"I want to kill the enemy!"

Every morning, all the students assemble on the dusty school ground to say the morning prayer, sing songs, hear the Thought of the Day and announcements from the principal and to utter the pledge and sing the national anthem. The pledge goes as following (I know it by heart by now, having heard it around a hundred times I suppose):
“India is my country; all Indians are my brothers and sisters.
I love my country and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage.
I shall always strive to be worthy of my Motherland.
To my country and my people, I pledge my devotion.
In their well-being and prosperity alone lies my happiness“
Add these words with the complete uncritical and unlimited admiration of the Indian military and armed forces and the result is this: A student in my fourth class, Divyraj, who also lives in the children’s hostel, is a sweet and smiling boy with what I what call a very friendly nature. He loves listening to me telling ghosts stories or fairytales about dragons and brave princes and he is a very smart boy; he scored the highest marks in his class in the English exam. He smiles and laughs a lot and I really like him. But to my great regret he is one of the many boys who are completely fascinated with the thought of being an army man and killing the enemy, Pakistan that is. I recently made a worksheet for the fourth class and one of the questions asked them to write a short story about flying in a helicopter. This is his answer (I have copied it exactly as he wrote it, including the few mistakes): “One day when I would become a army man. One day I am flying in a helicoptor the pilot was a pakastani milatery so he take me to pakastan they beat me one hunter. I got angry. I kill everyone and I went to my home and I told everyone this accident with me.” Imagine if I Danish child had been writing something similar about killing all the Swedes or Norwegians… I know you cannot compare the countries, but it is just to illustrate the completely different mindsets. It is the same thing with a boy in my sixth class also from the hostel; Virendra is his name. He is so full of life and good ideas, is great in creative writing and I always enjoy talking to him and he is definitely one of my favourite students in class sixth. But unfortunately, he is just as brainwashed as Divyraj. I have had discussions with both of them in the hostel about the army, and Virendra is completely convinced that if the Indian army does not fight against Pakistan about Jammu and Kashmir (the northern state of India, which Pakistan and India has been fighting about for ages. It is currently deserted because of the wars and there is still no official solution), then Pakistan will attack and conquer the whole of India. “I want to fight the enemy!” he proclaims with loud voice and adds without a flinch that he wants to kill all the Pakistanis. All my attempts to tell them that they are also people, that war is wrong and that it is just a piece of worthless land and that Pakistan would never want to take the whole of India peels off like water on goose feathers. In my last discussion with both Virendra and Divyraj I told them about Jahnvi and Jehangir both my 2nd years at Red Cross Nordic. Jahnvi is from India and Jehangir is Pakistani and they were best friends in the college and I believe, still are. Virendra reacted to this piece of information with denial. “No, it is impossible, it cannot be,” he simply repeated and my confirmation that it was true did not penetrate at all. I always get very frustrated when I have these talks with the boys, because there is nothing I can do to make them change their view. I am up against a whole mentally of morning pledges, national anthem and massive military propaganda. There are military school were primary school boys are trained to fit the army from a very early stage on. Currently, the Indian army counts 10 million soldiers and the government uses 14% of all expenses on the army.
The principal-madam’s husband is a captain in the army, and a few weeks back he visited the school, because he wanted to have a little presentation about ‘the opportunities available in the military’ for interested boys and girls from class sixth to tenth. Driven by my expectation to be provoked, I attended the presentation. It consisted of the man telling the students that the army was the best carrier option AT ALL in India. “It is a very good life”, he said. He was emphasising these facilities: Free accommodation (the colourless barracks), free food (we used to compare the food of RCN with military food when it was at its worse), free clothing (the uniforms and probably not the most comfy material) and free transport service (the two times a year they get a chance to go home) and medical help (after being injured because you are wasting your life running around in a constant mock war). Additionally, one would have the honourable job to serve one’s country and if one died, the family could be very proud of the sacrifice. I couldn’t restrain myself, so I asked a couple of questions which had a hidden hint of criticism in them, but I doubt anyone noticed it. I asked the captain if he really thought there was a risk that Pakistan would attack India within the next few years and he replied yes, you never know, they might. When I asked him to elaborate on the reason behind such an attack, he ‘explained’ to me that the Pakistani president could easily throw a war against India, if he himself was becoming unpopular in his own country so to lead the attention towards the war and away from his own descending power. If this explanation is all it takes to convince people that a war is likely, then I understand the vast support for the military protection of the country.
I asked the five big boys in the hostel from ninth and tenth class the same evening, if they considered joining and it turned out almost all of them had thought about it as a good option and they certainly all supported it. One of them even told me that yes, it is better to spend these massive amounts of money on providing weapons for the army than on the many poor people in India and that it would only be an honour to die for your country. This lie has killed so many people throughout history and yet the false tunes are exactly the same. And don’t think that this view is only held by the boys. I had a talk with one of the sweetest girls in my sixth class, Isha, who wants to become an airforce pilot. To my horror, she told me that she thought it was the right thing to kill Pakistanis even though she recognized that they were also just people like you and me. She is not only a girl, but furthermore a Muslim, but yet she seemed to have the same disturbed image of Pakistanis being the root to all the evil in India. I am sure you can find exactly the same view of Indians on the other side of the border.
This whole military business makes me very frustrated, because I am so utterly and totally against wars and militaries and all the propaganda crap about honour and ‘the enemy’. No one seems to see the wrong thing in having a job, which’s only function is to train you to destroy other people’s lives, not only the ones you kill, but whole families and homes. It makes me very sad that these otherwise wonderful children have these depressing and distorted views. The only person who has expressed the same feelings in this matter as I hold, is our loved friend and neighbour, the 82 year old man, Mister Mohan. He follows a spiritual movement and believes that we are all brothers and sisters no matter skin colour, race, religion or any other reason to have a ‘us’ and ‘them’. But he is the exception and I can do nothing but sit back and wonder why human beings never learn from the mistakes of the past.