The Atrocity at Wagah and its Lessons

A suicide bomber killed over 60 persons and injured over 200 in Pakistan, at the evening flag-lowering ceremony on the Wagah border on November 2nd. Apparently the Pakistani Taliban, or one of its factions, has claimed responsibility.

This senseless outrage tragically does not stand out alone. Many countries and cultures are witness to killings, of strangers by strangers. The world has come to know, since Michael Moore made his film Columbine, that periodically in America some sick minds kill children in schools. The jihadi factions have struck almost everywhere since 9/11, and Pakistanis have suffered more than most others. This crescendo of murder cannot be isolated from the noise orchestrated by groups in lesser acts of violence against some imagined insult or injury. In India, we have witnessed Rama Sena goons in Mangalore dragging girls out of bars, and khap panchayats in Haryana killing lovers who married across caste or communal lines. Prashant Bhushan was attacked by young thugs in his chambers for having supported the cause of Kashmiris. At a more sophisticated, but equally threatening level, we have seen MF Husain banished from India, Taslima Nasrin refused permission to reside in Kolkata, AK Ramanujan’s article censored out of textbooks, and whole books and films banned from the country. In Madras some years ago a mathematician objected to a play about Ramanujan because in a dream a goddess kissed him on the forehead! In Hyderabad sometime back Sikhs attacked a cinema for showing a picture in which a spy dressed as a Sikh smoked a cigarette!

What connects all these disparate acts of violence, threat, anger, and censorship is the psychological impoverishment suffered by persons in these activist groups, who feel isolated and threatened by the actions and opinions of others, or by their very existence. Mere lofty condemnation will not suffice, nor recourse to legal protection. All such acts, trivial and grave, point to something deeper than a mere lack of self-confidence to engage in dialogue or assert one’s own point of view or values. They point to a deepening isolation from the rest of society, and the mainstream of life. To the perpetrators, the shocking unreasonableness of their response is the only response they can make to a situation that has deliberately excluded them from its progress and decisions. In a very small way, we have all been in more or less the same situation, at a party, or in a family discussion, when we have walked off in a huff, or even thrown a tantrum.

We witness today in our globalizing world, perhaps not a clash of civilizations, but a crowding of different cultural values, and economic inequalities that are patently unjust by any cultural value, while aspirations are equalized by global media.

The pace of change does not permit inter- and intra-community dialogue, or even inner family dialogue, all of which are essential to maintain social cohesion and help each member meet new and rising challenges. While widespread Islamophobia may have put the world’s spotlight on the nature of Muslim cultures, the great majority of human communities, even in the richest countries, feel left out, and unable to pass on traditional values to the next generation with any show of confidence. The widespread drug culture among the young in the West testifies to this, as well as high divorce rates, and falling out from school. Even the proliferation of Hindu gurus in the West and increasing conversions to Buddhism and Islam have a negative side, in that they are strong statements of the failure of the inherited social values in the West.

All this should be taken into account in the extraordinarily violent background of the last century which witnessed two world wars and mega deaths, and spawned continuing state sponsored violence all over the world. Even the fig-leaf of NATO or other international support fails to convince most people that the wars raging in the Middle East have any justifiable sanction in international law.

A period of such violence results in social trauma spreading over large sections of several disaffected communities. Many community leaders and their followers withdraw from active participation in political life, increasing the action with impunity of the top elite. These reinforcing cycles of distancing large sections of the population from political or social involvement inevitably produce isolated clumps of persons, mostly young people, disconnected with the world, withdrawing into their alternative reality – of drugs, or of hate and sometimes of extreme impersonal violence against the people whose values seem to dominate the world.

Their reality many times contains a strong alternative binding focus commanding all loyalty. It could be a religion, even a new cult like the Falun Gong of modern China, or even a film personality, like MGR or Jayalalitaa. It is reported that a few persons committed suicide when she was arrested recently. Some Osmania University students committed suicide over the Telangana statehood struggle. These sacrifices were made to the internalized hero figure, or the special enshrined holy principle which gave them meaning to life.

The socio-psychological processes that produced Hitler’s Brown Shirts, or Mao’s Red Guards, or the present-day Taliban are little understood. This is not to deny that most of them were perhaps just foot-soldiers, looking for a place to be, or that at the top end there were cold-hearted political manipulators. But for most, total belief in their isolated crusade was real driving them to extremes. They should not be seen as perpetrators or victims of sporadic horrible events, but as activists of extreme forms of social disaffection, which in varying forms is spreading over all societies. We continue to ignore the psychological causes for their existence at our peril, especially in a fast globalizing, multicultural world with wide-open disparities. Social and economic gaps need to be narrowed through strong continuous affirmative governmental and community action.

Our social walls are dialogue proof, and even a polite enquiry from over a wall is considered offensive. We have lost the ability to help each other, of different religions, castes, ethnicities, linguistic groups. The tips of these multiple isolations can be seen in the arrogant ways of behaviour rampant in India. It can even be noticed in the ways scientists dismiss non-scientists; and administrators treat non-officials. Guarding one’s turf should not lead to self-defeating isolation. Much of our fear of loss of identity, of pollution of belief, of destruction, stems from an archaic dread of transgression of commandments, which we have inherited from the archetype of a stern father, of a vengeful god. Perhaps, one of the greatest of social movements was the emergence of the concept of a loving God, a beneficial and merciful God, but piety towards such a God has not erased the earlier fears that have come down from earlier cultures.

Special efforts should be made by community leaders for mutual inter-community understanding and support. A process of open-ended community dialogue should be encouraged, right from the school level and through various people’s association  cutting across generation, gender, profession, and class divides. All this is easier said than done, but inaction in inter-community building could lead to even more horrible consequences in the near future.