Beyond the rhetoric of war

This past week, since hostilities broke out in West Asia, the rhetoric of war has intensified and provided ready material for news headlines. The United States and Israel have unapologetically claimed responsibility for starting the war. Donald Trump first spoke about “epic fury” when he unleashed the might of his army against Iran, then denounced his enemies as “evil people”, and finally called for their “total surrender”.

With Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, certainly not a leader with a popular track record, killed (reportedly by a ‘blue sparrow’ missile), Iran has responded with matching rhetoric, retorting that its enemies would have to take their surrender expectations to their graves. The language of call and response is familiar and brings back memories of earlier conflicts. When the Gulf War broke out in 1991, a defiant Saddam Hussein described the conflict memorably as “the mother of all battles.”

One week into the current war, the deaths in Iran are estimated at 1,332, and the casualties in other countries are significant, too. Six American soldiers have died in action. Reuters quotes reports saying Lebanon alone has lost 294 lives. In Iran, a missile claimed the lives of some 175 girls at a primary school. Scenes of a mass grave waiting for the children are among the grimmest to have emerged so far. These deaths are bloody and heart-wrenching, and yet the reportage is largely focused on the swagger of the players, obscuring the ugly realities on the ground. What we hear the loudest is what the warring leaders are saying, and the reports are accompanied by brief details about how many are dead. When a war is raging, we are never told the stories of those paying with their lives. Any such human story rips the glory off the conflict.

In his famous 1946 essay, George Orwell wrote about how politicians twist language to hide death and devastation. The Indian-born British novelist and journalist gained his insights from his experiences as a policeman and soldier; he wrote sharply against imperialism and totalitarianism.

A telling paragraph from his essay: “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.”

Orwell was deeply concerned about how language could be used to make murder ‘respectable’. Out here, we in India are not unfamiliar with how inhuman acts are calibrated as acts of valour in defence of religious, caste or national honour. Everything from food supply to bus travel gets a political spin. What is described as a freebie or revdi when given by your opponents becomes a proud achievement if you are the one giving it. Language is the packaging with the power to sell anything.

But one hard lesson is that ground realities sometimes bring down rhetoric with a thud. Grandiose narratives may last decades, but in the world of electoral politics, even if no one calls out politicians’ lies, voting patterns often reflect disapproval.

When a war breaks out, we read about how a host of geopolitical considerations come into play, and relations among countries are tried, tested and recast. Not everyone gets to know about what such conflicts mean to the arms trade. As we watch the explosions on our TV screens, read about the many technological advances in warfare, and hear about the attrition in the language of a heroic odyssey, we mustn’t forget that what looks like a spectacle to us is death and destruction raining down on others.

The writer often sees high art in kitsch and vice versa.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.