It is humanity that is always killed. Killing of human
lives and mutilation of human existence is the crudest manifestation of it and
has continued since the dawn of the civilization.
Hunting, gathering and shifting of nomads, war between
early human settlements, imperialist wars, religious wars, rebellions, civilization
clashes, world wars, racial wars, Holocaust, cold wars, internal and
state-sponsored terrorism – it is always the humanity that is killed; it is
always the human lives that are sacrificed.
It has continued to this age of the ‘global village
hypothesis and has got embedded in the developments-on-work to realize the
‘hypothesis’. And the way the 20th Century has been and the 21st
Century has begun, the human killing is going to continue unabated.
Nations have replaced the empires and politicians have
donned the roles of the kings. And ‘many kings’ and ‘changing kings’
only exacerbate an existing perennial problem – the human greed.
The line between the need to survive and the need to
please the greed has always been very thin and with increasing avenues to
corner more of the limited resources in increasingly layered societies (or
to say territorialized civilizations), it is fast losing its
distinctiveness.
The modern-day structure of the existing civilizations has
come into the shape after the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, the subsequent
Industrial Revolution and the resultant European greed (and not quest)
to rule over the world.
The world or the ‘global village’ (more in economic
terms than for the concerns of the human parity), of the day has had its
genesis in that human greed.
This greed had given the world two world wars in the last
century killing tens of millions. This greed had given the humanity Holocaust, an
unimaginable manifestation of dark nature of the human civilization. This greed
had given the world a prolonged cold war that killed millions in the covert war
between the two superpowers eager to widen their influence territories in the
world. They promoted open and covert wars; war between the nations; wars in the
nations.
In the last century, when the colonial empires and the belligerent
nation states like Germany, Italy and Japan were bowing out, newer
imperialist powers were taking shape. And therefore, the end of the colonial
imperialism didn’t change much. Instead, the world became a battleground for
the ‘formations’ of the greed of these newer nations (read
democratically and autocratically run empires) or the ‘global
superpowers’.
It left a legacy of distraught borders between many
nations. It left a legacy of puppet leaders in many nations controlled by the
superpowers. It left a legacy of regular covert wars to increase the
territorial influence by stuffing (yes stuffing) more and more nations
in the respective camps (of superpowers). It left a legacy that gave rise to
global terrorism and a breed that generates terrorists across the globe now.
It left a legacy of irresolvable controversies (more of
human greed) between the nations and in the nations.
By the time, the cold war collapsed in the last decades of
the last Century, these irresolvable controversies had become monstrous in
their contours. And the rise of a multi-polar world with no real ‘supercop
like superpower’ only worsened the situation.
The nation states used as dummies by the super powers had
become a sorry state of affairs. They had either installed democracy or the
autocracy of monarchy or military. Many continue to remain so. But many, after
the end of the cold war, could not assess where to go. They have lurched
between failed democracies to oppressive autocracies. They continue to remain
so. And the resultant chaos perfectly suits the greed of the ruling class, be
it democratically elected or autocratically installed.
They needed a diversion and it came in the form of
‘nationalist rhetoric’. And the legacy of the distraught borders served pretty
well to interests of the greedy class. The ruling classes in these countries
indoctrinated the imaginations of the populations stuffing them with fear of
the enemy in the next country beyond the border. They branded the whole
countries as evils and force-fed this imagery. And they have successfully, with
varying degree of failure, done so, establishing their rule. In such countries,
the ruling faces change but the indoctrination remains the same. And today, such courtiers are the biggest sponsors
of terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism, the war killing tens of thousands
every year.
Alternatively, in case of civil war in nations, the
similar developments happened on ethnic and religious lines. Here too, the
leaders of one community exploited the fear and hatred sentiments of the masses
to engage them in fighting for their own borders. Such ethnical and racial
cleansing is still killing tens of thousands every year in many parts of the
world.
The killing machinery having its origin in human greed has
continued unabated in every such nation escalating the spectacle of an outbreak
of man-made human calamity in future.
The condition is especially carcinogenic in autocratically
run countries with controversial borders or countries with disturbed internal
atmosphere like China, North Korea, many other African, Asian and South
American nations like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Congo,
Somalia, Syria, and Sudan to name a few (yes, there are many!).
I have written in context of the state-sponsored killing
of Sarabjit Singh in a jail of Pakistan: Sarabjit Singh was an Indian
national who strayed in Pakistan
from his village on India-Pakistan border. Victim of mistaken identity, he was prosecuted
for spying and was sentenced to death though he was never given fair hearings.
He spent over two decades in Pakistani jail. With
increasing international pressure and a good response by India in releasing Pakistani prisoners
languishing in Indian jails, the rulers of Pakistan were facing tough
questions on not releasing Sarabjit.
The Military and ISI (Intelligence) combination that runs Pakistan saw it
as a threat as the civilian government could have released Sarabjit and it
would have been a serious step in improving people-to-people contact between the
two nations and could have served to lessen the hostile imagery. That would be
ominous for the Pakistan Military that has ruled the country most of the time
since its origin after the Indian Independence in 1947 feeding on the evil-imagery
of India in Pakistan. A
poor country with insufficient resources and chronic corruption, the rulers in Pakistan need some diversion and a ‘hostile India
in the perception of the common Pakistani’ has served well to their scheming.
But, as the Sarabjit issue had become a matter of national
politics in both the countries with some Pakistani groups advocating for a fair
trial to Sarabjit and his release, they could not have him eliminated by
hanging or shooting out.
So, the cowards as they have been, sponsoring state-run
terrorism and back-stabbings, they got Sarabjit killed in a plot where some
inmates of the Pakistani jail, where Sarabjit was lodged, brutally assaulted
him that ultimately took his life today.