Is War Imagery Appropriate in Battle Against Covid-19?

This writer is among some people who think war-imagery fits the present situation in the country uncannily. Weighty opinion has dismissed this language as incongruous. For example Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen says if a war takes place there is a government to take necessary measures. What is confronting us is a terrifying health emergency.

It is also a fact that some of the most reckless leaders in the world today also use the most bellicose language and strike war-like postures in their fervour to advance the interest of big money. One of them was our Republic Day guest of honour, who has since been stripped of his powers in his own country to stem the tide of public indignation at his careless and negligent handling of the crisis.

A month later the US President, who also trifled with the menace and has been indirectly responsible for exponential rise in numbers of those afflicted or killed by the virus, was given a ceremonial ovation in India by thousands mobilised for for that purpose alone. He too is facing now a hailstorm of abuse in America for the same folly. They were favourites here because our leadership is addicted to similarly militaristic postures and rhetoric. Hence this language naturally raises hackles.

Is that reason enough to dump that imagery? Yes, if one considers wars with limited purposes which can be left to the care of the government, leaving ordinary citizens alert but going about their daily business of life as usual. But the twentieth century accustomed mankind to an altogether different form of war, called by military historians ‘Total War’. And we obviously face such a danger and task in our battle with Covid-19.

Such a war, like the war against the Axis forces in World War II, which saw entire countries engrossed on all fronts of national life, concentrating all their material and human resources and all their social organisation, political and administrative machinery and mental energies to fighting the enemy to the bitter end. In the end Germany was reduced to ashes, the haughty Japanese were brought to their knees and Great Britain was shorn of most of her imperial power and glamour. The Soviet Union lost 25 million people and the immensity of their sacrifice was hailed by Einstein as something that will be “inscribed for posterity in letters of gold in annals of mankind”.

The Nazis were surprised by the tenacity and grit of the ordinary British people. No one within the boundaries of a nation could pursue a peaceful solitary pursuit at home at that time. Such wars were fought for life of nations, for the survival of powerful ideologies. Literally a fight to the finish. And it demanded and received from belligerent nations a similar kind and degree of resilience, resourcefulness and willingness to sacrifice. Its end was hailed as a triumph of humanism and democracy. Everyone hoped things could then get written on a clean slate again, though it did not happen. Later in the century the people of Vietnam saw through another such devastating war for their existence against the mightiest military power in the world. 

It is my contention that we are meeting such a turn of events now. This virus confronts people in and attached to the medical profession, who are in this case the armed forces at the theatre of war, but also seems capable of ruining the arteries of production, communication and exchange like a relentless hostile power. And a lot depends on how we unite to tackle it. The arch imperialist Churchill joined hands with socialist Clement Atlee and his Labour Party in the war for survival of Britain. Labour introduced a plan for all-embracing social welfare despite heated Tory opposition. Stalin called to the country’s defence in The Great Patriotic War, as it was officially called, even the Russian Orthodox Church. The capitalist democracies extended a hand of friendship to the Soviet Union laying aside their sworn enmity. They all called it a war to save humanity from savagery.

Such is the situation in the country today. The enemy is equally powerful, wily and resourcefully evil. The figure of speech is no idle talk. Unless the entire country unites and cooperates, and resolves to fight it as one soul, like nations on the Allied side did in WWII, not only our present fortunes, but our future is at stake. That means an atmosphere of unity and solidarity, willingness to share hardships and sacrifices, that seems still far from compelling owing to the present ruler’s obsession with hegemonic power. If this situation prevails while every indication is that the enemy is about to unleash a lightning strike of vast magnitude, the potential of national energy and initiative, collective resistance and resilience will remain dormant and we shall be most ill-prepared for it. As Senator Bernie Sanders in the US has warned Americans, “...worst-case scenarios are what we must plan for.”

It will be a calamity equal to the might of the enemy if the ruling party devises a strategy by calculating advantages to the monopolists of finance and industry and regarding lives of the masses as “expendable”. The post-lockdown scenario today is ominously suggestive of such calculations in some circles. The idea among them seems to be that the if the grasses wilt and die under the heat there is every chance of their growing again after a lapse in time but the big trees must be saved at any cost. They forget that the grass may be an integral part of a mutually-supportive ecosystem that will collapse if it disappears from the scene. The police, as usual, are blindly and brutally enforcing the lockdown when people are helplessly struggling against loss of jobs, want, privation and starvation. Charity by NGOs, as they themselves will be the first to admit, is like a passing shower in the scorching and parched desert.

In my humble opinion direct cash transfer may to an extent cushion the blow if it reaches the most distressed and isolated people. It may eventually reach stranded migrant workers too, if the media are not caught up with other human interest stories. (Right under our noses, sanitation workers in cities have been denied protective gear and masks and driven to earn their keep with the gravest degree of exposure to the danger.) But even granting that the rather humongous agenda is being fulfilled by the state in the most philanthropic manner, that does not amount to reviving the economy and restoring social and political institutions of civilised life.

Unless the people are ready in body and spirit to shoulder the burden of putting the wheels of production, transport and exchange back in working order and at work, death is bound to stalk the land. And it is not money alone that is going to do the trick.

There ought to be a shared programme of national revival on the basis of a consensus among all parties and opinions. The state must adopt such a programme without dithering. The public sector will perhaps have a larger and more varied role to play, pushing aside neo-liberal wisdom. The small producer, the manual labourer and the small and medium industries will have to be less neglected and given a much better-tended share of the state’s attention than is bestowed on them now. The basis for that may be laid today amidst the rising human toll and devastation around. It is possible only if and when common sense overcomes blind appetite for profit and all shades of organised political opinion and all capabilities of invention and productive work are given respectful attention as well as leverage for just initiatives and interventions within the limits of democracy.

Given the considerable tilt towards despotic power and unchallenged monopoly today, this plea would naturally strike those in the driver’s seat as not worth the paper on which it is written. But as fatalities increase and desperation grows it might be the only tonic left for reviving the energies and will of our people.

When the Prime Minister exhorts us not to step over the boundary of our compounds or corridors of our flats, he is appealing to our individual instinct for survival. At the close of the first phase of the lockdown, he seems to see that this goal is unworkable. Social production must resume early. The burden for now is on tea garden workers and construction workers. Even if the logic seems foolproof it puts the crushing burden on some of the poorest and most helpless people. But the business interests appear pre-eminent. The sacrifices are demanded largely from such workers and medical staff.

Why is there no social sharing of sacrifices among all sections of society?

Because the “nation” in his thinking covers the rich and the middle classes, people who can work from home.

Had the war image been accepted by the people at large, out of conscious choice, everyone would have had an obligatory and risky part in the fight. But if saving the nation means saving of a class at the expense of those compelled to earn their daily bread, come what may, the war will be half-hearted, full of heart-burn and it will leave a painful memory that will make the nation weaker. Provided that the common people agree to be ground at the mill without anger and anxiety. Part of that threat may be reduced by deflecting resentment towards Muslims, as appears to be the hazy intention. But there is no guarantee that people will not revolt.

Hence the idea of “Total War” with each one coming forward for a place in the programme voluntarily is actually more realistic and productive than lockdowns enforced by police that inconveniences some much more than others.

The author is a socio-political commentator and cultural critic. The views are personal.