Saturday, 5 November 2016

Honour or Ego, Valour or Vanity




                                                         Honour or Ego, Valour or Vanity
The Breaking News on TV channels and the headlines in the newspapers hit us hard with daily reports about Pakistan firing on civilians and retaliation by the Indian army  busting the enemy bunkers, thereof accounting for the killings of innocent civilians including women and children and for the death of soldiers on either side,( that includes both army personnel and terrorists on the Pakistani side) - caught in the crossfire between India and Pakistan. The daily mortal tally is on the increase and as things hot up in our neighbourhood( among Pakistani parliamentarians, and between its army and government), there is very little possibility of this game of snipers coming to an end soon.
It is indeed a matter of concern that no one thinks about the families orphaned by the deaths of their breadwinners. A life snuffed out is finality.  A life lost is a life lost; no amount of tears can wash away the sadness of the tragedy. But for politicians of all hues, it is an opportunity to grandstand to impress their voters.  “For one head lost, we will recover ten heads of the other side” or “a whole jaw for a tooth” cry the politicians as they hug the bereaved family members for photo-ops.
The question that each one of us should ask is about the rightness of snuffing out the life of a person in the name of liberation and vengeance. The two independent nations, separated violently at birth have forgotten that they were not two but one before independence. In the last seventy years, there has been intermittent wars-1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999 which have seared into the memory of both nations with high intensity of volatility and vengeful anger. The intrepid forays into peaceful ventures were often put paid to by high sounding angry political rhetoric and sabre- rattling to the extent that even a game of cricket between the two nations came to be  viewed as a Kurukshetra battle. The fancied Indian Premier league jamboree inviting players from all cricket playing nations had no place for the talented Pakistani players.
After the Indian PM’s extraordinary gesture of flying to Lahore to greet his Pakistani counterpart on his birthday and afterPakistani heartthrobs wereinvited to be on our silver screens, there came the Pathankot terrorist attack on our Air Force station. The Uri massacre, a few months later, incinerating 19 Indian soldiers, made the Indian army retaliate with its surgical decimation of Pakistani posts and bunkers killing unknown number of their soldiers and terrorists disguised as enemy soldiers. A moral and justified assault by the Indian army should have been left at the LOC as a fitting reply , but unfortunately like small babies chased by fellow students rushing to the mother with cries of being hurt and wounded, our politicians  heeding to the wise counsel of our news media and mindless warmongers rushed to different national  and international  fora asking the world to isolate and humiliate Pakistan. The result is the increased venom spewed by Pakistan on a daily basis even as it loses many of its own soldiers.
Whether one is an admirer or a critic of Indira Gandhi, no one can take away her magnanimity after the 1971 war victory. Ninety thousand Pakistani soldiers were freed.  But what we see today is an orchestrated and boastful cry of self appointed nationalists demanding the ban of films with Pakistani matinee idols, extracting promise from Indian film producers never to engage any artist from across the border, asking theatre owners not to screen Pakistani films , and asking BCCI(Indian Cricket Control Board)not to have any sporting ties with the ‘enemy’ country  and matching counter retaliation from the other side resulting in casualties on a daily basis. Who gains out of this gun play? Whose loss is it that no one bothers about? What is this vengeful spirit on both sides that lack sensitivity to the grief of so many families?   The amount of money spent by these two nations in stockpiling Rafael jets, Russian bombers and Chinese nuclear arms, can well be utilized for improving the economy and welfare of the nation.
The generation today does not have any idea of the partition frenzy and those who had been the victims of that frenzy have only dim memories of the pain that time has gradually erased. Many of them have progressed in life and recall old houses, families, friends and acquaintances they had left behind in Pakistan. A nostalgic urge to visit those places linger in their minds.  In fact when some of us went to England and US for studies, we made good friends with fellow Pakistani students. There was never any rancor or bitterness between us. All these talks fuelling hatred, animosity and hostility are by insensitive, thoughtless and obtusely selfish people who would prefer a continuation of hostility for their own survival. They cloak their ambition under the garb of nationalism and patriotism, not realizing that hatred begets hatred and the brunt of war is borne by soldiers who lay down their lives. In the essay, ‘The Pleasures of Hating’, the 19thC English essayist William Hazlitt describes the effects of hatred: “It makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands; it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness.” Soldiers are like anyone of us- human beings. In peacetimes they exchange sweets with those across the border. But they are disciplined and strike when asked to. They are asked to fight for honour and valour, but at the bottom it is  an order to fight for their leaders’  ego and vanity. Isn’t it time for the politicians and leaders on both sides to make an attempt to cease this mindless hostility that only tolls the bell for those whose duty is to safeguard the lives of the civilians. Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking about war, said: “,  I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity “
 Does anyone of our netas understand the pain of the family that loses a father or a son or a husband or a brother? I remember the Irish playwright John Middleton Synge’s lines in Riders to the Sea : “The men venture out and are lost; the women stay at home and grieve. ... enter, seemingly uninvited, and begin keening in a primitive ritual of grief.” Why can’t Indians and Pakistanis of the new generation recognize each other as brothers and sisters separated at birth? Why can’t the new young leaders on both sides respect each other as fellow human beings?  Why don’t we, who are economically, militarily and politically better placed than our neighbour  desist from blaming and fault finding  Pakistan as instigating Indian Muslims to riot in Kashmir? Instead of proving our worth as a model state with a Ram Rajya civilization to guide us and working towards the betterment of Kashmir and that of the nearly 14crore Muslims in India-which constitutes around 14% of the total population- we seem to indulge in rhetoric that can only inflame passion. Let the new generation show the white flag unlike the older generation who continue to wave red flags. It is time for our leaders, policy makers and even the rabble rousers to understand that their individual sense of right and wrong has to be governed by the interest of the nation and its people, and to develop inner consciousness to make moral choices and  reflect on those choices. It is time to wake up and engage with Pakistan- what Arnab Neil Sengupta defines as “chipping away methodically at the logics of permanent enmity.”  The youth alone can be inspired to support an albeit belated reconciliation.

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