KARACHI, Jan 11: Urdu translation of Glenn Paige's book Nonkilling Global Political Science--Halakat Gurez Almi Ilm-i-Siasat was launched at the Institute of International Affairs on Monday.
The contents of the book pleaded that the 20th century was the century of peace movements and that a world far away from killings and bloodshed was possible to find since man was not a born killer.
The Urdu rendering done by noted writer Zaheda Hena was a demanding task done skilfully. With Dr Mobarak Ali in the chair, the assembly of learned persons was addressed by Tasnim Siddiqui, an activist and a social scientist, who briefly reviewed the book, describing the malaise of the ravaged and war-torn world, soaked in human blood.
Syed Sikandar Mehdi, political scientist at Karachi University whose foreword is a part of the book, read out a paper dwelling upon the murderous features of the contemporary times, with a reference to the expectations raised for peace and "non-killing", a term coined by the author.
Dr Jaafer Ahmad, director, Pakistan Study Centre of KU, said the blood-letting and killing was not a part of human nature. Actually people are made like that in an aggressive social environment and poor upbringing.
Fifty per cent of world population was that of women who do not wage wars. Among the remaining 50 per cent, there is a majority of peaceful people. Jaafer recalled that from Plato till the present times, the method of tyranny and torture employed against the social offenders was justified, but now we have to promote the philosophy of humanism and peace.
Since, social imbalance was the major cause of criminal activities, the social scientists will have to find peaceful methods to remove the economic inequality and social imbalance between classes, Dr Jafer said and observed that finding of that peaceful method was, however, a "baffling question".
Zaheda Hina spoke about the difficulties she had to find Urdu equivalents of unfamiliar English terms, for example, 'halakat gurez' for 'killing'. Later, speaking at the International Relations Department of the University of Karachi on Tuesday on his book "Non-killing Global Political Science", Glenn D. Paige said that despite unprecedented polarization and brute use of force, a non-killing society can be established.
Glenn Paige maintained that a non-killing global society was possible. He called for re-imagining the past and the future to appreciate in proper context the possibility of establishing a non-killing global society.
Explaining what he meant by a non-killing society, Dr Paige, the Korean war veteran who later turned a pacifist, said: "It is a human community, smallest to largest, local to global, characterized by no killing of humans and no threat to kill; no weapons designed to kill humans and no justifications for using them; and no conditions of society dependent upon threat or use of killing force for maintenance or change."
It is a society where "religions do not sanctify lethality; there are no commandments to kill. Governments do not legitimize it; patriotism does not require it; revolutionaries do not prescribe it. Intellectuals do not apologize for it; mists do not celebrate it; folk wisdom does not perpetuate it; common sense does not commend it".
Deliberating upon the features of the society, Paige explained that non-killing doesn't mean unconcern or in-action. But he is very much influenced by the Gandhian philosophy.
Paige claims that a non-killing society had always existed and it is very much there even today. He urged replacement of the assumption of lethal in escapability by the premise of no killing in escapability.
According to Paige, the attainability of a non-killing society implies a disciplinary shift to non-killing creativity. For attaining this, he says, a non-violent scientific revolution is required and according to him such a revolution would be possible, if seven interdependent sub-revolutions are put into action.
Paige called for questioning the assumption of killing and its implications throughout what might be called the "deadly discipline" of political science and other violence-accepting disciplines.
