War Now and, Forever?

There was a very interesting "byte" on Star television a few days ago, some of you may have caught it, for those who didn't . . . or those who did and missed the irony, it goes something like this:-



Ajai Shukla, a veteran currently anchoring at NDTV for Star, who recently provided amazing footage flitting all over Afghanistan with satphone and hand-held camera, often ahead of the Western tv crews due to the simple advantage of his possessing local skills and skin, is now back in India and shooting bytes with an Indian farmer somewhere near the border in the Jammu area. On asking this rustic and laconic resident, with the sound of guns booming in the background, the now standard question about whether there will be a war soon or not, the farmer responds, with some amount of cynical fatigue at what seems like an idotic query to him, that the "war" as the media sees it has now been on at the same heightened level for the last 3 years and in some form or the other for the past 50.



He, the turban clad unshaven farmer, possibly a Gujjar, could be from any of the three main religious groups (Hindu, Muslim or Sikh) who inhabit that part of the country and speak in the same language, dialects even, then uses a very colloquial turn of phrase which pithily states that even the "maheshi and dungars" (livestock and other farm animals), who cross the border regularly in pursuit of their natural needs, are no longer bothered by the daily exchange of fire, but would rather see an end to the troubles at their doorstep. It is only the media which is out in numbers looking for gore, apparently.



All they want, the humans and the animals, he says, as he repeats softly and possibly almost tearfully, is that this firing is nothing new, this war has been ongoing, and the "new" war scare is a major media built exercise. All he wants is that their fairly easygoing way of life should not get destroyed or changed too much. Get it over with. His main worry is that subversion will creep across the border and inhibit his freedom on his side of the border in the name of fundamentalism on the other side.



Really, at the end of the day, all we in India want is that we be allowed to evolve our easygoing Indian way of life some more, for better or for worse, as time goes by, mistakes and all. Is that asking for too much from our neighbours, to let us be and mind their own business while we mind ours? It really should not and would not bother us in India as to what sort of lifestyle the Pakistanis evolve.



Or should it?



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What is this evolving easygoing Indian way of life, often derided as "Hindu bania" on chowk and elsewhere by Pakistanis? Is this way of life restricted only to Hindus in India, or all Indians, or is it available and sought after by others too, including Pakistanis in Pakistan? Is the average silent majority Pakistani also seeking similar lifestyles, but is she maybe too scared or wary to admit it in the face of holy wrath from the mainly male pushers of a version of Islam peculiar to a few?



Let me see if I can address this, from my perspective as a world traveller. And then you tell me if this has anything to do with religion? Is it that we in India are under attack from a combative form of Islam because our multi denominational and adaptive system in India increasingly produces people who form a larger and an even more increasingly questioning and vocal middle-class . . . and who may be similar to majority Pakistanis who have to remain silent . . . but very different from that produced in the visible mullah type Pakistan? And if so, do we need to solve this problem together? Or should we just try to seal our borders to the rapidly invading hordes from neighbouring countries?



After all, General Musharaf can arrest Muslim fundamentalist leaders in Pakistan but we can't lock up the equally venomous and dangerous Imam Bukhari in Delhi, so maybe there is something here that needs further elucidation?



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The poem to be played during the intermission, the lines to be discussed . . .



This is from Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est". Owen was killed in action in 1918, during World War I.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues --

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.\*

\* Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.



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I had a first-cousin, Abhimanyu Sikka, a brave Major in the Indian Army, tall Punjabi with Oriental Naga features, deadly commando, great reader of books, lies buried in a grave in the Delhi Cantonment Board's Christian War Cemetery. His grandfather, Phizo, was the most separatist Naga "rebel" leader in the early years of India's independence. Grandson died to Pakistani bullets, fighting for the Indian way of life.



I go there very often to seek solutions, it is a very peaceful place. Frequented by peacocks and other wildlife from the neighbouring ridge, I also go there to thank him, and others buried there, so that we can sleep in peace.



And now I am asking for a formalisation of this ongoing war in which he died?



I also had a brother who gave his life, but being a Hindu he doesn't have a grave for me to visit. There is also added more recently a nephew-in-law from the South.



But hey, all of them, and the peacocks floating by freely, dancing in the foggy drizzle on top of sombre graves in black marble and granite, send me a message about defending a way of life. Can you imagine preventing the peacock from dancing at the graveyard? Can the fundamentalist mullahs do it, can they stop the peacock from dancing on their graves?



What does his mother, my Aunt, say? I will tell you some other day. She watches the peacocks, too.



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We want, we cherish and thus have democracy in India. We want to continue to have the right to, for better or for worse, be able to bring in or throw out our rulers. We place great value to it. The system we have may or may not be perfect, we realise that, our leaders have been assasinated, our democracy suffers from the effects of caste and religion based number crunching, but it is constantly fine-tuning itself and, hurdles and hiccups notwithstanding, we do wish to continue as Indians to have as the people of India an opportunity every four or five years, to exercise our franchise. Do Pakistanis even understand that, in their vehement support of military regime after military regime in Pakistan?



OK, so the argument evolves, don't worry about Pakistan. So what good is democracy if stomachs are empty or caste wars still abound? We should be free to legally hang our democratic leaders. Right on. And then summon their daughters in distress when the chips start falling.



Hey, the term used here in India is evolving. For anybody following India over the past few decades, this evolution has been fairly drastic and is ongoing all the time. For example, just look at the women on Indian streets, even Delhi which was supposed to be unsafe a few years ago has changed in this context. Give it time, our version of democracy and an emerging middle class should improve matters. Will improve matters. Is improving matters. And if in evolution we lose some of our best, well, tribes and herds from whom we descended do the same, so does nature.



So, this evolution on our end of the sub-Continent enriches contemporary sciences. It transforms our civilisation as we have known it, rapidly. It brings out in addition to democracy, concepts of accountability, free trade, human dignity, private property and, most of all, equal rights for women. Most of all, it assimilates, and that is our rapidly evolving strength.



But then, can the same evolution argument be used by our fundamentalist neighbours? Now let us see my Pakistani chowkies throw the standard Babri Masjid and Kashmir at me, while not talking about how more Muslims live peacefully in India than anywhere else in this world other than Indonesia. Or ignoring the position of women in the hard-core Islamic world. Why don't my Pakistani friends ask 50% of their population, the women, if they want to follow the much vaunted hard core Islamic model which reduces them to drudgery?



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And so we in India do have to worry about this lack of evolution in Pakistan.



Oh, go away, you Indians don't need to worry about us Pakistanis, whether we have mullah rule or military rule.



Sorry, we do have to worry. We have to try to get you to set your house in order. We don't like war, but it is an ongoing fact of life currently. We don't want the way of life the Islamic fundamentalists want to bring in, and we have a good idea that neither do you. Most of all, the American masters probably don't want to, either.



Is there a solution? When last in history did two democracies fight wars?



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Last words . . . it seems that we in India are under attack from Islamic fundamentalists because we are trying to make our principles and our lives worth defending. This is apparently not acceptable to the Islamic fundamentalist because it threatens, by visible display, to undermine their religious and traditional feudal basis of authority and in identifying that, we have an ongoing request for formalisation of war supported, increasingly, by the Indian middle class who has the most to lose otherwise.



So, if the farmer on the border who stands to suffer and lose the most says that we need a one-time war with Pakistan, not neccesarily against Pakistan, then maybe we need to go ahead with formalising it. If nothing else, to try and see if that helps Pakistan go in for a democracy or atleast a government by consensus.



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The truth is always bitter.



Humanity does not want fundamentalism as portrayed by the hardcore Islamists, and in that war, against it, we the majority of people in India and Pakistan are together. We, and more so the Pakistanis, are just too damn stupid to accept it.