About a month ago. I found myself tuning into the discovery channel as they broadcasted a documentary on the Second World War. Half way through the screening, for about ten minutes, the narrative was about the concentration camps run by the Nazis at Dachan and Treblinka. Videos taken by American Soldiers who captured and eventually released the starved and decimated prisoners of these camps accompanied the almost brilliant narration. As image upon image of the worst form of cruelty, human beings have ever committed upon their fellow men and women in the name of superiority of race and religion flashed before me. I sat back and wondered “how superior are we, really?” Today we consider ourselves part and parcel of the 21st century, the century of democracy. As we look around and bear witness to scientific progress and technological advancement, we consider ourselves completely alien from the past. The battles of the II world war are today’s history and the barbarianism of the past reflects just the ‘mentality’ of those times when people fell victim to the hallucinations of a mad man completely enveloped by the spirit of globalization that is sweeping the world’s cities today, transforming the world as some one said into a “global village”. We fail to realize that the same barbarianism against which a previous generation once raised arms, continues to simmer at this very moment.
A close analysis of any of the currently ongoing international conflicts, whether it be the conflict in Palestine, the Balkans, Srilanka or Africa, or the conflicts in our very own backyard, in Jammu and Kashmir and the north-east, one common factor that is observable is the role of religion, caste and creed. The same religions that preach to their followers, peace and common brotherhood are being subverted to justify genocide murder, rape and other forms of cruelty. Many of us might have had opportunities to read stories or narratives of people who have been able to escape from the concentrated rage of a crowd maddened by hat and loathing to commit murderous acts of cruelty on others with whom they had until then lived in relative peace and harmony. I recently red the opportunity to read in the Readers Digest magazine, the story of a budding athletic talent in America. A native of an African nation, the only relics he had to show of his past life are the burns on his body, remnants of the time when he miraculously escaped being burned to death by people from a tribe with whom his people had an animosity.
A famous English saying goes “The Pen is mightier than the sword”. In the same way words can be more dangerous than bullets or bombs. A bullet can kill one person and a bomb about a hundred but a word altered in a radical context to the wrong kind of people can incite them into a murderous rage that can kill thousands. The riots in Gujarat in which thousands of minorities were slaughtered and the tribal violence characteristic of the North-East are evidences of this truth. Throughout human history whether it was in pre-independence India and Palestine or at present times in Sudan and various central African republics governments and individuals have always used and still continue to use religious strike and sectarian violence as tools to further their own wishes and whims. The end result has been a gradual worsening of the already worse humanitarian crisis situation in these nations. Over the past three to four years, the Capital cities of various European nations have borne witness to an increasing number of hate crimes of crimes targeting people of a specific race or religion. The return of radical elements across the globe, an example of being the revival of a neo-Nazi movement in Germany that is modeled on Americas ku klux klan, is a clear indicator of the emerging trend to blame ones failures on others, often minorities and target them.
Today, as situation worsens, with sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing being practiced on an unprevented scale across the globe, often with government assistance and backing, the need has now arisen for us to rise up and speak in one voice against the false notion that one’s color, religion or nationality guarantees one the right too consider himself or herself superior to any other individual. In the true sense it is not one individual who is superior to another, but rational human beings who are superior to those who propagate hatred. For peace, harmony and unity to succeed the heads of the various religious orders and the leaders of the world nations have to rise together and renounce once and for all the hatred and violence being propagated in the name of god. As I conclude, I am forced to remember the horrified and shameful faces of the villagers of Treblinka as the allied soldiers made them march through the concentration camp, to bear witness to the crime of which they where a part. I pray that never again should men or women look with such shame for being accomplice to the commission of such a terrible dead either through their keeping quite or by their failure to act.
Vivek John,
St. Josephs College,
Bangalore.