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The End of Imagination
What do you do with these levels of lunacy? What do you | Ladies and Gentlemen, the United States of America! do if you're trapped in an asylum and all the doctors are Come on up here folks, stand up and take a bow. Thank you dangerously deranged? Ignore it, it's just a novelist's naivete, for doing this to the world. Thank you for making a they'll tell you, Doomsday Prophet hyperbole. It'll never come difference. Thank you for showing us the way. Thank you to that. There will be no war. Nuclear weapons are about for altering the meaning of life. peace, not war. Deterrence is an old thesis that has been From now on it is not dying we must fear, but living. resurrected and is being recycled with added local flavour. The It is such supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons Theory of Deterrence cornered the credit for having prevented are deadly only when they are used. The fact that they exist the Cold War from turning into a Third World War. There are at all, their very presence in our lives will wreak more havoc several flaws in this argument.
than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our Flaw Number One is that it presumes a complete sophisti- thinking. Control our behaviour. Administer our societies. cated understanding of the psychology of your enemy. It Inform our dreams. They are purveyors of madness. They assumes that what deters you the fear of annihilation) will are the ultimate colonisers. Whiter than any white man that deter them. What about those who are not deterred by that? Is ever lived. The very heart of whiteness. the suicide-bomber psyche - the "We'll take you with us" All I can say to every man, woman and sentient child school - an outlandish thought? How did Rajiv Gandhi die? here in India and over there just a little way away in
In any case, who is the "you" and who is the "enemy"? Both Pakistan, is: take it personally. Whoever you are - Hindu, are only governments. Governments change. They wear masks Muslim, urban, agrarian - it does not matter. The only good within masks. They moult and reinvent themselves all the time. thing about nuclear war is that it is the single most egalitarThe one we have in India at the moment, for instance, does not ian idea that man has ever had. On the day of reckoning, even have enough seats to last a full term in office, but demands you will not be that we trust it to do party tricks with nuclear bombs even as it asked to present
GERARD CLOT. PARAS scrabbles around for a foothold to maintain a simple majority in your credentials. Parliament.
The devastation Flaw Number Two is that Deterrence is premised on fear. will be undisBut fear is premised on knowledge. On an understanding of the criminating. The true extent and scale of the devastation that nuclear war will bomb is not in wreak. It is not some inherent, mystical attribute of nuclear your back yard. bombs that automatically inspire thoughts of peace. On the It is in your contrary, it is the endless, tireless, confrontational work of body. And mine. people who have had the courage openly to denounce them: the Nobody, no man, marches, the demonstrations, the films, the outrage - that is no nation, no govwhat has averted, or perhaps only postponed, nuclear war. ernment, no god Deterrence will not and cannot work given the levels of has the right to ignorance and illiteracy that hang over India and Pakistan like put it there. We dense, impenetrable veils.
are radioactive Our two countries have nuclear bombs now and feel entire- already and the ly justified in having them. Soon others will too. Israel, Iran, war has not even Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Nepal (I'm trying to be eclectic begun. So stand here), Denmark, Germany, Bhutan, Mexico, Lebanon, Sri up and say Lanka, Burma, Bosnia, Singapore, North Korea, Sweden, something now. South Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan...and Never mind if it why not? Every country in the world has a special case to has been said make. And when all our larders are bursting with shiny bombs before. Speak up and our bellies are empty, we can trade bombs for food. When on your own nuclear technology goes on the market, when it gets truly behalf. Take it Jains never believed that peace can be competitive and prices fall, anybody who can afford it can have very personally.
achieved through war their own private arsenal - businessmen, terrorists, perhaps even the occasional rich writer like myself. So you see, even
Arundhati Roy is a writer, an activist, and a campaigner for without a war we have a lot to look forward to.
indigenous people in India. The above is an edited extract But let us pause to give credit where it is due. Whom must
from "The Cost of Living". by Arundhati Roy, published by we thank for all this?
Flamingo, 1999 priced at £5.99. The Men who made it happen. The Masters of the Universe.
June - August 2001 Jain Spirit 25
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