Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes about what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author, and chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.
When in primary school, we did not know or care about the Partition. Why would neighbours suddenly begin resenting each other enough to kill and set fire to each other’s homes? Who gained or lost in wars, whether between nations or within one country?
Truth be told, sitting in a tiny school in a small town in Uttar Pradesh, we did not know where exactly Lahore was, or Sindh or Amritsar. Our parents, when they did, talked in hushed whispers about “the Partition” and “refugees” who had come streaming in and changed the profile of “our” towns.
A little later in Nainital, we saw the terrible, unbelievable traumas some of our neighbours, who were landlords in Punjab before being driven out with next to nothing and turned into unwelcome refugees. One large family lived in a huge kothi next to ours. They were luckier than many, and had done very well with the land the Jawaharlal Nehru government had granted them in the terai region as compensation. However, memories of the Partition and a sudden loss of centuries old roots had driven several members in the family to lose their sanity. Even though they now had several kothis, as well as a “Faaram Haus”, faces of their women remained perennially sad with vacant eyes.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
War, we were learning slowly, is a terrible thing that turns men into beasts, women into zombies and children into scarred and introverted human beings for the rest of their lives. Most of our classmates in a sparsely furnished missionary school came from small towns or rural areas, and admissions were granted to all who had certifiably cleared the exams.
Our school benches in Shahjahanpur were long and hard and Mohan, a poor boy from a refugee family, sat to my left on one of those. He had a thin pockmarked face and had lost an eye when a pellet gun was fired at his family of workers as they fled from Lahore. Who was fighting whom and why? And who had shot him? He couldn’t or wouldn’t tell. We only gathered from his grunts and monosyllabic answers that his family were hardcore Arya Samajis, and they would take revenge once they had the means. He said he had a tin box where he kept his own ‘revenge money’. For an anna coin, he would allow us to touch the area behind his ear where the pellet was still lodged. He hated my best friend gentle Abdulla, and our teacher who was a Christian. He thought they were lesser than him in every way.
He dropped out of school and a year later, my father was transferred back to Nainital. But much before I learnt English and the smart catch phrase “clash of civilisations”, during my brief sharing of a hard school bench with Mohan I sensed that even when everyone thought the war was over, lava was bubbling under the surface to erupt when it found an opening. Just five years after the Partition, the refugees had made the dreaded mosquito-infested terai area bloom and become the granary of Uttar Pradesh. But even so, later whenever unrest grew, one heard the locals mutter under their breath about how refugees had struck gold but retained the barbarism of the Partition.
All this come to mind watching media coverage of POTUS embracing the prime minister of Israel, and one particularly obnoxious Hindu leader here announcing he is willing, if need be, to go with a thousand followers and help the Israeli forces take revenge against Hamas.
How quickly we forget the lessons of wars past. In the evening chat shows on popular TV channels, anchors and their screeching representatives reporting from Tel Aviv in army fatigues and helmets, behaving as though the curtain is about to go up on a great and historical drama in which they are actors and their leaders, though far away, are decision makers. The mindset of the 21st century had perhaps been glimpsed long ago when a neighbourhood woman, watching Iraq being hit by unmanned missiles on her TV somewhere far, far away in the comfort of her home, had remarked, “Ah, what a beautiful war!”
After Iraq and its terrible, terrible aftermath, it was no longer possible (but for the stray bhakts) to see modern warfare as a brave adventure whereas Krishna told Arjun, “If you win you shall rule over the earth, if you die, you shall ascend to heavens.” The world wars have already killed the idea of decisive victories and essential nobility of xenophobic patriotism fanned by power hungry autocrats. The war monuments don’t commemorate victory or sacrifice, but the tragedy of a young life cut short at its prime to feed the dreams of some vainglorious dreams of a supreme leader.
Last evening on some channel, how silly it sounded to hear racism, sexism and militarism all in one quote from so many. Whether Israeli or Arab, the young soldiers I saw all over the world are alike. They have grown up watching and reading the same Hollywood westerns and classics about war, drive around in similar cars or dream of doing it one day, and impress beautiful maidens who will come along with them for a ride and a drink. Despite induction of women into the forces, one can fight against the basic macho culture of wars only so much. Once war gets going, we see the cave man come out and then its all hyperventilation, xenophobic and religious war cries, dragging women by the hair, shooting crying infants and curled up elderly too weak to flee.
The war divides the world in Manichean dualities: Black or White, Good or Bad, Friend or Foe. There are no human beings, only shows, parades and cries. Watching the gory scenes from a bombed out street, I do not feel it is a failure of the decent people to unite that the perfidious coalition of grey haired power wheeler dealers say it is. It is them, who have been each year in Davos, Geneva and New York to discuss the fate of humanity above human heads. Where is the UN? G-7, G-20 leaderships? NATO? The Influencers and Sherpas? All who were celebrating Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam just the other day. Weren’t they going on and on about how important it was to empower women, to remain united as one big happy family for saving the planet and fighting off climate change? “Big happy family indeed,” says a grey haired colleague eyeing a gigantic poster telling us how united we were, how empowered our women. A benign leader with an enormous blue smile looks down on all of us at a petrol pump, expecting us to smile back.
Herodotus, world’s first historian, writes of a victorious Xerxes, the great king of kings crying at the sight of Hellespont covered totally by his ships and the coast and plains full of his jubilant army. “I was reflecting,” Xerxes tells his uncle Artabanus, “how short the total sum of human life is…look at all these people…but not one of them will still be alive in a hundred years’ time.”
Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.