Abbas
Zaidi teaches media and linguistics at various universities
in Sydney. He is the author of The Infidels of Mecca.
He can be reached at: hellozaidi@gmail.com
Writing
in History of the Peloponnesian, Thucydides makes
several observations about waging, winning, or losing a war.
The strong do not wage a war because they are strong since
they know that their very strength can push them into errors
that are not the makings of their enemies. Thus, he posted
an important dictum in his book: “I am more afraid of
our own blunders than of the enemy’s devices.”
In
a similar vein, Sun Tzu offers his own dictum: “If you
know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result
of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy,
for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If
you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb
in every battle.”
From
Mao to Jinping through Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese have not
lost a single battle, let alone a war because they never initiated
one. We may say that war is not a project that responsible
people start without realizing its long-term effects. Often,
both the victorious and the vanquished are losers in one way
or another. Reading the social history of warfare will show
that even the ‘comprehensive’ winners’ societies—or
people in general—had to pay a heavy price for the wars
that their ruling elites won.
The
above details are better viewed in terms of history, a kind
of look-back view. Often, wars do not end when physical hostilities
cease, but at the negotiating table. The two Great Wars bear
witness to it. It would, thus, be a truism to say that one
of the lessons of history is that war is a terrible undertaking
and must be avoided unless all the negotiatory possibilities
have been explored and exhausted. And who can talk about the
issue better than those who fight wars?
Tahir
Malik and his colleagues’ Warriors after the War
have done what few historians, political scientists, or journalists
have done. The book is a collection of interviews with almost
all the major generals who participated in various wars between
India and Pakistan. Their thesis is that the origins of India-Pakistan
animosities are found in the very division of India that opened
several wounds and left them unhealed. Their sub-thesis is
that both India and Pakistan feel vulnerable (“fearful,”
is the expression they use) to each other’s intentions.
Grievances against each other are the leitmotif that underpins
their mutual animosity.
To
elicit responses from their interlocutors—military men—the
authors are as qualitatively objective as possible, conducting
ethnographic investigations based on a questionnaire. Every
respondent is asked the same questions.
The
questionnaire invites them to ‘look back’ and
tell: What happened? The answer is: War. Why did it happen?
The answer is: Because the other side is at fault? Could it
have been avoided? The answer is: Yes, only if the other side
had been fair.
The
ethnographic data is comprised of two parts: the Indian response
and the Pakistani response.
The
Indian view is that Pakistan never accepted the details of
Partition and has been trying to destabilize its larger neighbour
through infiltration and acts of terrorism. In contrast, the
Pakistani view claims that India never accepted Pakistan’s
sovereign existence from the very beginning. For India, Kashmir
is a fait accompli, a fact of Partition. For Pakistan,
Kashmir is an unfinished fact of Partition that seeks its
resolution in its accession to Pakistan. India has been insisting
that Kashmir is its atoot ang, an inseparable part.
For Pakistan, Kashmir is its shehrag, the jugular
vein. Both physical/physiological expressions confirm the
tangibility of the issue.
Indian
generals claim that Pakistan has always been the aggressor
who has taken advantage of India’s generosity—an
abstract term. Pakistani generals claim that the problem is
the Hindu mentality—again, an abstract term. Thus, between
the materiality of the terra firma where wars are
waged and the ideality of terra incognita where ideas
fly, the India-Pakistan conundrum lives on. The Indian generals
make it clear that India never attacked Pakistan, not even
once. Their Pakistani counterparts insist that the wars were
inevitable, the result of Indian machinations. Sadly, the
good times, when the generals on both sides were colleagues
employed by the British Empire, did not create a goodwill
capital (yet another abstract term, perhaps). Tahir Malik
et al aptly point out that the main stage of the
post-Partition violence was Punjab. They could have said that
the Punjabi generals, especially on the Pakistan side where
they dominate the army, could have shown better judgment.
In Pakistan, unlike in India, the real decisions are made
by the army, not politicians. However, they offer no verdict,
which is in line with their objective stance.
To
conclude, this is a significant work of ethnographic scholarship.
It should be made part of several syllabi in India and Pakistan
to show why the military mind does not—perhaps cannot—offer
profound insights to those who want to end the business of
war. But then, ending the business of war is one thing; but
then wars becoming business is another matter. Typically,
it is the generals who make war history. However, to make
the genre of war history is one thing; learning or not learning
a lesson from it is another.
By
Abbas Zaidi:
The
Man Who Would Be Remembered
