“Peace can’t be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding.”

Nicole Machiavelli and John Locke were having coffee at a café in Hong Kong. Machiavelli exclaimed at the protests going on outside, “we need policies of force and iron hands to quell these.” Locke, holding ‘Candide’ by Voltaire, read out a few lines from it. He told Machiavelli that humans have a capacity for reason and should be reasoned with if one wants lasting peace.

In this essay, we’ll explore how peace is achieved through rightful means. We’ll walk through the lanes of history, society, government, economics, and others to find out whether peace can be achieved through force or understanding.

Peace, as defined by Woodrow Wilson, is a state of non-antagonistic calmness, which allows humans and societies to flourish to their capabilities. Force is something inorganic, in the sense that it is hard, offensive, and acts against the ongoing flow of activities. Understanding, unlike force, is a slower process of taking things into consideration and reaching out to a long-lasting recalibration of thoughts, systems, and processes.

History shows the futility of trying forceful means to instill peace in society. Dhanananda provides a case in point. Despite being super powerful, his rule with an iron hand led to resentment and eventual upsurge by Chandragupta Maurya. Samrat Ashoka also prophesied the need to follow Dhammaghosha (policy of peaceful advocacy of ideas) instead of Bherighosha (forceful expansionism and obedience culture). Akbar too found value in understanding the concerns of masses from different regions and cultures, the best example being Ibadat Khana for religious syncretism.

Modern India saw innumerable instances of Britishers forcing the populace to be peaceful. Tribal rebellions like that of Santhals and Mundas were a direct result of these policies. Even in the post-nineteenth-century struggle, even the Britishers admitted that the policy of carrot (understanding and conciliation) proved to be more beneficial than the stick (forceful measures). Reforms like the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms of 1919 saw more lasting acceptance vis-à-vis steps like the Arms Act and the Vernacular Press Act of Lytton.

Society, which is massed with threats to peace like patriarchy, class struggles, and grave inequalities, provides a testbed for ‘how to achieve peace’. We’ve witnessed the rise of sedition cases under the Indian Penal Code along with societal tussles like divorce cases. As per Pratap Bhanu Mehta, these generate ‘more heat than light’. An approach of conciliation, understanding, and amicable persuasion has been evidently successful.

“Understanding-based measures” have also borne fruits in the internal security problems of India. An example is the Bodo Peace Accord of 2020. This shows how rightful means can solve issues that have haunted ‘peace’ for so long. Measures like AFSPA Act are not seen as sustainable. “Proper assimilation” of reason is important to lead miscreants on a different path, as defense expert Manoj Joshi advises. Policies like Tribal Panchsheel are also worth mentioning in how comprehensive understanding is required to inculcate peace.

In the realm of polity and governance, there are rich examples of how to achieve peace. Centre-state disputes, for example, have been solved to an appreciable extent when time is taken to appropriately understand the perspectives. Committees like Mihir Shah’s (for water federalism), Sarkaria, and Punchhi (for general federalism) have shown positive effects.

The nation saw the largest farmer protest ever (as per The Economist magazine). The laws regarding farmers, which had the support of experts like Ashok Gulati, failed to generate acceptability. The reasons are a lack of discussion, deliberations, and understanding. It seemed that the policies were ‘forced’ upon the farmers of the nation.

The aforementioned theses on ‘peace via force’ versus ‘peace via understanding’ are adequately resonated by our worldly understanding of peace. The concept originated as early as the fifth century BCE when Socrates talked about the concept of dialectics.

According to Socratic dialectics, order and peace can occur when people understand the flaws in their values, ideas, and opinions, and at the same time understand the value in the views of others. For this to take fruition, force can never be the way. Because as per the “fight or flight” theories of biology, an antagonistic and aggressive attempt to change something, even if for the better, isn’t perceived so. Mighty China’s attempts to quell the ever-increasing protests in Hong Kong are surely unsustainable, as per Riya Mohan. The little legitimacy that it possesses is due to the ‘consent and understanding’ generating policies among the mainland Chinese populace. This shows that even Xi Jinping understands the value of peace via understanding and consensus.

Globally, the ‘Articles of Peace’ talk about how international interventions are necessary for perpetuating rightful peace. But the erstwhile concept of the ‘Right to Protect’, under which the USA tried to ‘bring peace at the barrel of the gun’, is heavily despised now. Canada proposed ‘right while protecting’, in which proper understanding, mindfulness, and respect for relativities are given center stage in any regime changes and acts for peace.

Coming back to India, we have more pressingly seen our most controversial policy aspects being rectified. The horrors of retrospective taxation, inspector Raj, and economic regulatory harassments are being mitigated. The Sabka Vishwas Legacy Resolution scheme and faceless tax assessment are steps in the right direction of inculcating economic peace and prosperity.

In order to bring peace and contentment among the youth, the youngest demographic in the world (according to IMF), India is coming up with reskilling initiatives. ‘Samarth 4 days 4.0’ and ‘PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana’ provide a case in point. Even further, in order to bring order in schools, we’ve moved from forceful tactics like failing students to giving them avenues of reformation and retest.

This essay’s juggling between various dimensions of times and space provides us with key ideas on how “peace can’t be kept by force, but can only be achieved via understanding”. Global pioneers of peace and our own national forefathers have left a plethora of ideas to guide us in this direction.

Rousseau’s general will, Aristotle’s value of ‘deliberative democracy’, and Gandhi’s conception of ‘peaceful satyagraha’ are among such ideas. All these are “different leaves of the same tree”, the tree of peace and understanding. In theory, as per the above geniuses, force and peace are antithetical concepts. So they can’t be used to achieve either of them.

Peace, if achieved by forceful means, can’t be sustained beyond a short time. Understanding of the various cross-currents, ideas, theories, situations, reasons, and systems is necessary to arrive at a ‘win-win’ situation. Post-modern scholars like Daniel Bell even claim that there are no absolute truths but “multiple truths”. Unless we understand such truths, it is difficult to arrive at peaceful solutions.

Back at the Hong Kong café, Machiavelli realizes the flaws in his theories of achieving peace. While being proud and adamant about his theories of statecraft, he gives in to the fact that ‘peace can’t be kept via force but only by understanding’. Machiavelli and Locke have a laugh. Machiavelli, at last, reads out a fascinating quote by Henry Ford written on his table:

“Coming together is the beginning, keeping together is progress, and working together is success”.