Welcome speech by Vytautas Landsbergis, Conference "The merits of Regional cooperation – the case of South Asia"

Distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen!

When one turns his mind to tales and dreamlands of his young years, and also to romantic literature about great geographical discoveries, the high southern seas and ships of brave sailors come back like moving calls and pictures of once for ever excited imagination.

In our Western and East-Western culture there is also one special picture of the three Magi, who came bringing oriental and royal gifts to greet the poorest newborn Child. One of them came then from a famous land, previously visited once by Alexander of Europe.

Today it all sounds rather dry as "South Asia", such a region of the world, among others, and many have to reach yet for books or googles of geography to become aware about limits and definitions of it.

One of those was me. Yes, we remember, there is in South Asia the home area of most ancient known philosophy and state-building traditions based on law, of incomparable beauty of architecture and music, of owadays mighty empires with cosmic religions later fading and turned into a dust. And again, our ears of today are full of rumours and formulas about newly emerging powers. Somewhere, but also there. South Asia is not a region yet with well developed cooperation and worldwide mission, but may become it. Something essential is needed for that, more than a split group of actors on the stage. Of course, they are, but what then? Such new appearance must bring both chances and problems, and it brings problems and chances indeed, actually at the same time. That is ongoing. Let the good in that process be welcomed, while evil condemned.

Let me say, being a distant and ignorant observer, that situation where two inheritors of King Ashoka and Prince Gautama stay in a long lasting and so much exhausting war for disputed lands, not souls, looks an absurdity over absurdities.

Don't be similar, I could suggest, to your northern Eurasian neighbour, so painfully suffering the illness of territorialism.

The unique heritage of Tibetian culture with its unique importance for the entire world cannot be put on the edge of disappearance with slow-minded gawks, called international community, just watching from around.

What a lesson may be brought to us, if not stopped, from Bhutan! There is a Government concerned about people not in terms of material wealth, but of happiness. That is something different from our Western chains of mentality. Richness and happiness is not the same, dear economists. You may have money and a cancer together. It's hardly to be called an achievement. What is then and how accounted your living standard? To add, the cancer of greediness is not much better of other forms.

The classical wisdom of East – that also of South Asia – appears much needed for our unhappy West, unhappy despite its all false values.

Let me quote the great poet of Bengali, whom I admired while still young: "Prisoner, tell me, who was it that wrought this unbreakable chain?"

"It was I", said the prisoner, "who forged this chain very carefully. I thought my invincible power would hold the world captive leaving me in a freedom undisturbed. Thus night and day I worked at the chain with huge fires and cruel hard strokes. When at last the work was done and the links were complete and unbreakable, I found that it held me in its grip".

The poet and philosopher saw this captive "by himself" as a metaphor used for more and more materialist, those times expansionist and finally consumerist, industrial Western civilization.

He wished for India, like Mahatma Gandhi did as well, a different way.

What ways were chosen generally in South Asia, you know better than me.

But while the South Asia prefers democracy, there is a question of possible common way for all democracies in the East and West. Completion is better than competition. Consolidation of democracies and bridge between the great democratic entities is of crucial need, if we don't want to disappear in a world-wide terrorist war. Anyway, the Westernization of South Asia, an effort striving to get one more great self-captive of industrial consumerism, like new big house founded in a swamp of sovereign and community debt, would not be the best way, but rather a lost chance. Of what?

That chance could be the merge of different approaches – more rational and more spiritual ones.

It is possible, if not absolutely utopian, when the culture is not put behind material profits, and human spirit together with love and compassion – not behind the ever growing auctions and advertising to consume ever more.

Fairness in politics and business, including banking, should stem also from the responsibility and compassion to those eventual victims of confuse and manipulation.

Let's love more, assist more, and seek for happiness among the brothers, not enemies. 

11-10-2012 Brussels