Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All – at the WCF, and Outside It.

Amidst the high spirits, high-fives and hurrahs of the super-charged World Culture Festival held recently, 11-13th March at Delhi, as a celebratory salute to the Art of Living’s 35 years of service to the world, there lay a  powerful if subdued undercurrent to the celebrations. The Festival also witnessed the trustful coming together of nations, interest-groups, entities, and individuals from opposite, at times opposed, ends of many types of spectra.  

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar With the FARC Leaders

This is the Art of Living Founder, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s ground-breaking, seminal contribution to contemporary world history - to remove ”inimical”  from the lexicon of human interaction, and get groups at conflict with each other to find ways to make peace with each other.

 He has facilitated the total and – more importantly - lasting metamorphosis of radicals, political opponents, criminals and even armed terrorist groups, and helped them see that that the other side too has been through pain, despair, loss and bereavement. That all of humanity is on the same side and there is no ‘other’ out there.

For those unfamiliar to the Art of Living or its 35 year old record of work, it might be difficult to grasp the mind-boggling diversity at the WCF and at the Global Leadership Forum. What (or who ) on earth could get such diverse groups together to dance and sing and confer and deliberate, and glory in their differences?

The answer would be - they witnessed and experienced, individually and collectively, the Art of Living Founder, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s transformative genius at work, melting the barbed-wire-barricades of bitterness, and transforming the hostility and aggression between sworn enemies to create a space where hostility and arms can be thrown aside – by both sides - and bones of contention buried with a new give-and-take perspective. Where both parties understand that the gentle mediator wants the best for both of them.

 Gurudev’s reputation precedes him, to open hatred-mined national gates and dismantle formidable diplomatic walls. Drawbridges are lowered and  he is accorded access to unapproachable groups, be it Tamil refugees in Sri Lanka, or the FARC guerrilla group of Colombia, war-torn Iraq, trigger-happy armed extremists in India, or dreaded prisoners in high-security jails across the world, because he is acknowledged as having no agenda of his own. His impartiality and disinterestedness have become legend. His immunity to lobbying has led to the world trusting – and respecting - his objectivity and fairness.

Gurudev Sri Sri’s has been an exceptional and unprecedented journey as international peace-maker, flying under the radar, far and away from the self-serving arc lights of publicity. He has placed himself above the frenzy to claim credit. Merited or otherwise.

It has been a chequered mission of peace – bringing the most unlikely of groups to the negotiating table to sort out and think through solutions to age-old conflicts. He is a globe-trotting, continent-straddling ombudsman: several far-flung conflict-zones have been the beneficiaries of his One-World-Family mission.

The WCF witnessed powerful and iconic speakers who underlined the unitive and peace-enhancing contributions of Sri Sri and the Art of Living. The Global Leadership Forum also saw stellar opinion-leaders from diverse fields exploring ways to transcend the dichotomies in today’s world through inner peace leading to outer peace.

Says Sri Sri, “Inner peace is the key for world peace. You cannot have world peace with individuals who are boiling from the inside, ready to explode. If such people are at the helm of affairs then not only the person explodes, but the countries and communities explode.” 

And so that game-changer - the inner world of conflict - is addressed by diverse  Art of Living programs that help individuals overcome stress and dysfunction. They first find reserves of inner peace, strength and renewed confidence, and then progress to contributing to the community, the society and the world around them. Self-interest and separate-ness are transcended and individuals begin seeing the other as a part of themselves: Inner peace is the key for world peace.

Hopefully, at the WCF, the youth, otherwise so marooned on their electronic islets, experienced the commonalty of mankind, felt the oneness that binds every part of the universe with the other. No matter the differences, the contrasts in habits, complexions, languages, costumes, lifestyles. The sheer scale and the diversity of the gathering helped them experience that there is only one heritage – the heritage of humanity. And, equally hopefully, they would have made a decision to pitch in and work for a fairer, more harmonious and equitable future for the human race.

The World Culture Festival will be prove to be that point in time-space when “One-World Family” ceased to be a concept and manifested as a felt reality for millions across this multi-cultural, multiracial, multi-everything planet we call home.

This is the power of one man’s vision.

Padma Koty