Violence is Our DNA!

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

We kill to survive, is our convenient logic. As fear of death lurks at every step of our existence we have polished our logic. We kill to eat; kill to loot other peoples’ harvest; kill for revenge; kill for conquest ... and the list is long in mankind’s history. We invade territory for domination, for heroism, for lust of power, for women: And for excitement. We watch cock fights, bull fights and like Nero watch man fighting a lion to his bloody death and shout in joy; clap in frenzy when a hero falls in a single combat. We kill animals, birds and men to appease gods and goddesses for power, knowledge, mystical prowess for wish fulfilment. Timur Lane, Mahmud of Gajni kill for gold, gems, slaves. And today we kill for oil, for religion- this however is ancient practice; today it is less heroic. We call this terrorism and counter it with civilizational pride, which is acceptable to all rational institutions of justice. If the ISIS kills  in the dark of night for Islamic state we kill for democracy and human rights in open daylight with moral justification. But kill we must.

We kill wives for sexual philandering and wife’s lover out of jealousy. Macbeth killed his royal guests for ambition, to wear the golden round on his head, however illegitimate it maybe. In modern democratic elections we assassinate characters; kill reputations in bloodless manner; we kill with technology, scientific inventions, destroy cities in the name of scorched earth policy. With our new knowledge of cyber space we kill without weapons, hack military secrets. We can now kill by creating artificial cyclones, floods and droughts. Fake news is now another weapon which can kill without any bloodletting. Why?

Why, is a taboo adverb. Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die-wrote Tennyson. Kill or get killed envelop the entire gamut of human experience. Avail the chance to kill and dominate or fall to the sword of the other man. After bloody wars the victor does not say ’pardon is the word to all’. War crime Tribunals are set up to find out the guilty and hang them. After the Second World War Nazi warlords were tried at Nuremberg and history recorded the justice- killings in glowing letters. When the Japanese ‘hero’ general Yamamato was asked for his final word before he was hanged by the Americans he is said to have stated: ‘You reached Japan before I reached America; I would have asked you the same question had I come to America first. Yes, this is the logic. Kill before you get killed.

In social relationship in India especially, we had the practice of Sati, that is, if the husband dies his surviving wife, however young and blameless, must hold the body of her husband in full bridal gear and burn with her husband to the chant of mantras by priests and to the noisy praise of thousands of onlookers. Mercifully this practice is now banned by law. But one is tempted to ask: Is cruelty in our dna? Are sadism and even masochism built into human nature?

We hate violence, not by natural compassion in our nature but perhaps out of fear of similar fate waiting somewhere in our journey in life. Budha was the first wiseman or sage who thought of non-violence. He perhaps extended the logic of natural death against violence to creatures. Since we are born to die one day why should we kill: But this truth is not accepted by man in his death-certain life till date. In the 21^st century, in spite of the knowledge explosion and the historical memory of the devastation caused by violence we kill for the same reasons we have tried to overcome by pity, compassion, mercy and other values. Ashoka introduced the Buddhist ideals of non-violence in his life but it did not last even a half century. After Ashoka’s death people slowly returned to the animal ways. Gandhi revived the same non-violence with more refined logic to put the idea as a counter measure to Hitler’s hate-kill anti –semitism. But we continue to be violent.

 It is obvious that man refuses to learn from history. Passions, hate, ambition, revenge and such like negatives have not yet been transcended despite philosophy, ethics, justice, literature and politics.it will remain as long as our dear dna does not have a metamorphosis.