The walls culture !
JUST when ordinary people were heaving a sigh of relief in the belief that ‘walls’ may be going out of fashion, came the bombshell that the then US president Donald Trump was raring to bring them right back.
His plan was to build a huge wall along the US-Mexico border to keep prospective immigrants out and presumably to keep ‘the American way of life’ safe from contamination.
There you have it in a nutshell as they say! Whatever the justification, there is something abhorrent about projects to wall in – or wall out – people.
Should not all right-thinking people be thinking of pulling down the existing dividers, rather than erecting more of them? Let us not forget that walls in history have mostly done more harm than good to the good Earth. Why not, then, learn from history rather than be condemned to repeat it?
At this point, a word or two about the “wall culture” may not be out of place. When the Berlin Wall finally came down (or, more accurately, was brought down), right-thinking people all over the world had heaved a collective sigh of relief. The sense of relief, however, was somewhat premature.
For one, pictures coming out of Palestine showed horrid wall structures of massive proportions put up by the Israeli authorities for the ostensible purpose of keeping themselves safe from the stone-throwers of the ‘intifada’.
Meanwhile, Indian authorities had hurried through with the completion of a fence (read wall) along a good part of the Line of Control in the disputed state of Jammu & Kashmir.
Visits exchanged by Indian and Pakistani peaceniks gave rise to slogans about the imperative need to bring down the figurative ‘Berlin Wall’ between the two countries.
There is no objection in principle to this noble thought. It is just that no one appears to give a wee thought to the reason why such walls go up in the first place.
Nor do the peaceniks turn a discerning eye towards the physical walls while they shout from housetops about the imperative need to eliminate the figurative ones.
The ‘wall’, per se, has a history all its own – a history replete with tragedy and heartbreak. Hardly anything connected with the ‘wall’ reflects any redeeming feature.
The tragedy is that- as one said – just when one thinks that the wall is going out of fashion, out pops the leader of some state or the other with plans to bring it right back. So much for the march of history!
Great Big Walls have long featured in human history. Given the propensity of the human species to be constantly at one another’s throats, the wall does afford the semblance of security of sorts.
Viewed from this perspective, the wall may well be looked upon as a symbol of security of sorts.
Not that all walls have equal impact. Some walls in history are more famous (or infamous) than others.
While some have lived up to their promise as providers of security; others have had just the opposite effect.
The ones who conceptualized the Great Wall of China possessed great vision. They reasoned that there is nothing like a great big wall to safeguard one’s privacy.
The Great Wall of China, when completed, was an imposing and awe-inspiring edifice, enough to put the fear of the Almighty into the minds of the hardiest of would-be invaders.
The Great Wall of China appears to have done its bit to discourage invaders for quite a while.
In due course, though, the structure outlived its usefulness. It re-emerged in rather recent times as an attraction for tourists to gawk at and, one may add, for scientific researchers to make loaded statements declaring it (the Wall that is) to be the one feature on the landscape of the good Earth that would be visible when viewed from the moon.
When Armstrong, of the Apollo mission fame, did land on the moon, one does not recall any assertion from him to corroborate such a claim, though. Still, it does look good on paper.
Now that one pauses to ponder, at no juncture in history has there been a dearth of walls on this blessed planet of ours.
In today’s world, beset as it is with pestilences of the likes of globalization, one need hardly over-emphasize the insurmountable walls of tariffs and subsidies raised around themselves by the prosperous countries.
While talking glibly of free trade and a ‘global village’, the rich countries of the North continue to weave a web of invisible walls around themselves to preserve their position as islets of prosperity and privilege in a vast sea of poverty and want.
And, then, how can one ignore the walls of racial and ethnic prejudice being erected in several regions of the globe.
Perhaps the most ugly and abominable walls are those born out of prejudice, suspicion and hatred.
In actual truth, man’s inhumanity to man has spawned more deadly walls than have bricks and mortar!
From a larger perspective, even that citadel of hope – the United Nations (of Nobel Peace Prize fame) – has regrettably done its damnedest to add to the walls disfiguring the world’s landscape, rather than help to demolish some existing ones.
Each Ceasefire Line that the United Nations Organization jealously guards represents yet another wall that need not be there at all.
Why not rope in the elders of the world to do their bit to cure the ills of this world. We have so many Nobel laureates on the loose end, so to speak.
Why not constitute one or more Councils of Elders to apply their collective minds to devise solutions to the ills of the world.
They could make a beginning by having a go at the root causes of terrorism and extremism. The world – and humanity – could do with a few walls less!
— The writer is a former Ambassador and former Assistant Secretary General of OIC.
