A call for collective sanity in these violent times

It is not easy to come out of the shock, pain and anger that the recent terrorist attack at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir has caused to our collective consciousness. And, as many suspect the involvement of Pakistan in this brute act, the mass psychology of revenge seems to have affected the public sentiment. Yes, it is for the Indian state, and associated officials, foreign policy strategists and army personnel to decide the way the entire gang of terrorists and their sponsors are punished and eliminated.

Yet, as a teacher/educator, I dare to be contemplative, and ask myself a difficult question: Can our ‘legitimate’ violence be necessarily appreciated as the most appropriate response to their illegitimate violence? Or, is there any other way to acknowledge the roots of this violence, and move towards a state of collective sanity through self-reflexive education and mass awakening?

As teachers, we have some responsibility to communicate with the young generation, urge them not to get carried away by the instinctive urge for revenge and problematise what these days we have almost normalised. In this context, let me make three observations.

First, whenever a crisis of this kind erupts, the proponents of hyper-nationalism become super active. And as an emotion, hyper-nationalism is immensely addictive because it simplifies a complex phenomenon, creates binaries, popularises conspiracy theories, negates the possibility of authentic self-critique and demonises the ‘enemies’ of the nation for every problem it confronts. While the ruling regime loves the gospel of this ideology of binaries to hide its own failures, we, as ordinary citizens, are almost hypnotised to think that our ‘enemies’ — say, Pakistan, or ‘separatists’ in Kashmir, or the Muslim population in general — cause all sorts of problems; and if we succeed in eliminating these enemies, we would live in peace forever! No wonder, the stimulation of hyper-nationalism, far from restoring sanity and the spirit of dialogue, takes us to a never-ending chain of violence vs counter-violence.

Second, the discourse of hyper-nationalism, as we are witnessing, is sustained by yet another dangerous practice of religious fundamentalism. In fact, the practice of religious fundamentalism robs religion of the religiosity of love and compassion, or the spiritual quest for the oceanic merger of the temporal and the eternal, form and formlessness, or the finite and the infinite. Instead, it blinds our visions, and makes us think that it is only our religion that is supreme, and all those who adhere to different faiths are necessarily our enemies and potential sources of cultural contamination. When the terrorists killed innocent people on the basis of their religious identities at Pahalgam, we could see a close link between terrorism and religious fundamentalism. But then, there is a great danger, if in order to cope with this sort of Islamic fundamentalism, we too are tempted to fall into the same trap. Is it, therefore, surprising that at this crucial moment, a group of militant Hindu nationalists are provoking us so that we begin to see every Muslim as a potential enemy of the nation? Likewise, when every Kashmiri Muslim is reduced to an object of perpetual surveillance or military gaze, we reproduce the same ideology of violence.

Third, it is high time we began to interrogate militarism as an answer to terrorist violence. War is not fun; war is not a television spectacle; and war, far from solving a problem, intensifies it further. Yes, the wound it causes does not heal easily. Even if the narcissistic ego of a nation seeks to manifest itself through its military power, missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons, the celebration of militarism brutalises our consciousness and negates the possibility of dialogue, reconciliation and peace.

In recent times, we have witnessed the devastating effect of the Russia-Ukraine war, or, for that matter, the Israel-Palestine war. And despite a series of wars with Pakistan, Indo-Pak relationship remains tension-ridden. The ‘victory’ in a bloody war might help the power-hungry politicians to win another election. However, it does by no means assure peace and cross-cultural understanding.

These are difficult times. It is easy to get carried away by the propaganda machinery, and the mass psychology of revenge it accelerates. In fact, if you speak a different language you are suspected, or ridiculed as a foolish ‘idealist’. Yet, as teachers, we have a role to play at this moment of collective insanity. Hence, I invoke three great teachers — Rabindranath Tagore, Jiddu Krishnamurti and Thich Nhat Hanh — and seek to learn from their wisdom, and try to communicate with the young generation.

With his poetic wonder and universalism, Tagore could see the discontents of hyper-nationalism, war, militarism and the psychology of violence.

Likewise, Jiddu Krishnamurti repeatedly warned us of the negative consequences of our ‘conditioning’. This conditioning erects walls of separation and causes all sorts of division: I am a Hindu, you are a Muslim; I am a Jew, you are a Christian; or I am an Indian, you are a Pakistani! The result is that we begin to see one another through the prism of this conditioning with all sorts of stereotypes; never do we realise our shared humanity. For Krishnamurti, it is important to decondition our minds so that we can look at the world with absolute freshness and innocence.

And, Thich Nhat Hanh —the Buddhist monk who saw the Vietnam war — came forward with his engaged religiosity and put great emphasis on dialogue, compassionate listening and kindness. Even Osama bin Laden, he said with his characteristic wisdom, needs to be listened to and understood.

Is it possible for well-meaning educators, social activists and public intellectuals across the borders to come together and initiate a movement for collective sanity?

Avijit Pathak is a sociologist.

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