Dr Brainerd Prince
Guns and grenades or peace and non-violence are not the only two available choices! With Russia declaring war on Ukraine, perhaps, we all have nurtured deep questions about war, and particularly its relationship to God and religion. At moments of great destruction and carnage, we humans think about the larger questions of life and death. Some of these unvoiced questions could be: Why does God allow war? Why do humans fight? Can we all not live at peace? Can we take sides in a war?
These questions in some form or other might have crossed our minds. However, before we bring God or religion into this, we need to understand war.
What is War?
We already have an opinion on war. We already feel we know what war is and how we should respond to it. My request to you is, keep that view, but for a moment, listen to what Carl Schmitt the German jurist and political theorist has to say about war. We need not agree with him, but let us hear him out.
For Schmitt the reality of the concept of ‘friend and enemy’ is the fundamental reasoning for the occurrence of war. Schmitt’s world is simply divided into friends and enemies. He writes: ‘The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced to that between friend and enemy.’ In other words, the entire world of politics can be reduced to a relationship between friend and enemy. Thus,all political actions including the action of war are built on the distinction we make between friend and enemy. Perhaps, friendship or the lack of it is not the first thing we have in mind when we think of war.
If this be the case, the natural question then is, who is a friend and who is the enemy? Schmitt writes:‘The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates.’How much ever we want to deny it, in Schmitt’s world there are collective enemies. Collective enemies are different from personal enemies. The rules that govern collectivities, kingdoms or states are different from those that govern individuals.
Furthermore, ‘An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy...’ Thus, the status of a friend or enemy is based on confrontation – a confrontation between different groups. There may be a million reasons which led to the confrontation, but it is the presence of confrontation or a lack of it that determines if one is a friend or a foe.
For Schmitt the logic for war is simple: If there are more than one group of people in the world then this creates friends and enemies, with the reality of confrontation between enemies and this confrontation causes war. Schmitt states this in powerful lines: ‘The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy.’
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This pencil illustration 'War of Words' is by Apone Naroh, a Naga visual artist based in Kohima. To get in touch, contact: aponenarohart.business.site or (+91 7628863437)
Religion and War
If war is between enemies then how is religion involved? Can religion become a reason for war? The answer can be an ‘unfortunate yes’ if religion becomes a source of confrontation and views non-believers as enemies. When this happens then religion too becomes a reason for wars. History is full of instances where religion has brought about wars.
Schmitt says something very insightful, ‘Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy.’ In other words, if the differences in religious beliefs and morals are sufficiently strong between one group and another, then on the basis of these differences communities and political states become real enemies that make war on each other.
But we need to dig deeper, as to how can religion become a source of contention and confrontation when the common understanding is that the teachings of religions are precisely the opposite of enmity and war.
In religion, while the binary between friend and foe seems to be collapsed in the call to love everyone including one’s enemies, I want to bring to our notice that there is a deeper binary at work which is between belief and unbelief. With regard to ‘belief’ religious communities can be as ruthless as a state and those with unbelief are seen as the enemy of the faith. While personal and even state enemies are quickly forgiven, unfortunately, there is no grace for enemies of the faith. History is full of confrontations between adherents of faith and heathens. Many a war has begun because of religious differences.
War and God
Even if one concedes that religions spark wars, most religious folks will hesitate to put the blame on God for human wars. Although we do ask questions like, why does God allow war when it brings so much evil and destruction? Is God not powerful enough to stop wars? The technical term for this line of thinking is called ‘the odicy’ – why is there evil in the world when God is good?
Although this is a legitimate question, our question is different. Our question is simpler and can be put forth in this manner – does God endorse wars? Even a brief survey of the major religious traditions will reveal that the Gods of religious traditions do endorse some form of confrontation and even participated in them.
In the Hindu traditions we have both Krishna and Rama endorsing as well as being part of wars. In the Greek mythologies we have Ares, the God of war. In Islam we know that Prophet Mohammad was personally involved in wars and Allah in Quran endorses jihad or holy wars. The Old Testament God too endorses wars and even leads the Israelites against their enemies. The Buddha too who is seen as a champion of non-violence does not condemn the political office of the king that has to do different acts, including wars, for the protection of the state. Even with Jesus, while there were no physical wars, there were confrontations. His confrontation with the Temple authorities and the Jewish religious leaders is well established. Thus, even the gods do not escape the sword of confrontation. Perhaps there is a clue here about the reality and perhaps even the legitimacy of human confrontation.
Re-imagining Confrontation
What if the problem is not human confrontation, but rather how we respond to it? What if confrontations are necessarily a part of being human. What I am claiming is that simplistic talks of peace will not do. What needs to be rigorously interrogated are visions of peace that people bandy about with each other.
Perhaps, to think of the world as one happy family is a fantasy. There is something damning in Schmitt’s final analysis. He writes, ‘As long as a state exists, there will thus always be in the world more than just one state. A world state which embraces the entire globe and all of humanity cannot exist.’If this be the case then there will be confrontations between human groups.
However, the critical question then is – does confrontation necessarily mean war? Is there no other way to deal with confrontations? This is where, I believe, we must leave Schmitt behind, because he envisions physical war as an inevitable response.
What is needed, however, is perhaps an alternative response to confrontation. Let us probe this line of enquiry further:
Firstly, every confrontation must be taken to be unique and we must recognize that ‘Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation...’. This alone should stop most of us spectators from passing irrelevant and unhelpful comments about other people’s confrontations.
Secondly, I propose that if confrontation can be reimagined from being physical and war-like to being verbal and if an honest space for genuine dialogue and verbal confrontation can be established then the physical confrontation in devastating war can be replaced with dialogical confrontations.
Finally, dialogical confrontation is not to be understood as being benign. The word ‘dialogue’ has lost its power as it is reduced to ‘politically correct conversations’ in our liberal world. In my view the term ‘dialogue’ needs rescuing. I understand it as a ‘war of words’ with serious consequences – there will be losers and winners, a giving, and a taking. Physical wars cause chaos, dialogical wars too cause chaos. The only difference is that physical destruction and carnage is replaced by a giving up of power and rights by the one who loses out in the war of words.
In one sense, Schmitt is right, there will always be multiple human groups, who will eventually become a friend-foe binary because of confrontation. My point is not to dispute Schmitt on this, or even to collapse this binary. In my view too, confrontations are a reality but that they need to be managed in a manner that leads to minimum destruction. This can happen if the confrontation becomes dialogical with the possibility of physical war being minimised and perhaps even completely eradicated.
Dr Brainerd Prince teaches and tutors in academic and research skills. He consults for higher education institutions on research, academic skill training and designing research programmes. Contact: samvada.research@gmail.com
