By Thomas Wallgren, professor of philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland, board member of Maan ystävät (Friends of the Eartth, Finland), September 17, 2025

This speech was given on September 11.

Students and colleagues,

Today is 9 / 11.

But what is the real 9 / 11 ?

What is the 9/11 that will be remembered, not only 50 or 200 years from now, but thousands of years from now, and for all time?

It is today 24 years since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City.

We remember that and we share the grief of all who on that day lost the ones whom they loved.

We also recognise that today 52 years have passed since the coup d’état against president Salvador Allende and the democratic government in Chile. We remember the coup and we share the grief also of all who then lost their beloved ones.

We remember the World Trade Center in New York and we remember Estadio Nacional in Santiago de Chile.

We remember those sites of violence and terror and they remind us, that we must search for solidarity and peaceful co-existence.

But today, as we meet here, we also remember something else, something more hopeful and, as I firmly believe, something more unique and of far greater significance in world history.

Philosophers, friends, fellow citizens.

We meet here today also to remember and celebrate the third 9 / 11, the 9 / 11 of the mass meeting at the Jewish Theatre in Johannesburg in South Africa in 1906.

On that evening, exactly 119 years ago, some three thousand people belonging to the India community in Transvaal gathered in this theatre. They gathered to mobilise their strength against the offensive new rules imposed on them by the British colonial administration.

Inspired by the young lawyer chairing the meeting, a man named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and emboldened by the impassionate speech by Sheth Haji Habib, this was the meeting when the idea and the practice of satyagraha crystallised for the first time.

Satyagraha, derived from the sanskrit words satya – truth, and agraha – firmness, is defined by Gandhi as “the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence.”

Satyagraha is often translated as truth-force. In Finnish and Swedish languages we have the beautiful words totuuden voima and sanningens kraft.

The idea of satyagraha is simple at its core: it is the idea that the power of truth is a non-violent power and that it is the greatest power in the universe.

I agree with Immanuel Kant, that we have the right to hope that eternal peace will come to this humanity and this planet, plagued as it has been for millennia by the belief in, and practice of, violence and terror and war. And I agree with Gandhi and with all satyagrahis of all times that the power of truth may prevail.

Perhaps, my friends, Gandhi was right, perhaps Truth, Love and Non-Violence are indeed invincible and perhaps then, the history humans have experienced so far, and the wars and terror we see even today, are only a passing moment, and eternal peace will come.

Friends, we can commit to satyagraha, or, at least, we can aspire to commit to satygraha, and to build eternal peace.

I am happy to share with you, and to celebrate with you today, the 119th birthday of satyagraha.

Thank you for letting me speak.

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