Sometimes, it is the very idea of being at war that makes ordinary people see each other as enemies with enough aggressive passion to go for each other’s throats. Grotesque as the thought is, ironically, the tentative nature of the source of this dark passion is also the spark of hope. It means that the minute the idea of being at war is removed, the enmity between people too can evaporate.
Jolle Demmers explains this strange and menacing, yet transformative power of the idea of war beautifully in her book Theories of Violent Conflict: An Introduction. She uses the last scene in the classic 1980 Second World War Hollywood film, The Big Red One, written and directed by Samuel Fuller, with Lee Marvin in the lead as an infantry sergeant, to illustrate the point. The story was apparently based on Fuller’s own traumatic experience of war as a former soldier.
I bought and watched the movie. It depicts a time when the war had turned dreary. For a few American privates trudging through a forest, each day had come to mean no more than negotiating the danger of violent death to live another day. Then, on a foggy day of this normalised survival routine, the figure of a German soldier emerges from the mist in the distance, appearing to want to surrender.
The sergeant ducks to avoid being sighted, draws his combat knife and waits. Once close enough, he lunges at the man and stabs him. He would have stabbed the grounded German again to confirm the kill, but a fast-approaching commotion takes his attention away. It turns out that the noisy men are another group of American soldiers excitedly shouting at them that the war ended four hours ago.
Though bewildered initially, the message soon registers. The sergeant and his men gather their stuff and prepare to leave when a soldier shouts out from behind that the German soldier is still breathing.
All the men rush to the fallen man. They desperately give him first aid and manage to resuscitate him. The sense of relief, especially of the sergeant, is palpable. As they prepare to carry the wounded man away, the sergeant murmurs between clenched teeth in a barely-audible, soldierly tone: “You better not die, or I will blow up your brain.”
The absurdity of war could not have been better portrayed. Rendered equally ridiculous is how war manages to segregate perfectly normal people into friends and enemies, not based on any personal rivalries or misgivings, but solely on the idea of belonging to one side or the other of the warring fence.
Confounding as this attribute of war is, it also exposes a vulnerability of ordinary people, communities and even national populations. A vulnerability that demagogic populist public figures and those aspiring to be one have, time and again, successfully exploited to buttress their leadership standings by erecting imaginary, often unsubstantiated, warring fences.
To many people in conflict-torn Manipur, this picturisation of war—written by Fuller and theorised on by Demmers—would seem almost a profile of what they have been going through over the past three years. This will be confirmed by most who have been frequenting the many relief camps of conflict-displaced people, not with the intent of finding alibis to validate their preconceived biases—as so many ambulance-chasing journalists and fact finders have done, accentuating the divide—but to listen with empathy to the woes of those who have lost homes and loved ones.
On the surface, the familiar pattern is to be confronted with angry posturing by those in these relief camps that all their miseries are on account of their hated enemies on the other side of the conflict fence. But as emotions settle, answers to non-probing queries such as how they would define their pre-conflict relationships with their once neighbours, now “enemies”, the answers are telling and touching. They were normal neighbours, often bound by the supply-and-demand chains of a common market.
Many recall the “others” as friends, having studied in the same schools and colleges, or engaged in the same occupations or were even small-time business partners. If any bore ill will at all, these were the usual quotidian grudges—like shopkeepers complaining of uncleared credit purchases by those who are now on the other side of the fence.
Then suddenly, for reasons not many of them comprehend fully, everything utterly changed and darkness descended. Those who were their friends and acquaintances once transformed into sworn enemies.
Although Manipur’s ethnic conflict has compounded, with the Nagas now dragged into the fray, making it wider than a two-way fight between the Meiteis and Kuki-Zo tribes, given this background of pre-conflict relations, it is not altogether unimaginable that the second part of Demmer’s conflict profile can become a reality. Despite all the atrocities and losses suffered by either side, once the idea of being at war is put to rest, things can as suddenly change again—this time for the better.
Numerous unpublicised meetings between different groups of people from either side of the conflict fence have been happening all throughout the three years, and those who have taken part in even some of these will have reason never to have lost faith in the old bondages ultimately prevailing over the conflict.
These interactions are now becoming more formal and open. The latest evidence is the July 31 visit by leaders of three important Zomi organisations, travelling from Churachandpur to Imphal across the conflict fence, to plead with Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand to strengthen mutual trust among the communities.
The harsh reality realised is that there are never any real winners in any conflict. The other truth that no meaningful reconciliation is possible if any party is left feeling a loser is also beginning to dawn. The effort now hopefully will be for all to try and understand each other’s genuine grievances and insecurities, and address them to find a common ground to live together in peace again.
Pradip Phanjoubam | Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics
(Views are personal)
(phanjoubam@gmail.com)