[spectre] [Reader-list] Understand the Whispers by Rajeev Bhargava

[Inke Arns]

[cross-posted from the Sarai Reader-list, greetings, -i]


From: Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha@sarai.net>
Subject: [Reader-list] Understand the Whispers by Rajeev Bhargava
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 13:19:18 +0530

Dear Readers,

here is a text that has been sent in by Rajeev Bhargava, a political
philosopher in New Delhi, on the moral dilemmas that are being obscured by
the rhetoric of war and vendett in the aftermath of September 11.

Shuddha
______________________________________________________________

Understand the Whispers
Rajeev Bhargava

In India, as elsewhere, every person understood the cry for help: the
horror and fear writ large on terror stricken faces, the trauma in the
choked voices of people who saw it happen, the hopeless struggle to control
an imminent breakdown in public, the unspeakable grief. For one moment, the
pain and suffering of others became our own.

In a flash, everyone recognised what is plain but easily forgotten that
inscribed in our personal selves is not just our separateness from others
but also sameness with them,that despite all socially constructed
differences of language, culture, religion, nationality, perhaps even race,
caste and gender, we share something in common. Amidst terror, acute
vulnerability and unbearable sorrow, it was not America alone that
rediscovered its lost solidarity. In these cataclysmic events, all people
across the globe reclaim their common humanity.

As we empathised with those who escaped or witnessed death, and re-lived
the traumatic experience of those who lost their lives, we knew a grave,
irreparable wrong done to individuals, killed, wounded or traumatised by
the sudden loss of family and friends. These individuals were not just
subjected to physical hurt or mental trauma, they were recipients and
carriers of a message embodied in that heinous act. From now on they must
live with a dreadful sense of their own  vulnerability. This message was
transmitted first to other individuals in New York and Washington, then
quickly to citizens throughout the democratic world. The catastrophe on the
east coast has deepened the sense of insecurity of every individual on this
planet.  

However, this was not the only message sent by the perpetrators. Others are
revealed when we focus on our collective identities. These messages are
disturbingly ambivalent, morally fuzzy. They are less likely to sift good
from evil, more likely to divide than unite people across the world.  

One such message which the poor, the powerless and the culturally
marginalised would like communicated to the rich, powerful and the
culturally dominant is this: we have grasped that any injustice done to us
is erased before it is seen or spoken about; that in the current
international social order, we count for very little; our ways of life are
hopelessly marginalised, our lives utterly valueless. 

Even middle-class Indians with cosmopolitan aspirations became painfully
aware of this when a country-wide list of missing or dead persons was
flashed on an international news channel: hundreds of Britons, scores of
Japanese, some Germans, three Australians, two Italians, one Swede. A few
buttons away, a South Asian channel lists names of several hundred missing
or dead Indians, while another flashes the names of thousands with messages
of their safety to relatives back home. 

Intangible wounds

Hard as it is to talk of this right now, it must be acknowledged that the
attacks on New York and Washington were also meant to lower the collective
self-esteem of Americans, to rupture their pride. Not all intentional
wrong-doing is physically injurious to the victim, but every intentionally
generated physical suffering is   invariably accompanied by intangible
wounds. The attack on September 11 did not merely demolish concrete
buildings and individual people. It tried to destroy the American measure
of its own self-worth, to diminish the self-esteem of Americans. 

Quite separate from the immorality of physical suffering caused, isn’t this
attempt itself morally condemnable? Yes, if the act further lowers the
self-worth of  people with little enough. But this is hardly true of
America, where the ruling elite ensures that its collective self-worth
borders supreme arrogance, always over the top. Does not the Pentagon
symbolise this false collective pride? 

Amidst this carnage, then, is a sobering thought.It occurs more naturally
to poor people of powerless countries. Occasionally, even the mighty can be
humbled. In such societies, the genuine anguish of people at disasters
faced by the rich is mixed up with an unspeakable emotion which, on such
apocalyptic occasions, people experience only in private or talk about only
in whispers. 

I have spoken of two dimensions to the message hidden in the mangled
remains of the destruction of September 11. The moral horror of the
individual dimension of the carnage is unambiguous and overwhelming. But as
we pause to examine its collective dimension, a less clear, more confusing
moral picture emerges. How, on balance, after putting together these two
dimensions, do we evaluate this more complicated moral terrain? 

The answer has to be swift and unwavering. For now, the focus must remain
on the individual and the humanitarian. To shift our ethical compass in the
direction of the collective weakens the moral claims of the suffering and
the dead. This is plainly wrong. Nor is it enough to make merely a passing
reference to the tragedy of individuals, a grudging concession before the
weightier political crimes of a neo-imperial state are considered. The
moral claims of individuals are currently supreme. 

But we cannot permanently screen off the collective dimension. To do so
would obstruct our understanding of how tragedies of individuals can be
prevented in future; in any case, in the long run it extends another
already existing moral  wrong. 

Victim must not turn perpetrator

>From all accounts, the victims in America have reacted with quiet dignity
in the face of  overwhelming grief. But there is also a growing moral
revulsion and perhaps an understandable expression of the need for
vengeance. Even as some people unfairly, even preposterously, become the
victims of this newest hatred, the American President has promised revenge. 

Can anything be wrong with hating ruthless strategists who achieve their
political goals by the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians? How
can it be wrong for a woman to hate the rapist who has permanently scarred
her, or for victims to hate leaders or organisers of mobs that lynched them? 

At issue here is not the feeling of an intense desire to hurt others in
order to gain advantage for oneself. Of course, malicious hatred is
obnoxious. But those who hate  the perpetrators of the carnage on September
11 are not driven by malice or spite. Hating the wrong-doer is not morally
inappropriate. If so, it must be morally permissible to desire to hurt the
wrong-doer. It is extremely abnormal if self-respecting persons do not
experience righteous anger, even hatred towards those who have wronged
them.There must be some room in our moral topography for what the
philosopher, Jeffrie Murphy calls retributive hatred.

Yet it may not be wise or morally appropriate for victims to act on these
feelings. It is imprudent because retaliatory action sparks off escalating
cycles of revenge and reciprocal violence. Retaliation by the US and
counter retaliation will almost certainly plunge the entire world into
greater suffering, pain, vulnerability and insecurity. Revenge can unleash
even greater tragedies. 

How do we make sure that today's victims do not  become tomorrow's
perpetrators of much worse? What if the original motive of revenge unravels
an unappeasable thirst for violence? If lessons of history teach us
anything at all, it is that the barbaric acts of one group solicit equally
barbaric acts from others. No matter on whom the first blow was struck, if
our aim is to terminate barbarism, then, it must be stalled now, suddenly,
and abruptly. In the shifting sands of the complex ethic at work here, the
entire moral advantage rests with victims of the immediate crime. If the
vision that generally motivates them is to come good eventually, it is
best, all things considered, to forgo the temptation to act on retributive
hatred and feelings of vengeance. 

Retribution, not revenge

To restrain vengeful motives is wise for another reason. Undoubtedly, the
massacre on the East coast is motivated by the desire to question the
economic, political and cultural supremacy of the USA in a radically
unequal world. If and when the mightiest nation in the world retaliates, it
will not be to grant equal status to offenders. It is rather more likely
that, by a massive display of strength, they will be shoved further back in
their less than equal place. The not so hidden text of American retaliation
will be an abject lesson to all to never again dare American supremacy. 

Will it surprise anyone if a disproportionate and symbolic show of force to
maim and crush the enemy flows from the very same motive of vengeance? It
is true, of course, that some acts of revenge are the wellspring of
equality and refute claims of supremacy  by wrong-doers. However, the
spectacular show of violence on September 11 and in the days to come is
likely to reveal a different,warped logic of alternating claims of
superiority. 

We need retribution for sure, but not revenge. In the days to come, we must
not be forced to witness ghost towns in other parts of the world with more
terror-stricken faces, choked voices, desperately crying for help. American
might must be restrained, perpetrators must be brought to book in an
international court of justice and tried for  crimes against humanity, our
common humanity. 

This would just be a beginning. To set a larger process of reconciliation
in motion, the messages of marginalised collectives hidden under the
gruesome rubble of Tuesday's destruction must be decoded and discussed by
moderates from all over the world. Only by properly understanding the
social, cultural and spiritual basis of self-respect in our troubled times
can we ever begin to address the problems violently thrown at us on
September 11. 

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