The Significant Unit of War

If I go by most scientists after a space expedition, when an individual is first struck by chronic truth or unreal beauty, most impulsive thoughts documented are of great insignificance relative to that vastness. Then tranquility provides insight that we humans are not insignificant but significant.

Is the significant unit in this nuclear age the individual or the nation? When I cannot forget for a moment my nationality as I marvel the earth and sky no matter how velvety blue or how silvery white, I know that the unit cannot be the nation alone or the individual only. They both complement each other, an inseparable part of the other. What happens then when my nation is threatened, shall I not feel the need to take up arms? Shall I not recall the tyranny of history over our lives or the tyranny of a concept of history over our lives?

Pakistan is a nuclear nation and India is too. Both nations are not worthy of being categorized as ‘both’. They share the commonality of desiring the same land and people: the Valley of Kashmir. Sadly the only leader on both sides who mouthed the added option of an independent Kashmir was Pakistan’s ex-PM Benazir Bhutto.

I have seen one testing the a-bomb first and I have seen the same one win IT battles, I have see one promising much to its elite before the test and I have seen the same one give nothing to its poor after the test. Perhaps there would be no conflict if Pakistan was much larger than India or substantially weaker. What is problematic with Pakistan’s stature is its subtle dependency. To reiterate, it shows no signs of deteriorating at an exponential rate and that is what is essentially problematic. There is war when there is a need for a win-win situation on either end.

But lets assume that was not even. Let us not even touch history. Why then is there prospect of war? Does aligning one billion troops alongside the Pakistani border take focus away form domestic troubles on the Indian front? Does Mr. Advani look of the same stature as Colen Powel when he talks of terrorism? Does war rhetoric make good literature: The kind where covering a spectacle by the more vocal nation is marketed as free press? How many souls are sold to this age of irony each day? And who benefits at the end of the very day?

This need for India and Pakistan to return with the trophy means nothing. The significant unit is also the individual. The individual’s needs cannot be in any circumstance fulfilled by another at any level in any way. The others can divert, distract, defer our needs temporarily but not fulfill them. The nation too, cannot secure its needs through a confrontation with another at any level in any way. Trying a fifth war between Pakistan and India cannot teach this lesson.

If what we achieve is determined by what we give up for it, here is a price we should not be willing to pay. Any attempt to separate the individual and nation ought to be destructive; for the best of all highs of an individual is his/her contribution to the people they were born into or from.

What is Pakistan ready to lose to achieve peace? It certainly should not lose itself. It should not lose its commitment to rid itself of the menace it is guilty of creating during he Afghan war. It should not lose its moral and international pledge to the Kashmiri people to assert their right of self-determination. It should not lose the reason for its creation: peace. It should not lose its people’s lives and what they stand for. It should not lose Jinnah’s vision when he urged for restraint. Beyond that Pakistan should lose. All beyond is glamour and false glow that soon will fade anyway.