Healing Space | Kashmir, compassion, conciliation

Anger inflames anger. To douse the flames, you need the opposite of anger - you need an act of compassion and a move towards reconciliation. (Illustration by Suneesh K.).

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.

In the Book of Joy, co-authored by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, these two great men speak about the difficult periods their respective countries have faced: the invasion of Tibet by the Chinese, and the apartheid regime of South Africa. Speaking in this context, Archbishop Tutu says, “When Nelson Mandela went to jail he was young and, you could almost say, bloodthirsty. He was head of the armed wing of the African National Congress, his party. He spent twenty-seven years in jail, and many would say, ‘Twenty-seven years, oh, what a waste’. And I think people are surprised when I say no, the twenty-seven years were necessary. They were necessary to remove the dross. The suffering in prison helped him to become more magnanimous, willing to listen to the other side. To discover that the people he regarded as his enemy, they too were human beings who had fears and expectations. And they had been molded by their society. And so without the twenty-seven years I don’t think we would have seen the Nelson Mandela with the compassion, the magnanimity, the capacity to put himself in the shoes of the other.”

It takes a while to sink in. Why must we lose our anger to arrive at justice? Because anger inflames anger. To douse flames you need to perform the opposite action i.e. quench it, deprive the flames of oxygen. This is an act of compassion and a move towards reconciliation. Further on, the book notes how the Dalai Lama, whatever he may be known for, is not known for giving fiery speeches against China. Oh well, these are great and rare men, easy for them to say, we think. But in Humankind: A Hopeful History, Rutger Bregman amazingly finds instances of ordinary people acting with compassion, kindness, a sense of humanity even among the Nazis acting for their government during the Holocaust. “It's when crisis hits - when the bombs fall or the floodwaters rise - that we humans become our best selves,” he notes. In Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari reminds us that the century we live in is the most peace-loving in the world yet: “Ours is the first time in history that the world is dominated by a peace-loving elite – politicians, business people, intellectuals and artists who genuinely see war as both evil and avoidable."

As we take in various forms of media, and consume the news - a daily litany of riots, oppressing minorities and women, clear biases and prejudices, mass manipulations, chest-thumping war cries and declarations of vengeance, retellings of history that display the worst of humanity - it is easy to forget that there are other ways in which to approach conflict. This is because the role of news is to focus on what is specifically going wrong and to call it out. Therefore the more we consume news, or any media with a spotlight on what has gone wrong, the more we condition our minds to seek what is wrong in the world. When we condition ourselves sufficiently, what we find validates our world view. We are in time convinced that the world is a terrible place and that justice looks increasingly like vengeance.

This is a skewed perspective. Because our environment channels us into the negative world view, we have to consciously counterbalance it with a positive one. This is not to sit in denial about the deep and real harms of conflict. Countries like Canada, South Africa and Germany set up versions of truth and reconciliation commissions to deal with the collective wounds of their histories. In any country, vast groups of people have been wronged. From the Roma of Europe to the native American tribes of North America. Religious inter-fighting complicates the matters of ethnic divides.

India has a large and complex history of religious, ethnic, linguistic and geographic territorial wars. However, we are not beyond conciliation as long as we have a will to reconcile. This will depends on our ability to step back from the limited perspective, and view ourselves in the context of history, complexity, and most importantly, compassion.

Conflict negotiations and peace treaties between warring nations are essentially dialogue with a therapeutic end in sight: how do we get past our differences, heal old wounds, and what future are we creating? What do we need to acknowledge, what can we forgive and how can we make reparations to individuals and families and communities who need it? These traumas affect people inter-generationally and to leave them untreated is to keep our wounds open and festering.

Justice goes way beyond the slow march of a legal framework. It has to take the form of psychological, material, spiritual reparations for individuals, families and communities. Whatever wounds we may be in denial of, let us not deny that we are all in need of healing.

How to make your peace with your past

1. Acknowledge it. You cannot begin to heal what you don’t acknowledge.

2. Assign blame where due. Remove generalisations. See actions as self-determined.

3. Locate the helpers. Find all individuals who have contributed to peace, protected, aided.

4. Consider context. What factors beyond an individual’s control influenced this outcome?

5. What is the tangible act of compassion that you need for yourself and that you will be able to give to the opponent that will allow you to release your collective pain?