By IANS
New Delhi : India has to undertake the responsibility of guiding the international community with ideas towards peaceful coexistence, according to outgoing Japanese ambassador Yasukuni Enoki.
“I do not wish India to be merely a major power in the world; instead, I very strongly expect that India would emerge as a respectable leader and be able to guide the international community with ideas towards peaceful coexistence,” Enoki said Tuesday.
He was speaking on the theme ‘My Expectations Toward the Major Power India in the Coming Decades’ at a function organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) here to honour him on the conclusion of his nearly five-year tenure as Japan’s ambassador to India.
“What I am most impressed with about India is not its progress in the field of IT or the phenomenal success story of Maruti-Suzuki,” said Enoki, “but the generosity and tolerance manifested by its people evident in the peaceful coexistence between Hindus and Muslims as well as the harmonious coexistence between human beings and sundry animals in the midst of a bustling town.”
“Mahatma (Gandhi) was of course great, but the Indian people, who fully understood Mahatma’s teachings and followed them in action, are equally great,” he said.
He, however, stated that even as India emerged as a global power it has a lot of responsibility to shoulder.
“First, India may place the idea of tolerance as a foundation of Indian diplomacy, and put this into a theory in an appealing and easily understandable manner,” the ambassador said.
Secondly, he said, India should introduce to the international society the Indian reality where people of different religions, cultures and languages live together peacefully under a democracy.
Stating that India should deploy peace-building or peace consolidating diplomacy in various places of conflict, Enoki said: “Though there do happen communal disturbances even in India, it is however very heartening to witness peaceful coexistence in community being taken for granted in India, in contrast to the tragic reality in many places in the world such as Iraq, Palestine, Darfur in Sudan, and so forth.”
The third point of his expectation is that India should resolve the issues of Kashmir and nuclear disarmament.
“India should advance its active diplomacy vis-à-vis two difficult issues, namely the Kashmir problem and its relations with Pakistan, as well as nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, which may be the touchstone to prove the authenticity of the Indian peace developing diplomacy with highly esteemed ideals.”
The ambassador also lauded the Indians’ ability to harmoniously coexist with nature, but stated, “I do not wish to see India merely as one of the economic powers flourishing at the cost of disrupted environment.”
He said that India should present itself as a model of economic development in harmony with environmental protection, and lead the world in this direction.
Speaking on India-Japan relationship, he said that Japan received strong cultural and religious influence from India since the introduction of Buddhism in that Far East Asian nation in the sixth century.
He said India and Japan “should work together hand in hand, with the common philosophy towards challenging the two major problems of the world, namely, peace-building by severing the vicious chain of hatred and violence as well as leading to harmonious coexistence with nature by protecting the earth from environmental disruption”.
A career diplomat, Enoki, 61, had earlier served as Japan’s ambassador to South Africa with concurrent charge of Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland.
He took up the New Delhi assignment in December 2003 with concurrent charge of Bhutan.