ABSTRACT
Every year 21 September is commemorated across the globe as the
International Day of Peace. Ten days later, on 2 October, India ritually marks the day on which one of the greatest advocates of peace and non-
violence in the modern world was born. He was Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi. Given the state of the world today, however, one can be forgiven for
thinking that these commemorative days are both symbolically and sub-
stantively empty. As the renowned historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote in his
magisterial account of the short twentieth century, The Age of Extremes,
‘The years after 1989 saw more military operations in more parts of Europe,
Asia and Africa than anyone could remember’.1 The last decade and a half has witnessed civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, genocide in Rwanda,
resurgence of Hindu fundamentalism in India, rise of the Taliban and Al
Qaeda in Central and West Asia, globalization of Islamic fundamentalism,
the carnage of September 11, aggressive US-led neoliberal military occupa-
tion in Iraq and a West-led global War on Terror that appears interminable at
least from the vantage point of the present. If anything has been democratized
at all across the globe, it is the culture of death.
