[Nettime-bold] Understand the Whispers by Rajeev Bhargava

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha@sarai.net>]

Apologies for cross posting to those on the Sarai Reader List
Here is a text that has been sent in by Rajeev Bhargava, a political 
philosopher in New Delhi, on the moral dilemmas that are being obscured by 
the rhetoric of war and vendett in the aftermath of September 11.

Shuddha
____________________________________________
Understand the Whispers
Rajeev Bhargava

In India, as elsewhere, every person understood the cry for help: the horror 
and fear writ large on terror stricken faces, the trauma in the choked voices 
of people who saw it happen, the hopeless struggle to control an imminent 
breakdown in public, the unspeakable grief. For one moment, the pain and 
suffering of others became our own.

In a flash, everyone recognised what is plain but easily forgotten that 
inscribed in our personal selves is not just our separateness from others but 
also sameness with them,that despite all socially constructed differences of 
language, culture, religion, nationality, perhaps even race, caste and 
gender, we share something in common. Amidst terror, acute vulnerability and 
unbearable sorrow, it was not America alone that rediscovered its lost 
solidarity. In these cataclysmic events, all people across the globe reclaim 
their common humanity.

As we empathised with those who escaped or witnessed death, and re-lived the
traumatic experience of those who lost their lives, we knew a grave, 
irreparable wrong done to individuals, killed, wounded or traumatised by the 
sudden loss of family and friends. These individuals were not just subjected 
to physical hurt or mental trauma, they were recipients and carriers of a 
message embodied in that heinous act. From now on they must live with a 
dreadful sense of their own  vulnerability. This message was transmitted 
first to other individuals in New York and Washington, then quickly to 
citizens throughout the democratic world. The catastrophe on the east coast 
has deepened the sense of insecurity of every individual on this planet.  

However, this was not the only message sent by the perpetrators. Others are 
revealed when we focus on our collective identities. These messages are  
disturbingly ambivalent, morally fuzzy. They are less likely to sift good 
from evil, more likely to divide than unite people across the world.  

One such message which the poor, the powerless and the culturally   
marginalised would like communicated to the rich, powerful and the culturally 
dominant is this: we have grasped that any injustice done to us is erased 
before it is seen or spoken about; that in the current international social 
order, we count for very little; our ways of life are hopelessly 
marginalised, our lives utterly valueless. 

Even middle-class Indians with cosmopolitan aspirations became painfully 
aware of this when a country-wide list of missing or dead persons was flashed 
on an international news channel: hundreds of Britons, scores of  Japanese, 
some Germans, three Australians, two Italians, one Swede. A few buttons away, 
a South Asian channel lists names of several hundred missing or dead Indians,
while another flashes the names of thousands with messages of their safety to
relatives back home. 
Intangible wounds

Hard as it is to talk of this right now, it must be acknowledged that the 
attacks on New York and Washington were also meant to lower the collective 
self-esteem of Americans, to rupture their pride. Not all intentional 
wrong-doing is physically injurious to the victim, but every intentionally 
generated physical suffering is   invariably accompanied by intangible 
wounds. The attack on September 11 did not merely demolish concrete buildings 
and individual people. It tried to destroy the American measure of its own 
self-worth, to diminish the self-esteem of Americans. 

Quite separate from the immorality of physical suffering caused, isn�t this 
attempt itself morally condemnable? Yes, if the act further lowers the 
self-worth of  people with little enough. But this is hardly true of America, 
where the ruling elite ensures that its collective self-worth borders supreme 
arrogance, always over the top. Does not the Pentagon symbolise this false 
collective pride? 

Amidst this carnage, then, is a sobering thought.It occurs more naturally to 
poor people of powerless countries. Occasionally, even the mighty can be 
humbled. In such societies, the genuine anguish of people at disasters faced 
by the rich is mixed up with an unspeakable emotion which, on such 
apocalyptic occasions, people experience only in private or talk about only 
in whispers. 

I have spoken of two dimensions to the message hidden in the mangled remains 
of the destruction of September 11. The moral horror of the individual 
dimension of the carnage is unambiguous and overwhelming. But as we pause to 
examine its collective dimension, a less clear, more confusing moral picture 
emerges. How, on balance, after putting together these two dimensions, do we 
evaluate this more complicated moral terrain? 

The answer has to be swift and unwavering. For now, the focus must remain on 
the individual and the humanitarian. To shift our ethical compass in the 
direction of the collective weakens the moral claims of the suffering and the 
dead. This is plainly wrong. Nor is it enough to make merely a passing 
reference to the tragedy of individuals, a grudging concession before the 
weightier political crimes of a neo-imperial state are considered. The moral 
claims of individuals are currently supreme. 

But we cannot permanently screen off the collective dimension. To do so would 
obstruct our understanding of how tragedies of individuals can be prevented 
in future; in any case, in the long run it extends another already existing 
moral  wrong. 

Victim must not turn perpetrator

>From all accounts, the victims in America have reacted with quiet dignity in 
the face of  overwhelming grief. But there is also a growing moral revulsion 
and perhaps an understandable expression of the need for vengeance. Even as 
some people unfairly, even preposterously, become the victims of this newest 
hatred, the American President has promised revenge. 

Can anything be wrong with hating ruthless strategists who achieve their 
political goals by the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians? How 
can it be wrong for a woman to hate the rapist who has permanently scarred 
her, or for victims to hate leaders or organisers of mobs that lynched them? 

At issue here is not the feeling of an intense desire to hurt others in order 
to gain advantage for oneself. Of course, malicious hatred is obnoxious. But 
those who hate  the perpetrators of the carnage on September 11are not driven 
by malice or spite. Hating the wrong-doer is not morally inappropriate. If 
so, it must be morally permissible to desire to hurt the wrong-doer. It is 
extremely abnormal if self-respecting persons do not experience righteous 
anger, even hatred towards those who have wronged them.There must be some 
room in our moral topography for what the philosopher, Jeffrie Murphy calls 
retributive hatred.

Yet it may not be wise or morally appropriate for victims to act on these 
feelings. It is imprudent because retaliatory action sparks off escalating 
cycles of revenge and reciprocal violence. Retaliation by the US and counter 
retaliation will almost certainly plunge the entire world into greater 
suffering, pain, vulnerability and insecurity. Revenge can unleash even 
greater tragedies. 

How do we make sure that today's victims do not  become tomorrow's 
perpetrators of much worse? What if the original motive of revenge unravels 
an unappeasable thirst for violence? If lessons of history teach us anything 
at all, it is that the barbaric acts of one group solicit equally barbaric 
acts from others. No matter on whom the first blow was struck, if our aim is 
to terminate barbarism, then, it must be stalled now, suddenly, and abruptly. 
In the shifting sands of the complex ethic at work here, the entire moral 
advantage rests with victims of the immediate crime. If the vision that 
generally motivates them is to come good eventually, it is best, all things 
considered, to forgo the temptation to act on retributive hatred and feelings 
of vengeance. 

Retribution, not revenge

To restrain vengeful motives is wise for another reason. Undoubtedly, the 
massacre on the East coast is motivated by the desire to question the 
economic, political and cultural supremacy of the USA in a radically unequal 
world. If and when the mightiest nation in the world retaliates, it will not 
be to grant equal status to offenders. It is rather more likely that, by a 
massive display of strength,
they will be shoved further back in their less than equal place. The not so 
hidden text of American retaliation will be an abject lesson to all to never 
again dare American supremacy. 

Will it surprise anyone if a disproportionate and symbolic show of force to 
maim and crush the enemy flows from the very same motive of vengeance? It is 
true, of course, that some acts of revenge are the wellspring of equality and 
refute claims of supremacy  by wrong-doers. However, the spectacular show of 
violence on September 11 and in the days to come is likely to reveal a 
different,warped logic of alternating claims of superiority. 

We need retribution for sure, but not revenge. In the days to come, we must 
not be forced to witness ghost towns in other parts of the world with more 
terror-stricken faces, choked voices, desperately crying for help. American 
might must be restrained, perpetrators must be brought to book in an 
international court of justice and tried for  crimes against humanity, our 
common humanity. 

This would just be a beginning. To set a larger process of reconciliation in 
motion, the messages of marginalised collectives hidden under the gruesome 
rubble of Tuesday's destruction must be decoded and discussed by moderates 
from all over the world. Only by properly understanding the social, cultural 
and spiritual basis of self-respect in our troubled times can we ever begin 
to address the problems violently thrown at us on September 11. 


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