This is not my question, mind you. Paul and I watched a movie last week. We shared a taxi home. After I dropped Paul off, the taxi driver asked me this question. (Paul and I must have been discussing international affairs on the trip home.)
I started with my standard, infuriating platitude "Better to talk with your enemy than enjoy some sense of moral superiority but have no idea about their motivations or intentions". I think he found my views unpalatable and was silent, so I asked who he thought was the criminal, expecting it to be an ex-KGB officer. I was astonished when he mentioned the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. (How can anyone who loves cricket be evil?) l leaned forward to get a better look at the speaker and spotted a Sikh's turban. Fortunately I had read about the assault on the Golden temple only a few months ago in an S&T magazine.
I managed to politely enquire if he was referring to the Indian overreaction to the occupation of the temple. Instead his issue was with the persecution of the Sikhs after the murder of Indira Ghandi by her Sikh bodyguards. The driver was of the view that the current Prime minister was involved directly. His friends and neighbours were assaulted and killed, so he fled and Australia took him as a refugee. These events happened in the early 1990s, but he still wants justice.
He then wandered into what must be a conspiracy theory about the accused assassins being blackmailed into confessing and Sanja Ghandi wearing a bullet proof rest on the day of the assassination (showing foreknowledge suggesting conspiracy). He pointed out that the Indian government had been uninterested in the prosecution of the Hindus who assaulted the Sikhs and that no prosecutions had succeeded.
I hear enough conspiracy theories to have lost interest in checking them (but if you are interested), but I do not deny that there is a long list of crimes performed by the living that have not been prosecuted and will never be prosecuted. It does make it hard to have faith in international relations when actual perpetrators are feted as dignitaries. But I do believe the point is not to have faith in international relations, but to still perform them with compuction. I am reminded of this parable:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
For all that, someone murdered a lot of Sikhs in the 1990s. God's justice will fall on them as Man's justice cannot be relied upon.
Posted by: PythonMagus | Saturday, 22 November 2014 at 07:27 PM
Having escaped to Australia as a refugee, the taxi driver needs to be very careful not to bring all of his baggage and prejudices and hatreds to this country.
I get a cab to work every morning, and I have heard just about every complaint, gripe and whinge known to man. My favourite driver is a nice Chinese gentleman, who just puts on some very soft classical music, shuts the f*** up, and carefully drives me to work.
Posted by: Paul | Thursday, 20 November 2014 at 11:51 PM