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Magazine
A time to reflect
AP
The needless violence we have inflicted on each other must not be forgotten.
THE wheels turned. A split second's decision found my companion and me quickly boarding the unreserved third class ladies compartment of the Bombay-Lucknow Express as it lurched out of the station. Not having made it past the wait-list in the air-conditioned sleeper, it seemed the only option to not missing the women's conference we were heading for in Lucknow.
The tiny compartment teemed with women and children all of whom talked in the same pitch. Looking visually incongruous and bewildered as we did, we were offered 10 inches of space each, as a concession for being such a rare species in their midst. While my companion shrank into her nook and shut out the displacement with a book, I surveyed the scene, which crackled with a sense of adventure, and promise.
The family of a large woman, an old granny and a brood of kids were from the slums in Dharavi. They were Muslim. A middle-aged woman seated on a trunk near my seat, was Leelaben, a Gujarati Hindu woman who ran a beauty parlour in Jogeshwari. She was to regale us with stories of havaldars who visited in search of hafta and happily settled for a nubile beautician. And the aisle all the way to the door bustled with Adivasi vegetable vendors who squatted with their baskets shifting and moving till they found a comfort zone. This was secular India, cheek-to-jowl in merry co-existence.
Beyond sat a young woman and child and with them was a man in army fatigue! A man? In a woman's compartment? Shripal Singh had made his peace with the angry enquiring women before the train had left and seemed now at ease with his sublime situation. At my questioning glance, he offered, "Main jawan hoon. I am with my family as my wife is young and unable to care for the child alone on a journey. I'm also afraid for their safety," he said, waving his arm in the general direction of the raucous bunch of harmless women. "Besides, I'm a jawan." I was to understand it gave him special privileges.
It was post-Kargil, a belligerent and unnecessary war involving the tragic deaths of hundreds of innocents on both sides of the Line of Control. We were still watching the funerals of young soldiers whose lives were dispensable for our respective governments. I looked at the callow youthfulness of the young jawan playing with his child. He was returning from a long stint at the Kutch border and looked forward to visiting his parent's home in a village outside Lucknow. What did he think of the war?
"Kargil?" said Shripal Singh. "The Pakistanis deserved it." His soft face hardened as he continued as if by rote. "They are a community known for butchering. They killed thousands of Hindus during Partition. If a thief enters your house, must you not defend it?" I had heard echoes of this very statement among the educated and privileged.
Did Hindus not kill as well? "But that was self-defence," he exclaimed. Is it not true, I asked, that violence inhabits all of us, not one particular community? That it is capable of manifesting itself in people of any religion, community or tribe? As an Indian Hindu soldier, did he not kill?
Is it not true that he, as an Indian soldier had been trained to believe that the Pakistani soldier/civilian is an enemy who threatens his home and nation just as a Pakistani soldier is similarly programmed? And if he did not believe that, he would not be able to kill the innocent soldier in combat with him? If he did not hate him, would he be able to riddle his body with bullets?
An enemy is created and wars engineered for the benefit and whims of a privileged few. They invoke religion and nationalism for their crimes and clearly believe that many lies become a dubious truth. And people can be bought with that dubious truth. They invoke religion and nationalism so they may sleep at night and not have their bloodletting haunt them. Those who engineer wars remain untouched by the brutality and suffering of war.
Does he realise that he is trained to hate so he may kill? That the foot soldier is merely a dispensable pawn? Shripal Singh's face softened again. He sat still for a long time. Then, he said, "What you say is true. Nobody has talked with me about these things. And we soldiers do not think too much. We do what we are destined to do. Kill or die at war." Then he dropped his voice and said, "The truth is, I have killed. And I have killed needlessly." He seemed shaken.
Echoes of this encounter still reverberate. In Iraq, the shreds of a forced, mindless and brutal invasion by Bush and his allies are now being tacked together in clumsy resignation, we must consider, nearer home, our own reality. Ayodhya 1993, the Bombay riots 1993-94, Kargil 1999, and Gujarat 2002. As illegitimate and brutal as the aggression on Iraq. And all of them State or government-sponsored. In fact, today, even as Togadia publicly claims responsibility for the 1993 Ayodhya demolition and for the Gujarat riots in 2002, he remains unpenalised as do all those who were involved in its planning and execution.
Our governments have presided over major aggressions on our own people in our own land.
Even as India and Pakistan are once more negotiating peace, we must not forget the needless violence we have inflicted on each other, the loss of innocent lives on both sides and the fact that we are capable of sliding into a morass of unreason at the drop of rhetoric. Above all, we must ensure that, like the young jawan, as citizens, we do not suspend our sense of reason.
The writer is the Editor, Gallerie. E-mail: gallerie@vsnl.com
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