Pathways for Civilizational Progress—A Baháʼí Response to UN International Day of Peace 2026 & BRICS Summit 2026
Dr. A. K. Merchant*
Every year the member-states of the United Nations, established 81 years ago, gather in the 3rd week of September to commemorate the International Day of Peace.
The theme for 2026 is "Invest in Peace - For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day." It urges us to focus on: (i) Honouring everyday architects who build stability and local action from the ground up; (ii) Recognizing daily cooperation, safety, and dignity as the true foundation of peace; (iii) Encouraging small actions like volunteering, dialogue, and community support every day.
Unfortunately, present-day society, visionless, faithless, and restless, is refusing to understand a civilizational collapse. Therefore, chaos and anarchy everywhere. Individuals become lawless, institutions seek survival without regard to the needs and rights of their society as a whole. Predatory interests arise, pressures are exerted by economic, ethnic and political groups; religious denominations substitute social programs to be carried out by the state comprising conflicting ideologies.
The social order becomes overburdened by the weight of regulations; the family unit loses its integrity and power of unity; education divides into numerous unrelated branches of knowledge and technology; industry falls prey to market forces that produce goods and provide services far removed from the wellbeing of a majority of the human race.
At such times, as demonstrated by the recent BRICS summit gathering held in India, concern about the general plight of humankind seek to repair the political ills with the fabric of ethics; to mend the economic systems with philosophy; to salvage the creeds by a closer identification with spiritual quick fixes. Quite oblivious of the truth that each type of socio-politico-economic-religio system in present-day society has reached a point of near collapse. Efforts to repair or devise alternatives only result in new problems.
When obsolete institutions of governance become prey to conflicting interests; when unity in diversity is simply a chimera; when legal frameworks cannot be preserved by justice and the constitutional order and is made subject to schemes and experiments; when human beings refuse to admit that disorder and dislocation is first of all a disease of the soul but would heal it by violence and social revolution—at such a time for laying the foundations of an entirely new order the Cosmic Will unfolds. A new Era begins unbeknownst to the vast majority of the peoples everywhere.
Little imagination is needed, with the scarred horrors of 130 active armed conflicts and wars currently raging in different parts of the world today as per data compiled by International Committee of the Red Cross. This is double the number recorded 15 years ago. Around 60 countries are directly involved, alongside numerous non-state armed groups. Such widespread anarchy in a variety of forms just goes to show that despite the enormous material and scientific progress the instinct of a barbarian human appears to be dominant. Such base behaviour is also the theme of many movies and social media. Sadly, each new discovery or invention has been exploited for its destructive power to permit human beings to dominate others until we realize that all of the tremendous faculties of science and technology have got concentrated on the problem of finding more efficient methods of killing and destroying.
From the perspective of the Baháʼí Faith the life and progress of civilization are dependent upon recognition and implementation of the Cosmic Will that is disclosed to humanity from age to age. This is stated in all the Sacred Scriptures. Today it is the acceptance of the oneness and wholeness of humankind and the world as one country is the basis for our future. For it is this belief that would give all emotions their integrity, to all ideas their valid practicality, to individual plans and actions their sanction, to the community its power to live in harmony, to the institutions and agencies the authority.
The ultimate cause of chaos and confusion of today is not that too many persons consciously deny the significance of the Cosmic Will but they deny the progressive character of its revelation. Bahá’u’lláh, Founder of the Baháʼí Faith, explains the process in the following manner: “Know of a certainty that in every Dispensation the light of Divine Revelation hath been vouchsafed unto men in direct proportion to their spiritual capacity. Consider the sun. How feeble its rays the moment it appeareth above the horizon. How gradually its warmth and potency increase as it approacheth its zenith, enabling meanwhile all created things to adapt themselves to the growing intensity of its light. How steadily it declineth until it reacheth its setting point. Were it, all of a sudden, to manifest the energies latent within it, it would , no doubt, cause injury to all created things….In like manner, if the Sun of Truth were suddenly to reveal, at the earliest stages of its manifestation, the full measure of the potencies which the providence of the Almighty had bestowed upon it, the earth of human understanding would waste away and be consumed; for men’s hearts would neither sustain the intensity of its revelation, nor be able to mirror forth the radiance of its light. Dismayed and overpowered, they would cease to exist.”
It is out of a deep sense of spiritual and moral duty that Baháʼís everywhere are impelled at this opportune hour in the unfoldment of human history to invite everyone to the penetrating insights and practical pathway for a united world. Baha’u’llah’s teachings address the local and global challenges of today’s world and make fraternity and reciprocity the foundation of every aspect of human life. It is high time that the people, particularly those in the position of decision-making, whether religious or secular, must understand that the ancient dispensation should be annulled. The institutions of a by-gone Era are obsolete for resolving the manifold crises of present-day society. It is must be recognized that the nature of human beings and the nature society, both are essentially spiritual. All causes of conflict, of greed, of corruption and a host of other vices represent a distortion of the human spirit. Acceptance of this truth will enable all people to set in motion constructive social forces which, because they are consistent with human nature, will encourage harmony and cooperation instead of war and conflict.
The Baháʼí Faith regards the current world confusion and calamitous condition in human affairs as a natural phase in an organic process leading ultimately and irresistibly to the fulfilment of the prophecies enshrined in the Scriptures of dharma and all religions. Here is a system of belief that enjoins independent search after truth based on reason, in accord with historical evidence. It shows the way for uniting the human race into a single socio-economic order whose boundaries are those of the planet. For, humankind, as a distinct, organic unit, has passed through evolutionary stages analogous to the states of infancy and childhood in the lives of its individual members, and is now in the culminating period of its turbulent adolescence approaching its adulthood, its maturity.
“…How lofty is the station which man,” Bahá’u’lláh writes, “if he but chooseth to fulfil his high destiny, can attain! To what depths of degradation, he can sink, depths which the meanest of creatures have never reached! “Seize, O friends,” He further appeals to all of us, “the chance which this Day offereth you, and deprive not yourselves of the liberal effusions of Divine grace…” Leaders of religion, exponents of political theories, governors of human institutions, who at present are witnessing with perplexity and dismay the bankruptcy of their ideas, and the disintegration of their handiwork, would do well to turn their gaze to the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, and to meditate upon the World Order which, lying enshrined in His teachings, is slowly and imperceptibly rising amid the welter and chaos of present-day civilization.
*The writer is a social worker, independent researcher, & member of the Bahá’i Community of India. Views expressed are personal.