War and Peace

War is a timeless trope. Beginning with that of Kurukshetra or the Trojan war. The bloodiest ones are measured not by how many they kill, but how closely and intensely you cared for and loved your enemies. Brothers. Friends. Turned into war-enemies. From the winters of war, we may yet emerge. Bloodied. Defeated. Even if we vanquish the enemy. There is no glory, and yet, in epic and history, we can read the human condition as one of dancing in war. The seductive grandeur, the great risk of loss of life, loved ones, and sociopolitical status make it attractive. The making of war heroes and martyrs. One man’s terror being the other’s freedom.

Something about the pacifist narrative, however rationally justifiable, seems disingenuous to me. There is enough evidence in the frames of the literary, mythical, and historical, to affirm today that man thirsts for war. Sovereigns will find excuses to go to war, no matter what their historical coordinates. The common man, too, once in power of some measure, thirsts for war. Anurag Kashyap, Tarantino and Ram Gopal Verma’s 90s films come to my mind. Especially, the meek Faizal (played by Nawazuddin) in GoW2, who turns into the most fearsome warmonger.

What surprises me is that the rest of us play innocent, and attempt to wash the blood off our hands. There are Lady Macbeths yet among us. Either we are engaged in conniving, direct participation, cowtowing to powers who wage war, or merely watching in nervous pleasure. All are conditions of culpability. Perhaps, criminal law needs an amendment adding to the conspiracy and abetment provisions, one that describes the making of nervous euphoria out of watching another’s war.

At least Lady Macbeth was verbally honest than the modern man about her smugness in power, when she says (Macbeth, Act V, Sc. 1):

What need we fear
who knows it, when none can call our power to
account? Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him?

[Film still from Joel Coen’s Macbeth (2021).

Ft. Kathryn Hunter, as one of the three weird sisters.]