - mind process information, most of which comes to it through the sense of sound?

Even the horizon, be it noted, is limited to line of sight vision. It is for this reason that our sound-sensory apparatus switches on during gestation, long before we are born to this earth.

One can say that our ears have a head start.

What exactly happens when we receive sounds from the outside? Brain scans now confirm that our visual cortex is stimulated and our minds use the sound to create an internal image of the event.

It is this image that predominates the one we receive from our eyes. We even say of a prejudiced person as one, whose vision is colored, thereby implying that the internal image he has, overpowers the evidence of his own physical eyes.

At this point, to limit my exposition, I shall revert to Sanskrit words, "Chitta" or the active part of the mind, "Chétanä" or the state of consciousness, and "Chitra" or an image, usually internally formed in the active part of our mind; for the one visible on the retina Sanskrit has the "Drishya".

I have a confirmation of sorts. Don't people who understand something say, "I see" without really meaning that they are sighted and not blind?

I am, therefore, suggesting to you something that may not have been submitted to anyone anywhere:

Understanding means creating accommodative images.

I use the word "accommodative" with reason. Quarrels occur when our images are not in agreement. We have the famous and well-known story of the six blind men who were using their sense of touch to figure out what an elephant was. And each had an image that did not agree with those of the others. Friends, I now have to use two phrases to explain my next point. We have this 'Image-based understanding" and we, the educated and the influenced, find we also try, unsuccessfully, to often substitute it with what I would call 'A word-based understanding'.

Here, when I say 'word-based', I mean those words that, for one reason or another - like the abuse, or overuse of available of visual technologies - do not create a "Chitra", or, a sharp internal image/vision.

Most words - especially long speeches are so boring, listeners fall asleep. Even India's Vice President recently found his foot had gone to sleep as he was reading out the Hindi text of the President's address to the Parliament! I hope Rotarians - and those who come to speak to them - are free from this affliction.

Opposed to a word-based understanding, I bring to you an example of an image-based understanding in the shape of a small visual - a chart - that I like to call "Humankind's Price of Fear" and what can be done if we reduced it just by 25%...." Each square on the chart represents one billion U.S. dollars. There are one thousand squares. That equals one trillion U.S. dollars that was the approximate sum total of the annual military budgets of all the countries on this world in 1993.

Super-imposed on these one thousand squares is a small area – approx 25% in size. This area is made up of thirteen approximate rectangles of varying sizes, each representing the amount of money and time to solve a problem that humankind faces. Once you see problems in this perspective you immediately understand that the money that the few billions of dollars that are being asked for are negligible in comparison to what we spend for our collective fear, which, paradoxically increases the more we spend in search of a security we have you to clearly define and understand. The text that came with this chart, not included in this presentation says, “If asked by a child, how would you explain our failure to act on this information?” Friends. I have to save the rest of theoretical part with this example and save it for another opportunity, another day.

Rotarians, when I was here more recently your able and dedicated President informed you about the Foundation’s new program of Scholarship for Conflict Resolution.

A couple or so years ago at the First Alumni Multi District Conference in India held in Goa, I was lucky to be selected as a panelist and I must gratefully add that your Club had contributed to defraying part of the expenses of that trip. At the Goa Conference I had suggested that Rotary set up RA-CAN, the Rotary Alumni Cyber-Ambassadors’ Network,” because, “For less than the price of a world-around airline ticket…a deserving past/potential alumnus can today transform into a Conflicts-Resolution-Supporting, life-time cyber-Ambassador. (Such) a Network can become the synergistic link between the Clubs and the anywhere-on-earth Community Programs of Health, Education, Hygiene, Nutrition, Sanitation, Conservation, Employment and Farming…”

I conclude by quoting to you lines from the excellent editorial in the February 20, Times of India, entitled “People Superpower”, which, in turns, quotes Patrick E. Tyler writing in the New York Times. Mr. Tyler has described the current Iraqi situation as a standoff between two Super Powers: the United States and world public opinion. The paper suggests Mr. Bush take a lesson from Mrs. Indirä Gändhi who imposed an Emergency on India in the name of National Interest. And the people here overwhelming voted her out at the first chance.

I am hopeful, International Understanding will somehow prevail. We, in India won’t have to face a price rise and a sluggish economy because of Oil prices and the misadventure in the Middle East will be prevented in the nick of the time.

Thank you.

Speech delivered by Vyôm Akhil, Guest Speaker, Rotary Club Sambalpur (Main), February 28, 2003