Searching for Ways of Peace
Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil, SDB
Guwahati
Whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, “ violence and destruction!”
(Jer 20:8).
During the last century an estimated 130 million were killed (Arbuckle xi)
One estimate says that, in the 70 years after 1917, the Soviet regime killed 61,911,000 people, of which 20 million were in the Stalinist period alone (Glover 237)
Between 1958 and 1962 the Great Leap Forward in China killed 20-30 million people (Glover 284). The cultural revolution launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 killed 15-70 million people
2 million died in the Vietnam War
3 million in the Korean War
In the Iran-Iraq War between 1980-1988 a million people were killed
Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge killed 2 out of the 8 million of Cambodia (Glover 309)
Between 1900 and 1989 wars all over the World carried away 86 million people (Glover 47)
In the Hutu-Tutsi clash in the 1990’s at least one million were killed (Glover 120)
Since World War II, 25 million people have been killed by their own governments (Arbuckle 182).
No less than 10 million people have died since World War II in civic violence
While Hitler’s and Stalin’s brutality is well known, historian Eric Hobsbwam feels that even the liberal states waged the two world wars in the same spirit. He says, they “recognized no limit on the suffering they were prepared to impose on the population of ‘the enemy’, and, in the First World War, even on their own armed forces. Indeed, even the victimization of entire blocs of people, defined on a priori grounds, became part of warfare…….This was part of that relapse of nineteenth-century civil progress into a renaissance of barbarism…(Hobsbawm 392).
This list does not include dozens of other international and inter-community conflicts during the last century, more especially recent years, e.g. the Sino-Indian war of 1962, the Indo-Pakistani wars of 1965, 1971, Israeli wars on the Palestinians in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982 ; the Turkish invasion of Cyprus; revolutions in Egypt 1952, Iraq and Syria in the 1950’s and 1960’s, in South Arabia in the 1960’s and 1970’s, in Iran 1979.
We are getting used to news of violence. Milan Kundera wrote in 1982, “The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned the groans of Bangaldesh, the war in the Sinai desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten”.
Robin Wright re-echoed the message in Los Angeles Times in 1992, “In Georgia, little Abkhazia and South Ossetia both seek secession, while Kurds want to carve a state out of Turkey. French Quebec edges towards separation from Canada, as deaths in Kashmir’s Muslim insurgency against Hindu-dominated India pass the 6000-mark. Kazakhstan’s tongue-twisting face off pits ethnic Kazhaks against Russian Cossacks, while Scots in Britain, Tutsis in Rwanda, Basques and Catalans in Spain and Tauregas in Mali and Niger all seek varying degrees of self-rule or statehood. The world’s now dizzying array of ethnic hot spots….” (quoted from Volf 15).
Scientists point out that animals fight, but they do not wage wars. Humans are the only primate who pursue enthusiastically mass killings of their own kind in a planned way. It might even seem that war belongs to the most important of human inventions!! Is it possible that the ability to make peace is a later achievement? The oldest traditions of humanity, its myths and epic poetry, speak primarily of killings. And in our own times, hatred has mounted, and people go the furthest limits of harshness using suicide bombs and killing even of non-combatants, including women and children.
War is not the only form of violence. It takes various forms: ideological conflicts, terrorism, pathological forms of nationalism, racial violence, ethnic cleansing, famine, domestic violence, workplace abuse, football hooliganism, cyberspace violence, intercultural violence…..and finally, accepting violence as normal. Violence is both action and lack of action that is insensitive to human suffering and oppressive of human persons. Violence in every form keeps growing. Indeed, as St. Paul says, presently “…all of creation groans with pain” (Romans 8:22).
People like Konrad Lorenz have written at length about the innate aggressiveness of man, concluding from animal behaviour that human beings are programmed to be violent in war, crime, personal quarrels and destructive and sadistic behaviour, as though there is an innate instinct to aggressiveness (Fromm 22). This point of view we are unable to accept. For, once we accept that violence is normal for human beings, that an ethnic clash or nuclear war is due to biological factors beyond our control, we do nothing to prevent war or violence. But the fact is that our aggressive behaviour is created by social, political and economic circumstances of our own making. We can prevent it.
That is why it is good for us to study our inner weaknesses more carefully. For example, since ‘tribalism’ (fierce loyalty to one’s own community including exaggerated forms nationalism and other collective self-identities) runs so deep in our nature, it looks impossible to eliminate these dispositions in us. However, when we know more about the monsters within us, we learn to cage them and tame them (Glover 7). The greater our individual and collective self-consciousness about our inner makeup, the easier it becomes for us to handle ourselves. History can teach us many lessons.
Forms of Violence
“Non violence is not for power but for truth. It is not pragmatic
but prophetic” (Thomas Merton).
Violence is not about war only, but about abusing people, reducing their self-esteem and their self-confidence or self-worth, leading them to an experience of powerlessness and subjugation, e.g. due to poverty (Arbuckle xii). Violence can be physical, emotional, verbal, theological, cognitive, sexual, visual, institutional, structural, economic, political, social, and ecological.
Violence also includes condoning violence, inaction during violence, passive acceptance of violence, considering violence as useful. We all contribute to violence when we take refuge in any of these forms of escapism. For example, when governments defend their military and law-enforcing personnel and prevent international scrutiny of reported physical tortures (like in Iraq or Chechnya), they condone violence. When men of the police force stand with each other in mutual defence despite their inhuman treatment of prisoners, they condone violence. The same is true of members of a gang that defend each other though they know that their companions have gone to excesses, of political leaders that overlook the violence of supporters, of ideologues that consider violence as self-defence, professionals who tolerate colleagues in their dishonest and exploitative ways.
Modern man, who claims to have set himself free from every form of oppression from political and religious authorities or social conventions, is today even more exploited than ever before in a hidden manner; he has become a slave to the business interests of mighty impersonal corporations. As a consumer, he/she is compelled to be satisfied with second rate mass produced goods, and third rate entertainment; he is deceived by advertisements, illusory hopes, unsatisfiable, unrealisable goals, personality-degrading and mind-fragmenting concepts. As a worker too he/she is abused and exploited, and often he becomes addicted to work (workaholism). The public as a whole (both the workers and consumers) have come to be unconsciously serving the interests of profit-making companies. And companies in turn are in merciless competition among themselves trying to eliminate each other. Henry Ford admitted that assembly-line producing was dehumanising, but he added, “A great business is really too big to be human”. Fordism was really the industrial counterpart of Nazi ideology and Nazi oppression of worker and consumer (Arbuckle 112).
Gerald Arbuckle puts the following activities on the list of violence: maligning others, calumniating, spreading negative rumours, and character-assassination. For example, Martin Luther King was accused of being a Communist and Archbishop Romero of leftist leanings. Arbuckle has a further list of violent deeds: deceptive strategies used by corporate magnates, e.g. using euphemisms like ‘downsizing’ to mean plain sacking; political manipulations, e.g. offering bribes, making unrealistic promises, using deceptive flattery, having recourse to untrue advertisements, glamorous display, boasting, being arrogant or jealous, intimidating, gossiping, hurting people with cynical humour, taunting, sneering, scorning, patriarchal or ethnic or racial jokes, ignoring conventional courtesies, being rude and ill-mannered, entering into inhuman competition, vandalism, scapegoating, projecting on to others one’s own faults, football hooliganism (greatly aggravated by commercial sports), political witch-hunting and oppression of minorities. He considers also political patronage, cronyism, family-rule over society (Marcos, Suharto), new forms of colonialism, imbalance in trade and economic relationships, placing unbearable burdens of international debts on weaker nations….all as forms of violence.
There is, further, the violence done to future generations when the present generation leaves debts behind, exhaust natural resources, damage nature e.g. massive deforestation in India, inherit to others unbearable burdens. By doing so, the present generation violates an unwritten contract of justice it has made with coming generations. There is violence planted also into those unhelpful philosophies that educate the rising generation to collective anger, cynicism, exaggerated pragmatism, narcissism, and nihilism.
Then there are the local variations of violence: caste unfairness in India, communal clashes in South Asia, gender inequality in many parts of the continent, unequal class structures in West Asia and elsewhere, insidious consumer and media cultures in developed countries, violence sanctioned or sponsored by government, drug deals, street gang violence in urban centres, insurgency and secessionism, ethnic hatred, militant politics; mafia in Sicily and the US. If these are all forms of violence, the longer list of oppressors would include parents, husbands, fellow-citizens, politicians, business tycoons, trade unionists, ethnic leaders, slum lords, drug barons, arms traffickers, intellectuals, and anyone else who can hurt….and anyone who condones violence or remains inactive….and ourselves!! Those who suffer from violence: the public in general, e.g. that are harassed both by insurgents and the police in turn; the poor and the weak who are victims of local thugs, the homeless, innocent prisoners (an estimate claimed that 40% of those in prison were innocent), the brutalised, the stigmatised, the sick, the illiterate, and bonded labour (Arbuckle 174).
Arbuckle sees a tinge of human aggressiveness even in the recent legal and the media harshness against paedophile clergy. When we notice that the Olympic Games which were meant to bring nations together, have often been marred by aggressive competitiveness and nationalistic pride, we realize how deeply violence has planted itself into our public life.
Civilization has not Civilized us
“Nuclear weapons have changed everything, except our modes of thought” (Einstein).
Eric Fromm says that, contrary to what people usually think, primitive man was the least warlike, and, and that it was with the growth of civilization that warlikeness grew (Fromm 206). “The history of civilization from the destruction of Carthage and Jerusalem to the destruction of Dresden, Hiroshima, and the people, soil, and trees in Vietnam, is a tragic record of sadism and destructiveness” (Fromm 227). Fromm sees the degree of destructiveness increasing with the increased development of civilization. He argues that the picture of innate destructiveness fits history much better than prehistory. Man is the only primate that kills and tortures members of his own species without any reason, either biological or economic, and feels satisfaction in doing so (Fromm 25)
Fromm calls man’s fascination with killing ‘necrophilia’. Assyria’s aggressiveness in destroying villages and cities and poisoning soils, was an early witness to necrophilia as civilization took a step forward. Chariots, invented around 1800 B.C. revolutionized warfare in the Near East, Mediterranean and China. In 1674 B.C., the horse-riding Hyksos were able to conquer the horseless Egypt and become Pharoahs. In India, pre-Aryans had an advanced culture. But the Aryans had horses and chariots. That decided the issue (Moraes 68). The introduction of saddles and stirrups allowed the Huns and other communities from the steppes to terrorise the Romans, which led to a culmination in the Mongol conquests of much of Asia and Russia in the 13th and 14th centuries (Diamond 94).
The Spanish adventurer, Pizzaro, had an army of 168 soldiers, and the Inca ruler, Atahuallpa, of 89,000 and millions of Inca people in Peru. But Pizzaro won (Diamond 68). Technology gives the aggressor an advantage, and accentuates the impersonality of killing. One does not realise the damage one is causing. In fact, it looks as though the killer is not killing, but operating a machine. A human person comes to be doing the very opposite of what he/she is made for. Hitler, who was a student of architecture, was also the destroyer of cities. He wanted to destroy Paris and Leningrad. He was a Jew-hater, also a German-hater, a hater of mankind, and of life itself. Fromm is right in saying that man is the only species that is a mass murderer (Fromm 533).
The Nazi killing of the Jews was organized as a production process. Those who could not do useful work were led into the gas chambers and gas let in. Useful objects like clothes, hair, gold teeth were sorted out and recycled. The reply of the Allies to the German-Japanese military harshness was equally terrible. The code name of the attack on Hamburg was ‘Operation Gomorrah’, which wiped out a city of 2 million in three nights (Glover 81). On August 6, 1945 the atomic bomb ‘Little boy’ was dropped on Hiroshima. The calculation of death over 5 years were 200,000. On August 9th ‘Fat Man’ was dropped on Nagasaki. Over 5 years 140,000 had died (Glover 897-9). All sensitivity had disappeared on both sides.
When atrocities are committed by one’s own party or country, the same insensitivity is noticeable in our own days. Even democracies become illiberal and intolerant of minorities….they silence weaker voices, connive at and even provoke ethnic conflict, and become hard on the public through state-violence.
India has some of the fastest growing cities of the world. The impersonality of urban agglomerations, with their poverty, squalor and disorder, produces an atmosphere conducive to violence: common values and personal relationships begin to disappear; consequently, modern man is isolated and lonely; he/she becomes part of a crowd, not of a community. Margaret Thatcher asked cynically, “Is there such a thing as a civil society?” People become a part of the ‘disorganized dust of individuals’. They have no convictions to share, but only slogans and ideologies that they derive from the media, though, in reality, they hunger for truth and for companionship all the while.
Psychologists tell us that the human organism needs both stimulation and rest. In industrial societies, the human person is continuously under stimuli: greed, sex, violence, narcissism through movies, TV, radio, magazines, and the market (Fromm 323). If he is an unproductive person, all the more, he becomes inwardly passive and bored; the outlet he seeks may take the form of violence. Eric Fromm considers an exaggerated love of machines, gadgets, and other lifeless objects forms of ‘necrophilia’—a love for death; worship of speed and the machine, glorification of war, destruction of culture; drug, crime, cultural decay…….all as signs of ‘necrophilia’ (Fromm458).
We see that man’s aggressiveness is due to those aggression-producing conditions that he himself creates: physical conditions, mental attitudes, intellectual convictions, acquired beliefs. It is up to him/her to create conditions that will contribute to peace and harmony.
No limit to Excesses
Thucidides records that when Athens and Sparta fought, Melos wanted to remain
neutral. The Athenian spokesman said, “It is a general and necessary law of nature
to rule wherever one can” . The Athenians took Melos and killed all men of military
age and sold women and children to slavery (Glover 18). The summary of the Athenian argument was, ‘might is right’.
Adolf Hitler told Alice Miller, “My pedagogy is hard. What is weak must be hammered away. In my fortress of the Teutonic Order a young generation will grow up before which the world will tremble. I want the young to be violent, domineering, undismayed, cruel. The young must be able to will these things. They must be able to bear pain. There must be nothing weak or gentle about them. The free, splendid beast of prey must once again flash from their eyes” (Glover 337). Shooting Jews was treated as a sport, they were made a shooting-target. Bottles would be put on their heads to teach young recruits to hit straight (Glover 341). The bureaucracy and technology of modern state has made the scale of barbarity horrifying.
We notice that even wolves are not aggressive to their own kind. But our recent history tells us that “no animal could ever be so cruel as man, so artfully, so artistically cruel”, e.g. cutting babies out of women’s wombs or throwing them before their mothers to catch them on a bayonet. Torturers are told to suppress their ‘squeamishness’. The victims do not belong. They are of another ideology, nation, tribe, or religion (Glover 35). Hitler called the enemy ‘subhumans’. The British referred to the Germans as Huns. The enemy becomes non-persons. They are less than dirt. As a Soviet soldier confessed, “The Afghans weren’t people to us”. They were less than human, just animals (Glover 49). They are an inferior race, killing them was like killing cockroaches (Glover 50). During the World War II, the Americans considered Japanese yellow monkeys, vermin, subhuman rats, rattlesnakes (Glover 176). For the Japanese, Americans were demons, fiends, monsters, twisted nosed savages (Glover 175). Hindutwavadis refer to the tribals as “vanvasis” as though they were mere jungle product.
Unfortunately sensitivity towards destructiveness-cruelty is rapidly diminishing, and ‘necrophilia’, the attraction towards what is dead, decaying, lifeless and purely mechanical in increasing. The Falangist motto was “Long live death” (Fromm 32-33).
For the Khmer Rouge, the victims were ‘microbes’. Young men were trained to be cruel to animals, human beings, pregnant Vietnamese women (Glover 307). The Soviet motto in Afghanistan was, “The army must keep healthy and we must banish pity from our minds” (Glover 51). A Soviet soldier remembers his days in Afghanistan “It’s frightening and unpleasant to have to kill, you think, but soon you realize…Killing en masse, in a group, is exciting, even—and I’ve seen this myself—fun”. And another, “I actually want to go on killing” (Glover 55). Ex-Vietnam sergeants would boast of the atrocities they had committed (Glover 51). A Vietnam returnee admits that he misses the war “because I loved it, loved it in strange and troubling ways” (Glover 56). Another, “The hardest part—the part that’s hard is to kill, but once you kill, that becomes easier, to kill the next person and the next one and the next one. Because I had no feelings or emotions or nothing. No direction. I just killed. It can happen to anyone” (Glover 62).
Providing a Philosophy for violence
Alexander Solzhenitsyn says in the Gulag Archipelago, “The imagination and the
spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses,
because they had no ideology” (Glover 252). On the contrary, people armed with an ideology of aggressiveness kill millions.
Many modern ideologies have justified violence. Marx believed in violent struggle, Darwin taught that the fittest would eliminate the rest. Young people for a few generations have been fed on the thoughts of thinkers like Marx, Lenin, Mao, Camus, Marcuse, Sartre, Che Guevara, Fanon, Arendt and Gramsci. For them, struggle is the sole path towards progress. They look at every human being as a wolf to every other human being. But a more careful study of human history will reveal that every struggle was in the larger context of ‘Collaboration’, and that those who reconcile and motivate others for collaboration make the greatest contribution to human growth. Not ‘either us or them’, but ‘both us and them’ making a big WE. Indeed, Collaboration is the Law of Human History, not Conflict taken in its isolation.
According to Nietzsche, every higher culture began with the conquest by barbarians who had an ‘unbroken strength and lust for power’. The nobles came from the barbarians. Their superiority lay in psychical strength, which also meant ‘more complete beasts’. Nietzsche saw in Christian compassion the triumph of Judeo-Christian slave morality. He laments that the Jewish ideology (morality) developed in Egypt where the Jews were slaves, and was further developed by Christians when they were also slaves. He was alarmed at the spread of this kind of morality in the world (Glover 12). In his thinking, the concept of struggle predominates (Glover 13). He says, half the world is weak, sick, and inconstant; that is the half that glories in being weak, compassionate, and humble. And that is the conspiracy of women and priests against men, against the ‘strong’. Nietzsche despised altruism. Loving your neighbour is a disguise for mediocrity (Glover 14). Egoism is essential to the noble soul, the belief that others are subordinate by nature to us (Glover 15). In advocating hardness, he rejects pity as unmanly. “To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more….Without cruelty there is no festival” (Glover 16).
It is this type of conviction that makes leaders brainwash their people about the need to fight. In Plato’s ‘The Republic’ Thrasymmachus argues that it is the interests of the strong that is generally considered just and right (Glover 18). What surprises us is the ease with which people go for philosophies of violence and fall under the spell of irrational doctrines, political or religious. The reason, however, is simple: human beings need a cohesive frame of orientation. The more an ideology pretends to give answers to all questions, the more attractive it is (Fromm 311). Ultimately it becomes, as Albert Camus said of Communism, a metaphysical justification for organized murder.
The Nazi ideology of wanting to preserve the unmixed Aryan identity of the German people led to the excesses of World War II. Since war was proposed as the only solution, war had to come. For example, Helmuth von Moltke considered a war between the Teutons and the Slavs necessary. He exhorted the Germans to hold high their spiritual culture (Glover 186). “War is the only remedy to cure existing illnesses”, he said, “War is beautiful. Its noble grandeur raises man high above earthly, daily things”. Dr. Schmidt-Gibichenfels said, “We Teutons must no longer look upon war as our destroyer…at last we must see it once more as the saviour, the physician” (Glover 196). Many Germans thought Nazism gave their lives meaning and purpose (Glover 362). People became ‘monocerebral’, whose feelings had withered. For them, the only form of sin was failing to take advantage of others when opportunities offered themselves.
In the same way, for Stalin, violence was a necessary part of his revolutionary goal. He said in 1932, “Russians may be hungry and short of clothes and comfort, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” (Glover 255). He believed that individual victims were unimportant, that in the longer historical perspective they would be forgotten (Glover 256). Someone who worked under Stalin said, “With the rest of my generation I firmly believed that the ends justified the means. Our great goal was the universal triumph of Communism, and for the sake of that goal everything was permissible—to lie, to steal, to destroy hundreds of thousands and even millions of people, all those who were hindering our work or who could hinder it, everyone who stood on the way” (Glover 259). ). Mao thought he could afford to lose 300 million people in a nuclear war, since the other 300 million Chinese would emerge strong.
Even today, theories of violence are propagated continuously on the TV and through cartoon strips: the belief that violence solves problems, that the more power the better, that threats do help. Emotions are stirred. The media entertain people with violence. It is calculated that children in the US see 8000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence before they leave elementary school.
As there are conflict-promoting ideologies, there are responsibility-shifting ideologies. Zygmunt Bauman has argued that modernity is “prominent for the tendency to shift moral responsibilities away from the moral self either toward constructed and managed supra-individual agencies, or through floating responsibility inside a bureaucratic ‘rule of nobody’” (Bauman 1995,99). In a manner of speaking, post-modernity today has created a climate in which evasion of moral responsibilities is a way of life. By rendering relationships ‘fragmentary’ and ‘discontinuous’, it fosters ‘disengagement and commitment-avoidance’”. Postmodern thinkers believe that every account of justice that purports to be universal is inherently oppressive.
Many ideologies are continuously proving to be incomplete explanations, and even to be deceptive. Turning back to Marxist ideology, we are today able to see that class analysis alone does not explain all the diverse dimensions of corporate reality and conflict. Time has come for us to develop complementary systems of thought…..and a philosophy for peace.
Working on Emotions
“If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold” (Gen 4:24).
When myths replace history, societies are in danger. Slobodan Milosevic’s creation of a Serbian national mythology proved disastrous to the populations of the Balkans. Croatians and Muslims had to pay heavily for it. Myths are kept alive by commemorative events and public display. Irish republican myth and Soviet Marxist myths were reaffirmed by marching, parading, flag swinging and performing gymnastics. Hitler manipulated rituals, so did Mussolini. Soviet ideology came alive during May Day parades. Hutu-Tutsi hatred was fomented by political rhetoric as well (Glover 121). In America, the national flag was visible even on baby carriages and sports stadiums after September 11, 2001. It expressed people’s solidarity with the American struggle against ‘Islamic terrorism’. The Hindu nationalists (RSS) regularly hold their rabble rousing parades. Symbols stir human hearts. It is said, men possess thoughts, but symbols possess men (Arbuckle 18). Anger rises. Others react, and both groups get trapped by the violent responses of each other (Glover 123).
The Hindu nationalist leader Sadhvi Rithambara told Hindu men that they were eunuchs if they did not save Ram’s birthplace. She told women to give birth to sons who would kill Mulsims, and that killing Muslims was a good thing (Moraes 87). Advani’s ‘ratha yathra’ mobilizd the historic anger of millions.
Little angers get accumulated, or get linked with bigger angers, and explode. Penetration of local issues by regional and national issues, combination of personal quarrel with communal anger or political grievance aggravate tensions. Latent hostilities are drawn towards new avenues that open up. Occasionally local demonstration against one grievance gets compounded with ethnic or inter-religious quarrel. Then, all forms of hostilities become conjoined.
Emotions can be worked up out of proportion to the grievance. At times it happens that more serious emotions are being roused over lesser issues, while people who are suffering under far greater hardships remain silent. While some fight for fulfilment, others have to fight for existence. Some struggle for greater amenities, others for basic necessities. Some press for privileges, others for most elementary and greatly reduced rights; some for exaggerated forms of self-expressions, others for essential freedoms. Some deafen the world with their greatly magnified claims, others whisper their basic needs below their breath. Anger of intellectuals and armchair philosophers is often blown out of proportion.
There is a big difference between the expectations of people in the developed world and those in the less developed; of the elite in every nation, and of the poorest and humblest; of the dominant ethnic groups in every society, and of the minorities and the marginalized. The former are assiduously pursuing satiety, the latter are frantically searching for security.
Using Aggressive Language
The motto of the Red Guards, “Mercy to the enemy is cruelty to people”
(Glover 291)
Aggressive language has gone into many ideologies and theologies that have developed during the last few decades. Justice issues have been often universalised, sometimes trivialised, not rarely personalised. In fact, justice-fighters need to look at their issues more holistically. From a distance, the world may appear neatly divided into guilty perpetrators and innocent victims. The closer we get, however, the more the line between the guilty and the innocent blurs and we see an intractable maze of small and large hatreds, dishonesties, manipulations, and brutalities, each reinforcing the other. The victim from one point of view is an oppressor from another point of view, and in another context. “To break the world cleanly into victims and violators ignores the depths of each person’s participation in cultural sin. There simply are no innocents”, Marijorie Suchocki (quoted in Volf 80).
Working for peace is not a popular mission in our times. The fighter is the hero today. Fighting for justice, fighting for human rights, fighting for environment, fighting for the rights of women, fighting of one’s people. However, what happens when justice as perceived by one fights against justice as perceived by another? What happens when perceptions collide, and two people who are fighting for perfectly good causes come into conflict? What happens when principles collide: e.g. the rights of the individual and the rights of indigenous people, one person’s right to property and another person’s right to existence, one person’s right to success and another person’s right to survival?
One person’s justice is another person’s injustice; one therefore seeks ‘just’ revenge, and the other ‘just’ counter-revenge (Volf 121). No wonder then that “the worst injustices, the most bloody and unjustifiable transgressions of justice are committed daily in the name of justice, under the protection of the name of justice”. The more grand and more sweeping justice is, the more injustice it can wreak (Caputo, as quoted in Volf 202). That is why while we struggle for justice we should approach the entire endeavour in a peaceful way, and make it clear at every stage like Mahatma Gandhi that our intentions are peaceful, and that we can be self-critical as well, and that we are capable of repenting for our own injustice.
If the plot is written around the schema of ‘oppressed’ (victims) and ‘oppressors’ (perpetrators), each party will find good reasons for claiming the higher moral ground of a victim. Each will perceive itself as oppressed by the other and all will see themselves as engaged in the struggle for liberation. Would it not be perverse to argue that the word ‘oppressor’ is but only the incriminating label that a self-styled victim likes to place on his enemy, or that the appellation ‘victim’ is just the name a person who is as oppressive as anybody else likes to use in order to gain social advantage? And the words of Isaiah come true, “And people will oppress one another, every man his fellow and every man his neighbour” (Is 3:5).
There is enough encouragement for violence, in any case. As Roman Caesars offered violent spectacles to the city rabble, today newspapers and TV give reports of war, crime and atrocities to satisfy the growing curiosity of viewers and readers (Fromm 396).
Cultivating memory of Historic Injuries
“Memory is not what happened, but what people felt what happened”
(Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm). In the Balkans, the Serbs, Croatians,
Muslims…all had their own negative memories. Mothers taught
the children words like Jihad, war, crusade, revenge with deep emotion.
The Turks had defeated the Serbs in 1389 in Kosovo on the Field of Blackbirds. The Croatians had taken advantage of Serbs during World War II. It was not easy for the Serbs to forget these hurts and humiliations. Slobodan Milosevic’s ‘this is your land’ speech aroused their wounded memories. The Serb media whipped up anger among the Serbs. So did the Croatian media among their own people. The media war ultimately led to actual conflict. The Serbian forces invaded Croatia. Shocking things happened: Muslims and Croatians were beaten, tortured, mutilated and killed; Catholic churches and monasteries were attacked and even destroyed. At Sarajevo, the Serb army targeted the Oriental Institute, destroying thousands of its Islamic and Jewish manuscripts. They shelled the National Museum and the National Library, destroying over a million books and many thousands of manuscripts and records; elsewhere in Bosnia the Serbs destroyed Ottoman architecture, 800 mosques (Glover 147). It looked like the attack of the barbarians on the Roman Empire, or of the Huns on Western Europe.
History is often written in such a manner as to keep alive negative memories and promote prejudices. The winners boast, and the losers remember. The B.J.P.Government wanted to re-write Indian history highlighting Islamic excesses and showing the minorities in bad light. It is reported that Pakistani textbooks describe Jews as tight-fisted money-lenders, Christians as vengeful conquerors, Hindus as devious and cowardly people. China and Japan have serious differences of opinion about their recording of World War II events. Protestants in Northern Ireland go further: they keep alive their anger by the solemn celebration of the Orange parade in which the defeat of the Catholics by William of Orange in 1691 is celebrated. And Catholics respond in similar fashion.
All ethnic states have minorities within their borders, and if they divide according to community further, they will find again other minorities within the new area, ad infinitum. History records repeated clashes between neighbouring communities. And thus, ancient hatreds remain. A narrative of victory stirs resentment on those who were defeated. A narrative of defeat calls for redressing a grievance…. no matter how many years have passed (Glover 146).
Anger against one’s own traditional culture is even more tragic. During the Cultural Revolution in China, the Red Guards attacked traditional Chinese culture. They wanted to eliminate the influence of Confucius on Chinese society. They destroyed most of the temples in China. In people’s houses, books and works of art were destroyed. Libraries were wrecked and books burnt (Glover 288).
There is a general human weakness that when we revive our memories we tend to be selective, prejudiced and lost in self-pity. Only a healing of memories can bring a less destructive world into existence.
In recent years, prayer-services and commemoration of the dead are being conducted on sites associated with wars, with unhealed or unacknowledged collective wounds: Verdun, Gettysburg, Auschwitz, Hiroshima (Parker 57). Can we do something similar at Somnath, Ayodhya, Panipat and Plassey? We cannot change our past, but we can change our response to the past.
Since memories shape present identities, neither ‘I’ nor ‘the other’ can be redeemed without the redemption of the remembered past. When we entertain profound hurt feelings over the memories of our colonial past, we are doing more hurt to ourselves than to others. We attain true freedom only when we have redeemed our past and got rid of all rancour and ill feeling. We must dig up the anger that is buried in our hearts and transmute it by the power of genuine forgiveness into re-invigorating spiritual energies.
Working on Prejudce-Reduction
Edict XII of Asoka (c. 261 B.C.) reads, “For he who does reverence to his
own sect while disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to
his own sect, in reality, inflicts, by such conduct, the severest injury on his
own sect”.
History records any number of instances of mutual prejudice. All communities had a negative word to refer to the outsider: for the Greeks barbaroi, for the Romans barbari, for the Jews gentiles, for the Indians mlecchas, for believers infidels. People had negative images of each other, they stereotyped each other. Their memories of events differed. Communities deliberately cultivated prejudices. Where there is actual prejudice, nothing else matters: your education, job, knowledge, ideas, the great things you have accomplished—all these are nothing—you are just a stereotype of your community (Glover 152). For the Nazis, Einstein was just a ‘hated Jew’.
As we said, history provides ample evidence to mutual dislikes and exclusion. Jews were confined to ghettoes in medieval Europe. There were zones for coloured people in Western towns. There were reservations for indigenous communities in America and Australia. Gypsies were marginalized. South Africa believed in keeping the black people apart. Upper caste Indians kept the lower caste people outside the towns. Hindus and Muslims loathed each other.
We are sensitive to Christian-hate. Of late, Muslim-hate has become widespread. But it has a history. Prejudiced people in Christian Europe referred to them as children of Ismael, anti-Christs, children of Cain (Wheatcroft 5). Words like ‘street Arab’ and ‘mad mullah’ that have gone into daily vocabulary witness to the collective prejudice of many communities against Muslims. The destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya need not be retold. Nor was the anger only in one direction. The rage of the Taliban against ‘Buddhist idolatry’ led them to vandalize the Bamiyan Valley Buddhas in Afghanistan. The destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 need not be retold.
Different communities may have different understanding of the same events. For the Americans Pearl Harbour was an unprovoked aggression. For the Japanese it was a response to the encirclement policy of the Americans, Chinese, British and Dutch (Glover 166). In 1914, what was containment of Germany for Moscow, Paris and London, was ‘encirclement’ for the Germans (Glover 229). Most consider the Korean and Vietnam wars as failures. But for the American Government they were symbols of proud resistance to Communism, and the official policy of America would not allow any public grief over the loss of personnel in those two wars (Arbuckle 116).
Ideological prejudices can lead to grave injustices. In the Russian Revolution, millions of people who were slightly better-off than others, were declared ‘oppressors’ and killed. When the Soviet soldiers killed the ‘kulaks’ (mere peasants described as bourgeoisie), the criteria for identifying them was vague (Glover 238). The same thing happened in China, Vietnam and Cambodia. In Cambodia, Pol Pot men considered even people with spectacles or knew a foreign language as foreign collaborators!! In these catastrophes, more harmless people died than guilty. “The distinction between justice and injustice in specific cases usually are not as clear-cut as the partisans think they are” (Runyon 67). It is not easy to distinguish between justice and “socially specific prejudices and self-interested claims to power”, says Young (quoted in Volf 199).
But the education of the public is not easy. People always want to tag responsibility onto someone. Kate Adie, the BBC reporter said in 1993 about Yugoslavia, ‘if you take the stand that nobody is totally good or totally bad, the viewers are not pleased’. And yet that is the truth. Things need to be explained. John Dawson says, “Paradoxically, the greatest wounds in history ….have not happened through the acts of some individual perpetrator; rather through institutions, systems, philosophies, cultures, religions and governments”. That is why no one seems responsible and everyone is happy to disclaim responsibility. However, all are responsible in varying ways.
Since all disown responsibility, the situation turns out to be like a blind man leading the blind. When we propagate ideologies that condone violence, when we support a conflict for the achievement of some immediate goal forgetful of vaster consequences, when we over-insist on one set of rights deliberately remaining blind to a comprehensive network of rights and relationships in true Asian style, we do not know what we are supporting. We cease to be promoters of life. A cold legal view of all reality, not a human vision of life, begins to reign. Eric Fromm said that emphasis on law and order only without worrying about life and structure, stricter punishment for criminals, love of destructive violence—do not contribute to the growth of man, do not promote love for life (Fromm 33). One person’s justice is another person’s barbarity. Even the concept of Human Rights has different connotations in different parts of the world, and in different cultural contexts. Carter said, for the Americans human rights are about freedom of religion, press, rule of law, etc. Soviet concern is about a decent home, right to have a job, family, medical care (Runyon 6). In the Asian context, they may be further different. But when people try to impose ‘mono-civilizational’ answers on humanity as a whole, tensions are bound to arise.
If, after World War I, the winners had held some of their pretended rights in suspense and thought of forgiveness and reconstruction, they would not have alienated Germany altogether. It is sad to think that the injustice of the Peace Treaty of Versailles, demanding that Germany alone take the full responsibility for World War I, led to World War II. Justice as understood by the Allied Powers differed from justice as perceived by the Germans.
We can learn from history. A new beginning can be attempted even after a long period of mutual alienation. Prophetic gestures can reduce tensions. Forgiveness can lead to better times. When Tony Blair took over as the British Prime Minister, he issued an apology on behalf of the British for their contribution to the infamous Irish Potato famine. This gesture met with the universal approval of the Irish political leaders. The fact, of course, is that there is a myth around the Irish famine of 1847 as though it was caused only by the neglect of British Protestants. But Irish Catholic middle men also would have to be held responsible (Arbuckle 10). There is a myth around the Bengal famine in India which happened during World War II, as though it was caused solely by the indifference of the British Government. But the insensitivity of the Hindu business community and Muslim administrators, who at that time shared responsibility with the British for ruling Bengal, was equally a cause for the disaster. In the 1980’s Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew his forces from Eastern Europe, and told the West that he had deprived them of an enemy (Glover 232). The Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee’s bus trip to Lahore thrilled millions of Indians and Pakistanis.
Suffering can lead to vindictiveness or to redemption. “Suffering can also lead to the belief that, having suffered, one has acquired a right to impose suffering upon others. It is the special task of the survivors of violence to show us how such suffering may be transformed into redemption” (Veena Das 33). Redeeming the past……that is what forgiveness is. Extremely hard as it may sound, forgiveness is the only reliable strategy for ending the self-repeating phenomenon of unfairness in human history. Forgiveness alone can break the cycle of violence. It holds the ultimate key to that treasury which can pay all historic debts.
Oppressors and Oppressed are just Ordinary People
Both those who fight and those who die are just ordinary human beings.
Dean Rusk speaking about the Cuban crisis said, “I’ve met and worked with a good many people whose names are in the history books or in the headlines. I have never met a demigod or a superman. I have only seen relatively ordinary men and women groping to deal with the problems with which they are faced” (Glover 218).
It is ordinary men that contribute to war or to peace. One can grow into a monster, another into an amazing peace-maker. Heinrich Himmler, along with Hitler, was responsible for the slaughter of between 10-15 million unarmed Russians, Poles, and Jews. He was not a hater, or monster, but merely a dehumanised bureaucrat. He was courteous. He was Spartanly simple. He never read immoral books. He was not a rebel. But he sought to be under a strong man. He turned out to be a veritable monster.
In Erich Maria Remarque’s ‘All is Quiet on the Western front’ a German soldier asks, “Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French shoemaker want to attack us? No, it is merely the rulers”. Going beyond the rulers, ultimately, it is the ideology-creators, idea-givers, that are behind mighty forms of violence. They could have built up an ideology for peace too. All those fighting are just ordinary human beings. What counts for most people are petty local and personal matters, more than, say, human rights (Glover 41).
On a Christmas day in 1914, a German soldier cried to his enemies, “We don’t want to kill you, and you don’t want to kill us, so why shoot? (Glover 233). No one wants to kill another. Speaking of the Nazi experience, Christopher Browning says in ‘Ordinary Men’, “Once the killing began, however, the men became increasingly brutalized. As a combat, the horrors of the initial encounter eventually became routine, and the killing became progressively easier. In this sense brutalisation was not the cause but the effect of these people’s behaviour” (Glover 349). Ordinary men became brutes.
Primo Levi speaks of such human-brutes, “Instead, they were made of the same cloth, they were average human beings, averagely intelligent, averagely wicked: save for exceptions, they were not monsters, they had our faces, but they had been reared badly” (Glover 402). Both the authors of violence and victims are just ordinary people. Dividing the good and the evil is not as simple as some would like to make out. Alexander Solzhenitsyn says in Gulag Archipelago, “If only it were all so simple!! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being….it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren’t” (Glover 401). Nietzsche has said that whatever harm the world-calumniators may do, the harm that the good do is the most harmful harm. That is a statement that can make us think.
The slide into complicity with what is evil in our culture would not be nearly as easy if the cultures did not so profoundly shape us. In times of crisis, we find it difficult to distance ourselves from our culture and raise our voices in protest. In fact, we find ourselves almost helpless if the prevalent culture itself has already surrendered to an ideology of violence. We join in the violence ourselves, or seek escape in merely ‘denouncing the other’. We act as though a self-righteous denunciation of ‘the other’ sets all things right.
When we limit ourselves to moralistic denunciations of injustice, we do not fulfil our mission. We must proceed on to historically and socially informed path-breaking efforts. Experience abundantly shows that the categories ‘oppression/liberation’ seem ill-suited to bring about reconciliation and sustain peace between people and people groups. This is the firm conviction of persons who have lived a full life in the midst of ideology-driven conflict. Ultimately what is required is reconciliation between the oppressors and the oppressed, or else it will merely lead to injustice-with-role-reversal.
The Healing of Collective Memories
“..all men have hearts. And each heart has its own leanings. Their right is
our wrong, and our right is their wrong”
(Prince Shotuku of Japan)
Edward Said in his ‘Culture and Imperialism’ points out that during the colonial period, intellectuals who should have been the guardians of the conscience of their own nation and culture were no more than echoes of their community’s prejudices, their noble ideals notwithstanding. Slave trade, world conquest, and unfair commerce were all part of the ‘civilizing, modernising, and Christianising course’……a form of ‘civilization’ that led to holocaust, apartheid and ethnic cleansing!! It is the task of today’s intellectuals to heal such memories in their own communities …those communities that suffered this colonial injury, restore them to health and help them to look positively to the future. That is the only way they may transform their wounded cultures and the disturbed social situation in which they live, bringing health and wholeness. They have a vocation to be healers and not to be a depository of grievances.
Paul Ricoeur’s recent suggestions to European Union contained meaningful words like ‘exchange of memories’, ‘forgiveness’. These concepts are extremely useful for situations where people still retain hurt historic memories. We need a ‘healing of collective memories’. When you happily meet the other and forgive, the demon in the other disappears. In fact, you begin discovering yourself in the other and are filled with compassion even for his failure. You discover that they are also human, just like you!
In a dealing with East-West historic injuries and negative memories, two kinds of conclusions are not helpful: a) conclusions that arise from an exaggerated sense of guilt of the West for its colonial past, or those that presently reflect its attitude of dominance, b) equally, those conclusions that arise from the unhealed memories of people in ex-colonies, i.e. of those who suffer excessively from post-colonial complexes and live on grievances. Their conclusions are not likely to correspond to precise reality or to lead to anything very useful. There is bound to be a blind spot somewhere. They can only be partially objective. Their conclusions need to be sifted and re-interpreted before they can be useful for actual life. Objectivity can spring only from serene reflection, with an enormous amount of confidence in one’s own heritage with no grudge towards anyone, with no guilt feelings on the one hand, nor grievance or anger on the other.
Prince Shotuku of Japan introduced a liberal constitution in 604 A.D. He said, “nor let us be resentful when others differ from us. For all men have hearts, and each heart has its own leanings. Their right is our wrong, and our right is their wrong” (Aston 128-33). In the light of this marvellous insight coming from a great prince who lived on our ancient continent, could we decide to bring a non-confrontational approach to our problems? Can we be true Asians, living in the tradition of Buddha, Asoka, prince Shotuku, and the Dalai Lama? The mission of peace calls for a new thinking. It lays on us the compulsion of awakening a new consciousness in ourselves. It demands that we bring new themes for discussion, create a new public opinion, build up new philosophical and theological bases for peace.
To begin with, we ought to search for the roots of aggressiveness in ourselves. We must canalise and tap that hidden energy for new purposes. Only when we have unmasked injustice and evil in our own inner world and have subjected ourselves to a spiritual surgery, shall we be able to discover the forces of evil in the society that surrounds us and commit ourselves to working on them. Or else, even as we work for peace, we may find in ourselves a striving for unfair superiority, eagerness to manipulate others; we may discover traces of individual and collective selfishness, unwillingness to share power and material means.
The Koreans have a word ‘Han’ to refer to the experience of pain, bitterness, helplessness and eagerness for revenge imposed by injustice and oppression…..at times accumulated over centuries. The result is a self-image of victimhood. We need to be liberated from it. Young people in particular have to be helped out of self-imprisonment in bitterness, lest they retreat into themselves in a permanent manner. Listening, affirming, appreciating, questioning, searching together, leading people to creative dialogue with even opponents….these are some of the steps that the healer of memories takes in the fulfilment of his/her ministry.
It is a Higher Motive that can Persuade
“What should I do with that, by which I do not become immortal?”
Upanishads
Human beings come fully alive only when they share with others those values and ideas which they consider precious and true. These satisfy them more than anything else. Martin Luther King said, “If you haven’t found something that you’re willing to die for, you’re probably not fit to live any way”. Self-interest is a reality of life, but creative and sensitive people will learn to combine it with concern for others, sensitive leaders will combine it with national interests and with those of humanity.
Persons like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were inspired by a higher motive, when they adopted an approach of refusal to retaliate to injuries. They entertained a vision of love as an agent of change, and communicated this message with demonstrative action. It did not exclude the dimension protest, e.g. when they deliberately broke the law for conscience sake (civil disobedience). They acted out of conviction.
Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize winner, said that he was deeply impressed by a question raised in the Upanishads, one of India’s ancient classics. He was referring to the question of the learned wife of Yajnavalkya when she asked “What should I do with that, by which I do not become immortal?” This profound question in the Upanishads inspired him in his efforts to propose an economic theory which gave central importance to the human side of economic development, and which won him the Nobel Prize. Dean Rusk says, at the crucial moment during the Cuba crisis, what played the decisive role in concluding the issue was the basic question asked in Westminster Catechism, “What is the end of man?” Rusk was a convinced Presbyterian (Glover 220). Pope Benedict XVI was right when he expressed his conviction that wherever and whenever men and women were enlightened by the splendour of truth, they naturally set out on the path of peace (World Day of Peace, ‘In truth, peace’, 1.1.06).
Human beings need an object of total devotion as a focal point of all their strivings and a basis for all their effective values (Fromm 311). Material possessions alone do not satisfy the human heart. Selfishness can offer only partial answers to human longings. When relationships and adequate self-expressions will be considered more important than consumption and retaliation, human society will be reborn. War and peace are not things that depend on fate or instinct, but on human choices and community-set goals (Fromm 156). If it is the path of peace that people choose, coming generations shall be blessed. E.F.M. Durbin and J.Bowlby (1939) have argued with great skill that peaceful cooperation, not merciless competition, is the most natural and fundamental tendency in human beings (Fromm 283). Only if we decide to follow this tendency, so gently planted into us by our Creator, can we move from confusion to community, war to peace, propaganda to respectful conversation, enmity to amity.
Asian cultures are generally ‘cultures of life’, they promote life. In cultural chaos people are left without familiar symbols, myths, rituals, convictions (Arbuckle 23). Humanity, in consequence, is weakened in human society. The danger is that the culture goes dead and society withers. St. Iranaeus said that the glory of God was the human person fully alive. Eric Fromm calls such a person a ‘biophilous’ person. He/she loves life and everything alive, he/she furthers growth; he/she wonders, he/she loves the adventure of living. He sees the whole, not merely the parts: he has a holistic view of the human person, of human society, of history. He/she influences others through love, reason, example, and inspiration, not through authoritarian ways. He promotes the culture of life, and culture comes alive through him/her. And society prospers.
For Marx, moral laws were a disguise for class interests. And yet we cannot deny that there is an inner voice that speaks to us. “The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind” (Sigismund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, quoted in Glover 224).
Building on the Asian concept of Compassion
Ancient epics like Illiad, Odessey, Mahabharata and Ramayana were about
the heroic deeds of the strong against the weak. Modern epics have been
about the courageous struggles of the weak and oppressed against the strong,
like the struggle for political independence and economic fairness. A time is
coming,, and it is here, when we shall enact and write together the grand epics
of ‘Reconciliation and Peace’, bringing the weak and the strong together…….
until all are strong.
If the concept of justice is not tempered by that of compassion, a central value in Asian tradition, we shall be locked in inextricable struggles with each other, with no visible progress in any direction. The Confucian emphasis on justice, for example, is softened by many humanistic ideals and the cultivation of self-discipline. It is completed by moral education that strengthens affective ties in society and promotes the common good. Virtues like solidarity, dedication to the community, family values, social harmony and exercise of benevolence are fully in Confucian tradition, softening a crude understanding social justice.
In Dalai Lama we find a worthy representative of the Buddhist tradition. He stands for what some people consider an ‘idealistic response to the individual and collective needs of our times’ (Mehrotra x). He suggests that we look at the enemy as a human being, “Although personally that enemy is harming you, forget that so-called enemy. Look at him as a human being just like you or me who also wants happiness. With that reason you can develop genuine sympathy or compassion” (Mehrotra xiv). His absolute refusal to hate the enemy remains most admirable.
If we do not make place for love in our hearts and in the heart of our struggles, our life will not fructify and all our efforts will lead to endless self-defeating and self-perpetuating struggles! “Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited….It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes” (1 Cor 13:4-7). Can we capture something of this spiritual message that comes from West Asia in our personal life, in our social relationships, in our struggle for a better the world? We need to learn to forgive, to start anew, to build on the broken pieces of hope and shattered bits of good will.
We need peace makers today….those who esteem others, even their enemies; those who win sympathies and support by the uprightness of their conduct and truthfulness of their argument; those who transform hearts by human touch with which they handle even the most vitiated situations; who have the ability to identify and separate real issues from their own ego-requirements, the rigid ideologies they have appropriated, the irrelevant theologies and predetermined positions they have accepted. The work for peace often begins with one person who is convinced and committed. But such a glorious idea constantly keeps winning fresh support. It is a work that calls for courage, even greater courage than waging war. It seeks no glamour. It is an effort that needs to sustain itself even when every pointer to success seems to vanish. It is a work that seeks to tap every form of good will buried in the deepest recesses of the opponent’s heart.
Building one’s Concern for Humanity on the foundation of ‘Inner Group Loyalty’
Christ too claimed an identity: he identified himself with the victims of violence.
It is when a Christian does this, does he/she become most Christlike.
As we have already seen, inter-community conflicts are daily on the increase. The world today is being torn apart by the politics of differences. As a consequence, some have come to consider the inner loyalty within an ethnic group as a negative force, describing it as ‘tribal loyalty’. But, in fact, it is an eminently positive force. Anthropologists look at identity affirmation of communities as something healthy, even necessary. It is the energy that any community needs for its own self-preservation and self-enhancement. It serves a psycho-social purpose ensuring solidarity within the community in times of danger. There is an inbuilt instinct in human persons, possibly to preserve and defend the genes, that strengthens group identity and makes one sacrifice for the family and ethnic group. There is also a similar psychological conditioning by which one feels intensely for one’s religious, ethnic, linguistic, territorial identity (Glover 142). It is on this solid foundation that we can build our commitment to the whole of humanity as well. The inner loyalty we speak of has gradually to be widened to include an ever widening circle of friends until it embraces the whole human family.
In India the joint family used to give a sense of security and well being to its members, especially in moments of crisis. Japanese hold by peer group loyalty at school or employment. This group acts like an extended family. To think of one’s group as very special is normal. For oneself, one’s group is indeed unique. This understanding of one’s group as unique, however, must combine with the recognition of every other community too as unique, each in its own way, and include respect for other groups and their rights. Loyalty to one’s own community is a resource. When it opens out to the rest of humanity in benevolence, it becomes fruitful. Most world religions have proposed transcending the confining boundaries of one’s own community. Christian concern reaches out to the ends of the earth.
Solidarity in evil can only be countered by solidarity in good. Soon after World War II Carl Jung wrote, “It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts” (Jung 1964a, 168). The same would be true of the goodness of people. It kindles goodness in others.
Tapping the Resource of Asian Cultures
The Dalai Lama has made a decisive choice “between the power of the gun and
the power of wisdom and compassion” ( Mehrotra xxiv).
Though the FABC had invited the Asian Churches decades ago to plan their mission in dialogue with the ‘Cultures’ of Asia, we have done too little reflection in this line. While we have given considerable attention to the socio-economic problems of Asia, we have done too little to tap the resources of the sturdy cultures and civilizations of our ancient continent. Our pride in the rich heritage of our great civilizations and stimulating cultures would have little substance, unless we searched for greater rootedness in our own inherited values and traditions.
Asian values of religiosity, community cohesion, family loyalty, love, compassion, concern for every sentient being, absolute respect for life, choice of the middle path, moderation, balance, renunciation for a higher goal…..these and many other values in our tradition elude the scrutiny of technological and scientific research. They are not considered relevant to current economic theories. But our society lives by them, except small sections that have become alienated from their original identity. These values can be understood only through profound reflection in the context of a living community in which they are rooted. If we have become uprooted individuals, we shall miss depth and the sustaining power that comes from our community. Cohesion within the community and concern for the larger good of humanity, the measure of self-renouncing generosity and radical commitment that such a challenge elicits ….these do not figure in the market place. And yet these determine the destinies of societies, nations and civilizations. So many of us unfortunately look at ourselves and our cultural heritage like uprooted people—‘with borrowed glasses’. So it happens that our self-understanding itself is not sufficiently Asian.
If Asian values do not find a place in defining the future of Asian societies, we can only see a ‘black hole’ ahead. We are heading towards cultural (civilizational) suicide. Structural changes or legal reforms alone cannot ensure good conduct. Laws are interpreted and observed in a particular cultural context and with its own traditional values. If, for example, respect for life is not an absolute value, and what is important is the smartness to evade the law-enforcing machinery, then violence will thrive. It is doing so already in many situations.
We often take values for granted. We think that they are ‘the given’ in any society. We can no longer think so. Communities that are alienated from the core of their inner selves have become rootless, and their traditional values miss the sustaining strength derived from their cultures. Modern society has been striving hard to propagate a sort of ‘secular humanism’ to replace centuries old cultures and civilizations, and even religions. It has met with limited success. Mahatma Gandhi and Dalai Lama have shown that a peaceable approach, rooted in our ancient civilizations and religions, can be brought to the mightiest problems of the day. Does not the teaching of Jesus “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” contain truly an Asian message ( Mt 5:9)? It is this assurance that has to be developed into a theology that can guarantee a future for us.
The Strength of Religion
“He has chosen me and sent me to bring good news to the poor, to heal
the broken-hearted” (Is 61:1)
Speaking of the need for peace, Kurt Biedenkopf, MP of West German Parliament, said some years ago, “We will have to rely on the strength of religion….to make the kind of sacrifices and exercise the self-discipline that will be demanded” (Runyon x). It is true that the human person is often ruled by sell-interest. But he/she is subject also to the law of mutual self-interest, balanced self-interest, self-forgetting interest in the other and in the common good. It is religion that can impose this law from within. Secular inspiration emphasizes the change of the mind, religion the change of the heart. Secular ethic is impersonal. Religious demands are personal, they touch the human person. Secular ethic seeks to reconcile differences, different positions. Religion seeks to reconcile differing people. Issues may be irreconcilable, but if people who can love and trust and forgive can be reconciled, issues speedily become reconcilable.
The Church may not have always succeeded in her effort to bring peace to human society, but she has kept trying in spite of her own limitations. People would like the Church to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. But the problems remain. Over the years, the Church has to become an agent of healing for individuals, families, institutions, nations, communities and cultures struggling with the memory of a wounded history. In this, Pope John Paull II has set us a marvellous example.
Binding the broken hearted is an unbelievably great mission. “He has chosen me and sent me to bring good news to the poor, to heal the broken hearted” (Is 61:1). Every Christian believer, every citizen, ought to take on this responsibility. No one needs to be afraid he/she will fail. Failures are bound to come. But we can still hold on to hope. Theologies of hope say that the Word of God keeps calling, coaxing and compelling; opening out new alternatives, new possibilities, evoking new responses, defeating old stalemates. The Lamech approach is replaced by the Jesus approach: forgive seventy times seven times (Mt 18:21). And we learn to identify with the victims of violence, as Christ did on the cross.
F.W. de Klerk of South Africa was asked whether it was international sanctions that brought apartheid to an end. His reply was quick, “It was not sanctions, but a deep analysis on our knees before God”. Mandela knew how to forget injuries. He was like Joseph of old who knew how to forgive, forget, begin all over again (Gen 45:14-15; 46:1ff). God keeps forgetting evil (Is 43:18-19;25; 65:17; Jer 31:34; Rev 31:4). When we think of it, forgiveness is double suffering: accepting the original injury, and forgoing the claims of justice. But it ushers in a new spring. It lays the foundation of a new future. A new heaven and a new earth come within reach.
When we grow conscious of the shadow side of our being and make up our mind to work on it, we begin to discover the inner resources for healing hidden within us. Then only shall we be empowered to shed the sunshine of joy, love, gentleness and happy relationships around us. Then only shall we develop the spiritual strength to be effective in the healing ministry and tap the restorative power of peace and non-violence. Only the strength of an inner peacefulness which we have painstakingly acquired through prayer and closeness to God can give a peace-giving quality to our words and deeds. May we make a worthwhile contribution to the great cause of peace, reconciliation and healing in these troubled times.
References
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