Gandhi International Institute for Peace calls for Global Peace
Los Angeles, Dec 05, 2023
NRIpress.club/Ramesh/ A.Gary Singh
In the midst of the wars in different parts of the world, Gandhi International Institute for Peace condemns violence in all its forms.
We wish to call to mind that peace makers of Hawaii have always responded to conflicts around the world. As a student at the University of Hawaii and later as a Congressman during the Vietnam War, Spark M. Matsunaga observed that the world had many institutes to study war but none to study peace and recognized that “If we want peace, we must educate people to want peace.” His efforts in this direction led to the creation of the United States Institute of Peace and later to the Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa which reflects Matsunaga’s belief that Hawaii is a place where we might seek to replace the existing culture of war with a culture of peace. This very same view was shared by late Auntie Pilahi Paki, Hawaii’s beloved poet and spiritual guide who stated that “The world will turn to Hawai’i as they search for world peace because Hawaii has the key…and that key is Aloha.”
For the past 18 years, Gandhi International Institute for Peace based in Honolulu has continued the work of Matsunaga and Pilahi Paki through activities supporting Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of cultivating the spirit of nonviolence and peace in the hearts of men, women and children around the world. Gandhi firmly believed that violence could not be removed by violence; it could only be removed by nonviolence. Spark Matsunaga, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. had argued that it was not enough to say we must not wage war, it is necessary to love peace.
Today, wars are being fought with increasingly sophisticated and deadliest weapons. Peacemakers face enormous odds but teachings of Mahatma Gandhi remind us that “Peace is the most powerful weapon of mankind.”
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