The river,
The flower,
The stars,
The birds-
We can look for them later.
But today,
In this darkness,
The last battle is yet to be fought.
What we need now in our hovel
Is- fire!”
-Murari Mukhopadhyay, “Love” (tr. Moinak Banerjee)
The control of fire by early humans paved the way for human geographic dispersal, changes to diet and behavior and cultural transformations. Homo erectus (meaning the “upright man”) is considered to be the first among the archaic humans who controlled fire, as depicted in a diorama inside the National Museum of Mongolian History in Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia. The discovery of the use of fire and sharing of its benefits may have developed a sense of harmony as a group, which might have sparked the first signs of a civilization. Some critics argue that with this, man had not just gained power over the dark but the ones who could make and wield fire might have enjoyed a higher position than those who could not, leading to what can be called the first hegemony and the resultant conflict.
The earliest recorded evidence of war belongs to the Mesolithic cemetery Jebel Sahaba (also, Site 117), dated about 14,000 years old when it was found in 1964 by a team led by Fred Wendorf, an American archaeologist. The Stele of the Vultures is another example testifying military conquests carried out in southern Mesopotamia around the mid-to late-third millennium B.C. as the stele depicts the victory of the city-state of Lagash over its neighbor Umma. Wars decided not just the reign of kings and dynasties but also necessitated the development of infrastructure such as The Great Wall of China, a series of fortifications generally built along an east-to-west line across the historical northern borders of China to protect the Chinese states against invasions or Dubrovnik in Dalmatia. With the advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances like the telegraph and Morse code of dots and dashes, which were utilized for military communication further led to mark the beginning of the Atomic Age.
“War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength”
-George Orwell, 1984
Von Clausewitz (1911) defined war as “an act of violence intended to compel our opponents to fulfill our will.” Thus the “law of the jungle” administered not only animals in their habitat but also humans in societies and this application of Darwinism glorified power and repression. As George Orwell’s book begins with the above slogan employed by an entity known as “The Party” to introduce the reader to the concept of Doublethink and coerce any individuality or autonomy brandished by a citizen, we must understand how a war is a regulated, collective, authorized and institutionalized implementation of violence.
There are many comprehensive “war” terms such as “insurgency”, such as the Iraqi insurgency (2003-11) which ensued after the US-led invasion occurred as part of a declared war against international terrorism, and continued throughout the Iraq War when the Ba’athist Iraqi regime was finally deposed. The term “civil war”, also known as an intrastate war, the later term standing as its definition, came to be used to mark the continuum of civil unrest in Ancient Rome (753 B.C. – A.D. 476); the American Civil War is one of its prominent examples which was fought from 1861 to 1865 between the North and South states of America over the controversy of enslavement of black people. The United States and the Soviet Union fought as Allies against the Axis powers in World War II but there was a growing tension on the part of the Soviets who suffered the death of millions and blamed it on America’s delayed entry into the war, conversely, the Postwar Soviet expansionism threatened the Americans of Russians’ plan of controlling the world. In his essay “You and the Atom Bomb” published in the British newspaper Tribune in October, 1945, Orwell used the term “cold war” based on his observance about how the world was to change after the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
“Close your eyes for a minute, and just imagine that you are in an enemy country. You’re in a jail, your hands have been tied. You are being kicked and punched, and you have been made to stand against a wall. And then somebody fires a sten gun, full magazine. Onto you. Please gentlemen and ladies, open your eyes. That’s what happened to me. I am Captain G.R. Choudhary.”
-and that’s how the then 2/Lt of 3/9 Gorkha Rifles began his TEDxRTU (Rajasthan Technical University) talk on “My Time as a PoW in Pakistan – a story of courage, pain, pride and hope”, present at the forefront of action on the outskirts of Shakargarh in Pakistan (on 14-15 December, 1971). It shows how soldiers experience war which is quite different from civilians though the ones local in a war zone are subjected to fatal atrocities. A biographical film “Sarabjit” produced by Vashu Bhagnani and others and directed by Omung Kumar renders the story of Sarabjit Singh (alleged to be Manjit Singh by a Pakistan court) who was convicted of spying and tried by the Supreme Court on charges of bomb attacks in Lahore and Faisalabad in 1990. It emphasized on how under-trials are locked up for years and exposed about planned murders by jail inmates either on the instruction of the authority or rivalry against prisoners because of ethnicity, religion or nation.
Wilfred Owen is known for his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” and the line Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori is taken from the Latin odes of the poet Horace, meaning “it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country”; he depicts his experiences as a soldier who fought in northern France during First World War.
“Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all
Blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.”
A scene from the story “The Last Song” from Temsula Ao’s collection of stories These Hills Called Home, illustrates the trauma of the Nagas (and the condition of women at large) whose history is replete with bloodshed and abuse from the early fifties of the last century and hence their demand for freedom from the Indian State, and their prolonged struggle for a legitimate identity.
“Calling out her daughter’s name loudly, she began to search for her in the direction where she was last seen being dragged away by the leader. When she came upon the scene at last, what she saw turned her stomach: the young Captain was raping Apenyo while a few other soldiers were watching the act and seemed to be waiting for their turn.”
While Hindi film industry’s take on the surgical strike at Uri tries to instill patriotism with its “How’s the Josh?” both India and Pakistan denied each others’ reports of casualties, who were obviously not from the military sides alone. As India rejoiced on the return of Abhinandan Varthaman on March 1, 2019, who had crossed the “Line of Control” and descended in the village of Horran for being struck by a missile in a dogfight to obstruct an intrusion by Pakistan, a video was released which showed an “angry” mob there pelting him with stones and alternatively, here the Varthaman moustache or “Abhinandan cut” became famous.
For ages, Izzat (Respect), Naam (Reputation), Namak (Fidelity to the salt you’ve intaken) and Nishaan (Flag or the colours of the regiment) have been the core of India’s military ethos which spread among the general public as well through films like “LOC Kargil” (2003). Should we really be proud of the increasing global military spending (even more than educational expenditure), as can be seen in the 2018 report (for 2017 survey) released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, with peace treatises mostly limited to paper as at some place or other some soldier is inflicted with third degree torture, or the exercise of genocide such as the condition of millions of Soviet PoWs held by the Nazis in concentration camps or a more recent, exodus of the Kasmiri Pandit community, the Ayodhya dispute and the demolition of the Babri Masjid by Hindu propagandists triggering riots in which thousands of Muslims were killed.
A thin line demarcates the interchangeably used terms- nationalism and patriotism, both at its peak whenever there is an issue regarding Pakistan, even if it is a cricket match. Kunal Kamra in his stand –up comedy act on “Patriotism and the Government” at Tuning Fork, Mumbai effectively shows the comic side of this political jingoism and the video of the event up on his Youtube channel ends with – “Ever wondered why you’re patriotic? Because that’s what they want.” In times like these when the Bajrang Dal raises Anti-Pak slogans and burns Pakistan’s national flag and Pakistan in turn asks India to “Get ready for our surprise” (as recorded by The Guardian) as a response to India’s airstrikes, doesn’t the image of soldiers “protecting” us as they stand at the borders rather magnifies the terror in a war-torn world we live in? Or is it just the legacy of Parthasarathis manipulating Arjuns since centuries to perform their “duty”? Times when the image of a little Syrian boy covered in dust and blood floods the internet, does this mean patriotism and violence are two sides of the same coin?
- Simreen Biswas
Want to get published on EMN and join the community? Here is an opportunity to join the Board of Young Leaders Program by Eat My News. Click here to know more: bit.ly/boardofyoungleaders
-and that’s how the then 2/Lt of 3/9 Gorkha Rifles began his TEDxRTU (Rajasthan Technical University) talk on “My Time as a PoW in Pakistan – a story of courage, pain, pride and hope”, present at the forefront of action on the outskirts of Shakargarh in Pakistan (on 14-15 December, 1971). It shows how soldiers experience war which is quite different from civilians though the ones local in a war zone are subjected to fatal atrocities. A biographical film “Sarabjit” produced by Vashu Bhagnani and others and directed by Omung Kumar renders the story of Sarabjit Singh (alleged to be Manjit Singh by a Pakistan court) who was convicted of spying and tried by the Supreme Court on charges of bomb attacks in Lahore and Faisalabad in 1990. It emphasized on how under-trials are locked up for years and exposed about planned murders by jail inmates either on the instruction of the authority or rivalry against prisoners because of ethnicity, religion or nation.
Wilfred Owen is known for his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” and the line Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori is taken from the Latin odes of the poet Horace, meaning “it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country”; he depicts his experiences as a soldier who fought in northern France during First World War.
“Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all
Blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.”
A scene from the story “The Last Song” from Temsula Ao’s collection of stories These Hills Called Home, illustrates the trauma of the Nagas (and the condition of women at large) whose history is replete with bloodshed and abuse from the early fifties of the last century and hence their demand for freedom from the Indian State, and their prolonged struggle for a legitimate identity.
“Calling out her daughter’s name loudly, she began to search for her in the direction where she was last seen being dragged away by the leader. When she came upon the scene at last, what she saw turned her stomach: the young Captain was raping Apenyo while a few other soldiers were watching the act and seemed to be waiting for their turn.”
While Hindi film industry’s take on the surgical strike at Uri tries to instill patriotism with its “How’s the Josh?” both India and Pakistan denied each others’ reports of casualties, who were obviously not from the military sides alone. As India rejoiced on the return of Abhinandan Varthaman on March 1, 2019, who had crossed the “Line of Control” and descended in the village of Horran for being struck by a missile in a dogfight to obstruct an intrusion by Pakistan, a video was released which showed an “angry” mob there pelting him with stones and alternatively, here the Varthaman moustache or “Abhinandan cut” became famous.
For ages, Izzat (Respect), Naam (Reputation), Namak (Fidelity to the salt you’ve intaken) and Nishaan (Flag or the colours of the regiment) have been the core of India’s military ethos which spread among the general public as well through films like “LOC Kargil” (2003). Should we really be proud of the increasing global military spending (even more than educational expenditure), as can be seen in the 2018 report (for 2017 survey) released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, with peace treatises mostly limited to paper as at some place or other some soldier is inflicted with third degree torture, or the exercise of genocide such as the condition of millions of Soviet PoWs held by the Nazis in concentration camps or a more recent, exodus of the Kasmiri Pandit community, the Ayodhya dispute and the demolition of the Babri Masjid by Hindu propagandists triggering riots in which thousands of Muslims were killed.
A thin line demarcates the interchangeably used terms- nationalism and patriotism, both at its peak whenever there is an issue regarding Pakistan, even if it is a cricket match. Kunal Kamra in his stand –up comedy act on “Patriotism and the Government” at Tuning Fork, Mumbai effectively shows the comic side of this political jingoism and the video of the event up on his Youtube channel ends with – “Ever wondered why you’re patriotic? Because that’s what they want.” In times like these when the Bajrang Dal raises Anti-Pak slogans and burns Pakistan’s national flag and Pakistan in turn asks India to “Get ready for our surprise” (as recorded by The Guardian) as a response to India’s airstrikes, doesn’t the image of soldiers “protecting” us as they stand at the borders rather magnifies the terror in a war-torn world we live in? Or is it just the legacy of Parthasarathis manipulating Arjuns since centuries to perform their “duty”? Times when the image of a little Syrian boy covered in dust and blood floods the internet, does this mean patriotism and violence are two sides of the same coin?
- Simreen Biswas
Want to get published on EMN and join the community? Here is an opportunity to join the Board of Young Leaders Program by Eat My News. Click here to know more: bit.ly/boardofyoungleaders
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