War and the Exodus of Uncertainties

By: M.R.Lalu
Pictures of exodus from a war-ravaged Ukraine are seriously distressing. The plight of the displaced ordinary people is ostensibly heart wrenching, who had to leave their homes overnight, with little more than the clothes on their back, probably uncertain of a destination that they can find asylum in. War is not only about the destruction that it can cause but the unlimited human sufferings it brings, makes it the most hazardous one. Cutting the umbilical cord of intimacy with one’s own land, people flee for safety deserting their dreams and the ambiance that they really loved and cherished.  The world is watching millions of Ukrainians fleeing to neighboring countries like Poland, Hungary, Romania, Moldova and Slovakia with a chill in their spine. Would they ever be able to build their lives from under the debris of the devastating war? It needs tremendous courage to cross over to spaces of anonymity, enduring freezing temperatures, waiting for their chance for days on the road probably with unfed kids and feeble old people. Salutations to those who decided to take up Kalashnikovs in their hands back home, to fight the last war before they fall forever. Undoubtedly, beyond an ego war, Ukraine truly depicts the highest form of patriotism against the hostility of its gigantic neighbor.   Nobody at present can predict the outcome of the war, not even the pundits. Twelve days after the Russian invasion began, it is still unpredictable to the level of casualty the war would cause by the time it ends. But the exodus by the innocent civilians to safety across the boundaries is relentless. With the United Nations estimating a 4 million people in the coming days to become refugees, the situation is becoming tougher, throwing humanity across the globe a chance and a challenge to exhibit the level of kindness that it is capable of responding with.
Human history, without pages devoted to the stories of exoduses, will remain incomplete. For the Ukrainians, the acceptance by the European Union to accommodate them to its fold is a great humanitarian decision. Sudden influx of refugees to any country would make its socio-economic ambiance wobbly. It takes time for the refugees and the countries that give them asylum to take a steady move further. History is full of evidence and tendencies of great humanitarian challenges. Large human migrations changing the demography of lands subsequently altering their civilizational continuity in an unpredictable manner have been subjects of research. To quote from the scriptures, it was the Biblical Moses who took his people for a miraculous expedition, an exodus of the folkloric kind, having given a heed to his God’s command to escape from the dry land of Egypt. On confronted by the pharaoh and being unable to continue his exodus, Moses had to wait until God’s wrath happened upon humanity in the form of 10 plagues which almost wiped-out people from the land of Egypt. Disasters made Moses and his people to make the first human exodus.
Though conflicting and contradictory, Indians and many in the west cherished an Aryan Invasion Theory until recently, believing that the central Asian pastoralists in an exodus, walked over to our subcontinent spreading their Indo-European languages. Exodus due to human aggression or natural calamities or any reason for that matter, is bound to make socio-political challenges in the place where they get settled. It was in August 1947, when the British decided to pack their bags back to England, India witnessed the most horrifying, humiliating exodus in Indian history. Millions of people who became homeless and impoverished, forced to cross the borders of the land they amicably settled, leaving everything behind which once they held as their own. Displacing themselves, about 15 million people crossed borders to India and Pakistan. The legacy of the Indian partition is the story of thousands of homeless people, who, after 75 years of the deadly exercise, are still antagonized with an essence of estrangement. Another exodus that human history cannot miss is the massive exodus of over 500,000 people after their eviction from Jaffna by the LTTE. Every exodus creates a huge identity crisis for the fleeing group. The identity that they lost in their own country and the mountainous difficulties and perplexities that the new land offers as they try to gain a new identity. And the horror of being human frequently haunts them in a land where they get alienated with all their ethnicities lost. During the covid pandemic India was terribly rattled at its fallacy of pushing its migrant laborers to the streets forcing them to flee for their home states. More than the pandemic, the panic that was created was enough for the mass exodus to happen. Endless stretches of roads ahead and under the scorching sun, millions of India’s migrant workers walked hundreds of miles. Estrangement in their own land was the effect of such an exodus.
Every migration defines human survival irrationally, unable to distinguish the pleasure and pain of existence. But one thing is clear, from the exodus of Moses to that of the Ukrainians, humanity is intertwined with stories of terrible human sufferings. Since World War II, this must be the massive movement of people that Europe is witnessing. This is bound to pose serious economic and political problems in the days to come. Millions of Ukrainians flowing to European countries would critically affect the job market and turn the political situations of those countries unsteady. This war is putting the human race to test once again, to determine the depth of humanness with which it would accept millions of homeless women and children in the streets of Ukraine and to the lands they walk into.