titled, ‘A curriculum for peace studies’, published by WCC, ISBN: 978-93- 5288-704-
0, October, 2017
Title:
Identity and conflict
as obstruction to peace
Preface
“In
the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive
without a sense of identity.” Erik Homburger Erikson, Psychologist and
proponent of the Psycho-Social Theory of Development
Identity
as a multi-dimensional concept may be understood at a psycho-social level in
which a person takes up his/her chances to relate with the characteristics of a
group or certain groups - more as an attribute to choice than any that can be
contributed to discovery. Conflict, on the other hand, is described as a
serious disagreement or argument, a clash, a strike, a confrontation, a
collision, a fight or perhaps a struggle that can break instantly or over a
period of time. Either way, identity and conflict stem from an emerging tryst
of violence and parts connected therewith that this essay shall attempt to
elucidate.
This
essay aims at deconstructing the conceptual framework of identity and conflict
to understand the disenfranchisement and breach of rights and its process
continuum leading to inequality, injustice and exclusion that has moved through
history and has found its place in the contemporary scenario as obstruction to
peace.
Introduction
“The
identity of an individual is essentially a function of his/her choices, rather
than the discovery of an immutable attribute” Amartya Sen, Economist, in The
Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity
The challenge for humanity to find an order to set right
a few basic needs for survival by hunting, gathering or searching for better
grazing pastures, finding a place to safely rest before one could set forth to
explore the very purpose of life - was the natural and normal sequence of life…
once upon a time.
Over time, things have changed. We have others doing
things for us - from the past to the present - with the pretext of making life
easy for the next generation to continue, we have others who have thought for
us, who have carefully documented for us what they thought, others who have
taken care to even warn us of what to do and more of what not to; the ‘others’
from various spheres of life who have discovered and invented things that have
influenced us that we have incorporated into our daily use and life - from
religious notes to philosophies, from paradigms to theories, from materials to
food - that flood through art, science and business that the generation to
follow has to only improvise or customize to make life easier. All that one
needs to do now is decide from a plethora of choices presented in front of them
- from audio, visual medium to communication devices, from religion to
political parties, from automobiles to even life partners - all made available
to ‘surf, click and grab’ and that too with the best offer available being added
to the tag.
As we decide what to take and what to let go, what to
use and what not to, what to follow and who not to, we consequently choose a
few as we set aside the rest and set on to proclaim (even if we are not called
to do so) what defines us - an ‘identity’ we create in this trail of choices we
make or forego. Subsequently, the one element that we have managed to save in
this due process of attempting to make life easy is ‘time’; from the time saved
through the development and use of better and quicker equipments and gadgets
that perform with optimal efficiency to the availability of solutions to some
of the most complex problems confronting life itself, everything available at
our finger tips that calls for just a quick reference, we have saved a lot of
time indeed - so much of it that we have enough time to think of problems and
ways to create new ones in the meantime.
We have successfully moved our natural selection of
settlements from an ‘egalitarian society’ - centered around ecology, humanity
and a need that aimed at cooperation and unconditional support for peaceful
coexistence to a ‘profitarian society’ - centered around economics, money and
greed filled with expectations, conditions, stress and hypocrisy.
This movement nevertheless has had an impact
especially in three dominant areas:
·
our choice of
values
·
our idea of equal
distribution of resources, services and justice and
·
our way of life
The
clash of systems
“The increasing tendency towards seeing people in
terms of one dominant ‘identity’ (‘this is your duty as an American’, ‘you must
commit these acts as a Muslim’, or ‘as a Chinese you should give priority to
this national engagement’) is not only an imposition of an external and
arbitrary priority, but also the denial of an important liberty of a person who
can decide on their respective loyalties to different groups (to all of which
he or she belongs).” Amartya Sen, Economist, in The Idea Of Justice
From
the age-old hunter and gatherer groups to the modern white and blue collar
groups, for centuries, humanity has learnt to stratify, divide and rule to
exist - nevertheless survive. The existence of groups co-depended on
establishing a ‘me-we’ bond with a group with what one saw familiar while at
the same time excluding another by what it saw as unfamiliar or what it could
not understand at that point of time; thus finding a reasonable justification
to avoid, refrain, hate and eventually differentiate by labelling a group as
‘they’ or ‘the others’ breeding contempt, prejudice, bigotry and dogmatism
established on the foundation of personal bias and shallow opinions in the
process.
From
the ‘master-slave’ relationship in the past to the ‘king-subject’ relationship
a few decades back, to what we call the ‘state-citizen’ relationship that we
claim to have now, we have always had the need to have the ruler and the ruled -
a prerogative than a conditional clause for claiming our existence and a
reclaim to understand the shifts in our economic and political systems as well.
With more and more emerging trends of violence, betrayal and conflicts
happening globally and regularly - combined with peoples’ apathy and display of
the bystander effect, along emerges a pattern of people being connected on
grounds of sharing a common enemy and a common target for hatred rather than a
bond established on the grounds of peace and love.
At
the political front, the concept of absolute freedom (Laissez Faire) gets
criticized for the idea of self-exercised conscience that it relies on rather
than a solid and tangible set of agreement collected from common conscience -
Gandhi, a promoter of peace and non-violence had a conscience and so did Godse
who killed him - the idea of conscience left to itself begs for clarity as to
‘whose idea of conscience is it anyway?!’ that we would follow as the very idea
of conscience melts down to just a suggestion and nothing more and nothing
less; while on the other hand, at the other extreme end lies the idea of
‘Absolute Control’ left to the hands of an individual or a group to decide that
also suffocates people midway and corrupts the people in power and others
around eventually as incidents from history like the inhuman atrocities that
happened at UT 731 in China, the Concentration Camps in Germany or at the Abu
Ghraib Prison in the US of A-occupied oil fields of the Middle East may point
out.
While
these incidents of power, corruption and violence strike a chord with similar results
demonstrated through most psycho-social experiments conducted earlier like
Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, Muzafer Sherif’s Robber’s Cave
Experiment, Stanley Milgram’s Milgram Experiment, Hofling’s Hospital Experiment
or Solomon Asch’s Conformity Experiment, the final learning still remains the
same - power corrupts, good people are capable of doing the most evil things
and people who must have stopped them usually allow violence to exist by
conforming to authority and/or display the ‘Bystander Effect’ by which most
watch incidents of violence sans response thereby promoting violence and
submersing peace in the process.
Establishing
Boundaries
Over time, grouping has been made a forced choice to
be endured by many - forced ideas, forced mores and stricter codes of conduct,
forced restrictions, forced choices, forced lifestyles and a life of forced
conformity to authority and standards set forth by those who claim to be the
guardians and the sitting elite of the group to monitor and control the rest
and others according to their whims and fancies.
The
Etic (external) and the Emic (internal) motivational factors that establish
one’s identity emerge, operate and configure conformity to authority and the
reasonable justification that helps one to understand ‘why so?’ is unclear
until ‘I become one with the affected’ or usually never until ‘I am the
affected.’ This violence that destroys the very fabric of our social
connections, ironically, also plays a role in reconnecting at a closer yet
closed level victims of hatred, violence, betrayal, inequality, poverty,
exclusion and injustice with yet another group and yet another established
identity.
Meeting
midway and accepting the decision of the majority as binding and normal by
implementing the idea of democracy is also seen having its own flaw – filth
doesn’t become food just because we would consider that by statistical majority
a million flies who devour it can’t be wrong - perhaps this analogy must
resonate to draw a parallel to help us understand why many of the
democratically-run countries have such lousy leaders though supposedly chosen
by the majority in the most democratic way. So, ‘what do we have left if
democracy - the suggested remedy for all world disorder - is out?!’ still remains
a favourite topic for intellectual brainstorming during coffee-table
conversations.
Instability of congruence
"Poverty
too, like feminism, is often framed as an identity problem. As though the poor
had not been created by injustice but are a lost tribe who just happen to
exist, and can be rescued in the short term by a system of grievance redressal
(administered by NGOs on an individual, person-to-person basis), and whose
long-term resurrection will come from Good Governance — under the regime of Global
Corporate Capitalism, it goes without saying." Arundhati Roy, Writer and
Activist, in Capitalism: A Ghost Story
We
are simple creatures vulnerable to suggestions and a clever manipulator works
these suggestions at the right time in a right situation for every wrong reason.
We become vulnerable to suggestions to take up an identity imposed upon us, especially
in troubled and testing times in situations like trauma and grief especially if
it is in mass scale - times that are carefully monitored and optimally used by
people with cleverly masked identities - from the religious fanatic to the
local politician who count their existence through the communal divide they are
able to instil by tickling the most susceptible human emotions - fear, guilt
and shame - as a means to an end to fulfil their own personal wants and vote
banks. Many wars - from the Spanish inquisition to the one’s fought in Kashmir
or Syria - have been fought for an imaginary friend over imaginary lines -
visual and auditory hallucinations combined with persecutory and grandiose
delusions indicative of madness.
With
moral and self-righteous idealism that humans quote to control and kill each
other that unwritten social mores provide with authority than written civil codes
of conduct, the unseen cause for jurisprudence often finds a tryst with the visible
laws existing within the limits of a jurisdiction. This reasoned display of
madness often results in the unreasonable madness that overlaps and is seen in
the world today that is being entertained with equally seeming acceptance of
violence displayed - often fought over invisible superpowers in the name of
God(s) and Goddesses and over invisible territorial lines in the name of protecting
national security and promoting democracy - especially in countries where
minerals and oil can be found for the self-righteous and sacrosanct western
world to loot.
It
is always fear, guilt and shame that stress people and make them compromise on
their freedom and rights; giving perpetrators as well as hypocritic saviours of
the oppressed an opportunity to recognize these primal needs and optimize the
same for their own personal gains. At this point, it is hard to say if identity
begets violence or whether violence begets identity - at a time when we see
that one complements the other. Even when a person tries to shed his/her
identity to escape a label, through international migration, trans-cultural
assimilation or through inter-racial/caste accommodation, it only indicates a
transition from one labelled box to another - in this case, from the conditional
orthodox box into an unorthodox box with a set of other conditions. Identity,
like a shadow follows us stubbornly – through the darkest alleys to spotlights –
hardly giving us a chance to escape throughout our life. People seem to have a
need for identities to help establish prejudices based upon biases and baseless
opinions to accept or reject us – and to find valid reasons to do so – to take
us in or leave us out – with ruthless impunity while expecting acceptance with
stoicism.
Process continuum
The
usual process of taking over an identity - at least theoretically, happens as a
person goes through:
1. Formation
of an idea through group influence
2. Affirmation
of an idea through personal experience
3. Transformation
of a person upon reflection
4. Confirmation
of the transformation by the group to which one chooses to belong
5. Until
the identity takes over the person itself
Marking
of identity, on the other hand, is usually condensed to a few grounds:
·
Physical Trait:
Distinguishable physical features like hair, eye and skin colour or the very
shape of face and/or body or gender
·
Socio-Economic Factors:
Occupation, dressing, asset holding - including land, automobile, value of
possessions and liabilities including loans and debts
·
Social Affiliations:
Religion, nationality, family background, place of birth, language spoken and
accent and dialect used, caste, tribe, memberships in clubs and associations,
awards and accolades received, domicile and quality of neighbourhood,
educational qualification(s) and school(s) attended, criminal record and sexual
orientation
Forced truant
Imagine
being labelled as an ‘invalid’, a 'marginalized’, a ‘minority’, a ‘migrant’ or
a ‘victim’ - constantly reaffirmed and reminded of a memory one wants to shred
- identities forced even if one refuses to accept or wishes to shred. How would
we feel if our rights are to be decided by labels pasted on us by another and
the identity we carry is based upon the scars left behind by our oppressors?
Being
compelled to take the label on oneself like it were an honour offered in the
form of subsidies, scholarships and opportunities it may bring… if only we
don’t bargain and if we would just accept what is thrust upon us as is. After
all, ‘this is traditional, this is how the system works, this is how it has
been, is and will be,’ we shall be told; and given the unasked for right to be
stuck with an identity - silently yet systematically removing one’s right to
live sans an identity - even if one wants to. We shall find a cap of identity
available and wear the dunce cap silently to fit in with the rest of the
careless crowd in our regular pursuit to belong to the majority and to make our
way to the top of the normalcy curve of mediocrity as we are always taught to
adhere.
With
that, identity being confirmed, more by others than by oneself, here we are as
part of a larger group - a group that feels or that is relentlessly made to
feel as the marginalized, a part of the minority, a migrant, the oppressed, the
victim and as the violated. And now having worn the cloak, the appetite for
justice must match the voices of what others wearing similar cloak with rules
and roles to match command – and we march along - even if we do not understand
why we march with the crowd to a tune for a naked parade of the king.
From a slightly different perspective – perhaps the right
perspective - we are in a way bribed and lured by means of scholarships,
subsidies, waive-offs, freebies and other said opportunities available to a few
that make us and keep us ’a part apart’ rather than claim to welfare such as these
and more that must have been made a right available to all by bearing us as a
‘part of the whole’.
Invisibility of the visible
We
often undermine our capacity to hate rather than our capability to do so. As
Prof Philip Zimbardo puts it, “Good people can turn bad and become capable of
doing evil things bad people do, in overwhelming situations.” - A phenomenon he
called ‘The Lucifer effect’.
Incidents
of violence and persecution happen at the micro, mezzo and macro system at
various levels. Other incidents that exhibit the ‘Bystander effect’ at a larger
scale like our relative calmness as a witness to violence like genocides and
acts of terror that attempt to erase clueless and innocent civilians across the
globe - perhaps far from our television screens on which we gladly watch them
as mute spectators - like what happens in Syria, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Tibet,
Bangladesh, Philippines, parts of Africa, apart from North East India and
elsewhere too from a safe distance - safe enough for us to be comfortable to be
not bothered about anything happening at a distance far away from us.
Often
when we hear about incidents of violence where a person is left to die on the
road after being run over by a speeding vehicle or thrown out of one after a
brutal rape, with no one to help, we are left to the wits of our fantasy to
imagine, if at all they survive, what would they be thinking… Would they wonder
why no one cared when they were left to die? Would they be so gracious to see
and forgive the violence shown towards them (at times accidental and many times
deliberate)? Or would they go further to reflect on why the disregard and
apathy shown to them exists in the first place? Would they see an emerging pattern
of prejudice, bigotry, stereotyping and attitude - a result of constant and
continuous assimilation and accommodation of schemas within their frame of
reference that concludes in discovering and reaffirming their identity to
justify the injustice shown to them - a cognitive dissonance at any scale or
level as a natural tendency to move on - nevertheless survive as a group of
victims against a group of perpetrators - groups that often interchange their
stance in accordance to time for survival’s sake. Perhaps the same questions
rise from a point of reflection at a larger level as it does at times of
bearing individual trauma - only that this time it is reaffirmation and
reconfirmation of identities for resilience at a confirmatory scale.
The
upward mobility of the downtrodden
The
plight and fight of the socially (pushed) backward and traditionally oppressed
communities is more like a life on the wheel. The victims of violence and
injustice today being identified and recognized as such, command more than
demand their special provisions for upliftment in the name of social justice -
be it the Dalits from India or the Africans settled in America or the
indigenous people who were devoid of their rights in their homeland like the
Maoris of New Zealand or the Red Indians of America and every other colonized
country like India that is yet to recover from the aftermath of the mad
nightmare of the past.
This
self-imposed need to be identified and recognized as one belonging to the
victimized, marginalized and scheduled groups is a mandate to avail the rationed
welfare from the stored loot of his/her majesty’s invasion supplied in the form
of grants, aid and other concessions. This identity of the ‘receiver’ as an
ever-marginalized group or as a forever-developing country at large, gets
further cemented by the media and good Samaritans of the development sector who
make and take sensational coverage for overseas broadcast carefully selecting
the ‘target’ group to be showcased as dirty, humbled and always dressed up in
rags; while at the same time, the ‘giver’ being shown wearing the cloak of
superiority, authority and pride to break and throw morsels collected on behalf
of the victimized, poor, vulnerable, voiceless, haplessly helpless target
groups to fetch. In reality though, it is these non-governmental organizations
from the west whose survival depends by straining majority of the loot for
their own keep - collected in the name of the target group on whose behalf they
beg.
On
one hand, the people who carry the burden of the earlier oppressors and who are
widely pointed to for the blunders committed once for which they have no
rationale claim to be blamed, are subjected and go through the same level of
human disregard and discrimination which once their predecessors (alone) had to
be blamed for. This phenomenon is a turn of the wheel as we see the ones who
were up yesterday being crushed by the ones who were down today - just for the
simple way in which things have turned. Sadly, identities that were fought to
be cast away have simply become more certain, defined, nurtured, wilfully
promoted by many and unwilfully thrust on the rest - for the same reason it was
earlier done - for survival.
A resulting paradox - an ingroup that fought against an outgroup
for stratifying, discriminating and labelling it, now takes up yet another
fight to belong and be identified as a group carrying its own marks and scars
of identity - quite ironically that becomes the new identity the
ingroup wants to establish – reaffirming and confirming its identity more
strongly rather than finding opportunities to shed the same for which it has
been fighting all the while.
The culture of reaction and response
As
a recourse for the perpetual violence and a way out of the suburban drudgery to
soothe the conscience and ever questioning superego - those that result as a
collective - is established through international treaties and national
policies in an attempt to provide damage control to protect the affected –
thereby promoting rather than suppress identities in the meantime. Thus, in a
pursuit of burying identities, we only end up finding grounds to breed the same
instead.
Others
who lack faith in the collective conscience numb
their pain and suffer in silence. This systematic depletion of unity, even
though sees the existence of issues, resists seeking solutions. Subduing
dissent as an opportunistic stand tends to be uncalculated risk every oppressor
and their promoters can postpone yet never completely douse. In the process of brushing
issues under the carpet to showcase and promote a false sense of complacency
among the masses, unaddressed problems lie repressed until they erupt at
unforeseen places at the least expected time and situation. Every issue calls
to be addressed; as often, the simple, neglected form of unaddressed abuse
turns out to become more complex and irreversible when not mitigated.
Interconnection
of the broken links
The
chances of cultivating singularity in the case of identity, is not as much an
easy task as the claim to success through plural affiliations. Just as impeding
individual freedom by imposing regulations for preserving common good cannot be
denied, exercising strata to advocate nation-building in the context of valuing
inclusion and pluralism cannot be dismissed - though both remain contradictory
and paradoxical in their approach.
If
one calls for scrutinizing the prevalence of poverty, inequality in the distribution
of resources, services and justice, it all stems up from a context of social
exclusion that prevailed at a period of time or that prevails still. From
racism, imperialism, structuralism, autocracy to the more recent technocracy,
stratification, discrimination and class distinction seems to be the way of
life set forth by some, widely accepted by many and consciously or
unconsciously followed by all indiscriminately. In our adherence to belong, we
ensure that we don’t fail to belong to some group or the other and consequently
by doing so, render to fail some way or the other.
Excessive
emphasis on attributes based on religion, place of origin, gender,
linguistic-similarities and differences and so on as an ascriptive attribute to
describe one’s belonging to a certain group is also the discriminating force
that mutilates multi-culturalism and turns out to be counter-productive to the
idea of peaceful diversity and the idea of coexistence.
Though
there have been enough and more academic dialogues, debates, discussions and discourses
on the idea of identity, chances remain that there have been more questions
than conclusions that have opened up. As we show greater resistance to be
discriminated on one hand, we get more and more wilfully stratified on the
other – either for political or it’s associated socio-economic reasons. Even
the decision to opt out of having an identity established for us, seems out of
question as we find ourselves struggling to get out of one box only to find
ourselves drop in and fit right into another - packed, labelled and
compartmentalized to be exhibited for the rest of the world to see and
recognize. Thus, a fitting conclusion to this essay would be the chance to
reflect only even more on the identities we chose and the identities that
choose us as we reach a point of mooting over this final thought:
“When
you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or
anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you
are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by
belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is
seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion,
to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total
understanding of mankind." Jiddu
Krishnamurti, Philosopher and Thinker
Points for further reflection:
1. How
do we identify our self?
2. How
are we identified by others?
3. What
are the identities thrust upon us that we wish were not thrust upon us?
4. What
are the identities we have thrust upon others?
5. How
violent have we been establishing and thrusting identities on each other?
6. How
long have we been and will continue to obstruct peace by promoting violence for
establishing identities?
7. What
is the way out for promoting peace and building a brave, new world free from
identities?
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