SOCIETY
The circle of violence
TABISH KHAIR
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What happened in Ahmedabad and Bengaluru is a sad commentary on civic society in India today.
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PHOTO: PTI
Like all great works of literature, the
Mahabharata does not offer a
straight and simple moral. While on
the one side, it can be seen as a
celebration of the war between good and
evil and, as Lord Krishna puts it in the
Bhagvad Gita, an injunction to do one's
`duty', its bleak ending also evokes the
final futility of war, victory and, especially,
revenge.
The figure from Mahabharata that
continues to haunt us today is Ashwathaman
who, in one of the last acts of
revenge in that epic of gory revenges,
burns to death the heir of the Pandavas
and is condemned to wander the earth
for 6000 years, a perennial leper.
Ashwathaman haunts us because revenge
remains a primitive passion that
continues to plague modern societies. It
also remains the most futile and wasteful
of passions.
Each act of revenge engenders another
act of revenge. And an eye for an eye,
as Gandhiji put it, makes the whole
world blind.
The recent blasts in Ahmedabad were
not only an act of terror and a heinous
crime, but also, probably, an act of revenge
for the Gujarat riots and aimed at
Modi's government. Modi's hands are
not clean. Anyone who followed what
happened in the Gujarat riots knows
that much, if not blinded by party
prejudices
But that does not justify an act of revenge,
let alone one aimed at innocent
bystanders. Two wrongs never make a
right.
Mechanism of revenge
This is something the perpetrators of
the Ahmedabad and Bengaluru blasts do
not seem to have realised. But they are
not alone in their ignorance. People
from New York to Copenhagen to Riyadh
to Delhi seem to believe that the
only answer to a wrong is to do someone
else an equal or greater wrong. This is
the working mechanism of revenge.
Revenge is a difficult matter: at its
heart lies violence, and violence spreads
by propagating itself. If I am violent to
you, and you are violent to me, what
really wins is the plague of violence. Every
time we indulge in a violent act, we
contaminate others with violence. Every
time we revenge ourselves, we give others
cause to revenge themselves. That is
why all legal codes have tried to regulate
and curb revenge.
One can argue that civic society and
law itself are an attempt to stop personal
attempts at revenge. By stepping in between
the criminal and the victim, the
law assumes on itself the responsibility
of punishment, thus breaking at the start
an endless circle of retribution.
It is in this legal breaking of the personal
and tribal circles of revenge and revengeful
violence that we create
`civilisation'. In this sense, some supposedly
`primitive' societies have been extremely
civilised because they had
highly developed social tools with which
to abort any circle of personal or group
revenge.
By the same token, some supposedly
`developed' and `modern' people remain
basically uncivilised because they privilege
or celebrate the myths of personal
revenge in different forms, such as the
solitary gunman or crimes of `family
honour.' Cycles of revenge destroy the
fabric of civic society, and hence the law
takes it upon itself to arbitrate and punish.
Forgiveness
But that is also why the embodiments
of the `law' and authority cannot be legally
allowed to commit partisan crimes,
as appears to have been the case during
the Gujarat riots, and stay blatantly in
power. What has happened in Ahmedabad
is a sad commentary on civic society
in India today: personal revenge on the
one side, which includes circles of reciprocal
violence, and the inability of
figures of government and authority to
step in and abort such circles of violence
because they have themselves been contaminated
by the virus of violence
And what about forgiveness, one may
ask? Forgiveness, it has been suggested,
is a `divine' attribute. To claim to forgive
someone else is to make a claim that is
not in the capacity of human beings.
Even Jesus did not claim to forgive his
tormenters: he called upon God to forgive
them. Forgive them, O Lord, for
they know not what they do. How can
one human being forgive another human
being without setting himself up as superior
to the person who is being forgiven?
And then can it be forgiveness, or is
it another kind of victory, of triumphalism,
of violence?
However, it is another matter altogether
to refrain from violence and to
wish forgiveness on those who have
done violence to us, as Jesus and Gandhi
knew. This is what we can and should do
as human beings. But one need not talk
of something as difficult as forgiveness.
What one can talk of is the practical
remedy for violence and endless cycles
of revenge: a bid to strengthen the fabric
of civil society. And this can be done only
when the private person (or group) relinquishes
his desire for revenge in favour
of the mediated justice of law, and
the law and its representatives do their
job. Failure can only lead to a land of
Ashwathamans, a country of the blind.
The writer is Associate Professor,
Department of English, University of
Aarhus, Denmark
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