A dead hand in no man’s land

The bizarre Ayodhya verdict recalls André Breton’s first Surrealist manifesto: Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

The relatively recent, tangible and documented, crime-vandalism and destruction of a protected archeological monument-was ignored. The court ruled instead on excavated artifacts of questionable provenance, evidence entirely unrelated to the crime of 6 December 1992.

Had they dug deeper, the stratum of an older civilization might have emerged-bones, perhaps-and staked an even stronger claim on the present. It would have illustrated, very literally, a word that’s seldom used, a word worth knowing at least as metaphor, because it describes our national malaise.

It’s been around in English since the 15th century,  after a long career in French, but is so completely Indian in character, that I’m voting it into Indian Ink. Naturally, it is archaic elsewhere, but this Ayodhya decree confirms it is alive, and well, in Mera Bharat Mahaan. 

The word is mortmain. Self-descriptive, and a vowel short of its original French morte (dead) and main (hand), it describes the control the past exerts over the present, the stranglehold of the ‘dead hand.’ 

Mortmain robs our life of meaning, deprives us of will, denies us our dreams, and refuses us a future. It makes a mockery of independent thought and action. It scoffs at adulthood. Like religion, it promises tremendous power in the hereafter. The only payment it demands is now.

The other phrase brought to mind is even older than mortmain and dates back to the 11th century. Formally ratified as law three centuries later, it was first applied to our subcontinent in 1498.

When Vasco da Gama returned to Lisbon after ‘discovering’ India, Manuel I of Portugal styled himself ‘King of All the Indies.’ By the simple act of stepping on Indian soil, Da Gama had claimed it for his patron, and all unaware, the Zamorin of Calicut became vassal of the barbarians who had come shopping for pepper.

How did Vasco da Gama manage this coup? By citing the ancient Roman law of Terra Nullius. Literally ‘empty land,’ it permitted the Portuguese to claim land not feudatory to any other European monarch. Terra Nullius was the law of the coloniser — it denied native identity, property and life. No Man’s Land is a different concept. Where Terra Nullius was about land grab, No Man’s Land warns Hands Off. It has the flavour of truce, or at least forbearance, and appears in the aftermath of violence or disaster. It can accomplish surprising things, heal wounds in ways you could never have guessed at.

Since 6 September 1953 the De-Militarized Zone between North and South Koreas has been without human presence. In fifty years the land has reverted to its original vegetation and animal life.

Birds on the verge of extinction have seized a second shot at evolution. After 26 April 1986, a 30-mile radius around Chernobyl’s nuclear meltdown was isolated. You’d think this Zone of Alienation would be dead as the dodo. But life came teeming back, and the area is establishing a new ecology.

Wouldn’t this be the perfect solution for Ayodhya? Call a truce and make it No Man’s Land. Without human contamination, nature will reassert itself. It is the best apology we can offer to the land we have wounded.

Shake off the dead hand, step back, and let the grass grow.

Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed write as Kalpish Ratna