Sri Ramakrishna Math : The Vedanta Kesari, Culture and Military Ethics

After a glorious period of service to the Motherland, finally retiring as a General of the Indian Army, General (Retd.) Shankar Roychowdhury is at present a member of the Rajya Sabha.

Civilisations are fiercely competitive, clashing in conflict much more frequently than intertwining or co-existing in peace. All the great civilisations--from ancient Assyrian, Greek and Roman through medieval Middle Eastern Islamic and down to modern Euro-North American Judeo-Christian--share a similar background of conflict, conquest, and coercion. Given the inevitability of human conflict, the perception of history being shaped by the clash of civilisations is therefore a statement of fact, which has to be accepted as a component of the civilisational odyssey of mankind. Societal determination to protect its culture, way of life and collective interests when these are perceived to be threatened, has been the basic cause of conflict throughout history. The aggressors and defenders in all cases have been the peoples and cultures which have felt threatened, or have attempted to assert their rights over others. Over the ages therefore, warfare, and the search for antidotes to its capabilities for almost unlimited destruction, have become a major though unacknowledged facet of our struggle towards civilisational progress. Over the ages, some of the greatest minds in history have been drawn towards the need to introduce a philosophy of ethics and ethical behaviour into the field of warfare. All cultures have developed their own perceptions of the ethical and moral aspects of management and control of conflict. These have found expression in the progressive evolution of what have come to be known as the laws of war as well as humanitarian laws. This protracted intellectual endeavour has been in fact one of the most notable but least known achievements of human enlightenment and spiritual renaissance.

The military have been the practitioners of warfare by land, sea, or air. Captivity, injury or death is a constant professional hazard for them in the totally unpredictable future of their vocation, where it is a matter of pure chance whether they would be on the winning or losing side. It was therefore perhaps natural that it is they who best understood the necessity to try and mitigate the sufferings of combatants on the battlefield, and also uninvolved non-combatants caught up in the backwash of war. Perceptions of military ethics were naturally influenced and shaped by regional and local environments, but all eventually converged around certain essential human values like honour, chivalry, and a sense of right and wrong. Over a period of time, an esoteric, somewhat stylized military culture evolved itself, structured around an increasing acceptance of the requirement for ethical behaviour both on and off the battlefield during war as well as during peace. These perceptions became common to all military cultures, and in fact, mirrored the values of their respective parent societies to a very perceptible degree.

In India, military ethics reflected the country's basic spiritual attitudes, which generally preferred to transcend the harsh realities of the present world, and seek solace in an other-worldly life. It is therefore strange, but not entirely unexpected, that for an ancient civilisation where conflict has often played a decisive role, there have been very few Indian military thinkers in the accepted sense of the term. Our philosophers have rarely been warriors. The soul has occupied them more than the body, and almost none have devoted much attention to the metaphysics of physical conflict. However, all this notwithstanding, it is nevertheless the perception of Sri Krishna as a warrior divinity on the battlefield of Kurukshetra which has always been the very source and essence of our entire collective psyche. Military ethics are indeed the soul and essence of the Bhagawad Gita, which distills the eternal wisdom of our scriptures into the exhortation by the Divine Charioteer to Arjuna, a reluctant warrior facing mortal combat against his own kinsmen on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Its overarching concept is the timeless theme of Dharma Yuddha--Righteous War--and the moral obligation of the warrior to do his duty without thought of reward, immortalised in what is possibly one of the most quoted classical refrains in any language- 'Karmanyevadhikaraste, ma phaleshu kadachana' (The Gita 2.47). This single exhortation encapsulates for eternity the entire foundation of military ethics and its universal relevance remains unchanged to this day. The philosophy of Dharma Yuddha has inspired many immortals throughout our history, and foremost amongst these must be counted the great scholar, poet, writer, philosopher, and warrior, Guru Govind Singh, the only true soldier-saint of our country, as indeed perhaps elsewhere in the world as well. Still later, we find the same fire blazing forth in Swami Vivekananda, the saint who had all the qualities of a soldier and under different circumstances could well have found his calling on the battlefield. The spiritual descendants of Swami Vivekananda were Rishi Aurobindo and later, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. They were the latter-day heirs to Sri Krishna's philosophy at Kurukshetra, warriors in their own right who took up weapons in their own Dharma Yuddha for the country's independence. The Mahabharata also enumerates in detail the code of conduct which had been enjoined for warriors on the battlefield. The essentiality of the ancient and medieval concepts of military ethics was its perception of war as a contest exclusively between combatants in which non-combatants were not concerned or affected. Battle was in essence a personal contest between equals, an arena of stylised combat between single opponents of equal stature or capabilities. In this aspect the code of the Pandavas and Kauravas at Kurukshetra is indeed almost indistinguishable from the rules of chivalry of the Knights of the Round Table, who in turn evolved the intricate rules which bound the European knighthood of the Middle Ages. The underlying aim of these elaborate prescriptions was to ensure fair contest between opponents, and members of the chivalry were enjoined to observe all these intricacies strictly, under penalty of dishonour and discharge from the knightly order. Thus, the grades of combat and types of opponents each category of warrior might engage were enunciated. Battle between mounted and dismounted combatants were forbidden--both contestants had to enjoy the same advantages and disadvantages, including choice of mount and weapon. Forbidden too were direct contests between warriors of rank and common soldiers of lesser status. Since the former would generally be much better armed, trained, and mounted than the latter, the original purpose here was not so much a distinction of class as of ensuring compatibility of weapons and skill-at-arms between opponents. Also prohibited were collective attacks against a single opponent, or the slaying of a warrior who was temporarily disadvantaged during battle. Attempts were made from time to time, ever since the earliest days to protect the sick and wounded, and give a measure of dignity to the defeated. Certain weapons were sought to be outlawed on grounds of inhumanity. Manu, the law-giver of ancient India, was probably the first to lay down these principles. The practice of cessation of hostilities at sunset and return to respective camps to facilitate attention to the day's casualties also dates from very ancient times.

These elaborately ritualistic ethics of warfare were part of the culture of their times, but notwithstanding all these injunctions, it is also a fact that they often could not be maintained under the stress of conflict. In various other episodes, the great epic also chronicles the progressive erosion and degradation of ethics under the stress of combat as Kurukshetra war dragged on, and both sides, desperate for victory, progressively descended to stratagems expressly forbidden by their own code. The slaying of the lone Abhimanyu within the Chakravyuha by the combined Kaurava forces was a gross breach of military honour. But it was soon matched by Arjuna himself when against all laws of chivalry he slew the dismounted and disabled Karna. Indeed these and other such acts by the mythological paladins of chivalry are all reflective of the degradation of human values under the stress of war. But it has been religion more than any other single component of culture, which has historically been one of the main sources of conflict. The scriptural texts of all the world's great religions almost universally depict the eternal conflict between good and evil through the imagery of warfare. In this aspect too there is a strange commonality between the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and the Old Testament, in their depictions of wrathful prophets and cataclysmic battles. Religion and the military have interacted closely with each other. Military ethics and the code of chivalry were supported by all the religious concepts. It was enjoined on the warrior by his scriptures to be honourable and chivalrous. The perceptions of the Church and State being single or separate entities have also powerfully oriented military-cultural outlooks. It has remained an issue of politico-philosophical debate for centuries, which continues in contemporary theocratic states like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Israel. The separation of the two institutions is generally traced back to the England of the Plantagenets, when Henry the VIIIth severed his religious fealties from the Church of the Pope at Rome, and declared himself as the head of both the English state as well as the English Church. In India it was independently replicated by Guru Hargobind, the son of the martyred Guru Arjun Dev, when he girded on two swords and declared that he was the temporal as well as spiritual head of his community, the leader of both Miri and Piri, Shakti and Bhakti, Tegh as well as Degh. This vision found its ultimate expression as a full-fledged military order in the Khalsa of Guru Govind Singh, one of the greatest military as well as spiritual immortals of India, whose evocative exposition of Dharma Yuddha has echoed down the corridors of time--'When all else fails, it is righteous to take up the sword against the oppressor.'

Meanwhile, the reality of the battlefield as well as the nature of warfare itself progressively changed with the appearance of newer weapons and tactics. With the advent of the crossbow and long bow, the days of single combat between mounted knights were soon over. The knight and his formalised chivalry was vanquished by the Mongol horse-bowman or the English yeoman with the long bow. He vanished from the battlefield, and the professional soldier, from a proletariat unschooled in knightly courtesies, gradually took over the business of war. In what must surely rank as one of the supreme ironies of the story of mankind, increasing intellectual and technological capabilities brought with them not merely increased prosperity to the people, but also weapons of enhanced destructive capabilities to the battlefield. Gunpowder and cannon, musket and rifle, machine gun and mustard gas, bomber, submarine, napalm, and ballistic missiles, increased the range and reach of battle. Weapons of mass destruction comprising nuclear chemical and biological (NBC) weapons were invented and the concept of total warfare took shape. The perception of the nation state grew, and the nation in arms became the accepted concept of warfare. The reality of Kurukhshetra spread outside the battlefield into population centres and economic assets, and the non-combatant civilian found himself in the frontline as much as any combatant soldier in uniform. The introduction of each new weapon of increased destructiveness was greeted with concern and outrage at its apparent inhumanity, but ironically, the ensuing debates seemed to have missed out the essential inhumanity and destructiveness of war itself. However, since they appeared to be inevitable, wars still had to be won, but its material, humanitarian as well as ethical costs had become devastating. Religion itself, thanks to the pseudo-religionists, emerged as a self-contradictory factor with multiple manifestations which contributed to both peace as well as war. It promoted religious wars like the Crusades, and various forms of Jehad, fundamentalist terrorism like the Inquisition, and extensive ethnic cleansing which almost exterminated the indigenous peoples in the entire Latin America as well as Africa. Elsewhere, however, religion also became the fountainhead of peace, disarmament, the destruction of all weapons and total banishment of war. These views had independently taken early roots amongst thinkers, sages and philosophers the world over. In our own country, the teachings of Gautama Buddha, the Enlightened One, was perhaps the earliest organised attempt to propagate these philosophies which appealed strongly to a wide cross-section of the masses.

As Europe began emerging from the Dark Ages, monographs devoted to the laws of war started to appear as early as the 14th Century and chapters, or at least paragraphs discussing certain aspects of this subject can be found much earlier mostly in theological works. The underlying philosophy of Dharma Yuddha, made its appearance here as well, and many philosophers in the Middle Ages preoccupied themselves in pondering over circumstances under which a war could be considered as just. However, not until the Renaissance did the plight of those affected by war give rise to concern, and true champions of what later came to be called humanitarian law did not appear till the Age of Enlightenment. They formulated a fundamentally humane doctrine, according to which war should be limited between soldiers, without posing a threat to the civilians or non-military objects. The leading figure in the discussion, formulation and propagation of these concepts was the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rosseau, whose home town was Geneva, originally in France, and subsequently to become part of Switzerland. It was here, that humanitarian law was developed and it was from this area that knowledge and influence of this law spread to all countries of the world.

But it was only much later in history, that International Human Laws was suggested by Henry Durant, a Swiss businessman who happened to witness the Battle of Solferino fought on 24 June 1859 between the armies of Imperial Austria and the Franco-Sardinian Alliance. As in all battles of those days, casualties were heavy, totalling some 40,000 dead, wounded or missing amongst both sides. The sick and injured had been sheltered near the battlefield in a church at the village of Castiglione. Military medical services were non-existent at the time, and Durant saw the shattering agony of the wounded, who rarely survived due to lack of medical care. The sheer horror he had happened to witness, moved Durant to devote the better part of his life to search ways and means both in law and in practice to ameliorate the sufferings of the victims of war, and protect them from its full misery. As a result of his untiring efforts, was first established the Red Cross to minister to the needs of soldiers who were wounded, sick, or had been taken prisoner on the battlefield. From these beginnings grew an interlinked network of what came to be designated as International Humanitarian Laws designed to mitigate the traumatic impact of war on combatants and non-combatants alike. Some of the important instruments of these series were the Declaration of Paris (1856), of St Petersburg (1868), the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the first Geneva Convention of 1929, the four further Geneva Conventions of 1949 regarding respectively, the wounded and sick in armed forces in the field, the wounded, sick and shipwrecked in armed forces at sea, prisoners of war, and civilians.

The Twentieth Century witnessed the advent of nuclear, bacteriological and chemical (NBC) weapons whose sheer destructive power put them in a class of their own. They were in truth the latter day incarnations of the mythological Divya Astra which Lord Indra himself had warned Arjuna against using at Kurukshetra. NBC weapons have been collectively designated as weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and their appearance opened up a whole new series of disarmament issues, amongst whose leading and most active protagonists were great philosophers like Bertrand Russel, leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, as well as eminent war-heroes like Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, a Victoria Cross winner from the Royal Air Force who had witnessed the destruction of Hiroshima, and who later went on to found the Cheshire Homes. Chemical warfare had made its debut with mustard gas in the First World War of 1914-1918, while concepts of even more deadly biological warfare had entered the minds of scientists. The Geneva Gas and Bacteriological Warfare Protocol was ratified in 1925, based on the experiences of the First World War and was supplemented by a new series of protocols added in 1977 to protect against further developments during the Second World War of 1939-45, and the Cold War thereafter. These were further supplemented by the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons of 1972. Independent India signed the Geneva Conventions in 1949, ratified it in November 1950, and finally passed the Geneva Conventions Act in 1960.

The Cold War gave a massive impetus to the further development of nuclear weapons, whose creators sought to retain their exclusive monopoly in the field under the guise of promoting non-proliferation. A series of discriminatory documents like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) were drawn up to allow the so-called nuclear weapon states (the Nuclear Five--USA, Russia, Britain, France and the Peoples' Republic of China) to retain and even increase their stockpiles. These were then projected by the interested parties at the United Nations and other world forums for international acceptance and signatures. There was no mention or move therein for any reduction, leave alone total debarment of these weapons of mass destruction which had the capability to destroy entire regions and communities. India, amongst other countries, has refused to sign the flawed treaty, alleging blatant discrimination. Meanwhile, to protect her own supreme national interest, India exploded her own series of nuclear devices at Pokharan, first in 1974, and subsequently in 1998. In Hindu belief, the end of the world, the end of the present Kaliyuga, and the commencement of the new Satyayuga cycle will come with the appearance of Kalki Avatara, represented by a man carrying a sheaf of wheat. Some see in the shape of the sheaf the outline of a nuclear cloud. Is that how the world and all its living creatures will ultimately terminate?

Military ethics and culture as contributors to the civilisational cycle have found expression in many forms--as Dharma Yuddha, as rules of chivalry, humanitarian laws, as laws of war, or as disarmament treaties. They might appear to vary in outward form, but rarely do so in essential substance. Military ethics are trans-national and trans-civilisational, representing a universal component of all cultures. Their concepts are common to Kurukshetra as well as Camelot. Dharma Yuddha, Crusade, and Jehad are almost similar in form as well as substance and form the common heritage of the true Kshatriya, Samurai, Ghazi or Knight Templar.

Meanwhile the debate to make the world a safer place goes on--but the footsteps of Kalki can be heard, and mankind may be fast running out of time.