Public space needs to be secured for allowing people to live freely with their set beliefs and identities. There has been enough of vengeance against one another. Therefore, time has come for nations to work towards common interests, writes Raj liberhans
Recently, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte used offensive language against US President Barack Obama like the way he did it for the Pope. The Chinese, no less petulant, refused a landing staircase, forcing the visiting US President to exit his majestic Air Force One through the rear.
Elsewhere, men, women and children are dying in hundreds of thousands for no fault except that they happen to have been born in these fractious times in what have become contested geographies of the day. The colour of the skin still continues to decide one’s fate and any other shade but white is more than likely to shorten your life span. If it is not the colour, then it has to be religion, or caste.
This is happening more than a century and half after slavery was abolished, 50 years after the segregation policy was abandoned in America and 70 years after the United Nations Charter has been adopted by almost every country in this world. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights now lies in tatters and country after country, from democracy to dictatorship, is contented with facile tributes to the common hopes and aspirations, at ceremonial gatherings in swanky palaces around the world capitals. It is not the human rights that are sought to be strengthened against assault, but how much they need to be curbed because of assaults on unjust laws. We have all kinds of international platforms to and for brothers-in-arms calling for their kind of preferred world order to prevail over the universally equitable one. Islamic State, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, and more, are preaching to their adherents the superiority of their ideals deserving devotion and aggressive universalisation. In reaction, Governments are asserting their right to eliminate opposition in their countries where the interests — economic or geo-politic — of the ruling elite, are in peril, while notionally rooting for the cause of democracy, participative governance and the welfare of humanity.
The justification for all the nation’s policy moves is single-minded pursuit of self-interest, best obtained by hunting in like-minded packs and groups. The contestations have multiplied as a result. Pakistan wants strategic depth, hence the need to dominate Afghanistan. China wants to control access to South China Sea, little matter that the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague holds to the contrary. West Asia is on a sim; Turkey is too. Only 71 years after the Second World War ended and the world promised to work through peace, the UN is looking dejected and helpless. Not to get isolated on the world stage, is the key challenge. So, spot the winning combination and stay with it.
So also, it is for the individual. Self-interest guides a person’s every venture across the landscape of human interaction. This volume of self-interests can only cause conflict. But if you hunt in packs, then survival is assured. Precisely, the outcome that ought to have been feared and has been avoided, has really come to pass in our lives. The response of the state to all conflict is the biased use of the penal code in varying degrees of severity which only intensifies the anger and gives added energy to the conflicts.
leaders have resorted to grievance-mongering agitations and they often lose control over direction and miss the moment to effect reconciliation, thereby forgetting the cause. The end result is an even more volatile society with conflict genes inherent as they are, which awaits a conducive moment to re-ignite passions. It is easy to light the fire, but who will get consumed is not possible for the fire to discriminate.
‘We take no prisoners’ is the new paradigm. To negotiate or even be seen to want to meet your opponent half-way is a sign of genetic weakness and only shows that your moral fibre is plastic material. To wear a perpetual frown on the face with fake anger is masculinity personified, and when deprived of a personal privilege not sanctioned by law or civic reciprocity, enlarge the grievance into a national calamity. We are not angered by the sufferings or poverty of the millions in this country whose rights and opportunities have been laid waste by the heartlessness of the governing elite.
The only way for nations and individuals to go forward is to work for common interests. Governments have to govern in common interest and not for partisan benefits. Religion is in personal space; let the individual choose his or her own path to salvation, or hell as is the person’s wont. At least we need to keep the public space to give everyone a chance to wear their identity and belief without threat. Governments of all nations need to eradicate the vipers generating so much vicious poison.