Apr 12, 2002, 12.27am IST
ASIF JALAL.
First the chain of the sabarmati express was pulled to stop it near godhra junction. latching shut one of the compartments from outside, a mob threw stones, broke windows, and hurled petrol bombs inside, targeting the trapped passengers. then the coach was set on fire. more than 50 people died, most of them women and children. what followed was worse. among other things, there have been gruesome reports of unspeakable acts of violence on women and children in other parts of gujarat. from where do people acquire this horrific capacity for barbaric destruction? why do even women, who are believed to be the embodiment of love and compassion, remain mute witnesses to or act in compliance with men in these acts of hatred and cruelty? according to erich fromm, the german-born social psychologist and psycho-analytical theorist, the first step in understanding our destructive disposition is to recognise the two kinds of hate inherent in humanity. the first type of hate is ‘rational hate’. it is expressed in reaction to a threat to one’s own freedom, life or ideas. it has a biological self-protecting function. it comes as a reaction to a threat and dissipates when the threat is removed. it is not against life but for life. this type of hate is manifested in the cry of a baby who is hungry. the second type of hate is ‘irrational hate’. rather than reaction to a specific threat, it is a character trait inherent in some people. it is marked by readiness to be hostile to others. this is a passion to cripple life, a strong impulse to cruelty or a pathological aggressiveness. people with this kind of hate seek a target to attack. they do not wait for an incident to occur, they create it. such people are found among the leaders of racist mobs and organisations, and sometimes among the ideological ‘theorists’ of hate movements. this destructive potential is proportionate to the individual’s inability to express his capacities — the sensory, emotional, physical, intellectual and productive. fromm asserts that the more one’s ability of spontaneous expression of these capacities is thwarted, the more deadly and destructive the person tends to be. if life’s tendency to grow, to live, is thwarted, the energy thus blocked undergoes a process of change and is transformed into life destructive energy. destructiveness is the outcome of the unlived life. the conditions, which block life-furthering energy, produce disability to be positive. what is more important is that in being destructive to others, one is not gracious to oneself. a destructive person violates the principles of life in himself as well as others. in the language of religion, we express this truth by saying that man has been created in the image of god, and thus hurting a man is a sin against god. in secular language, we may say that what we do to others, we do to ourselves. one of the most fundamental principles of ethics is ‘do not do to others what you would not have them do to you’. to violate the forces directed towards life in any human being or even animal, has consequences for ourselves. our own happiness and existence depend upon respecting these forces. we cannot violate them in others and at the same time, remain untouched. the respect for one’s own life as well as that of others is concomitant of the process of life itself and a condition for psychic health. this truth was revealed to esarhaddon, the king of assyria, when he intended to execute the defeated king lailie after burning and destroying lailie’s kingdom. an old man who depicted the secret of life to esarhaddon told him, ‘‘i have let you see that in doing evil to others, you have done it to yourself also. life is one in all, and yours is but a portion of this same common life. and in that one part of life that is yours, you can make life better or worse. you can only improve life in yourself by destroying the barriers that divide your life from that of others, and by considering others as yourself. you injure your life when you think of it as the only life, and try to add to it at the expense of other lives’’. indeed, a destructive person is unhappy even if he has succeeded in attaining the aims of his destructiveness. in abhorrent passion, whereby one is driven to destroy others, one does not know that ‘‘the life of a moment and the life of thousand years, one’s own life and the life of all the visible and invisible beings in the world are knitted together as a whole’’. to destroy another’s life is not possible without injuring one’s own. this is the fundamental truth of our collective existence.
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