A few hours back I read an essay written by a Sri Lankan
journalist/ lawyer who got assassinated back
in 2009, and that got me conversing about the situation here in our Union. The
following thoughts are borne from that conversation. (You can read the essay here.)
…
"The sacrifice, David. That is how mankind
overcomes the Babel threshold. Our little tribal circles, bound by social
contracts and selfish mutual need. Everyone working in their own greedy,
self-interests and huddling together with their tribe, at war with all those
outside who they regard as barely human. What breaks a human mind out of that
iron cage of mistrust is a sacrifice. The martyr who gives up everything, who
abandons all personal gain, who lays down his very life for the good of those
outside his group. He becomes a symbol all can rally around. So instead of
trying to make a selfish, violent primate somehow empathize with the whole
world, which is impossible, you only need to get him to remember and love the
martyr. As one is forgotten, another must replace it. Unfortunately, as I
feared, today that is to be us."
-
David Wong, This Book is Full of
Spiders.
I
have to start by saying that the essay was indeed unlike anything I have read
in recent memory. It squarely hits so many thoughts running through my head in
recent days, primary amongst them, where we are as a nation. In soft discussion
held with close friends and colleges, bosses and clients, I cannot help but
conclude that the state of our union is in some need of some urgent repair, and
that it’s presently being held together by some magic and the sheer will of the
masses to not let the world slip from their shoulders. Any day this glue might
burn up and I shudder to think what lies beyond that veil.
I
do not have any answers and solutions here,
just a bunker full of questions and maybes.
The
point that struck me most was that in this sordid scenario, Late Mr. Lasantha
Wickramatunga, in the Sri Lankan context, is a martyr. It’s the martyr Sri
Lanka needed then and he’s the martyr it needs right now. He will hopefully
tower as someone who acknowledged the need of the masses outweighs the safety
or security of those in his ‘monkeysphere’
of 150 and knowingly laid down his life for it. It was the sacrifice that
country needed. But, four years hence, and many posthumous awards and accolades
later (UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press
Freedom Prize; the Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism
of Harvard University's Nieman Foundation; the
James Cameron Memorial Trust Award, and the American National Press Club's John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award; he
was also declared a World Press Freedom
Hero of the International Press Institute) where is Sri Lanka now? Has it
made a difference? I believe it has. I believe his death will prove to be the slow
churning ballast that will finally string the beleaguered nation together. And If
(hopefully when) positive change comes in any acceptable form to the island
nation, its people will turn back and
see that the morning of 8th January, 2009 was when the nation found
its courage.
A
similar question was asked by Emil
van der Poorten in his piece
“Chamorro And Wickrematunge – Decades And
Continents Apart But …!” , where he asks
:
“ Can the
history of Sri Lanka’s Sunday Leader, the death of Lasantha Wickrematunge, its
founding editor, and the events leading
up to it play a similar role in Sri Lanka’s future?
I believe
it will, even though the national euphoria attendant on the defeat of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE/Tigers) and the annihilation of the vast
majority of its leadership in the final battle has tended to distort and
obscure, in the short term at least, the significance of Wickrematunge’s
assassination.”
(On
a side not, I love Niemoller’s poem Wickrematunge reminds us of in his posthumous
essay. It is a subject I have debated endlessly, should people stand up for their
neighbors when they are being snatched away from their homes. I know they
seldom do, and seldom will, self-preservation is a strong motivator of actions
oft contra to our own morals. Such is
the enigmatic human condition. The need (or will) to protect the
immediate few will always outweigh the urge to protect the faceless many. And thus we label one who puts the need of the
many over the needs of the immediate a ‘Hero’ and if he dies, a ‘Martyr’. Maybe
we expect too little from ourselves and I have a much too dim view of our
global tribe. Wickramatunga gives me
hope. He fought for others so that other might fight for themselves and
hopefully others. So that the wronged are not left out in the open,
exposed, sans allies like Niemoller)
…
So,
I got thinking what about us, here in India? I firmly believe we are fighting a
war too. You probably are aware of it . You have felt the angry glances from
absolute strangers, the needless shove from a passerby, the endless angst on the roads, the frothing
nature of the multifarious gatherings, people vs people, people vs the regime,
regime vs regime. The hot streets seem to be boiling. Right now, look outside
any window, and you will see that Mr. Fresh Prince of Indian politics is wrong,
we are not bees, we are hornets. And someone is going to feel the sting of a
collective echo. Today, tomorrow or later, a levees gonna break, somewhere,
anywhere. It might be the death of one or many, a student or a soldier, a
lawyer or a lawman, a politician or his goon, an innocent is all it will take.
So
far we suffer the distinct misfortune of not knowing our enemies. This is yet
an shadowy and opaque war. No clear ‘us vs. them'. It’s much more subliminal.
It holistic It is a war that I feel has already begun in many factions, but
it’s just not being fought out in the open. A civil war of the cold nature, if
you will.
For
the first in recent memory, we have two undeclared PM candidates battling it
out in the media-sphere, creating theater, where the Fresh Prince bumbles his
way into an incoherent speech
that is half rhetoric and half school boy philosophy. And the other, the Godra
man himself, seeking to shed his image of Christmas past, quips IT
+ IT = IT. What is that you ask? Very proudly he declares: Indian talent +
Information Tech. = 'India tomorrow'. Ya! He might just win too. That’s his
winning formula.
So
the question I ask my self is this: who is are the victims of this war? We have
our concentration camps for sure, where
people are held. From where they cannot escape. Where there is abundant hunger
and suicides a-plenty. Be it the Indian hinter land or Maharashtra or Orissa or
Manipur. Be they farmers or students, skilled workers or laborers, or just
normal every day citizens trapped in their own city under oppressive laws (read
AFSPA) or military junta barricades. These camps might not have gunned walls
but they have clear demarcation. They exist because someone, something, created
circumstances for their existence. Somebody always benefits from the misery of others.
It’s just very hard to tell who.
But
what if we knew?
On
the way from Bilaspur I saw what appeared to be an endless sea of tarp tents
covering something. It extended as far as the eye could see on either side of
the Highway. Turns out, it was grain.
Unimaginable tons of it. Left on the
ground. Not even a warehouse to protect it. Apparently it has been lying there
for a while. It does not take much cerebral magic to realize that an open field
is not really very conducive to grain preservation. We have insects, rodents,
and other inedible pleasantries to protect against. A decision such as this
seems more deliberate. Someone, somewhere has chosen to be apathetic to
the plights of the hungry. Shortage creates
hunger. The hungry are easier to control (up to a point).
Such decisions create shackles.
Or
maybe, the war is being fought against the struggling migrant laborer, in Delhi
and Mumbai, living in sub human camps on the streets, washing their clothes in
the dirty Yamuna or the open Sea, eating vegetables contaminated with God-knows-what! and a cocktail of other contaminants, grown off soiled lands on polluted river
beds, working for sums barely enough to buy a loaf of bread. I wonder if they think to themselves, that
though they are meant to be free, they were never really born as such. Illusions can
be a tricky thing. Do they wonder, as they lie down to sleep every night,
tired, hand calloused from the tilling harsh concrete, in those wispy moments
before retiring to their kingdoms of choice:
this cannot be freedom. Am I a fief and is this is a fiefdom. How am i
am bound by the shackles of my circumstance, and who has shacked me? Who is my liege? Is it the
same faceless decision maker, who stockpiles grain on the highway for
rotting?
If
one really sits down to wander into the minds of the sleeping men and women of
this country, one will undoubtedly realize that a War is on. It is the
oppressor versus the oppressed. Whoever or where ever they might be. And is it
possible the oppressors might not even realize that they oppress.
We need a martyr today, not to win the war but to expose
the fact that a war is waging on. But
who will he(or she) be and what shall be his (or her) sacrifice?
In
the end, I recall the Selina Kyle whispering in Batman's ear : "There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and
your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you're all
gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little
for the rest of us."
So,
are we the oppressed or the Oppressors ? And is it possible that we are neither
?
…
But maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is no war. Maybe
this is just an attempt to make sense of the illogical. Creating Thor to
explain thunder. Maybe there is no explanation, and no levee will ever break and
we will continue foaming and frothing till we are exhausted. Resignation will
cover us once again. Is nihilism the way to go? Is it possible that a war will
never happen because we are fighting against ourselves? Fighting to escape the
boiling streets and into the air-conditioned atriums, in the wake of our
desire, creating the conditions of an invisible holocaust.
Maybe
we’ll discover or award ourselves a martyr. Maybe we won’t. Maybe it will never
come to that. Life is feeble and life is weak. We live, we die. On the way we
try to do right, often do wrong, we seek redress, we beg forgiveness. We remember
and we forget.
But, it’s
important to remember. It's imperative. Macbeth, once
warned off the frailty of live and its meaning in death :
“Out,
out, brief candle!
Life's
but a walking shadow, a poor player
That
struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And
then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told
by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying
nothing.”
It is imperative to remember the sacrifices of people
like Lasantha Wickramatunga. Remember the lives laid down for reasons beyond
the immediate. Reasons that make life grand and enduring. For if we go to war,
if we recognize its existence, we will need our heroes. And it is at that
moment, we will need to prove within and without, that the sound and fury of
hornets are significant. That the lives of martyrs matter.
That
Macbeth was wrong.
