The Dead Rise To Kill The Living
By SALMAN AKHTAR The Times of India | JULY 26, 2005 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1182268.cms (The writer is professor of psychiatry at Jefferson University, Philadelphia.) Politicians manipulate myth, history to trigger violence During a brief academic stint in the Yugoslavian capital of Belgrade in the early 1990s, I expressed a wish to visit Marshall Tito's grave. Having grown up in post-Independence India, I had idolised the leaders of non-aligned nations Jawaharlal Nehru, Srimavo Bandaranaike, Sukarno, Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Jomo Kenyatta and Tito. So when the opportunity to pay homage to a childhood hero appeared, I was readily drawn to it. My hosts, however, treated my wish to visit Tito's grave with polite indifference. Tito, it turned out, was a Croat and had been labelled a megalomaniac who had done Yugoslavia no good. He was declared persona non grata by Serbians, who now controlled the nation. My hosts were Serbs. They despised Tito and, while offering me great hospitality in all other matters, made sure I did not visit the old man's grave. In retrospect, their attitude appears remarkably benign. Just compare it with what their leader, Slobodan Milosevic, did a few years later. Interestingly, the grave of a famous person figured prominently in his genocidal campaign against Albanians, Kosovars, and Bosnian Muslims. Aiming to stir up hatred, Milosevic dug up the 700-year-old grave of the Serbian king Lazar who was killed by Ottoman Turks. Milosevic carried his exhumated remains in a coffin on a cross-country excursion. He arranged the coffin to be buried at each stop of his sojourn, only to be resurrected the next morning. This political ploy was aimed at purifying these towns and reminding their Serbian population that they had been humiliated by the Turks. It was directed at labelling the Muslim population of southern parts of Yugoslavia as descendants of these invaders. That 700 years had since passed did not seem to matter. Through grotesque dramatisation of the centuries-old Serbian defeat, a collapse of time was achieved. A scar was transformed back into a wound, and a modern hatred was manufactured out of a diabolical use of history. The result was an outpouring of Serbian rage and massacre of ethnic minorities. Over 100,000 people were killed. At the refugee camp of Srebrenica alone, 8,000 Muslim men and boys were shot to death in a matter of days. The irony that a grave played a role in creating more graves was too subtle to find notice in the midst of such mayhem. The fact, however, is that Tito's and Lazar's graves are not the only ones that have figured in inter-ethnic conflicts. Vandalism directed at Jewish cemeteries is an everyday staple of the resurgent anti-Semitism in Europe. Closer home, the targets of destruction during the infamous Gujarat riots included the grave of the revered, and arguably the first, Urdu poet, Wali Gujrati (1667-1707). One wonders what he could have done to deserve the wrath of Hindu mobs. What do dead people have to do with communal violence? Why do their resting places get involved in ethnic conflict? Such questions lead us to how group emotions utilise ethnic symbols for sustaining coherence or unleashing violence. During periods of societal calm, ethno-religious and national symbols (flags, places of worship and historical monuments) provide a group with a sense of pride and solidarity with its lineage and ideals. During periods of turbulence, however, such pride can turn into ethnic grandiosity. More ominous is the accompanying contempt for another group's emblems and icons. The destruction of New York's World Trade Center towers, the Bamiyan Valley Buddhas in Afghanistan and Babri masjid at Ayodhya as well as the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue that loomed over the city of Baghdad are manifestations of an angry group's desire to attack symbols of its enemy. After all, these symbols embody proud memories and historical linkages of the despised group. Demolishing a church or temple, disfiguring a grave and destroying a community's monument are all attempts at cultural genocide. To violate a group's icons is to attack its honour. What drives people to do such dastardly deeds? In my view, self-centred, charismatic leaders induce emotional regression in their followers in periods of economic uncertainty. Through fierce and one-sided rhetoric, they cause the group to put reason aside and become sentimental. They declare another group to be the cause of the economic strife that actually everyone is up against. They then remind their group of past humiliation at the hands of the other group and imply that similar injuries are being inflicted upon them. Finally, they inflate group pride by recounting past glories. The three strategies transform a cauldron of emotions into an inferno. Human lives are not the only objects laid on the pyre. Material things and structures as well as myths and rituals are destroyed. And, when the orgy of bloodletting looks for more outlets, the graveyard becomes the next stop. What would Wali Gujrati have said? ------------------------ Yahoo! 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