When Hitler’s Germany was possessed, agreat mind explained the situation. Just read the lines.
“Out ofthe very air comes a sense of danger, a queer, bristling feeling of uncanny danger” Nowapply it to our own situation. Besiegedby this “uncanny danger”, what are ouroptions? Are there any!
It was 2010, October. We were just past an upheaval. Asconflict practitioners, we sat down, preparing to conduct workshops on conflicttransformation. Right now it sounds bizarre; it sounded bizarre then too. Itwas close to stupidity.
Hurtling down the road to Kishtawar a friend gave voiceto the unease. “Can you tell me what is the point of conducting theseprogrammes.” Put simply, isn’t this all non-sensical.
It was not a question, it was a conclusion. An outrightdismissal, an accumulated cynicism, and a deep dislike for anything calledPeace-building. It was 2010 speaking through an ordinary fellow, to anotherordinary fellow. The disgust was palpable. I had no answers. And then tit hiswas hardly a question – it was an answer. I heard him, didn’t duck. And thiscapacity of not ducking was the outcome of my own journey through thissituation. “I don’t know what such programmes yield, but my reasons forparticipation are ordinary, routine and not an inch beyond or before personal.I learn.”
It is 2019. The images of post-2016 violence refuse tolift siege. If anything has changed since 2010, it is only for worse. Cynicismhas added more layers to itself. Our younger generation is dismissive of eventhe practices that up till yesterday were considered very relevant, andinnovative. If my friend disguised his dejection as a question, some one in hisplace right now would hurl a direct abuse, spiting on the very idea of PeaceBuilding, and Conflict Transformation.
I don’t know what our options are right now, precisely.But we can choose to educate ourselves what can be our options. If my friendasked that question now, I would return to him another question: ” do you haveany idea where we stand now.”
Are we, in the words of AlbertCamus “rushed into the nihilism of the era.” Listen, what more Camus had to sayto the people of his own times
“Each generation doubtless feels calledupon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its taskis perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroyingitself.” As if Camus is speaking to us, right here, right now.
The situation in this region is unmistakably building up for a bigger crisis, for a higher violence. Madness-in-power is intelligent enough to learn form the examples of ruin elsewhere.
The talk of surgical strike, the talk of re-establishing some imagined version of history, the talk of reclaiming some glorious past, and those occasional, sly reference that sound Syria…… it is enough to tell us that water has seeped into the foundation of our walls. It is enough to tell us that darkness has been couriered to our address. I’m reminded of a great mind that lives in the neigbourhood. His quotes are as powerful as nuclear weapons, but they produce light and no heat. He enlightens, doesn’t annihilate.
Aisai aisai Andhairai eijaad kiyai ja rahai hain jin saizameen tou kya sooraj ko bhi tareek kiya jasakta hain
Such is the darkness in making that not just the earthwe live on, but the sun we breath under, would turn black.
If my friend now asked methe question I would unhesitatingly tell him: I don’t want my child live hislife in total darkness; to laugh at me when I tell him the story that once upona time there was a morning, when sunpeeped through the window.
If I again drawfrom that great mind of our times
Wishful thinking is a shade of an imaginary wall. (Khush fehmi farzi deewar ka saya hai.)
I don’t want to rejoice in the “wishful”, I would rather shoulder the burden of thinking. Because when the flames of violence are high, thinking alone brings shade, under which I can save my world from destroying itself. But this is not an ordinary burden. Its weight pulls you down. At the same time people jeer at you. It’s doubly difficult.
Nevertheless, thinking bestows strength to the shoulders that carry it. It stirs a kind of spirituality. It’s painstaking, but bears fruit. B Russel once said “The civilised man is different from the savage mainly by Prudence, or, to use a slightly wider term, forethought. ……. Hunting requires no forethought, because it’s pleasurable; but tilling the soil is labour, and cannot be done from spontaneous impulse.”
Someone has beautify captured the idea of buildingpeace. “Like fishing, it is the pursuit of what is elusive, but attainable,a perpetual series of occasions for hope.”
Hope, that engenders from thinking is a savoiur.Compared to this, wishful thinking is a suicidal pleasure. We must make achoice for thinking, before someone else succeeds in slapping the choice ofsuicidal thinking on us. The catastrophe in the making can not be wished away.Borrowing from Camus again: It’s like building the Ark of Covenant. The delugerushing towards us will go past all the known peaks we might have thought offor our individual safety.
If my friend asked me the question now. I willunhesitatingly express my remorse for being too late on this.