Of war and disquiet

Whenever I watch action movies, I often wonder, why so many henchmen of the villain rushes to the hero, wanting to hurt/kill him, just because their boss ordered them. Was it loyalty? Or fear of the repercussions of disobedience? Or belief in the power of mob? Whatever the case may be, just on the order of their boss, fully knowing what they are doing would be absolute crime from every angle, they never hesitate to pick weapon to fight. They may even get killed, wounded, lose their near and dear, at times arrested (sic) as well. Somehow they are convinced that they do the right thing for themselves or for their dependents, if at all they have any, by resorting to violence. Are they brainwashed into believing that they need to put their life before their leader’s or merely being paid for violence makes them do such heinous things? Whatever may be the reason, organized crime, sponsored violence are something that I detest to the core irrespective of the reason and especially when they are glorified on screen or on media. The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, possibly rest of Europe would be apt, is a definite reminder to everyone on how futile life is in this world and is the reason behind this post.

The one common factor that ties up military and police or any service personnel in government is – obey! Irrespective of the consequences, the concept of obedience is drilled onto them at every possible way possible. There was even an movie in tamil recently that was on police training and its gory behind the scene problems. But there again, as per the norm of present corp of movies, the evil or the bad guy triumphs because the concept of one solitary hero, gathering a crowd to fight a well established system has gone out of favor along with MGR, Rajini era. But the underlying fact that, officers are trained and tortured to obey their seniors has often been shown as the reason for many wrong doings and those who give orders are often picturized as monsters. But what beats me is, where goes the conscience of that silent majority? Is it fear of consequences or is it sheer lack of will or unbothered by the happenings around them? If at all the Russian soldiers had thought for a bit before taking up arms against those who were their fellow brethren couple of years back, we wouldn’t be seeing so much death and destruction on a daily basis for last 2 months. In fact this is actually world war 3, even though it is clubbed as a fight between 2 countries. Considering all those countries that explicitly support Ukraine and those that implicitly support Russia, including those EU nations who covertly depend on Russia for their energy needs, it is already a war that has spread across 3 continents. I wonder what the students of history, ten years from now will be learning about this war, if at all it is covered in their syllabus. Our history books needs a major revamp on the wars that have happened, happening and potentially in the lead up to occur in near future. Rather than just whitewashing them as imperialism, colonialism, apartheid the historians should teach the students, few of whom would be in a position to decide the course of future wars on the cause and effect around the same. Rather than taking sides, it can be made as an activity or assignment for the students to come up with their view points. It has to be drilled into their minds repeatedly that, obedience has its merits across every possible front but not at the cause of keeping silent when wrong things are happening around.  

If at all anything, this war has shown the world a mirror to itself on its hypocrisy and helplessness. The megalomania level ego of the so called leaders of the free world and the mess globalization has created. The advantage of geography has shown its power over history and common sense. As mentioned on the title, there is never and no peace after any war. For the embers take much longer to subside and the mirror of peace that got shattered remains impossibly difficult to regain its semblance. Until every family that lost a member, every person who lost his livelihood, every kid who got orphaned, every business that got shutdown and every human who went hungry into the night have their sense of justice, no war can be claimed as complete. We are reaping what was sown from those that happened decades ago and rather than putting the fires out, we are hell bent on recreating newer ones. May the coming generations have better sense and forgive us all for the sins we are unable to stop from being committed in our names by the so called leaders.