War within and without: Time, Memory, History

The Great Banyan Tree at the Botanical Gardens, Shibpur. Source: Google.
Symbolizing the organic interweaving of histories, memories, and identities, this image evokes the concluding metaphor of the essay.

In international law, “war” generally refers to official armed conflict between two or more states with possibilities of significant casualties and destruction and is broader in magnitude and consequences than “battles” generally conceived and fought within local parameters, the definition of ‘local’ varying historically over time. Cicero, the classical Roman lawmaker chose to define war as “a contention by force”. In the conceptualization of Thomas Hobbes however, war is hardly limited to physical combat. This visionary 17^th century thinker was definite that a war or war like situation may continue outside or beyond the tangible official spaces of conflict like battlefield, sea, air etc., before or after the first/ last shots have been fired or lines of enmity drawn or erased. Such alarming ubiquity of war apparently comes from equating it with a disposition/attitude of hostility, or with a ‘particular set of psychological predispositions, which are opposed to the attitudes which characterize the state of peace.’(Thivet: 2008)[i]

Such predisposition to war or consideration of war/wars as pivot of societies translates to how time per se is conceptualized, not in a metaphoric sense but in a tangible sense of being structured around nation, identity and memory. Historically, wars have been inseparable from the European geopolitical reality since antiquity, right from the times of the momentous Persian Wars(499-494 BC)immortalized by Herodotus in ‘The Histories’; the Peloponnesian Wars(431-404 BC) documented in great detail by Thucydides or the series of Punic Wars fought between Carthage and Rome(146 BC). In the proto-historical self-conception of the Indian subcontinent too, the Battle of Kurukshetra was germane to the shaping of a distinct politico-administrative and societal set up. It steered the victory of Dharma or right over wrong, vindicated the might and faith of the Pandavas, avenged the humiliation of Panchali  and on a material sphere, oversaw the transformation of forest area Khandavaprastha into urban Indraprastha, the capital city of the burgeoning kingdom of the Pandavas . More significantly, the war or lessons offered by Kurukshetra, offered a magnificent template to subsequent generations of men –royals and citizens, dictating their choices and actions in the subcontinent then and later in similar related contexts.

The Battle of Kalinga(261 BC)—yet another seminal moment in the shaping of  an archetypal Indian consciousness, fought between the Mauryan Empire under Asoka and the independent feudal kingdom of Kalinga of the eastern shores of India,  remains distinguished for witnessing the transformation of Asoka from a conqueror to a renouncer—Chandasoka to Dharmasoka. Interpreted within the Hobbsian template, albeit conceived centuries later, such radical change of heart and intentions on the battlefield, unparalleled in the annals of human history, most definitively reaffirms the theory of wars being fought in the minds with wars symbolizing a state of mind per se. It was when the Emperor was overwhelmed with the feeling of renunciation, when the call of surrender to the Budhha resonated more deeply with him than the clamour of weapons or the ambition  to conquer, that Asoka could forego—his Self as a conquering, zealous emperor. This decision at one stroke arguably changed the landscape of ‘India’ as it was and what it could be—territorially, morally and philosophically, creating an alternate paradigm of exemplary rule without violence and co-existence with mutual respect.

An equally potent visual imagery can be picked from X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014).[ii]This Marvel fictionology revolves round an effort by Prof. X to save his people–the Mutants, from their future extermination by the humans through robots. At the root of such vendetta was the murder of an evil human military scientist, the creator of the robots, by Mystique, a charismatic and powerful mutant. As Wolverine time-travels to 1973 to dissuade Mystique from the act of rage and fails, a powerful cinematic sequence is born. Prof. X connects and speaks to Mystique’s mind but does not attempt to control it leaving the decision to choose between rage and serenity, forgiveness and destruction, to the woman herself. The mutants, as the plot unravels are eventually saved from the precipice of future annihilation, when Mystique decides to withhold her bullet, much akin to Asoka’s decision to stop the War inside. The future changes as the past changes.

Such telling impact of war/violence on man’s psyche and actions makes it an important resource/resurrection point for Memory, on both individual and collective plane. Memory especially for societies in crises has historically acted as a powerful mine of all things materially lost or diminished in value. How a society organizes its collective memory, consciously or involuntarily, largely depends on its relation with and understanding of Time since it is within the loop of time that people/ community/nation remember and flag their achievements; or, forget/ attempt to forget moments of humiliation, failure and defeat. In pre-modern Continental Europe, the concept of time was organized around revolutions and Pierre Nora, a pioneer French historian, argue that in the formation of the French identity post 1789 Revolution, what had to be retained from the past was in order to prepare the future. And there was a distinct clarity on what parts must be suppressed, forgotten and destroyed if need be. Evidently Nora here speaks of a conscious construction of French identity through cherry-picking events from the popular memory of those revolutionary times, such assortment being predetermined by their functionality in the present French and European contexts.

Applying the same analogy to the history of sovereign postcolonial India, here time per se has arguably structured itself around conflict and violence epitomized in wars. Such temporal mapping or interplay of time, memory and history thrives, as in the French and European context, on choice of specific segments of memory that have played a critical role in shaping geopolitical realities of Indian nation since 1947. Thus 1962, 1965, 1971, 1999—certain chosen flag posts of independent India, are years that saw the temporal fabric adjust itself around wars that played havoc with popular identity and memory, thus continually informing and reframing history. 2025 is a latest addition to this corpus. Considering that the mindful preservation and reiteration of select memory of wars and associated events have a potential to determine the future trajectory of nations, their people, polity or society, one can well contend that had the US political history not preserved the memory of its successful interventions, especially since the Cold War years, in conflicts and wars fought among foreign nations in foreign shores; Trump’s USA would not have slipped into this role in the present crisis engulfing South Asian Subcontinent so effortlessly.

It is the dictates of select memory preserved in her shared history with multiple nations in crises along with her declared policy of Interventionism, that arm USA with the confidence and authority to be the arbitrator, time and again, be that with regard to Iraq, India and Pakistan or Russia and Ukraine. Through such acts, the conflicting nations/blocs as well as the mediator, accord privileged treatment to certain slivers of time and memory over the rest. We are what we do, our actions shaped by our lived experiences/ memories as a community, as a nation. Historically the onus has been on a nation and its makers to choose its collective memory wisely and thus propel the people on the path of conquest and glory or forgiveness, renunciation and immortality. Eventually however, it is the people who need to decide who they wish to be—Dharmasoka or Chandasoka and accordingly histories would grow around them like the ageless banyan creepers holding countless untold stories, emotions, memories.

Dr.Somdatta Chakraborty

Senior Adjunct Researcher

Asia in Global Affairs

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Notes

[i] Thivet Delphine(2008), “Thomas Hobbes: a philosopher of War or Peace?”, British journal for the History of Philosophy, 16(4).

[ii] The X-men series portrays the world and actions of ‘mutants’, shown as a-normal people born with special powers, often represented as threat to ‘normal’ society and cognition—each with a unique ability/power that they take time to harness and use for their own benefit and some for larger good. Professor Charles Xavier, widely known in the film terminology as Professor X is a brilliant Oxfordian, and a mutant who possesses his inimitable telekinetic ability to read and influence people’s minds and the series of X-Men films take off from his core intention to use this special gift to carve out a collaborative harmonious existence for humans and mutants.  His philosophy does not stem from or recognize the binary of “we” vs. “they” and the 2014 film remarkably portrays how Professor X uses all his intention and psychological might to influence and prevent Mystique–his soul mutant sister from killing an evil military scientist.