Hegemonic brinkmanship and security torn asunder
The whole world is sick with security fever. The etiology of the ailment has multi-faceted strings of comprehension. Ever since human beings started their roller-coaster of existence on this planet they have been concerned with it for their proliferation, perpetuation and further extension of lives. At first this war was against the inhospitable nature, when this was tamed a bit and rudimentary specialization emerged and competition for the available resources intensified along with the accompanying increase in population, the question of security was redirected against human beings. Mutual collaboration of homo sapiens got circumscribed within a narrower field of amiability. In course of time one human group was subjected to abject condition by another i.e. the blacks by the whites usurping their rights of humane existence. The system of literal slavery gave Aristotle, Plato and other philosophers the security and comfort of leading a rarefied life and pontificating on anything including the slaves on whose blood they were celebrating their knowledge and argumentation. The security of the privileged class was guaranteed snatching the rights of the people who were treated as mere chattels. The feudal system of attached slavery of the peasants to land was deposed through the inauguration of reign of terror during French revolution. Guillotine worked as the judge of restoring security for the exploited millions. Dickens' 'A tale of two cities' recounts the mass-frenzy partially with powerful imagery of description and profound analysis of plot. It is always the so-called powerful interest-groups who exploit the teeming millions and devise and design the security system to safeguard their accumulated wealth through policing mechanism.
During the colonial period the economic dire-straits of the colonizers coerced them to look for alternative sources of material security and thus they were wandering long distances (made possible by the innovation of large vessels) to settle down in resource-rich geographical zones and deplete them completely by systematic plundering in the name of spurious civilizing mission. Long histories of pillaging by the European colonizers reduced the colonies of different parts of the world into debris of hunger and malnutrition. It's no wonder the cognitive paralysis kick-started by the colonizers is still going strong. After the subdued demise of the colonial exploitation the so-called democratic regime through the globalization process is expanding the scope of profit-maximization and legalized plundering. Now people resort to small arms to safeguard their security and its augmented metastasis is a matter of grave concern. Poverty (both economic and cognitive) of the denied segment is utilized by the moneyvorous capitalists. Industrialization and the commodification of human beings curtail the quality of time by inhuman drudgery and give birth to loneliness particularly in the West making people the best companion of their shadows. Hegemony and its discontents act like rampant wildfire throughout the world.
In every country nationalism is considered a vital component of proper human conduct so that security of the nationalities is preserved. But it evades our attention that jingoistic nationalism is a major threat to security if we look at the broader spectrum of the world. The holier than thou attitude provides only a piece of the security pie not the entire portion, for it has the intrinsic mechanism of endangering the security of others and here lies the system of incorrigible suspicion. It is suspicion that being born of jingoism jeopardizes the harmonious co-existence. Jingoistic nationalism is to be blamed for injecting life to suspicion which in turn contaminate humane zeal and inaugurate schism between people, thereby leading towards the extermination of security. In the name of reinstituting security the arms and drug industry (to name a few) is buttressed which benefit the neo-liberal investors. Security is trampled in this money-churning spree, which ensures the security of the money-monger capitalists. Michael Moore's 'capitalism: a love story' depicts how people's security is marred and they are turned into paupers through the rapacious actions of the businessmen. We find thousands of instances of jingoistic scourge from the historical dossier. The holocaust perpetrated by Adolf Hitler, the onslaught of Japanese Imperial Army in Nanking, the incurable wound of Hiroshima-Nagasaki episode, American masochism in Vietnam war, Gulag, invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, civil war in El Salvador with the complicity of CIA are some famous examples. Even Gulag is the proof of extreme megalomania emanating from imposed nationalism. People questioning the Stalin regime was considered not being instilled the doctrines of nationalism properly as a result they were hurled into the camp. The genocides perpetrated in different parts as a direct involvement of applied jingoism are instances of parochial security. It is imperative for us to fathom the simple dictum that no security can be attained without respecting the humane space creating gregarious proximity.
Perpetuation of human space hinges on the mutual observances of creative rules of peaceful proliferation. The idea of human rights is inextricably linked with security. Exhibition of reverence to the rights of others is the first step towards the attainment of primary security and for the security and peace to last long moneyvorous outlook of the capitalist converters has to be dispensed with. Although this calls for hard graft to get rid of personalized enterprise founded on avarice, this is the only alternative towards the promised land of peace and restored security. War propagated as the reinstallation of security is just a pretext for the expansion of arms industry. It was in the wake of Vietnam War that an underground destabilizing group called 'Weather Underground' launched sporadic attacks in USA to make people bear the slightest brunt of Vietnam War as their slogan was "bring war home'. In Vietnam people were being killed like birds and in the USA the residents did not have the slightest idea of what it was like to be in Vietnam amidst the pincer attacks of their country on the innocent Vietnamese. The Mai Lai Massacre committed by the American superpower was another addition to the repercussions of imperialist jingoism. Israel sitting under the cloak of American megalomania has been justifying the seizure of Palestinian security as the open sesame to the rehabilitation of religio-jingoistic Zionism.
History tells us when the line of popular security was infringed firebrands like Spartacus, Che Guevara, Zapata, Lorca, Gandhi, Surja Sen, Khudi Ram, Ullash Kar Dutta (to name a few) worked for the restoration of security of the majority. Bertrand Russell along with Jean Paul Sartre formed Russell Tribunal that expostulated and arraigned America for its criminal offence in Vietnam. Peasant revolt led by Wat Tyler in England is the affirmation of security scheme, implying that where there is a deliberate attempt to foil the deserved security, popular consensus is there to fight for it. These retrievers of human security questioned the authority structure of the society. Every humanist movement is an accentuation of absent security. Resistance is reassurance against self-absorbed security of extortionist class. Manufactured security of the West i.e. seen and defined from their point of view bypasses the notions and understandings of the people encountering the problem of security. It is imposed on the people's perceptions and lives to reap the benefits of opportunist rhetoric, such as institution of democracy in Afghanistan or decimation of WMD in Iraq. Taliban's fall from American grace is the glowing instance of manufactured security proclaimed by USA. Capitalists quite naturally working in jingoistic vein form one single nation based on their collaboration of capitalist pursuit and give birth to security as a new industry. Political Islam patronized by petrodollar reclaims the process of security with a canvassed divine flavour. There is no conflict between security sought by the practitioners of political Islam and the capitalist advocates as they cater to the interest of the minority trampling the lives of the fragmented majority. The activists of political Islam using the banner of religion are a major threat to unhindered mobility of human beings that is the fulcrum of security. Moreover, religious alienation caused by mutual suspicion hijacks the space of security. Aparna Sen's filmographic account 'Mr and Mrs Iyer' elucidates the role of suspicion in engendering insecurity for the religious minority groups i.e. the Muslims in India.
Nuclear weaponry and its further enrichment in a competitive ambience is a major obstacle to the attainment of human security. An unquenchable desire to rule the whole world is the root cause of the obliteration of security. The peripatetic locus of power underlines the fact that the world is no one's stooge; therefore tug of war with human lives with a view to dominating the universe is like cutting the branch of a tree sitting on it. So, all these excesses of different imperialism is suicidal ventures which in the long run usher in misery and disharmony of humane space- an indispensable part of our march towards a livable world. Hegemonic oppression in its local format (religio-political mode) constricts the mobility of groups having isolated identity through the use of corroded tolerance. The treatment of the Ahmediyas and the ethnic communities of Bangladesh by the intolerant bloc of privileged section are examples of such negating provision. Erich Maria Remarque in his "All quiet on the western Front" (later made into a film) confirms the futility of war and shows that the robotic involvements of the antagonistic parties work as a revelation for them that war is fought never between two or more blocs of people rather between adamant authorities of so-called security. John Lennon who vehemently opposed Vietnam War is singing for us 'all we are saying is give peace a chance'. Let's give peace a chance.
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