RECIPE FOR PEACE: Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has said it will be difficult to win the war against terrorism unless people treat their fellow human beings as part of their family. Here, he is delivering the seventh JRD Tata memorial Lecture at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore on Monday. — PHOTO: K. Murali Kumar

BANGALORE: "The eradication of poverty and disease and ignorance by those with the means to do so is not altruism. No, it is the best form of self-interest. We can be free only together. We can be secure only together. We can be prosperous only together," said Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu in an impassioned plea for a just world on Monday.

Delivering the seventh J.R.D. Tata Memorial Lecture at the National Institute of Advanced Sciences here, Bishop Tutu said he was sure that "there is no way that we will win the war against terror as long as there are conditions in so many parts of the world that make people desperate."

Poverty, disease and ignorance set apart the global south even as affluence, prosperity and good health were the hallmarks of the north. As the riots in France and the United Kingdom demonstrated, these inequalities spawned instability and turmoil, he said.

A less secure world

Bishop Tutu said he had seen the world turn a great deal less secure and far more violent than the strike on the World Trade Center in the U.S. "Now, there is a war against terrorism and some use the unfortunate paradigm of the West versus the Muslim world and we glibly speak of Muslim or Islamic terrorism. No one ever described the IRA or the Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland as Christian terrorists," he said. The world now is as polarised as it ever was during the Cold War.

Speaking for the world's underprivileged, Bishop Tutu said, "We were euphoric when the nations of the world adopted the Millennium Development Goals, so idealistic and yet apparently achievable." But that feeling was shattered by what he called "the immoral invasion by the U.S., the U.K. and others of Iraq for the reason that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."

But even as he talked about chaos and violence, Bishop Tutu remained hopeful of mankind's innate ability to absorb a moral universe, where there was no way that injustice and oppression, lies and evil could ever have the last word. "We are shocked when we see evil happening and we are even more appalled if it goes unpunished. We have internal antennae which home in on goodness because we are created for goodness, for love, for gentleness, for compassion, for sharing."

Bishop Tutu thanked India for all that it did to help South Africa fight apartheid.

Ethics of family

Speaking to presspersons here Bishop Tutu said inequality, poverty and diseases generated a lot of instability in the world paving the way for terrorism. It would be difficult to win the war against terrorism unless people realised the ethics of family and treated their fellow human beings as part of their family.

"It will be difficult to drop a bomb on the members of your family."

"Religion is carried by its adherence, and religion is by itself neither good nor bad, it is neutral. Religion has produced outstanding people in the world, including Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and Mother Teresa. It also takes credit for producing ghastly creatures on the contrary."

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