Even as hectic arrangements were on in the Rotary world, particularly in India, to welcome Rotary’s eighth Peace Center at the Symbiosis International University in Pune, came the horrendous news on Dec 14, of a mass shooting at the famous Bondi beach of Sydney, Australia. As Hanukkah was being celebrated by some 1,000 people from the local Jewish community, two gunmen were captured on videos, randomly shooting at the crowd, killing 15 people, including a child.
As the social media erupted with news of this horrendous act of terrorism, we started getting clips of a tall and hefty man running out from behind a car, jumping on one of the two gunmen, overpowering him, snatching away his rifle and pointing the gun at him, as the man ran for his life.
An eye-for-an-eye being a primordial instinct embedded in most of us, the first invariable reaction was: ‘Shoot him’. After all, the gunman was killing at random innocent, unarmed people. But, then as rational thinking kicked in, you realised that ordinary people not trained in using firearms, cannot instinctively use a weapon and take a life. Anyway, the brave saviour took five bullets in his body, and irony of ironies, turned out to be a Muslim, of Syrian origin, who had risked his life to save many more Jews who could have been killed. He turned out to be Ahmed, a fruit shop owner in Sydney, and has survived the injuries. The two terrorists were Muslim too, and this shooting was obviously a retaliation for the continuous and relentless killing of innocent Palestinians that goes on in Gaza on a daily basis.
But let’s leave geopolitics aside, the kind of violence that is engulfing our world is terrifying to say the least. First of all, mass killings are taking place through wars/military action that is sponsored, obviously, by the state itself… such as what we’ve been seeing in Ukraine and Palestine, to give only two examples. Add to this, random shootings that take place, including in schools, of all the places, simply because of liberal gun laws that make the legal owning of guns so easy in many parts of the world, led by the United States, and astonishingly, we have violence that fails to get any reaction from the government. That big chunks of civic society in these countries are in favour of liberal gun laws, as well as wars, is more saddening than infuriating. It says a lot about the kind of people that we are becoming. What is worse, our condemnation of violence or state-sponsored killings, is getting more and more selective depending on our political and ideological leanings in a world that is getting increasingly polarised.
It is in this context and background that Rotary’s eternal, unflinching and passionate quest for peace becomes priceless. And it is not only platitudes and verbal sermons that senior Rotary leaders across the globe have to offer when it comes to peace… they are literally putting their money where their mouths are… to put it simplistically. RI is committed to promoting peace through concrete action, scholar by scholar, by establishing and funding peace centres where young scholars are trained on how to work for and negotiate peace in the trickiest of environments and places.
Indian Rotarians should be justifiably delighted and proud that the next Rotary Peace Center is being inaugurated in Pune this January. God knows we too need to revisit our revered Gandhiji’s peace and non-violence mantra! Good luck, godspeed and three cheers for this Peace Center!
Wishing all of you a very happy 2026… and a more peaceful world!
Rasheeda Bhagat