The vital force of peaceful life in Indian culture is Dharma. Dharma is the innate nature of every individual which sustains and gives identity to him or her. Religion, on the other hand, is expression in a group of followers of a given philosophy. This identity is the reflection of a person's dual nature ---- masculine and feminine as well as good and evil. Dharma is an art of maintaining a balance between masculinity and feminity. Masculinity has in it aggressiveness, egoistic tendency and intolerance as against feminity which combines submissiveness, receptivity, creativity and the quality of nourishing. It is devoid of a desire for return. As far as the problem of peace is concerned, it is obvious that masculine traits are not congenial to peace and have to be subordinated to feminine traits. Dharma is also a guiding factor for desires, actions, wealth and salvation.
A woman acts like the Mother Earth. She receives the seed and makes it grow into a tree which bears fruits for society. She does not enjoy the fruits herself. She also inculcates the characteristics of motherhood in her spouse, which help him to attain salvation. She is the desire incarnate who triggers a sacred desire in her spouse's heart. Hence the saying that marriages are made in heaven has in it an element of truth.
Despite the much acclaimed modern education and desired material growth, why is it that the world is not moving towards peace? There are so many conferences, seminars and publicity campaigns to bring about peace in the world but all these are proving futile. On the contrary, we are moving towards violence. Today, once again, we, all the intellectual as well as spiritual people from across the world have assembled here to evolve peace-making efforts, with the hope that someday peace will prevail.
There are regular surveys around the world on Narcissism. The latest data inform us that more than half of the women are growing with masculine traits. That means three-fourth of the world population follows masculine path and just one-fourth follows natural traits of femininity, which means that the three-fourth population is physically strong, highly intellectual and aggressive in behavior, but lacking in emotional strength. This is also a fact that love and peace belong to the heart and not to the head. High-headed, egoistic intellectuals are bereft of inner peace.
The present-day education is just job-oriented. It only teaches to earn bread-n-butter. It is not concerned with transforming human society, nor does it teach how human beings should behave towards nature. Of course, it strengthens a person’s physical as well as intellectual capacities, but it does nothing to develop his emotional and spiritual qualities to which peace belongs. Thus, it produces an incomplete and unbalanced human being. Today’s system of education is not concerned with a student's life, his duties towards fellow beings, society or nation. In principle, education should take care of the common needs of a man and a woman. But what we discover today is that both a boy and a girl are taught the same components of education. A girl needs to know many more things about life than a boy. There seems to be a sense of discrimination here. This discrimination continues all through the cycle of life. Even, we can see the ratio of delegates here is not 50-50. Nowhere on earth it's like this. There are cases of sexual harassment, increasing exponentially, all over the world. With all the hue and cry about the empowerment of women or equality, things are moving in the opposite direction. Today, she is more worried about her own security and honour than her duties as a woman. Education system is bereft of morality and value system already. Both, man and woman are liberated from such bondage. Final prey is woman. I see cases of girl child infanticide also growing fast. Social environment across the world is pro-man and it results is loss of respect for women. Who would, then like to have a girl child in a family? Hence, the concept of family life is shrinking. One lives for oneself, without thinking of a person next door. Peace is a dream in every age. We need to invoke Dharma. Not only woman but even man has drifted away towards vice further. His aggressiveness is increasing rapidly and his greed posing a threat to his own existence.
There is a law of communication that an intellectual communication touches the intellect of the audience while an emotional communication touches the heart. The emotional communication alone transforms a person- it is not conversion and transformation at the level of the heart alone can bring about peace.
Man by nature believes in logic and science. He is less emotional and social. Woman, on the other hand, lives by her heart and for the heart. She is cool, sweet and accommodating. She believes in loving people and being loved, which is the highway to peace.
Indian wisdom tells us to follow the feminine route. Every person is partly male and partly female, though in a varied ratio. The body comes from parents, but the soul is immortal. It has existed from time immemorial. Gender and form of the body is the result of our karmas or deeds in the past lives. The fruits of peace or violence are produced as the results of our karma from the Almighty. When we want to nurture our deeds with aggression and encroachment for want of our own security, it will not result in peace. We need to work for someone else's peace lest he or she should disturb our peace. We get some fruits also from the karmas of our past lives, as per the Indian perception. Therefore, peace in an indivisual's life is the result of our karmas of present and past lives. Peace today is also a subject of international negotiations. The word diplomacy itself denotes ‘no peace’. Nations do talk peace, but resort to its opposite intentionally. The common citizen is never taken into confidence, but is forced to pay the cost. When a war breaks, even a mother can be seen killing someone else's children to achieve the goal of peace. Our education, devoid of emotional and spiritual ingredients has reached thus far in turning humans into ruthless but intelligent, creatures who have no sentiments. The gateway to peace is love. When we learn to love even our enemy’s heart undergoes a change or when we have no enemy, we live in peace.
Every male at the fag end of his life is transformed into a female devotee, full of love and peace. Each woman, as a wife, teaches this love-n-peace route to her husband. This is the natural course of life for every human being who lives in couples. The relationship between a husband and a wife is based on mutual understanding where none of the two is superior or inferior, but either of them has to be submissive as per the demand of the occasion. We can easily imagine the state of a society where half of the women are not willing to live like women. They follow the male route. Like their male counterparts they also lack in emotions. They also, against their nature, believe in physical and material world and grab every opportunity to indulge in glamor. This materialist woman hardly believes in the world of heart and value system. She wants to imitate man's lifestyle. Her children would be very different from those born to an emotional woman. The emotional woman is aware of the arrival of the new soul in her body and by concentrating on behavioral changes in her routine life (thoughts, feelings, dreams etc.) she will try to refine it. She can infer from which body the soul has come to her family. Accordingly, she will transform the soul into a human soul through talking, singing, telling stories etc. Now, the soul synchronizes with the human body. The soul now will use the body like a human being. If the soul is not transformed, it would use its body as the body of the previous birth, may be, of an animal or a bird. It is bound to disturb the peace of human society. This is what is happening today.
To create peace, the only golden path is to live like a seed, grow into a tree and bear fruits for society, forgetting one's ego. If the seed in worried about its own security, there would be no trees and fruits on the earth. Just as a famous Urdu poet Mast Kalkattavi has said:
The process of peace-making starts from the mother who has to inculcate a value system, congenial to peace, in her sons and daughters, on whom depends the peace of society. In the Upanishads it has been clearly stated that the mother is the first teacher and must be honored like a divinity-
The goal seems distant today, as the women of the 21st century are not ready to live like women, come what may. Though they are more love hungry today, yet they are losing respect and are forced to live alone in the old age. But the ego of intellect is burning her and in turn it is also burning the society, where each corner is devoid of love-n-peace. Only emotional mothers can produce loving mankind.
There are three paths to achieve the ultimate goals of life--- the path of action, the path of knowledge and the path of devotion. The traits of feminity form the essential basis of all of these three paths. In the path of action, the fruits are to be forsaken, in the path of knowledge the ego of doership has to be abandoned and in the path of devotion, unconditional surrender to the will of Almighty is necessary. Obviously, anyone of these paths has no meaning without feminine traits. Therefore, Manu, from whom the word man comes, said that all divinities are pleased when women are honored –
In Rigveda, the oldest book of the world, it is stated that Vak, the goddess of learning, has claimed that she unites the nations :
It is a statement which underlines the uniting strength of feminine trait, which is so essential, so indispensable for peace.