E-Paper
History?s habit of repeating itself
FLIPPING THROUGH the pages of history, in search of causes that started the Two Great Wars, what meets the eye is that apparently, localised incidents served as flashpoints to set in motion a chain of frenzied mass destruction across the world.
FLIPPING THROUGH the pages of history, in search of causes that started the Two Great Wars, what meets the eye is that apparently, localised incidents served as flashpoints to set in motion a chain of frenzied mass destruction across the world.
Take the case of the First World War, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, (the heir to the Austrian throne), in Sarajevo, carried out on June 28, 1914, by a secret union—the ‘Black Hand’ comprising extremist Serbian nationalists—eventually led to alignments and realignments within Eurasia giving birth to opposing alliances draped in self seeking military chauvinism, tearing through all that civilised world had hitherto stood for. What therefore, started in the Balkans soon swept across the continents leaving behind a trail of earth-shaking rumbles felt in places as distant as Verdun in France to Sakhalin in the North Pacific. Eventually, after four years of mass-scale destruction, some were adjudged winners and some losers. But man sadly remained the biggest sufferer.
Yet, despite the ravages and ruins left behind, very little was learnt by mankind. Once again when the first German panzer besmirched the Vistula watered serene Polish landscape on the first day of September 1939, the rest of the world was probably unaware that the process of re-entering an eerie eclipse had begun.
And, finally, when it did clear, it had left some un-erasable blemishes (gas chambers on the one side, Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the other) upon the face of earth!
People after people and countries after countries got drawn into fighting. Unilaterally justifying their respective entry into macabre bloodbath. For some, it was a conflict of ideologies while for others, it was a clash between civilisations and yet for some it was simply for ‘survival’! Interestingly, each warring nation assumed that ‘God’ was on its side. Ironically, the world, by and large, assumed the existence of ‘divine approval’ for 50 million human lives lost during the Second World War!
Thereafter, history kept repeating itself following more or less a similar politico-military course of unhindered decimation of humans and devastation across the world, whether it was Korea, Vietnam, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Falkland, African mainland, Kosovo, Bosnia, or the Persian Gulf, until 9/11 happened, which added yet another dimension to the perpetration of man’s hatred against man.
Sadly enough the horrendous and deplorable scenes witnessed in New York in the first year of the current millennium were insufficient to change the course.
And the world re-entered the conflict arena with renewed frenzy armed with daisy cutters and an assortment of super lethal arsenal capable of conventional and unconventional means of destruction, once again predicting a far more harrowing future for the so called superior human race.
The American anger first manifested itself in the release of hellfire inside the already lethally ploughed terrain of Afghanistan, which was in the midst of internal war of supremacy amongst factionalised warlords, the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It is another matter that Mullah Umar and Osama Bin Laden still remain untouched. Subsequently the guns shifted to Iraq to effect a swift regime change, which only saw the Euphrates and Tigris turning red with the spilt blood of innocents and helpless stakeholders drawn into a conflict for unknown reasons.
As of now, the world has become far more intolerant, lethal and self destructive since that fateful day of nuclear holocaust witnessed by the Japanese (7 August 1945). Today, as many as over sixty known centres (countries) including one next door are involved in acts of terrorism, who neither play by the Geneva Covenant nor hesitate in merciless indulgence in acts of butchery, each claiming to have a legitimate reason to reduce fellow humans to rubble.
The situation back home is no better. Kashmir is in flames and the North East is suffering. The hinterland lies exposed to all kinds of militant movements/ activities, sponsored either from within or outside, time and again reconfirming what history has repeatedly hollered through Ages to a deaf audience that- Man and man alone continues to remain the principal adversary of mankind!
