Your Excellencies
Hon’ble Ministers
Distinguished Guests
Esteemed Journalist Friends
And our respectable elders and
loving young ones who are witnessing this Peace festival live on Television
Channels.
On
behalf of Sahara Pariwar that is Sahara Family and myself I convey my thanks
from the core of my heart that all of you have gathered here on our invitation.
This
would not have been possible without the support and blessings of His
Excellency President, Hon’ble Prime Minister, Hon’ble Dy. Prime Minister and
their highly committed capable team of Republic of Macedonia.
I
shall fail in my duties if I do not thank my senior colleague who is like a son
to me; Shri Amreesh Chandra whose initiative has given shape to this peace
festival.
As
a promoter speaker I had to pass on this speech to our media friends in advance
and also to facilitate translation in 13
different languages so I have been asked to speak today verbatim that is same
word by word whatever I have passed on to them.
So I have been asked to read out my lecture.
Today
we have gathered to speak about and discuss peace.
Though
it is Balkan Peace Festival, we are hoping that this message of peace will have
a trickle effect and this initiative will actually be a message of Global Peace
for the entire planet.
Although,
I have already passed on my thoughts on Peace to all of you through more than
1800 words write up appearing in the Peace festival brochure which is already
with you all, I still want to say something here in the presence of this August
gathering for the great purpose.
For
our external personality, that is, our body, food and water keeps it energetic,
active and healthy, but for our internal personality that is the spiritual
personality, that is for our mental body, the food is peace and happiness for giving
us best quality mental health with lots of strong will power and positive energy
always seen as active optimism.
Every
human wants always to have a happy and satisfied life.
But
no life can be happy and satisfied without a peaceful state of mind. Happiness chases peace, but peace does not
chase happiness. Peace has to be in a
person’s life and all around him. Peace
in his immediate family, peace in his neighbourhood, peace in his work place,
peace in his city, peace in his country…. and so on.
Here
in this peace festival if we only talk about peace between two countries, that
is if we talk and discuss about war between the countries, I fear we shall
reach nowhere, we won’t be able to achieve peace in the life of individual
human beings for a long term or most desirably life long. This is not about only stopping war, its
about choosing PEACE. WE CHOOSE PEACE
OVER WAR.
Any
country is not a human being in itself.
Country’s body and face is the combined and collective faces of people
of the country, however, few human beings sit at the helm of affairs and take
all decisions for the country.
If
I talk about Macedonia, it is a very wonderful and a very peaceful
country. The first time when I had come
here, on the first day itself our Hon’ble Prime Minister and Hon’ble Dy. Prime
Minister, myself and my son roamed around in the main market area for almost 30
minutes to finalise a correct site for Mother Teresa’s statue. To my pleasant surprise there were no
security personnel’s as such accompanying us!
Gradually
over a period of time, in this peaceful country, I interacted with various kinds
of people from different walks of life and I found everyone very peace loving, law
abiding and ethical. I must appreciate
everybody in the Government and Government machinery because we have not seen
or felt any indication or even a desire of even one Euro. A wonderful and quite
unbelievable corruption free Government and Government machinery. So it is a very right thing happening that
Sahara Balkan Peace Festival is starting in a beautiful, wonderful and peaceful
country that is Macedonia.
When
we talk about peace, compassion and humanity two names come immediately to
mind. Shri Mahatma Gandhi who is the
symbol of Non Violence, no words and sentences can describe his unbelievably
great personality. Another great name is
Mother Teresa. I am really fortunate
that I knew her personally, very closely and I can try to describe her in a
number of pages, but truly speaking even after knowing her so closely I cannot
describe that great personality in words and sentences. Mother Teresa’s birth place is Macedonia. Well, what a coincidence that first peace
festival is happening in birth place of Mother Teresa. What a wonderfully lovely feeling it is.
It
is human beings everywhere who are instrumental in bringing about peace or
violence. In any country is Government
or Government machinery, religious groups, sects or different kind of
organisations, the human beings who are given leadership at various levels are responsible
for Peace or Violence. All such people
out of ignorance about fundamentals of life, indulge foolishly in violence and
in turn invite irritation, tensions, dejections, disappointments,
dissatisfactions etc. in future in their own lives too. May be at any moment of time some individual
in a leadership position plans, thinks and initiates within a narrow limited
vision; may be he does it out of greed, but he cannot visualise or does not
have clarity about knowledge of life or about the future when he shall have to reap
poison for his today’s wrong action or reaction seeds which he has sown.
I
shall humbly request all of you here to kindly spare some time to read out my thoughts
on peace which appear in the brochure of Sahara Balkan Peace Festival already
handed over to you. Two sets of the write-up
together will give clarity to this thought of Peace. So here today I am not making a long speech by
explaining about the philosophical, that is psychological, or emotional aspect
of life, in other words realities of life with which we are born with and we
live with.
One
very important point is that EVERY HUMAN BEING HAS A VERY STRONG COMPETITIVE
INSTICT. A
human
always wants to be victorious and finds enjoyment in defeating others. That
used to be one of the principal reasons in the olden days that strong or weak
Kings, used to continuously fight. There
used to be continuous small and big wars.
People under the winner Kings used to imagine their Kings as Heroes and
used to satisfy their own strong competitive instincts through their winner
Kings. Ofcourse, material gain also used
to be a principal reason for such fights and wars, but now by maximising own
production and development through scientific ways and with peaceful import and
export trade no material gains are really achieved by winning any war. The truth is in today’s war nobody is a
winner. The price of a war has to be
paid by both the sides. So we should
think, understand and discuss about satisfaction of humans strong competitive
instinct to feel like a winner hero of some kind of battle.
Gradually
sports have taken that place. We satisfy
our strong competitive instincts through the players who win laurels in the
international arena.
I
strongly feel and I want to strongly advocate that sports should be taken very
strongly and very seriously by every country.
We should further try to make it more competitive, more interesting by
introducing several incentives between countries. For example loser country
will have to make a small hospital at their cost in the land of the winner
countries. In Olympics or in such inter country sports marks for events could
be given to the winners, which shall decide which country gives more import
orders and which of them gets more export orders etc. etc. Very active sports which are mentioned here
can help tremendously to maintain harmonious relationship that is peace amongst
the countries.
My
humble proposal to Balkan region countries is to initiate in a big way and on a
regular basis various discipline inter country games, sports tournaments etc. Inter country competition of cultural events should
also be introduced actively and if you all agree then kindly introduce
incentives, may be small – small incentives for winner countries for different
events.
This
way countries will speed it up and acquire and aggressively do all kinds of
good research and massive productions for sports items and for development of energy
and skill of sports persons and then gradually and drastically reduce the
concentration or focus on research and development of arms and
ammunitions. We should introduce in these
tournaments various kinds of old and new highly skilled strong and thrilling adventure
sports which excites human mind a lot and shall satisfy competitive instincts
quite strongly.
We
should always remember that human beings always want to live their lives with
domination of positive characteristics in their mental body system provided
they get good human environment where they get justice and fair treatment and
where they can always get food, clothes and shelter comfortably and get a chance
for their continuous growth and prosperity.
As human is born with positive as
well as negative characteristics, if there is injustice, discrimination all
round with a tough, insecured life under wrong, corrupt leaderships, human
being’s negative characteristics dominate their actions, reactions and all
expression which culminates into disillusionment, dejection, disappointments,
dissatisfaction, fights and battles.
So
leaders of all levels should always always take care to provide good human
environment as the highest priority so that majority of the people always enjoy
domination of positive characteristics in their actions – reactions and in all
expression which is always a natural and probably the strongest urge of may be
99% people. Because every humans
basically always desire and enjoy a peaceful life.
Another
very important aspect to be considered is the high growth of population. A human-being's 'I' or self is very
dominating. He is born with it. So a high density of population creates all kinds
of confusions, people lose their peace of mind because everybody desires a good
existence. Say, for example in a room, there are 5 people who are very
comfortable with total peace of mind and in the same room, there are 50 people
who all lose their peace as they fight because a human’s natural strong
instinct is for proper existence; they fight as to who among them shall get a
chance to sit on a chair or the carpet and who may not even get a place to
stand?
This
problem of density of population becomes very grave if a big section remains
illiterate, uneducated and afflicted with malnutrition, they don't live in
peace and they also affect the peace of others around them. It implies that poverty
and unemployment, coupled with illiteracy and no education of life, become a
large hindrance to the peace of human mind that craves for the fulfilment of
basic needs of health and survival, the lack of which creates unhappiness,
disillusionment & fuzziness in the mind.
I
do not have the details, but Macedonia has lower density of population. My short term – long term suggestion to the
country is to take all measures possible to always control this population
density. We should also understand that the
poor class of people solely for pleasure indulge in free sex with a psychology
that if there are more children, there shall be more hands to earn parent’s old
age. Such children in hutments remain a
mass of bone and flesh without quality development of mental faculty. So Government should define through law the ideal
family size and an ideal family’s children should get all benefits, special facilities
of 1st grade citizen. Parents
out of domination of their ‘I’ that is the self, will choose the right path for
their children. Parents who do not
follow ideal family definition of law of parliament shall lose all benefits and
facilities for their children and should also lose the right to vote. Always remember country’s constitution is
written for the welfare of people and for the welfare of people today constitution
should be amended as per today’s need of the masses.
Another
point - Media is playing a bad role because newspapers, channels etc. mainly
talk about negative happenings and give negative news of quarrels, murders,
rapes etc. etc. This gradually puts human beings in a confined emotional sphere
which always leads to enhanced demand of SELF, without considering other
peoples genuine point of view and also leads to a situation where there is no
peace of mind. If there is curfew in the
city people get confined in their rooms.
Similarly negative news sub-consciously and unconsciously forces human
mind to get confined; meaning absolute self centeredness which causes all sort
of problems like corruption and quarrels in the society. So media should be forced to cut down
negative stories and add more positive, encouraging news stories.
Well,
at the end, I shall tell few things that God has given us, Brain, Mind, Heart
& Soul with a very strong thinking power. We can achieve anything and
everything with the aid of these faculties.
People
all around the world who are in important, big or small leadership positions
should be educated rather they need to be convinced for their peace of mind and
only then we can expect all round peace for mankind.
This
peace festival is initiated in Balkan region and shall be staged every
year. In next 12 years 12 Peace
Festivals shall be staged. Something has
generated so much of high respect in me for the Balkan region after I heard 2
days back that 3 countries have already approached very enthusiastically and
strongly to stage and host this peace festival next year. Balkan region countries can become front
runners for World Peace. It will be the
greatest contribution to the world.
Balkan region’s future generations shall feel extremely proud seeing
their name written in golden letters in the History of the world. But for that
you have to think and decide with confidence and practice everything mentioned
here with new and right thoughts coming from positive brain storming sessions and
show the path and set an example to the whole world in the coming years.
With
kind regards to everybody
Subrata Roy Sahara
Managing
Worker & Chairman
Sahara India Pariwar
