Hare Krishna. What are the causes of war? As the horrific images of the conflict or the Palestinian issue are continue to pour through mainstream and social media to all of us. And as the world is gearing itself, bracing itself for what is likely to be a prolonged conflict, And this conflict has come while still the world is recovering from the protracted elongated conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Naturally, the exhausted, the agitated, the shock human mind tries to understand what what makes people fight like this.

So I’ll try to analyze the causes based on three c’s, convenience, complexity, and constructiveness. Convenience. We if we look at the current war, there are, especially in the Western world, there are two ways in which there is reaction. One is the condemnation of the Hamas and the condemnation of, extremism, butchery of the ordinary citizens. And that seems to be the prominent trend, but there is also a vocal opposite trend where rather than the Hamas being seen as the cause, Israel is seen as the cause.

That Israel has occupied Gaza for a long time and they have perpetrated atrocities against the Palestinians. And therefore, what they got was just a natural expression of the anger of the Palestinians over the prolonged subjugation and exploitation. Well, this is undoubtedly right now, the minority view, and especially it seems reprehensible given the horrible monstrosities that were perpetrated against the Israelis. But that conflicting narratives are always there and different people often jump toward the most convenient explanation. Now, what makes an explanation convenient?

It depends on what a person’s worldview is that we all have certain ways in which we understand the world. And we try to divide the world into black and white. And when we try to do this, we have predecided in many ways. This is this this side, this group, this is good, this is bad. Or people who look like this, people who are like this are good.

So then what happens? Anybody who resembles what we think is good, we assume they are good. And anybody who resembles those whom we think are bad, we play presume that they are bad. So for example, some people may say that this is caused by, say, Islamic extremism, and some people say it’s caused by Islam itself. Some people may say that it is caused by Jewish colonialism.

They have colonized the particular territory. And some people, especially some atheists are saying, it is religion itself is the cause of the problem. So therefore, in the world where without religion, there’ll be no problem at all. So everybody jumps to the most convenient explanation. If you look at the previous Russia, Ukraine conflict, there’s one narrative that is prominent, especially in the Western world is that Russia is the embodiment of evil and it has launched an unprovoked unjustifiable attack on Ukraine, which is the embodiment of democracy.

Now there is an alternative narrative where Ukraine is itself corrupt. Ukraine itself is a puppet, a tool for Western expansionism, especially American and European expansionism. And NATO’s boundaries have been pushed forward to minimize and threaten Russia. And therefore, Russia’s response is actually natural when their national interests are threatened. So who is right?

So so the Bhagavita explains about knowledge in the mode of ignorance in 1822. Knowledge is normally meant to removing ignorance. But in this particular case, knowledge can reinforce ignorance when we take only one part of reality and equate it with the totality of reality. We take one thing and make it into everything. So we all can use convenience and jump to the most convenient explanation for us.

Oh, it’s this particular religion. It’s this region. Oh, it’s this person. It’s this group. And then, therefore, what is the solution?

Just eradicate. Eradicate that particular but that is a convenient solution. Is that a constructive solution? We’ll talk about constructive solutions to the third part. The second part is complexity.

Whenever any event happens in the world, especially a event that has huge consequences, the causes that led to it are also complex. And broadly speaking, from the historical perspective, the causes of war can be summarized by using an acronym rip. So rip, r I p, is often used to be rest in peace. So I’m using r I p p, rest in peace perpetually. So r, one cause of it is resentment and revenge.

So it often happens that one group of people, they, they see that another group is very successful and they feel that that group has, is unfairly exploiting us. And then there is resentment towards that. That leads to the desire for revenge. So this is more a cause at the level of psychology, at the level of the mind. The Bhagavad Gita analyzes our levels of being at multiple levels.

There is the body, there’s the mind, and then there is the intelligence. And beyond that, there is the soul. So similarly, we’ll try to analyze these causes of war in terms of physical, mental, intellectual. So at a mental level, when a person feels hurt, as is commonly said, hurt people, hurt people. And in that way, there can be small fights within the homes, the domestic wars, and though there can be bigger national or even global wars, world wars.

That’s resentment and revenge. So, if you consider the second world war, for example, now, what was its cause? The common understanding is that it was Hitler and his Nazi ideology. And that’s definitely true. But then the after the first world war, there was a humiliating treaty imposed on Germany, a treaty of ourselves, and that severely hurt the national pride.

And that’s how, Hitler was able to rise to power appealing to the feelings of resentment and revenge that were there in the German citizen, German citizens in general. So that that’s first thought. Now I is what I already mentioned, ideology and indoctrination. When people have a very manipulative leader and that person believes in a particular ideology, then they can use that to indoctrinate people. That means this is, this is right.

This is good. And that is bad. That is wrong. And not only wrong, it is so wrong that it deserves to be destroyed. So the now the second world war, especially, was caused by by ideology.

Now ideology is it could be religious. It could be secular. One of the simplistic explanations for war are that like atheists use it to say religion causes war. That’s a quite a common mainstream narrative, but look at world war one, look at world war two. These are two biggest wars in recent historical memory.

And where was religion over there? It’s a non issue. If at all Christians were there on both sides and people from other religions were used as soldiers in those wars. If you can say the Russia Ukraine war, again, religion is not at all a prominent cause over there. So it is not that religion.

It is ideology that could be the cause. So ideology and indoctrination. And the third is probably one of the most common. It is property and power. That when normally people want more and more power.

So sometimes those who are expansionists like this, they, depending on the narrative, they will be glorified by history. So for example, Alexander went around conquering the world. So now was there any grievance for him? Was he have resentful? No.

He was just he’s ambitious. Now, ambitious is a positive word, but what it means is that it’s a Genghis Khan was there. There’s power and property that that is what a person seeks. So this property, especially that is at a gross level and a physical level. So physical, mental, and intellectual, these are the different levels of causes.

And we could say these three are broadly questionable causes. When war is launched for either of any of these causes, then it falls in the direction of unnecessary war. And there’s a last P that is protection. War could be fought for the protection of one’s life. It could be for the protection of law.

It could be caught for the protection of one’s legitimate interests. So sometimes if one is attacked, one has to defend oneself. So it could be, protection of life. Then there are criminals. There are lawbreakers.

Generally, the police is used for fighting in within the country. The military is used for the military and the defense forces are used for fighting outside from outside the country. But the basic point is law and order have to be maintained. And some violence is required for that. And that violence may escalate to war sometimes.

And then there are legitimate interests. So now who will define legitimate interests? That is a different and difficult question at times. But a basic level, if people are not given access to livelihood, to basic human rights, then they may eventually rise to fighting. So if we look at the wars that are prominent in the broad Vedic tradition, the Mahabharata war and the that Kurukshetra and the Ramayan war in Lanka.

We’ll see that while they could be understood in simplistic terms, they are they are the causes are complex. If we look at the war between Ram and Rawan, now was it, racial war between say humans and Rakshasa? Well, not really. It was for the protection of legitimate interests. It was Ravan had abducted Sita and Ravan had been persecuting the Brahmanas and the sages, and the life and legitimate interests had to be protected.

And the trial for a peaceful solution, but didn’t work. And we see that Lord Ram avoided convenient explanations. He didn’t demonize the entire Rakshasa race and said that I will annihilate the Rakshasa race. No. The war was fought outside the city, outside the Lanka city, with soldiers.

And eventually, it was a member of that very dynasty on the Rakshasa dynasty, Vibhishan, who was made the king. So there is, it’s not a war of like one race or one community. One ethnicity is bad and that has to be destroyed. It was more like a pinpointed fight that this is the problem. Rawan is the problem.

And those who are supporting him is the problem, but that does not mean that entire race of Rawan is the problem. So similarly, you know, the Kurukshetra war is sometimes called as a Dharma yuddha. Well, yes, it is Dharma, but Dharma is not used here in the sense of religion. Dharma is used in the sense of order. So I talk about protection of legitimate interest, production of law.

It is not that the Pandavas were worshipers of one god and the Kauravas were worshipers of another god. And the Pandavas wanted to impose the worship of their god on other gods. On the Pandava side, the Pandava themselves were Vaishnavas. They were devotes of Krishna, who is non different from Vishnu. But on the Pandava side, there was Drupada, who is dynastic deity was Lord Shiva.

On the Kaurava side, there was Bhishma. There was Bhushila who were worshipers of Vishnu or Vaishnavas. So it was not that the war was fought to impose one religion on other religion. This war was fought to protect the legitimate interests that the Pandavas had a right to their kingdom and they were ready to shrink their right to the level of just five villages. But Duryodhan was not only arrogantly dismissive of their legitimate interests, but he was so abusive and exploitative that he had tried to dishonor Draupadi in a public assembly.

And therefore, he had to be stopped. If such a person who could do such a shameless activity in public, if such a person who were given unchallenged, untrammeled power, the mind shudders to think what such a person would do. So the point is overall causes of war are complex, and that brings us to the last part. Third C is constructiveness. When we are looking for, okay, how is this war to be addressed?

Instead of jumping towards the convenient solution, we acknowledge the complexity and we try to move towards what is the most constructive solution. So is it constructive to say that religion itself is the cause of war? And if religion were annihilated, then the world would be peaceful. Well, that is the theory of one prominent atheist who wrote a book, the cause of all evil, something like that. But we see the part of the world, which officially had an atheistic doctrine as a government for more than seventy years, nineteen seventeen to nineteen eighty nine.

There is Russia and then China, they had the bloodiest regime. More people were killed there during the red rule, the Soviet rule and the Chinese rule, then in the World War one and World War two combined together, a hundred million people. So first, so constructive solution is not to just make a big category, religion itself as the cause. Then somebody might say this particular religion is the cause. Okay.

We could associate find that particular religions, maybe have a greater history of religious violence than others. But then if that religion itself had the cause of violence, then all people following that religion would be equally violent. Or there would be equal violence wherever that religion is present, but that has not been the historical case. So religion is not so much the cause of war as the justification for war. And it is sadly true that power hungry people can use religious ideology to manipulate people and make them fight, but the same can be done with secular ideology also.

So if a religion is considered to be a cause from the political right, right wing extremism, then secularism, Marxism, communism, Maxillism, all these are causes from the left wing extremism. So extremism can come from any side. What is the constructive solution then? The constructive solution is that which focuses on consciousness. The Bhagavad Gita explains that people can function within three modes, sattva, rajas, and tamas.

Sattva is associated with clarifying, clarity. We see seek clarity. In rajas, one is simply having craving, craving for power, like we discussed, craving for power, craving for indoctrination, craving for getting back at others. And tamas is associated with complaining. And each of these can become driving modes of people.

And the Bhagavad Gita is followed by the book Shamat Bhagavatam, where the same principle that is describing greater detail and says that even Dharma can be practiced in the three modes. So if we look at the specific conflict in Palestine, the holy place, Jerusalem has been associated with Judaism, even from the pre Christian times when Moses came there to provide that as a secret land. And Jews were occupying that land till Romans occupied it in the ’70, around seventy DC, around seventy AD. And then after that, there are various emperors who ruled it till the Ottoman empire came up. And then it’s the first world war, the Ottoman empire was supported by Germany and Germany was defeated, that empire collapsed.

And then that area was taken by the French and the British as a part of their colonial of the territory. And over a period of time, especially if we consider when the Jews were being persecuted. The Jews were living here at that time, but they were being persecuted, especially the second world war. There was a huge persecution. So the Jews decided to have their own land.

That was that is a Zionist movement, which eventually led to the creation of Israel. So the Israelis have, they are not colonizers who came that for thousands of years, they have been living over there and different theories can be brought in, but the Arabs have also been living there for a long time. What exactly specifically caused the conflagration? If it is only religion, then it would have been constantly the conflict is what would have been going on throughout. Well, the conflict has been flaring up, coming down.

And yes, well, religion is definitely a major factor in this particular cause. It is not so much religion as it is the lower consciousness of people, the consciousness of exploitativeness, the consciousness of manipulativeness, the consciousness wherein people are highly in Rajasthan Thomas. And to the extent this consciousness is addressed, sometime those who are, like, extremely affected by this consciousness, they have to be stopped by force. But eventually, the constructive solution is twofold. There is Shastra and there is Shastra.

That there is there are weapons, Shastra weapons used to curb those who are who think that the only solution is a violent solution. Those who are very strongly infected by rajas going toward Tamas, they had to be stopped by force. And eventually, not we understand that not everybody in any group is like that. The Shastra, Shastra does not mean just religious scripture. It means wisdom that helps us to do Shastra, to do administration, to bring order.

That wisdom has to be communicated as Sathva rises, then there is some solution possible. Srila Prabhupada famously said that there is no use of crying for world peace, unless there is the awakening of divine consciousness in the individual. It is that divine consciousness that the Bhagavad Gita points to When it states that, The Gita says in five twenty nine, that is only when we understand that God is the So when as I started by talking about causes of war in terms of rip, the resentment and, revenge, then indoctrination and ideology, and property and power. So it is only when we understand that all property and power ultimately belongs to God. That actually, ultimately, the purpose of argumentation and purpose of power is not to prove myself right.

That ultimately, it is to find out who is right and align with the person who is right. That it is not to prove my ideology and to indoctrinate others or to eliminate those who don’t get indoctrinate, but ultimately align with the divine will. And we give up resentment and revengefulness when we understand that God is the well wisher of everyone. So when it is the divine consciousness is awakened in terms of understanding how God or plan is working in our life, and we humans need to align ourselves with the divine plan to raise our consciousness toward the divine and to act in that divine consciousness in this world. Then we can have inner peace and then we can progress towards having outer peace.

We may never have total outer peace in the outer world, but to the extent we have inner peace, to that extent, we, we have increased the chances of having outer peace. So to summarize, if we analyze the causes of war, I talked about three broad things, convenience, Different people will ascribe different causes depending on what their worldview is and which explanation most easily fits in their worldview. If we look at the actual reality, there’s they can see it’s complexity. And I I talked about the acronym rip, RIPP, resentment and revenge, indoctrination ideology, and property and power. And last was protection protection of life, law, and legitimate interests.

So which cause causes what? We look at the complexity and the nuance in which the with which the Kurukshetra wars and the Ramayan war was fought. Therefore, we brought the last point was constructiveness. So convenient solution is rarely the constructive solution because it cannot be implemented. Entire groups of people, cannot be eliminated.

But what can be done is we can try to raise human consciousness from the modes of rajas and tamas towards sattva. And those who are adamant on their own ways of functioning and going towards violence, they have to be stopped by shastra, by weapons. And at the same time, while there is subordination by subjugation by power, there is also elevation by education. That is Shastra. And as the divine consciousness awaken in more and more people, we’ll find that there can be greater peace internally and a greater chance of peace externally.

Thank you.