All Quiet On The Western Front

It is a coincidence that I got to watch this movie at a time when the Vande Mataram controversy has raised its ugly head again, for the umpteenth time. When energy and time is being wasted on the mere singing of a patriotic song – which of course does not guarantee that the singer is patriotic or that the one not willing to sing is unpatriotic.

If we are to believe the words of those who want the beautiful song sung compulsorily and those who refuse to sing – both dogmatic and irrational – then the very basis of one’s identity is based on this one sung, whether it is sung or not.

Drunk high on the poison of nationalism, we are ready to believe any bit of trash as long as it is garnished with now vacuous but still high-sounding words like “country” and “motherland”.

History repeats itself. In another country. Among another set of people. Often ruthlessly…

The Franco-German border. It’s All Quiet on the Western Front. And then the air is split by the shock waves of bombs, splintering shrapnels, gunfire and, most horribly, the desperate shrieks of the dying.

Raids and counter-raids on each others’ trenches is the stuff their routine lives have been all about for over a year now. It didn’t take long to drain them of the puffed-up patriotism that their teachers, fathers, neighbours injected into them as teenagers.

“Germany is a nation of high culture, science, arts…” their affable schoolmaster Kantorek once told them, goading them to do their duty for the Bharat Mata… err sorry, for the fatherland. And what is that duty? Fight a war. Fight the First World War. Fight to conquer and decimate other people. People who are inferior. The “other”.

It’s not difficult to blame Germany, all right. Although these very words would have easily adorned the speech of the haughty British, the proud French, the arrogant American… and of course the patriotic Indian.

For eons, waging a war has been the easiest way to demonstrate one’s virility. Barbarians we still are, at heart. And in the meaningless nationalism of this age, we have found the perfect alibi to turn fighter cocks at the drop of a hat.

So we had a Germany, proud of its racial purity and of course superiority. We had a Britain ever carrying its “Britishness“ on its sleeve. We still have a vain France. And then we also the have the upstarts– China and India—the neighbours whose claim to high civilization is destroyed by the mass murders, ethnic cleansing and racial jingoism that mark both their internal and external affairs.

Lewis Milestone gives vent to an entire generation’s agony, brought about by a war that only the political masters waged. He portrays the desperations of the soldiers—like today, fed on an overdose of nationalistic steroids that quickly wears out--at the front.

So what if they were Germans! The emotions, I am sure, are the same among all soldiers across the world.

It’s not difficult to see the common sense message of the movie: “Nationalism is the witchcraft used to bewitch a population and lead them to war. Nationalism is malignant. Nationalism sucks!”

Of course we are not willing to learn.

Because now, our time, India’s time, has come.

Mera Bharat Mahaan!