Yes, there's a war somewhere, but life goes on...

The day it started, we gasped in horror. What, is this actually happening? We followed the news, drone by drone, bomb by bomb, paying attention as if the war depended on it. Schoolchildren killed. Outrage. Global grief—yes, that is still possible. Leaders killed. Anger. Third party cities attacked—third parties are not neutral. This thing is spreading. Worry. Dismay at how my country is handling this. Yours. Ours. Sea-lanes imperilled, then effectively closed.

Our cooking gas supply is going to be disrupted. Do we have enough gas in the cylinder? Our neighbours had their replacement cylinder delivered as usual. Switch to induction. Shopshopshop. There is no problem. If you book at 1145, you will get your replacement at 130. It’s the magic muhurtam for gas.

A hospital named after one of our own. A university. A research institution. Smithereens now.

Never mind but will petrol prices go up? I had planned to go on a road-trip next week but what if I cannot get petrol on the way? I heard that everything depends on petrol imports—not just motor fuel and cooking gas but pharmaceuticals and plastics and all sorts of things. Electricity. Oh god, no electricity, no motor, no water. No lift!

They are also bombing a neighbour now. Oh, that country is like a lingering itch. They bomb them like a chorus in their campaigns. It’s a wonder anyone is still left there. Including those terrorists they always say they are chasing. But wars have a long, long life. Unlike civilians they kill. Unlike homes they destroy.

There is no problem. The government says so. The government is talking to everyone on the phone everyday. There is no problem. We are the most important country in the world. Everyone listens to our wise counsel. But then, why is that country, our alter ego, our nemesis, our enemy, being called to mediate? What matters is to be more important than they are, always.

More bombs. More sabre-rattling. More speeches. More challenges. More death. So much more death. Destruction of things it took ages to build. Homes people scrimped and saved for. Bridges and roads and power plants governments took loans for. The bridal dress grandmothers and aunts embroidered. Bookshelves groaning with a lifetime’s collection, so many still unread. And still they fought, and still the wonder grew that they could hold their own as smartly and bravely as they do. (Sorry, Oliver Goldsmith!).

It’s getting really hot now. So sultry. We are planning to go to the hills. With climate change, we really need to regulate working hours for those who do manual labour in the sun. Also, between induction stoves and air-conditioners, electricity bills will be so high. Rising temperatures are a public health problem. No one will come to work. No one is coming to work because they have no gas to cook their food and eat. People are going back to their villages because they cannot cook and eat. At least there, they can use traditional fuels. It’s like COVID-19 all over again. That’s what the government is saying. Forebear, like you did during COVID-19. Why did these countries have to go to war?

“The guns spell money’s ultimate reason.” Stephen Spender got this right. Those who benefit from war are innumerable. Those who think it makes them more important. Indispensable. Those who think it enhances their power. Those who sell those lies. Those who grow in the shadow of the liars. Those who make the things people fight with, and those are innumerable, from the bullets to the aircraft to the software that powers the drones. Those who have secrets to hide behind the wanton killing of children in school and people on the run and scientists in a lab and fruit-sellers in a marker.

What are going to do in the summer holidays? Some writing. Catch that blockbuster I missed. Visit my native place (I hope it’s not inconvenient for them because of the gas situation. I already bought my tickets in January.). Read some novels. Prepare for next year. Get my house painted. Get the terrace water-proofed.

They heard the sound of planes or drones. They were too afraid to look. The windows were sealed shut anyway. The lights were out. Or, they would be out if there was power supply. Bottles of jam and jars of sweet biscuits and dry fruit were running low as tensions ran high. They did not have long to speculate. One minute they were huddling together in the middle room of their home. In the next, a bomb had hit their terrace, torn through the roof and detonated in the centre of their huddle.

10 kilos rice. 2 kilos toor dal. 2 kilos moong dal. 1 kilo each chana and urad. 500 gms tamarind—if you buy too much, there are insects in it. This humidity is like that. 1 litre cooking oil. 500 gms ghee. Get some ketchup, please. And we are out of mustard seeds, turmeric, cinnamon. Get a couple of packets of batter. And good to have frozen parathas, just in case.

Flour and sugar. Sometimes milk powder. The children have not tasted fresh milk in months. The little ones have forgotten the taste. In twenty years, they will be mocked—those who survive this—for obesity and diabetes prevalence, forgetting who made it impossible to get eggs and greens and other nutrition. Those people, they will discuss in fine dining establishments that serve the cuisines of the decimated, have no idea about nutrition.

4 weeks. 6 weeks. 8 weeks. 12 months. Time passes quietly and swiftly when you stop paying attention to the callous, vicious destruction of people’s lives. Even when villains and heroes are visible, there is too much to do in our own days to think much about them. Hard to sustain anger or concern or even a passing interest when the drama of everyday life asks so much of us. Stop already with the bad news and the endless outrage. It’s irritating. It’s a downer. It’s embarrassing that you won’t stop. You can’t do anything. I can’t do anything. Change the channel. Deal with the problems at hand.

And yet, if no one looks, no one asks, no one is angry, no one cares, then those who start wars to indulge their need to be cruel simply get away with it. The juggernaut started in one place, moved to another, then another. It is a marvel that anyone has the will or capacity to stop it. Should one join the juggernaut or to reinforce the barricades in its path? Those who can dither, confident of their innate righteousness. They have stopped counting the lives that are lost. They have stopped noticing the war. This is just what happens in the world.

 

Finding Words for Peace in a Season of War

 And so it has happened.

***

The terrorist attack targeting tourists in Pahalgam lifted the curtain on an eager chorus ready with war cries. Night after night in television studios and on location, they told us about the perfidy of the other side and whipped themselves into a vengeful frenzy, hoping that we would join them. They shouted so every household in the nation could hear them.

Beyond them, an enigmatic government escalated diplomatic measures, such as suspending the Indus Waters Treaty and cancelling visas, and spoke about giving the armed forces operational freedom.

***

Those of us that have spent our lives talking about peace and working towards it, one small task at a time, have watched in horror. We have preached to the choir of our friends and associates—because that is the extent of our reach. We have sat with our words because we have nowhere to put them. Our voices reach no one. We have reflected on how much agency and voice we have lost in the last decade or so. The sense of futility has equalled the horror felt as war-mongering voices have become louder.

***

On April 30, 2025, I wrote on Facebook:

Terror, or indeed any violence, by any actor, state or non-state, is wrong and its consequences are always tragic. The tragedy begins with its immediate victims, lingers in the vengeful anger we feed as we perform outrage and finally, decimates our own humanity--our ability to feel for others and our ability to think.

We can close the door on this by pausing. Feel deeply, but do not equate grief and solidarity with vengeance. Perform grief with care--for those directly hurt, for those indirectly affected. Perform care with thoughtfulness--that considers consequences, that considers who will pay the cost of what you demand, that considers the means more important than the ends.

Responding to violence with violence is always wrong. It always feels like it's now too late for pause, for patience or for dialogue, but it never is. When the chorus mounts, peace seems to be the talk of the weak and witless. But it is when the crisis is most acute that it is time to breathe. It is time to maintain balance. Rising vengefulness is a sign that one is becoming the other, or more truthfully, a sign that one IS the other.

At a time when I feel less confident in my agency as a citizen, I am writing this because my silence would be my failure.

It is Akshaya Tritiyai and I wish you peace. May peace abound--in our thoughts, in our lives and in the world!

***

Today, Indian cities will carry out civil defence drills with air raid sirens and sheltering. For people my age and older, this is reminiscent immediately of 1971.

We shifted school buildings, had two drills a day, ducked under tables, had blackout paper on our windows.

One evening, my father stepped out just before the air raid signal went out. He was on the road when there was a fly-by of Pakistani aircraft. We ran from our flat to our neighbours’ flat to shelter together with them—my great-grandmother, my cousin, my mother, my 1-year-old sister and I. My paternal grandmother came to stay in the middle of the fortnight long war and told us stories to keep us occupied during the blackout.

But nothing ever removed for me the memory of loss. I went to a school where students and teachers alike came from military households. Twice or thrice a day, we would hear announcements about fathers and husbands who had fallen. Those moments of silence remain with me today. They keep me here, writing, so there is no silence about war.

***

These disjointed pieces of writing are what I can manage today, like stuffing paper into the cracks in a crumbling wall, hoping to keep the wind and water out. Not doing even this is worse than its pointlessness.

***

When civilians glorify the military and the sacrifices of those who serve, they also do them a disservice. There is always glory in doing what you have assumed as your duty and there is satisfaction in doing what you think is right. However, when those of us who do not serve, stop at vacuous praise and romanticising militarism, we also abdicate our duty as the people they defend. It is their job to defend and protect. It is our job to protect them by practising restraint, by resisting the temptation to join a vengeful chorus, by holding our leaders accountable for trying every measure and by making sure, their blood is not shed in order to satisfy our egos. The military’s job is to protect us and it is our job to protect them from our own vengeful bloodlust or our leaders’ egotistical vision. Military options should be the last option. The very last option.

In security decision-making, there is little transparency and therefore, there is no accountability. Are we sure that every other option has been exercised?

Most important, have we insisted that every other option has been tried?

***

The problem with terrorism is that it tempts you to insist that only a violent response will satisfy. The truth is we have no patience for the alternative—which short-term may be to press on diplomatically and long-term to understand the appeal it holds. We are also defenceless against those who will goad us into demanding violent reprisal. That chorus is so loud that it sounds like a universal demand. For governments, a violent response is an easy simulation of action—someone else carries it out and pays and you get to say you did this. But nothing really changes.

The fog of war distorts our knowledge about what is going on. Who struck whom? Did they actually hit their targets? Did they hit something else? Were they felled or did they make it back? Very quickly we do not know. And we do not ask because asking is not allowed in times of war (and let’s face it, now also in times of no-war).

The fog of war also obfuscates our real reasons and agendas. Everywhere.

The real impact of this surreal time is on people. Soldiers who die. Families on the border. Families of soldiers. What looks glorious and glamorous at a safe distance is actually a lifetime of grief (mixed with pride for military families), displacement, disruption, disability and a struggle for those at the epicentre.

I am not belittling this sacrifice. I am questioning why we let it happen if there is even a chance it could be avoided.

***

Even when there is no war, life in the border areas is war-like. Over the years, we have seen and read countless reports of schoolchildren playing cricket and landing on mines. We have heard about the military presence in small towns, taking over schools or subjecting people to searches. And yes, there is always a justification for all this.

But really, honestly, truly, is there?

***

I live two lives that are apparently incompatible.

I am a peacenik, peace activist (whatever activist means), pacifist, peace educator—one of those people—you pick your word. In a small measure, this is because even in everyday life, I hate shouting and confrontation. Everyone should just get along and leave me alone. In a large measure, this is because I cannot separate violence and conflict and war from their dehumanising and cruel consequences. This is what is foremost in my eyes. This is who I have always been.

I am also a security studies scholar. This means my professional credibility depends on being and sounding like a peer group of (mostly) men--some of them my friends--who sit in suits, know everything (and everyone) and having spoken of all they know, are convinced of the rationale for war. Decisive action, forceful responses, cool reasoning, realist thinking—all of which add up to understanding and justifying the exercise of coercive power. It takes a generous and confident display of testosterone-driven aggression. 

I came to this field because I wanted to be a more effective advocate for peace. I respect my colleagues for how much they know and for their integrity in speaking their minds. But their conclusions have never become my truth.

***

There is a gender dimension to war. It should be obvious but I will state the obvious here.

Those who were shot in Pahalgam were men. Those who shot them were men. Those who shouted in the TV studios were mostly men. Those who sat in those televised but secret official meetings were mostly men. Those whose op-eds got media space were mostly men spelling out the arguments for a ‘forceful response’ and the very few voices I read calling for restraint were mostly those of women. Those who led the diplomatic effort and pronounced it successful (but still not successful enough to prevent war) were mostly men. Those soldiers who will die in the fighting between the two countries will mostly be men.

Those who were bereaved in Pahalgam were women. Those who are displaced or left behind by war are mostly women and children. Those who are rarely seen as experts or asked about what they think are these women who must live and rebuild their lives after men have decided.

Those who are invisible in all of this are sexual minorities and non-binary persons. They don’t even exist and therefore, need neither consideration nor voice nor protection.

***

On another note, in every ‘ordinary person’ interview on TV, that person has asked for peace and normalcy. Returning to the studio, this has strangely transformed into a rationale for calling for war. Anchors have pranced about exultantly and triumphantly telling us about how we have diminished our neighbour and frightened them and created anxiety.

***

It is in times of crisis that one must stop and breathe and wait. This is the advice one gets for one’s personal life. Don’t make big decisions in times of trauma. This should apply even more to nation-states because the stakes are so much higher. But it does not.

***

Air strikes have already happened and spin has already obfuscated fact. This writing is too little, too late and I know that hardly anyone will read it. But write, I must. When we are all dust and ashes, and perhaps, atomic waste, somewhere in the universe, someone will know—she did what she knew. 

Because the stories we tell define us

The title of this post is taken from the title of Nayomi Munaweera's introductory piece in the third volume of the Write to Reconcile series.

***

Last month, I stopped by the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka's office and my eyes fell on a stack of brightly coloured books, intriguingly titled 'Write to Reconcile.'

It was the last of three volumes produced by a creative writing project conceptualised and led by Shyam Selvadurai along with Nayomi Munaweera, Ameena Husain, Amrita Pieris and Shiromi Pieris. The project was housed at NPC, which is how the books came to be there. 

Young writers applied to be part of the project, which brought them together to listen to speakers and took them around the island on field visits. They posted story ideas and stories, which were discussed in two online fora. One story by each writer was selected for inclusion in these volumes. The point was for the writers to deepen their understanding of the war experience, especially from perspectives outside of their own. Three batches of writers were convened, each making up one of the volumes.

Stories in the first volume focus on the war experience. They are set in Colombo and Jaffna, for the most part. In the second volume, the stories are largely set in the Eastern Province, where the population has been ethnically mixed for a long time. The last volume allows us to see the present post-war moment from the outside-in. A professional editor or literature professor might find the writing quality uneven, but it is hard not to be moved by the stories, and the intensity of feeling that most of them capture. 

It took me six weeks to steal the time between this pressing task and that urgent demand to finish reading the three volumes of 20-25 stories each. While it is hard for me now to look back and pick favourites from which to quote, I will never forget the voices and images with which they have left me. 

A family fleeing their home as the war crept in on them, leaving behind a patriarch who would not budge. An encounter with a soldier at a well in a desolate village. The towering statue of Shiva over a beach where two friends played, who were to be separated because of inter-ethnic quarrels around the temple. Sisters weeping for brothers. Sisters volunteering to fight to spare brothers. Brothers living in the shadow of war heroes. Lost homes, surviving only in memory. Memories so unreal they become fiction. People across the island, across ethnicities, search for and wait for their loved ones to return. Most moving, these images are created by people who have not lived the experiences for the most part. Such empathy, so creatively expressed! 

Let me dip in at random and share some words from here and there:

Nayomi Munaweera, writing about her family home: "The year the war ended, the Tamil Family who had occupied our house for about three decades left it and the house was ours again. In a casual conversation with a cousin I discovered that the Tamil family was from Jaffna. They had been forced out from their own ancestral lands and houses by war. They had taken our house because their own had been taken by the Tigers. Their misfortune had become ours." (Volume 1, page 11)

Shan Dissanayake describes a father sheltering in one trench with his daughter, wondering where his wife is and whether she has survived the bombing: "Siva's thoughts turned to his wife and now he couldn't refrain from softly sobbing. Was she one of those bodies in that other trench? The thought was unbearable... He felt his daughter move in his arms. They had to get away before it was their trench's turn." (Volume 1, page 52)

Shailendree Wickrama Adittiya: "The days grew more silent. Not the silence during the war when lights were switched off early and people spoke cautiously to each other, not knowing whom to trust. This new silence was of the kind where one small movement could shatter the peace." (Volume 1, page 91)

In Nifraz Rifaz's story in the first volume, a young Muslim man who polishes jewelry for a living, is picked up by three men in a van, because he writes a letter for his English class assignment. The letter is addressed to Prabhakaran. For this, he is brutalised, even before they read the whole letter, which ends: "Mr. Prabhakaran, is this war that we are fighting really worthwhile? One day when we die it's just the grave that will shelter us. And it's just a very small space. Isn't it?" (page 117)

In Vindhya Buthpitiya's story, a father and daughter bring home the ashes of her mother, into a Jaffna that her sister died to liberate. "Homeland rings hollow in my ears, like the carcass of this house. An overwhelming sadness washes over the anger I cultivated in these years of exile and I allow myself to cry. I think of Juderaj's spirited sermons abruptly rendered meaningless in the face of everything we have surrendered and everyone we have sacrificed." (Volume 1, page 199)

There are poems in these volumes too. Kandiah Shrikarunaakaran describes life during the fighting years and the long processions of the displaced leaving their homes. 

"Electricity cut off,
life now aligned with the sun's cycle,
we turned pre-historic.
Kuppi lamp with scant kerosene
resisted the night feebly,
every spit of light weak
against the howling wind.
These lamps flickered and dangled
marking our scramble backwards in history." (Volume 2, page 57)

"Lorries, buses, carts, disoriented crowds,
jammed, unmoving, rooted,
no one sure where to go,
which way to travel to safety.
Salty water brimming the road on either side,
failed to quench our thirst.
Impatient, sleepless, sunburnt,
our tears of anguish turned
the salty water saltier." (Volume 2, page 59)

Deborah Xavier writes about two people haunted by one incident in 1983: A bus load of people heads out in search of shelter amid the riots. They include a pregnant woman and a woman with a baby. The bus is stopped, and attacked by armed thugs. One of them throws the baby to the ground and kills the mother. (Volume 2, pages 159-167)

There are stories of hope too. In Easwarajanani Karunailingam's story, a Sinhalese ex-soldier moves to Kilinochchi in order to help rebuild the town, and ends up adopting an orphaned Tamil child. The story describes the distress of the resettlement process. (Volume 2, pages 198-207)

The war hero in Ruhini Katugaha's story tells his little brother, a doctor, "Ethnicity is what we choose to put on ... not something we get from our father's surname. The war is never going to be over little brother, if we think like that. When we are done with this war, we'll find something else to fight over and then something else." (Volume 2, page 262)

Krishanth Manokaran describes the homecoming of a grandfather and granddaughter. There is joy and love but also the memory of unnecessary death. "Krishnan had taken his motorbike to drive Sugi to the market and gunfire had broken out on the A9. Who fired first they didn't know. The army blamed the boys. The boys blamed the army. What solace did that give to a father?" (Volume 3, page 27)

In Adilah Ismail's story, a court clerk's memories of her own rape at the hands of a soldier are triggered by the hearing of a gang rape case. We also meet the judge, stepping out for a cigarette break and reflecting on what it would mean to find the accused guilty--would his evening walks "contain a frisson of fear and a wariness of strangers"? (Volume 3, page 105)

Volume 3 includes a story that imagines life in a free Eelam, with trade blockades from Sri Lanka causing acute food shortages. People run blackmarket stores and as the one he is visiting is raided, the protagonist hides: "Calming his breathing his mind did a strange thing to him then' he was once again back on that beach in Mullivaikal. He could hear the screams of injured thousands ringing in his ears. He remembered how the salt of the Nandikadal lagoon bit into the raw wounds across his legs and arms. He did not feel regret then or now, only a bone-deep weariness that this life of his had been lived with so much struggle." (A.A., page 167)

The quotations I have selected are merely an indicator of the riches in these three volumes. The books have been printed as part of the project but they are not widely distributed, I think, and that is a pity. I would hope that a publisher would at least publish a selection that could be available in stores, not just in Sri Lanka but across the region. 

Understanding the human impact of conflict is not just important in places where there has been conflict but also in places where are readier every day to escalate the level of violence in ordinary interactions. We are touchy and we are quick to anger. We do not learn history so in any case, we know none to remember. We raise statues for those who teach compassion but show no mercy for the infractions and imperfections of others, even when they are imagined. These heartbreaking stories must be widely shared so that we all learn how fragile our lives are, how precious our dreams (and this world) and how vital to our survival are values like cooperation, reconciliation and forgiveness. 

You can access the anthologies here:

Write to Reconcile Volume I

Write to Reconcile Volume II

Write to Reconcile Volume III

***

I want to close with a poem I loved, although it is really not about the war. I think it would resonate with anyone who has used boxes of paints or crayons with European names--prussian blue, for instance. How am I supposed to know what that means? (From Volume 3, pages 94-95)

Crayola Eyeseby Sukhee Ramawickrama

From childhood,
my Crayola-trained American eyes
recognise
Cherry Red
Royal Purple
Robin's-Egg Blue
Peachy Pink.

But here there is
Train Ticket Lavender,
Thambili Orange,
Milk-Tea Brown
which is creamier than
Spicy Pahe Brown.

Paddy Field Green is a favorite,
as is Floor Polish Red.
Poya Day White
 a shade crisper than
Jasmine White.

Indian Ocean Turquoise
endless, shimmering.
But nothing is brighter
than Little-Boy-School-Shorts Blue.

How can I begin to understand,
How can I allow myself to write,
When I am just starting
to truly see colour? 

The deadly burden of honour

Published here on October 27, 2013

In 2001, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ruled that wartime rape is an act of torture and that sexual enslavement is a crime against humanity. This marked a historical break from the idea that rape may be regrettable but was just one of the spoils of war. Last week, when the United Nations Security Council once again unanimously resolved to engage more women in peace processes and peace-building and stated that helping women pregnant after rape should be a part of humanitarian aid, it signalled the great distance that we have travelled in the last twenty years. But why would the rape, forced pregnancy, abduction and enslavement of civilian, non-combatant women even happen in the course of a war?

The answer lies in this double-edged sword that is women’s relationship with their communities—whether caste, or ethnic, or religious.

The pretty, touristy edge is the idea that women are the vectors of a culture. They teach the next generation the language, the material culture, the social mores and the history of the group. Most of us, even before we know to which community we belong, know that “in my house” we do this or we eat that or we wear such clothes. The responsibility for this learning usually rests with mothers, aunts and grandmothers. In college and in offices, women are entrusted with conceptualising and organising “cultural” activities. Society pays homage to this role even though it undervalues the work that goes into it—the cooking of food, the choosing of clothes, the planning of festival celebrations, the choice of leisure activities, the giving of music, art and dance lessons.

We imagine the community in the body of a woman—Mother India, for instance. This privilege of embodying the community comes at a horrific price for women. And that price is the loss of autonomy over their bodies and lives—for seemingly trivial matters and in extremely dangerous ways.

Look at the clothes we wear. Moral policing has almost no dress codes for men, and several for women. We talk about conservative dress, and modern dress, and traditional dress and Western dress, for women, and each comes with a value attached. Dress codes signify women as being from this or that community, and can also serve as a character certificate.

Women embody tradition in ways that men don’t. When possible, girls are trained in a number of artistic pursuits, whether the classical arts of dance and music or household arts like kolam or traditional crafts like weaving or embroidery. Rarely expected to perform, but they are expected to ensure the next generation’s familiarity with this heritage. Some arts and crafts do also become livelihoods (and sometimes, that is when men take them up)—weaving, for instance.

School friends are sometimes the first encounter a girl has with the invisible but solid borders of her community. But while there are lines demarcating difference between girls from different families, those lines turn into walls between the same boys and girls who grew up playing together. The list of don’ts grows at an accelerated rate after puberty. The possibility of encountering and interacting with unknown boys and men keeps too many girls from completing their education. The fear that they might want to choose their own paths and partners results in too many girls being married early, by force and to men they do not choose. Cross-cousin marriages, which are still common in South India, probably began as a way of keeping property within a family. They also reinforce clan and caste ties. When the right to marry a cousin, niece or uncle is asserted forcefully, what is laid bare is this: Control over women’s bodies (and lives) becomes the guarantor of community solidarity.

Patriarchal societies locate the honour of a community in the bodies of its women. Therefore, what women wear, where they go, what they do and with whom, become communal concerns. Daring to choose your own life-partner and worse, to choose one from another community, is punished with death or harassment that sometimes leads young people to take their lives. The exchange of girls in marriage as part of a conflict resolution deal is another way this "honour-body" equation works. Decisions are taken by male-run community bodies and women are complicit in enforcing them. 

In times of conflict, then, it is not surprising that violence against women becomes just another instrument of war, and one that hits where it most hurts—where men and communities locate their honour and display its distinctiveness—women’s bodies. Rape and forced pregnancy by conflict parties; opportunity rape when displacement and bereavement leave families without support networks; trafficking and sexual exploitation; sexual slavery; and preemptive, forced and early marriage—are all part of the conflict experience for women. We know in our part of the world that moral policing and dress code enforcement are also part of this deal.

None of this is new. What is new is that we are beginning to find these practices repugnant.

This repugnance has been expressed in the global effort to draw attention to sexual violence in conflict situations, through resolutions, through programmes to share their import, through implementation projects and also, through an annual naming and shaming of offending parties. The next step is to extend this repugnance to situations outside the traditional definition of conflict. As we fight globally to end impunity for these crimes, a broader understanding of conflict allows us to apply the norms we are creating to other situations where violence is endemic—communal clashes between sects and religious communities; inter-caste violence; insurgency and counter-insurgency situations; and the newest entrants, development-related campaigns and conflicts over resource use. In each of these, as hostilities increase all around, so does the threat of sexual violence. It is as much an instrument of these wars as the ones that the UN talks about or that we abhor in other countries. (We, of course, would never do such things.)

And we then come full circle, because increasing levels of violence in the public sphere lead inevitably to a brutalization where violent responses to everything become normal and violence within the home escalates. Women, children, the elderly, the infirm, the disabled and sexual minorities are all vulnerable in such a climate.

In India, communal riots get a great deal of attention, but everyday caste violence rarely does. While for non-Indian observers, everything in India can be explained through the lens of caste, sometimes it seems that we Indians (the middle class, “people like us” variety like me) barely notice either the small acts of exclusion or the most horrific acts of arson, mass killing or rape when they happen in the context of caste. But when you read the work of Bama or Sivakami for instance, violence is an integral part of the landscape in which their stories unfold. Violence against women is just another feature of this landscape. The interweaving of caste identity and patriarchy makes a deadly combination, affecting so many of us that to ignore it is inhumane.

In the last few months, we have seen some questioning—can we protest this rape and not that one where a Dalit girls is gang-raped by non-Dalit men? Can we condemn this violence and not that massacre of the members of one caste by another? There are so many stories that call for our attention, so many questions to ask of ourselves, so many perspectives to understand and so many changes to make.  We are barely at the beginning of this long road and the bumpiest stretches lie within our hearts.

Swarna Rajagopalan is writing this article a few days before UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) enters its teens. Much of her research and writing are on women, violence and conflict. She also runs Prajnya.

Geert Mak's "In Europe"

Earlier this year, I got a copy of Geert Mak's "In Europe: Travels through the Twentieth Century." I dipped into it at a couple of bookstores, and was convinced I should read it. I brought it back to India and started it in June. I just finished it last week. Admittedly, it is a huge book (over 800 pages) and I have been very busy, but that is still a very long time for me to take over one book.

What a masterpiece!

It is a 20th century history structured like a travelogue, but there are places where the archival research could rival a traditional history book and places where the first person account is pure oral history.

For me, one of the most striking things about this book is the time and attention devoted to the Second World War. When you study either modern European history or the history of international relations at an Indian university, WWII (in student-write) is usually important but occupies no more than a maximum of 15-20% of the curriculum. Geert Mak devotes at least half and sometimes it seems like a lot more, of his book to this event.

There are first person descriptions of key events, carefully reconstructed battlefield accounts and passages from diaries and letters that describe life during the war. I wanted very much to quote some of them but I did not, alas, read the book with a pencil or place bookmarks along the way so I cannot. There is no escaping how horrible the wartime experience was for any side.

From the chapter on Leningrad in 1942:
page 430: ' "You had to be in line at the bakery at 5 a.m., by 11.00 there was no bread left. It wasn't easy to walk around when you were starving, you had to drag yourself along by force of will. If possible, you kept all your clothes on in bed. You lay there like a big ball of rags, you forgot you even had a body. But, well, we were young Soviets, we had absolutely no doubt that we would be victorious." '
Page 431: ' "It was the women who won the war, everyone knows that. Their lot was the heaviest to bear. The party bosses could leave the city and come back by plane. They had their own food flown in as well, we found out about that a few years ago. They told dramatic stories about all their heroic hardships, but meanwhile they took good care of themselves. The common people couldn't do that. We wasted away; we were being shelled all the time."

If I had not told you that was about Leningrad in 1942, you could have assumed it was any contemporary war zone.

I would recommend this book as a companion to any European history text. I think it is a hard read but only because of the seriousness of its subject matter.

The writing is excellent, even in translation (or should I say the translation by Sam Garrett is excellent) and it humanizes events whose reach was global although in Mak's book, the rest of the world is really a distant footnote. That is in itself odd given Europe's imperial commitments at this time.

In that sense, along with the attention focused on one period and the relative lack of attention to the impact of decolonization, Mak underscores the very Eurocentric nature of the European perception of this war. I am not a historian of this period but I do not think I would be far off the mark in saying that by contrast, America's engagement with the world really began during this war. American popular histories, in print or film, seem to take cognizance of non-Euro-American people who were part of the war effort, even if Americans are portrayed in a singularly heroic light. I am only talking here of the way in which the Second World War is portrayed and perceived, and from a very inexpert perspective.

I found this book marvelous too for its descriptions of small detail and its quiet humour, expressed as relish rather than mockery, of the things that make us human. I am sure someone with the inclination will find a million things to deconstruct and critique from some deeply political perspective. I just soaked in the detail and traveled through time with Mak. I wish someone would write something like this on our part of the world.

And what I was going to say right after that, reminded me of another remarkable feature of this book: Mak himself features very little through its 800-plus pages although you know it is a journey he is undertaking and he does occasionally refer to himself to tell us where he went and how. It is a book written without the need to showcase the author's genius, and therefore, it does precisely that.

I cannot do justice to this book in one post, and I would really urge you to find a copy and persevere through it. As for me, this is going to be the year of 'fat books' (started with Rajmohan Gandhi's 'Mohandas' which I loved) and I have Ramachandra Guha's book and Nayan Chanda's as well waiting for me.

1971

There is a new movie about the 1971 conflict, one reads, but that is not why I am thinking about the events of that year in South Asia. Last night, we were reminiscing about a little girl I used to know.

We were both little girls. Standard I or younger, St. Joseph's, RC Church, Bombay. She lived a few buildings away from me in the Port Trust compound in Colaba. Her name was Nafisa and we used to play together. The reminiscences began with my mother reminding me of how we would walk each other home. Nafisa would walk me home because I was not allowed to walk by myself. But neither was she, so I would walk her home. Then she would walk me back. The loop was endless till an adult accompanied us. Our laughter reminded me of something else.

Three girls, on the primary school platform, discussing the world around us with the gravity of seven year olds. Nafisa announced that they were going to Pakistan because they were Muslims. I did not understand the connection at all, but was impressed by her serious face. And so it was that one day we were walking each other home back and forth, the next she was making this announcement and then she was gone. To Karachi, I think. A few months later, there was war.

But 1971 in my life was not just about Nafisa and war. That hot May, we moved to a new home in Cuffe Parade, where tall apartment buildings had just come up. A few months later, we travelled abroad and my parents who never treated their children like retards took me along to see the places they always wanted to see. The United Nations Headquarters in New York, for instance. My introduction at the age of seven to the manifestation of one battle-weary generation's dream of lasting peace. A dream that captured and still holds my imagination captive.

Then Nafisa and her migration. Adult discussions about East Pakistan and the refugee crisis were in the air. I cannot claim to have understood much, but I can remember that there were surcharges on many things to pay for the refugees who were flooding West Bengal. We had to put extra stamps on envelopes, I seem to remember. And then Sukhdev's photographs of what he witnessed from his hiding place somewhere in East Pakistan, published in the Illustrated Weekly of India. No one else my age seems to remember them when I ask, but they were striking. My memory of them is not of detail but of the impression they made on me; they remain my first images of the horror of conflict after all these years.

And then war. Our buildings were five minutes from the cantonment and harbour in South Bombay and stood out like sore thumbs. We had sirens and air raid practice, black paper on doors and windows and stories by candlelight. But even the delights of daily story-telling did not obscure the fact that something horrible was going on. Everyday, fathers of schoolmates who were army or navy men were killed or went missing and we would observe a moment's silence. INS Khukri went down, and its brave captain was known to people in school and I seem to remember his daughter also went to our school.

Impossible to forget.

I carry the year with me everyday into every piece of work I do. For another generation, Partition was the defining influence but for me, it is 1971. And I am not alone, I think. I have met at least one person, growing up in Karachi, who could remember the mirror image of my experiences--school shutdown because of war, bombs on places we knew. Both our experiences are nothing at all compared to what thousands go through everyday all over the world, in the name of larger causes and principles, but this little teaser and its memory reinforce my commitment, even when I feel that my work really is irrelevant.

Postscript:

I included details here about Nafisa and school in the hope that somewhere she is surfing the net and finding this, so that on the brink of middle age, we can catch up on where we've walked since those endless excursions of childhood.

More ruminations in the same vein are to be found here. I am looking for links to Sukhdev's work and will add them when I find some that are functional.