Can We Ever See An End To Communal Violence?
Bridging differences in a hyper-polarised world
At the time of writing this piece, the bloodbath unleashed in Gaza and Israel since October 2023 has taken at least 33,000 lives. While some Israeli civilians captured by the terrorist group Hamas still remain hostage, the entire two million population of the Gaza strip reels under a lockdown of essential supplies and under a constant threat of extermination. The conflict has sharply polarised the world into two distinct camps: one supporting Israel’s brutal response as self-defence, and the other calling for its genocidal actions to stop and give Palestinians a right to live.
Unfortunately, world’s history is full of such tragedies. Two or more groups of people, that have had a complex intertwined past, frequently engage in conflicts that range from skirmishes to full-fledged wars. Most of such conflicts seem to have been going on for hundreds of years, and yet the chain of violence and bloodshed never ends.
This makes me wonder: can we ever see an end to the self-destructive cycle of communal violence? Is there a way out?
There are no easy answers. But, perhaps we can understand the pattern which repeats in most of these conflicts. Most attacks are acts of revenge, carried out by a group of people who are carrying scars of past violence within them. For instance, we can frame Israel’s response as an act of revenge against Hamas’ surprise insurgence and hostage capture of October 7th. But, we can also trace it back to the highly complicated history of the Jewish state and Palestine in which both sides suffered a lot of bloodshed. In fact, the sheer brutality of Israel’s current response can be attributed all the way back to the absolutely horrific violence the Jews faced in Nazi Germany, which gave them scars so deep and scathing that their anger and fury is now spilling over the entire Middle East.
Therefore, the entire anatomy of violent conflicts can be understood by seeing them as long running chains of scars and revenge which perpetuate from the past into the future.
Here’s how it works: Each instance of violence infuses fresh scars into the victims, who are then doomed to live with them for their entire life. The scars never heal, but keep festering under the skin, ready to become ripe when stoked. When a seeker of power rises from amongst those victims and calls upon them to take revenge for their community, the victims are set on a vindictive path, fuelled by the seething rage burning inside each one of them. They, then, unleash unspeakable terror back on their attackers, often on an entire community of people who are even remotely associated with them. This ends up transferring the scars from the original victims to the new ones. The victims now become the perpetrators. And we now get a new set of victims, with fresh scars and freshly ignited fury of revenge. After a few years, an aspiring collector of power and wealth from amongst the new victims stands up and galvanises them into troops who then set out on their own path of revenge and redemption.
That is how, the wheel of violence makes a full turn, and the chain of scars and revenge never stops.
With this perspective, we can understand most conflicts that have taken place in recent history. Just as we saw earlier, the Jews are reacting to the generational scars inherited by them for centuries. At the same time, Palestinians, who suddenly saw their land usurped by a hurriedly drawn British plan, readily responded when a power hungry group like Hamas stoked their scars and called upon them to take up arms for extracting revenge.
In the Indian subcontinent, we see this deadly round robin of scars and revenge spill blood almost on a daily basis. Hindus and Muslims here have had a bitter rivalry going back to hundreds of years, starting from the Turkish invasions and their battles with Hindu kings, all the way to the Partition of 1947 which saw hundreds of thousands massacred along religious lines and millions displaced. Till today, Hindus contest that they have been on the receiving end ever since Muslims invaded their land and culture, and therefore, they have every right to retaliate. Muslims, on the other hand, believe they are always unfairly targeted for the brutalities of their ancestors, and that the victimisation claim of the Hindus is just their excuse to dominate over them. Over this entire course, there has been no honest attempt for reconciliation, no offers to own up to the misdeeds of the past, and no efforts made to seek and give forgiveness to each other.
In my opinion, that is exactly what needs to be done. The only way to end the ever-perpetuating chain of scars and revenge is to cut the chain once and for all.
All victims of violence seek closure. In its absence, they seek redemption and revenge. Hence, the best way to stop the wounds from festering is to provide them with a healing touch. The way it can be done is to have the communities first acknowledge that they committed atrocities on other groups, irrespective of whether they did it centuries ago or recently. Then, they tender apologies — honest, heartfelt admissions of guilt that they committed violence on humanity — apologies which need to be complemented by forgiveness from the other communities. Perhaps, the widely respected religious and spiritual leaders could take a lead in offering such apologies on behalf of their followers, which must, then, be accompanied by forgiveness from those who have suffered. These acts need to be initiated from both ends — Muslims and Hindus, Muslims and Jews, Brahmins and Dalits, Shias and Sunnis, British and Irish — each warring pair has a lot of issues to resolve amongst each other, without any intervention from a third party.
I am aware that conducting such an exercise seems extremely far-fetched, almost impossible, in the current hyper-charged, hyper-polarised world. The sheer amount of historical baggage between people of different religions and sects prevents them from taking a pause and coming out of the deadly vortex of violence and revenge. And matters are made even more complicated by power hungry politicians who see any effort of peace and reconciliation as meek surrender, not ‘masculine’ enough for them. After all, if people start to co-exist peacefully, how will they stoke up the scars, divide people into voting blocks and reap electoral dividends?
Thus, the clamour for carrying out such a massive and revolutionary activity has to come from the common men and women. The ones who have really suffered. The ones who are fed up by their daily ordeals of surviving, of seeking or receiving revenge, of seeing human beings slit each other just because they were born under different labels and geographies. It is only up to us to cleanse the entire vitiated atmosphere of whataboutery — where we keep justifying our violence by referring to the violence of the other side — and usher in conversations around peace, harmony and other critical global issues like global warming, hunger and health. Only when the blood-soaked chains of scars and revenge are broken, and creepers of apologies and forgiveness bloom, is when we would finally see an end to caste and communal violence that has battered and bruised generations of humanity around the world.
(This insight is the central plot of my debut novel “Fireflies from the Future”. You can check it out on Amazon.)
