#SayNoToWar trended on Twitter around the end of Februaru amidst the loud calls for war from a particular section of people in both Pakistan and India. If at all a war starts, whose war will it be?
On February 13, 2019, a CRPF vehicle in Pulwama (Kashmir) was attacked by another vehicle carrying explosives, killing over 40 CRPF personnel. Minutes after the news broke, the Indian media was quick enough to grab the limelight with the help of catchy yet ridiculous hashtags including #IdentifyAntiNationals. The debates inside the air conditioned news rooms in Delhi and Mumbai began with a “burning question” – What should be India’s next step?
The usual participants of these debates must have had their dinner by 8pm and were ready to spread their ridiculousness and hate over national media. Some of them quoted names of movies like “Zero Dark Thirty” and the recent blockbuster “Uri: The Surgical Strike“, followed by a statement to the effect of “if something can be shown in movies, it sure can be replicated in the real world“. Nobody pointed out the absurdity of this. Instead people surrendered to it.
These kind of statements are commonly backed by the nation-wants-to-know anchor who, if I remember correctly, was constantly jumping out of his chair, shouting, and asking the government to teach Pakistan a lesson. It seemed the government did listen to him as the Indian Air Force crossed the Line of Control and successfully dropped bombs on the Jaish-e-Mohammed’s terrorist camps. The Ministry of External Affairs claimed to have eliminated over 300 terrorists. A day later, both the Pakistan Air Force and Indian Air Force were involved in a fight between their respective fighter jets. The attack ended with India shooting down two fighter jets from Pakistan and one Indian jet and pilot going missing. Pakistan, later, claimed to have the pilot in their custody. This paved way for more debates and more social media posts demanding the Indian government to declare a war on Pakistan. The social media posts from both countries indicated a deep sense of hatred for each other. This emotion of hate is not new for both the countries. It is an old one stirred again for the benefit of God knows who.
If at all a war happens, it will be a war of the news rooms. News rooms, on either side, situated miles away from the border, will be ready to do almost anything for a skyrocketing TRP. We live in a strange time with respect to the media, the fourth pillar of democracy. It is an age of hashtags. The cheekier the hashtag, the higher the TRP. To run a successful news channel, right now, in both countries, all you need is a hate-mongerer as the head of the channel, spreading only hate and not peace. Sometimes, if at all a peace-promoting piece comes out of their channel, they will be quick enough to counter it with 10 hate-spreading, mostly fake news pieces. At a time when the whole nation is vulnerable, one of the leading media house aired a clip from a video game claiming it as the evidence of the IAF attack.
Of course, one cannot blame the media entirely. The viewers of these debates too are equally, if not more, responsible for this. The passionate consumers of these chest-thumping and hate-mongering news debates seem to have put a label on their emotions, and it reads “India vs Pakistan”. Any sentence involving this lable will stir their emotions like a bhel puri and erupt like a volcano. As long as visually illiterate, gullible people, on either side of the border, keep consuming hate, nation-wants-to-know anchors will keep selling hate.
If at all war happens, it will be the war of the Elite and Urban Class. This, for me, is ironic. The Elite, who doesn’t care about inflation, poverty, drought or even elections, suddenly wakes up from their slumber of privilege with the hashtag #FinishPakistan or #FinishIndia. Their WhatsApp groups suddenly become a grievance cell where everyone drops condolence messages which are otherwise filled with memes and gossip. The same people claim to understand the ground situation of Kashmir without even visiting Kashmir once. They, who would rant against the government for a day’s strike, who feel helpless when their WiFi stops working, are eagerly waiting to teach Kashmir the lesson of ‘how to live’. The humanity deep down inside them comes out only if hate evokes it. That’s the reality of the world. It will be the war of The Elite and Urban Class. An opportunity for them to exercise their ‘patriotism’, even when they are otherwise concerned with their B-1/B-2 visa.
Ultimately, it will be the war of Politics and Politicians. It is a war waiting to happen. Like the media, the politicians very well know that hate sells like hot cakes. If you can divert hate towards a common enemy and bank upon that to get some votes, whats the harm? A war which should be against an ideology, against terrorism. will be easily converted into a war between two nations and two Prime Ministers. Two Prime Ministers—one at the end of his term and the other who has just started his stint in the office—have a lot on the line here. A defeat here can end their political career and a victory here can secure their powers. It will be a war of two men’s egos.
When this politics of hate is not questioned by the fourth pillar of democracy, the media, and the people, it is a free hand for the man in power. Also, one needs to understand that if the situation is resolved, if the hate ends, if the fight ends and peace prevails, there will be nothing left for these politicians to beg for votes and they will have no other place to divert the hate. If this situation ends, and ‘the Kashmir issue’ is resolved, people will start asking the important questions—about employment, about clean water, about inflation. Any political party, on either side, doesn’t want to end up there.
We live in a place where pure hate is more powerful than pure love, where our literacy rate is going up but we are becoming illiterate, where our opinions are not formed by the things we examine ourselves, but by somebody else’s propaganda.
A war against an ideology can never be successful with arms and ammunition. A new war is about to begin. It already has. A war against humanity where humans themselves are endorsing it.