The Changing Nature of Conflicts

A hundred years back wars were fuelled by territorial ambitions and also the desire to assert one’s nationalistic identity. Examples of these include the Russo-Japanese wars and the Anglo-French wars fought in the early 19th century. The Second World War has brought about a paradigm shift in the causes that lead to an armed clash between two sides. What made the Second World War interesting was that the Axis Powers, who were primarily blamed for territorial aggressions, had their own reasons for fighting the Allies. Hitler with his brand of Nazism and racial superiority joined hands with Imperial Japan, who were looking to spread their wings and assert the Japanese identity, and Mussolini who had invented Fascism that valued nationalism, militarism and anti-communism.
This marked the beginning of an era where wars would be fought on the basis of ideologies that would be derived not only from socio-economic beliefs but also from beliefs in religious, cultural and racial superiority.

The Korean, Vietnam and the Afghanistan Wars were showdowns between communist and capitalist regimes while the Arab-Israeli conflicts were fought between Zionistic and Islamist cultures. The Islamic Fundamentalists started gaining ground after having tasted success in Afghanistan where the Communist ideology was defeated by a combination of religious fervor and capitalist interests. The 1990’s saw a radical breed of Islam gaining currency across different sectors of the world where people were mobilized in the name of religion and the dream of establishing a pan-Islamic rule. This was also the era when conflicts were reduced in size and increased in intensity and most importantly were fought within boundaries and not across them. The most notable among them would be the Kashmir Separatist movement in India, the Chechen struggle and most importantly the Taliban movement in the Afghanistan theatre. The 9/11 attacks, the London subway bombings and Mumbai blasts also served as reminders to the respective governments that the rules of engagement for these conflicts had changed significantly wherein civilian targets could be attacked without provocation.

The new millennium has added a new dimension to the cause of wars. In a recent speech the Prime Minister of India mentioned that the Naxalite movement was the single biggest threat to the internal security of the country and must be crushed. This movement has its roots in the economic disparity that is prevalent in certain parts of the Indian Territory. Although the Indian Economic success story is touted in various world forums it is an accepted fact that the Indian growth story has been an unequal one. The distribution of wealth is changing dramatically that could potentially lead to the disappearance of the Indian middle class that has served as a realistic and achievable aspiration in one’s quest for a natural economic progression. With the non-existence of the middle class the differential to cross in one’s lifetime would only be too great by which time it would have grown even wider. Currently these wars are being fought in the rural hinterlands of the country but I foresee a future where they might also be fought in the urban areas where people who earn a million rupees a month live alongside those who earn less than a hundred rupees a month.

Although the Naxalite movement may be local to India, it has been seen in a similar form in Nepal. It might not be presumptuous to say that a similar struggle may break out in a resurgent China which has thrown off the shackles of communism and is adopting an axiom which states that “It is glorious to be rich”. At the risk of sounding outlandish, a similar movement may also take roots in the United States where a growing immigrant population may not be able to reap the benefits of the American economic model. However, I suspect that the most vulnerable economies to this conflict would be the developing or the “Third World” ones which may not be able to ensure an equitable distribution of benefits due to the sheer size of its population and also the presence of a corrupt and self serving administration that does not recognize its responsibilities to the nation state.

There are countless exception to the thoughts that I have expressed, such as the Sri Lankan conflict, the Naga secessionist movement, the Irish struggle and Basque nationalism. The intent of this essay is to appreciate the changing reasons for the emergence of conflicts and also the battlegrounds to fight them. The War of the Twenty First Century may very well be fought in your own neighborhood between residents of a sprawling apartment complex and the inhabitants of a slum across the road.

The Teachers

The guru-shishya tradition of India is as old as our culture, dating back to the times of the Puranas and before. It has been extolled in the Upanishads where a Shanti Mantra starts with the invocation to the Almighty to protect both the student and the teacher. In the Ramayana the young princes of Ayodhya were sent to the gurukul of Vishwamitra to learn the principles of good governance and warfare. Even the revered Lord Krishna from whose divine lips the Gita came forth, learned the 64 arts and crafts from Sage Sandipani.

The respect accorded to these teachers was commensurate with their wisdom and the state ensuring that these humble men were allowed to continue their dedicated service to the refinement and dissemination of knowledge without undue hassles.

I remember my days in school when we looked up to our teachers in awe and parents held them in high esteem and regard. These men and women were aware of the responsibility that had been entrusted to them – that of shaping the character, value references and minds of the young boys and girls. There were quite a few teachers who had spent close to forty years of dedicated and selfless service and still taught with such enthusiasm that it would put us to shame.

But I sense something is terribly wrong .. When Amartya Sen talked about getting India’s primary education system on track he could not have been further from the truth. Teaching as a profession is dying .. I do not have statistics to quote but I can sense it in my observations and conversations. Out of the thousands of graduates who pass out of institutes of higher learning, I doubt if teaching would be the first choice of profession for them. I draw your attention to the word ‘first choice’, since this profession should not be taken up for lack of better options since it requires passion and dedication which can only come from an inner calling.

A deeper analysis will also show that teaching as a profession does not pay much in comparison to jobs behind blue and green trading terminals. At the end of the day every one of us desires to secure a sound future for our children and if the profession that we are pursuing does not offer the same then the anxiety to see our children succeed outweighs any passion that we would have had for teaching.

Offhand I can suggest remedial solutions for this issue … making teaching assignments more lucrative by offering pay hikes may not be the only way. We can start off contact programs targeting graduates where they are made conscious of this problem that is gripping us. We must tell them that numbers alone do not matter; it is the quality of input that is essential. They must sense the fact that institutions are not made by walls and lecture complexes; the ‘software’ is equally important. Teaching assistantship can be made a part of their curriculum where they can expose themselves to real time teaching assignments not only in colleges but if they desire then in schools too.

This problem must be studied well and most importantly soon… else we might have a world where there is nobody left to educate us.

Respect

As I tied up my shoe laces I glanced at my watch - the hands were slowly inching their way towards 9. A soft groan escaped my lips as I added on to my tally of being marked late for office. I made a dash to the kitchen, picked up a yellowed apple and tried to accomplish the twin activities of walking briskly and munching on it.
The only thing beautiful about the morning was the cricket field – the blades of grass shimmering in the winter sun and magnifying their ‘greenness’ with each passing day.

As a walked across the field, I spotted the curator and his assistant watering the cricketing pitch. Gazing at me the assistant raised his hands in a respectful ‘salaam’. And then he said – ‘Sir, I want to have a chat with you.’ He asked me if I was getting transferred out of the place. I said I would be moving out in a month. He told me that the news of my transfer had made him really sad and he was hoping that somehow I would get the order repealed and stay on. I brought a polite end to the conversation and kept on moving. I dismissed the words of the man as pure melodrama – an attempt to get closer to his sahib…

But I was proved wrong – throughout the day, lots of people came up to me and told me how sad they felt that I was leaving – these were the people with whom I had spent two years of my life in Munger – a town so obscure that people would not be able to pin point its location on the map of India. And that set me thinking – what had I done right over the past couple of years that made them feel so attached to me?

As I tried to remember the countless conversations that I had had in this place I remembered the words of a bartender – He had told me that what he found most striking about me was that about me was that I talked to everybody regardless of his or her social status in the same tone. ( I think it was more a subconscious action of my part rather than being intentional !! )

That set me thinking – in a world where we are so blinded by the color of money the nature of our relationships is not dictated by respect for man as an individual by his status in society. How often do we dismiss our maid servants with disdain! Would we treat our bosses in office in the same manner? Why is it that though we have evolved technologically, the quality of human relationships has been on a downward spiral?

History has shown that whenever a class of rulers has brutally oppressed its people, the tides of time have turned against them – The British Empire disintegrated slowly when it could no longer respect the right to self determination of its subjects. Closer home, the Dalits or the oppressed castes have roared to power in the state of Uttar Pradesh by sweeping the assembly polls. Centuries of oppression by the higher castes had stoked a desire for ‘social independence’ which inched its way to becoming a reality in the political battlefields of India.

If only we learn to respect each other…. Wouldn’t the world be a better place?