Skip to main content

War and a Dream


India has retaliated. My morning news on Asianet used the word ‘revenge’ gleefully. India has taken revenge on Pakistan. A few friends texted me personally to imply that Modi, whose faithful critic I have been, is a real hero, fit to be a world champion. A septuagenarian and former professor of sociology quoted Modi proudly: “Ab Bharat ka pani Bharat ke haq mein bahegi.” Now India’s water will flow for India’s benefits. The rivers flowing into Pakistan have been blocked by Modi.

My response to the prof, who is apparently aging without acquiring wisdom, was: “That’s a jingoistic view. I’d put is as: India won’t tolerate terrorism and we know how to deal with it.”

I’m not against violence per se. You can’t preach nonviolence to an aggressive buffalo, as a proverb in my mother tongue says. I salute India’s latest action on Pakistani terrorists. They deserve it.

However, my question to my old prof friend – who is as much a fan of Modi as I am his critic – is: Does that retaliation (revenge or whatever you call it) make Modi a great world leader, Vishwaguru?

The world needs healing, not more war. Light, not more darkness….

I know that line of thinking won’t work. Because it will be mocked as futile idealism.

Idealism is not dead, my friend. It still works. In the palaces of the rulers who sacrifice their citizens, their soldiers, their country if need be, for the sake of their ideals! Idealism has become the privilege of a few. Would Lord Rama approve of that? What about Lord Krishna?

The world stands in need of a leader who can bring ideals to the ordinary person on the streets. To you and me. And the poor woman who is begging for alms on the street to feed her little children. Especially to the man who shouts jingoistic slogans for the leader who is taking his country to war in the name of ideals.

Is it possible to take the country to peace in the name of those ideals? The one who can do that is the real Vishwaguru, for me.

I dream about a leader who can reinterpret the scriptures and the epics. Make Rama or Krishna relevant today. And awaken the spiritual potential that lies latent in human breasts. Instead of arousing violent passions, dark emotions, and savage instincts. The plain truth is that no one requires any particular skill to move a mob towards violence. Any twopence gangster can do that.

Leadership is a totally different affair.

Leadership is not taking the country to a war. Which will end one day. And then the leaders will shake hands, as the Palestinian poet wrote. They will pose for photo-ops. Display trophies. Advertise success stories. Rewrite history.

Who loses? The mother loses her son. The wife loses her husband. Children become orphans.

This has been going on ever since human civilisation originated. If your leader is repeating the same thing, what greatness can he claim, my dear prof friend?

Is there another way out? You may ask. I have no answer. If I had one, I would be the Vishwaguru. Since I don’t have one, I dream. I dream as I prepare for the mock war drill that my country is giving me this afternoon.  


 

Labels:

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanMay 7, 2025 at 3:44 PM

    Hari OM
    Dreadful news this morning... already the banging of shields/words leading to escalation. I despair at the world... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 7, 2025 at 5:45 PM

      With the kind of leaders the two countries have, we have reasons to worry.

      Delete
  2. Liz A.May 8, 2025 at 1:21 AM

    I'm so sorry. No one really wins a war.

    ReplyDelete
  3. magiceyeMay 9, 2025 at 10:25 AM

    Sad state of affairs brought on by our own actions.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...
13 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Nazneen’s Fate

N azneen is the protagonist of Monica Ali’s debut novel Brick Lane (2003). Born in Bangla Desh, Nazneen is married at the age of 18 to 40-year-old Chanu Ahmed who lives in London. Fate plays a big role in Nazneen’s life. Rather, she allows fate to play a big role. What is the role of fate in our life? Let us examine the question with Nazneen as our example. Nazneen was born two months before time. Later on she will tell her daughters that she was “stillborn.” Her mother refused to seek medical help though the infant’s condition was critical. “We must not stand in the way of Fate,” the mother said. “Whatever happens, I accept it. And my child must not waste any energy fighting against Fate.” The child does survive as if Fate had a plan for her. And she becomes as much a fatalist as her mother. She too leaves everything to Fate which is not quite different from God if you’re a believer like Nazneen and her mother. When a man from another continent, who is more than double her age,...
7 comments
Read more