Mr Chairman and friends, I have been attending this conference for a few years now. I would like to congratulate once again Mr Gandhi, Bharti Gandhi and their devoted people, teachers, students and staff of this great institution who have been organizing this conference for a very noble objective. And I have no doubt that someday these efforts will be a success.

Do we know that it took nature millions of years to evolve a human being? It didn't happen in a day. Gradually life in its primitive form, it kept on developing, and today, we have this beautiful creature - a human being - a thinking animal, who can think, understand and analyze. But we should know that it may take only a few seconds for all humanity to vanish from the face of this earth, if a nuclear holocaust someday comes along and it may be due to the foolishness of a couple of people that such a thing may come about. We cannot rule out the possibility of such a happening at some time in future. If it does happen and humanity is wiped off from the face of this earth, I do not know how many more millions of years will it require nature to resurrect humankind again. I am not even sure whether nature will find a way to create a human being once more.

With these possibilities in view, let us analyze what can be done and the people in power which ultimately may use that weapon - how they can be prevented from using this weapon of ultimate destruction. As all of you are aware, thousands of years back after human being had come into existence, there were disputes for various things, because the resources were limited and each person wanted to reserve for himself as much of those resources as possible, which gave rise to disputes. How were those disputes solved? By the use of force. The stronger eliminated the weaker, causing a lot of destruction in the process.

But gradually human beings thought about this problem. And as civilization dawned, they created instruments to prevent such hostilities and such destruction. So they created a scheme of government, with a legislature, with a judiciary and with an executive - in all the democratic countries -- ultimate power being given to the people in a democracy to elect people who would ultimately govern their lives. Powers were divided among the three governing institutions namely - the legislature, the executive and the judiciary to enforce the rule of law so that violence was eliminated and rule of law was established, so that disputes among people of a country could be solved through the means of a rule of law by the judiciary adjudicating over those disputes, in accordance with the law laid down by the legislature chosen by the common will of the people.

This was civilization; we became civilized at a national level. But at the international level, that stage of civilization is yet to dawn. Some process was started effectively. They thought those who brought the United Nations Charter in 1945 in the wake of the Second World War, which had raged for six long years causing immense destruction of property, resources and human life -- millions and millions of people had perished during those six years of the Second World War. In fact, it was an atomic weapon, the use of which brought an end to that war. And those who used that atomic weapon thought that this was a weapon which was a weapon of peace because it had brought peace by the use of that weapon. When the United Nations Charter was framed in 1945, those powers which had really won the Second World War, they united to forge this document -- the UN Charter -- and they thought that those powers together would be able to ensure world peace. And therefore the Charter provided for a veto - a veto on the functioning of the Security Council, which was the world executive. Power of veto was given to those five powers which had been responsible for attaining victory in the Second World War. But very soon things started changing in the world. Even those five countries fell out from each other. The unity which was there among them at the end of the Second World War soon dissipated. They started looking at each other as enemies, namely the American Block, the Russian Block and so on and equations kept on changing. And the result has been that the instrument which had been fashioned in the shape of the UN Charter had become totally outmoded in the situation of the current world affairs.

It no longer promises to keep the process of peace established in the world. And therefore that order needs a change. But how should that change be brought about? With the use of this veto a change in United Nations Charter is not easily achievable, unless a strong public opinion of the world is created in favour of this change. Now, perhaps those who had designed the atomic weapons, they had at that time thought that they would be the sole possessors of the atomic weapons and therefore their own security would never be in danger.

But today the situation is entirely different. There are many countries today in possession of nuclear weapons, which do not belong even to this exclusive club of five nations which had been given the veto powers. It is told that even those countries are worried and everyday new countries are also emerging to be nuclear powers. There are several nuclear powers in the world today and therefore those powerful countries are not sure as to whether some other countries, even by some foolish act of one of the persons who is in a position to use that nuclear weapon, may not once again mean a big holocaust, which would be hundreds or thousands of times bigger holocaust than the Second World War which had been responsible for several millions of human beings to perish.

This is the message that needs to go home to the rulers of those countries who had for long time thought that they were safe in the world because they don't possess nuclear weapons. They must realize that this is not the position today and even they may get wiped off once a nuclear holocaust happens for one reason or the other in the world. It is only after they realize that will know that it is important not only to put an end to all nuclear arsenals in the world, but also at the same time to establish a new world order. As I said, national wars used to take place. The main reason for those wars was that a country felt that there were important natural resources -- could be in the shape of oil, could be in the shape of mineral resources, could be in any other shape, human resources also and that powerful nation thought we have much stronger armies in our country and therefore with the use of those armies we can capture the national resources in other countries and put them to our advantage, because it was considered that natural resources were limited and were not really enough to serve the needs of the entire mankind.

Today the situation even in that regard has changed in the world. Everyone knows that the monetary resources possessed by the world are more than enough to serve not merely the needs of the entire human race in the whole world, but much more than that. Even the wealthiest nations can ensure that their way of life will not stand affected, if instead of using their resources in building arsenals of means of destruction, if those very resources were used for betterment of life in poorer countries, the underdeveloped countries. This is the realization that needs to dawn on them.

Today even those countries apart from the possible nuclear threat; they are already feeling the heat of terrorism. But why does terrorism arise in the world? Terrorism arises from a feeling, because a terrorist kills himself in the process. Most of the terrorists are persons who in the process of carrying out the act of terrorism kill themselves. Why do they do it? Why do they destroy themselves? Because there is a feeling in their minds that the resources of the world have been cornered in such a manner by some of the well-to-do countries that their lives will never get better. They are leading a very very deprived life and unless they have a hope for a better future, they are prepared to destroy themselves also, while thinking that they are also destroying something for the better nations of the world. This is the situation and that is what the wealthier nations also have to understand once and for all. They have to understand that instead of using their resources for increasing their arsenals of general destruction in the form of nuclear bombs, more and more nuclear bombs, better and better weapons and so on. If all that money, which is being utilized by so many countries for destructive purposes, could be diverted to improve a better life for the deprived sections of humanity, I think the real threat of terrorism will only end by that. It is not by any measures of security that this threat of terrorism would end. It is only by a better distribution of the natural resources of the world among the different people of the world, inhabiting different areas of the world that this threat of terrorism will come to an end.

This is the message which needs to go home to the rulers of powerful countries which are today blocking improvement for reforms of the world law. United Nations Charter needs a total recasting, which recasting is only possible when the powerful nations of the world also cooperate. They will only cooperate if they know that such cooperation is going to help them also, is going to secure a better security for them also. This is the kind of public opinion which has to be built up and that is why I congratulate Shri Jagdish Gandhi for having created such a powerful platform in the shape of an appeal, on behalf of two billion children of the world, by these 32,000 students of the City Montessori School in making an appeal through the various Chief Justices of different countries of the world. Such a large number of countries are getting represented in this forum. I agree with the suggestion which Justice Vishnu Sahai made in the morning, that let us also think apart from involving the Chief Justices who are responsible for the rule of law, let us also think of involving the executive heads, the heads of government or the heads of the state also, you can make that effort. Possibly, through the intervention of the chief justices of those countries, it may become possible to involve the heads of government or heads of state also in this enterprise.

I have no doubt that someday this realization will dawn on the executives of powerful countries also that it is in their own interest that a proper world order is created, in which we would have a world parliament, a world executive, a world judiciary in the shape of a fully competent International Court of Justice to adjudicate over disputes between nations. And when that happens we can say that the international community has become civilized.

Recently I was told that some functionary raised a question, how is it the duty of an educational institution like the City Montessori School to organise such a conference of the chief justices of the world. I do not think that that functionary has any idea about what is the objective of education, and what are the means of educating the children of an educational institution. As all of you have seen, over these days, it is the children of this school who are not only spreading the message, they are helping in organizing this conference. They are attending the sessions, these deliberations and listening to the deliberations. Now the purpose of school education or education in an educational institution is not merely to learn a language, arithmetic, or sciences. Much more than that, the purpose of education is to make a child a better citizen. It is the most important function of an educational institution, to imbibe in the children, which that educational institution teaches, the aspects of being a good citizen, a good international citizen also. He must understand what is the Constitution, how Constitution functions, what is Article 51, why is it necessary to promote Respect for International Law. All these things are more important part of education than merely learning a language or learning sciences - social or physical. And the authorities will have to understand the true objective of education. It is only by the involvement of the children of a school in such activities that they receive real, proper education.

I remember my childhood, when I was a student from the age of two-and-a half. For eight years I was a student in a school established in 1925 by Dr Annie Besant in Allahabad. Two years before my birth that school was established and I joined that school at the age of two-and-a-half years and was educated in that school for eight years. Most of the teachers, except one or two, were lady teachers from very good families. They had clear instructions -- those were the days of corporal punishment in normal schools, but in that school apart from no corporal punishment, it was a sin for a teacher to speak to a child even in harsh language. The language in which a child was taught was love and affection. Every extracurricular activity - nothing to do with the school - namely passing the examination, music was compulsory, scouting/girl guides was compulsory, excursions were compulsory, involvement of children in different handcrafts was compulsory. We were trekking to different places where leather work was being done, and other handicrafts were being done. That was the true education. Whatever I am today, I can safely say, I owe it to the eight years education which I received in childhood in Annie Besant School.

A child's character, much more than any academic achievement, it is the character of a child which is much more important, and which has to be shaped by the educational institution in which he happens to study. Those educational institutions who do not realize the importance of training a child, building his character, making him conscious of the world in which he is living, the problems of the world, how to solve them, how to have conferences, international conferences, how important people from all parts of the world come together, deliberate on momentous issues affecting mankind -- if they don't receive this education, and merely receive the education how to add two to five to make it seven, then an educational institution would be failing in its most important duty. And anybody who says 'why is it that an educational institution has to establish this conference, I think he does not know, does not understand the true concept of education.

It is a momentous thing that this conference has achieved. As all of you know in the first year 2001 only one Chief Justice from outside the country attended it. He wrote a letter which is displayed outside this hall and it was as a result of that letter that gradually more and more Chief Justices of different parts of the world started attending this conference and today it has become a big movement. And I have not the least doubt that it is going to leave a lasting impact on the future of mankind. I once again with these words congratulate Shri Jagdish Gandhi, an indefatigable worker and a livewire. I don't know how he gets his energy, from where he gets his energy, what does he eat. I think all of you should ask him the secret of his energy. He must be eating something very secret. Thank you very much.