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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