ON THE PORTRAYAL OF THE ENEMY AS OUR FRIEND

I have seen countless crime series where the aggrieved confides in the detective, expressing their surprise at the murder for “he had no enemies!” Enemy is often labeled as a strong word, and enmity is a taboo which seems to be often shushed, established only at a last, desperate bottom of relationships. Enmity between humans is so often denounced and campaigned against by social justice organizations and rightly so. The word ‘enemy’ often feels almost like an expletive, and one mostly avoids making any.  I, however feel that we are not paying the concept its due credit. Let us take the example of European colonies and the anti-colonial struggles in these nations, formerly bickering and divided kingdoms. India herself was such a nightmarish mess of kingdoms, empires, and clans after the demise of the Mughal Empire and during the demise of the Maratha Empire. The East India Company and later the British Raj established its rule over the subcontinent, with its varied subjects ranging from Pashtuns, Sindhis, Punjabis, Dravidians, Bengalis, Burmese with myriad tribes, faiths and castes, all with their notions of superiority, inferiority and differential treatment. Though aided by social reformation, true unity among such numerous communities was only achieved in the late colonial period, with the freedom movement and its different strands, both militant and non-violent, uniting political, ethno-linguistic and social factions in a common goal, to fight against a common enemy, the Anglo-Saxon invader. This is a very similar case to post-Revolutionary Europe- outdated concepts of class-based divisions, serfdoms and fiefdoms eroded as an upheaval against autocratic monarchies and their empires swept across the continent. Nationalism of the late 17^th to early 19^th century era was a uniting force to be reckoned with, kingdoms with diverse populations without any solidarity were increasingly replaced by nation states with common cultures, languages, ideals and histories of struggle. Thus, the broad enemy,  the monarchial system, united the people of the nations of Europe

  My point: common enemies make more and better friends, the more broadly defined, the better. Caste and sect differences are forgotten or at least subdued temporarily to express religious ones, myriad Indian kingdoms and states, previously rivals, united against a common colonizer challenging their hegemony on the rule of their subjects to form a politically united Indian subcontinent. Protestants and Catholics unite against Muslims, Shia and Sunni unite against Christians, Tsarists and Liberal Democrats stood united against the Communists in the Russian civil war.

One of the most effective, if not the most effective to bring about unity among the human race is pinpointing the enemy. Totalitarian regimes use it as a strictly observed rule, either as a distraction or a means of uniting the citizens (or subjects) to support their aims and whims.   One ought to wonder, antagonization isn’t all that bad if it brings about unity so effectively. Everyone is eager to lynch the piñata, everyone is united in their hunger to feed on the scapegoat. The challenge, thus, is to find a piñata which isn’t a human being of a certain community to lynch, but a genuine problem posing a grave threat to humanity is a whole. Albeit clichéd solutions but ones I really believe in, let us make our scapegoats  misogyny, racism, bigotry, intolerance, tolerance of intolerance, climate change, social stigma against remarriage and sanitary pads, polygamy belittling one half of a couple, and all things wrong with humanity. Let our enemies be all of our enemies, and affect all of us. Let these broadly defined enemies unite broad groups of the same species, Humanity.