The recent horrors in India were over plans to build a temple to Ram on the site where a Hindu mob destroyed a mosque in 1992. The mob’s justification for that destruction was that the mosque was built over the destroyed remains of a Ram temple … back in the 16th Century.
This is by no means an unusual circumstance in modern times. To varying degrees, scores of modern conflicts have their roots in grievances over events that took place centuries (or even millenia) ago. Kosovo, Northern Ireland, and Israel are some of the more obvious examples.
I don’t want to talk about specific issues too much, but more about the general question of how long do grievances remain valid? I mean, it seems obvious to me that, for example, a country who conquered a stretch of land five years ago shouldn’t be able to say “it’s in the past, let it alone,” but at the same time, I don’t think I have a claim to a farm in County Cork that some English landlord threw my great-great-great-grandmother off 160 years ago.
Can or should there be a rule about the validity of grievances like this? My initial thought is maybe 2 generations, but I’m not set into anything.
I can’t imagine any reason why there should be a “statute of limitations” on Right and Wrong. If a Wrong can be corrected, then it should be, and I don’t see any reason why a lapse of centuries or millenia should make a difference.
Generally, this would last until either the descendants of the victims cannot be identified any longer, or until the descendants of the criminals cannot be identified any longer, whichever comes first.
But there are exceptions, such as where restitution can be made directly to the victim, even without identifiable descendants. For example, all dead humans should be allowed to rest in peace forever; I vehemently oppose displays of human bones and skeletons of any kind or for any purpose (unless the deceased specifically allowed it).
I can easily imagine cases where one might not want to correct the past grievance, and practical or political considerations might make it difficult or impossible, but that still doesn’t make a Wrong into a Right. or even into an Okay.
I think that this might be the key to all such arguments of this nature…CAN it be corrected? As an example, the Native Americans; specifically, the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota. (I’m not ignoring any other tribes, just that I have some experience with the Lakota, and not with, say, the Cherokee). There is an on-going movement to return the Black Hills in particular (and all of western South Dakota in general) to the Lakota. The US Supreme Court has agreed that the Lakota were badly mistreated and there is a multi-billion dollar settlement in place for the Lakota. They are refusing the settlement (and accrued interest) and demanding the Black Hills.
It ain’t gonna happen. As much as we can argue about the correctness of who broke what treaty, white or Indian (and please, don’t insult my intelligence with the PC claim that only the white people broke treaties…the Indians also broke treaties with the same regularity as the white people), this is a solution that just will not take place.
As to the exact time that this settlement went from possible to improbable to impossible…wow, I dunno. If I knew the answer to that, I’d be a lot richer than I am.
Short answer: Exactly. And I’ve felt that way since grade school.
Longer answer: Consider what Toaster52 wrote about both parties breaking their treaties. That in mind, I would emphatically support the Lenni Lenape in bringing the suit, but I would not move out until the all the evidence was considered and the Court ruled in their favor.
Of course, as I said, there may be many pragmatic reasons why such a suit will never see light of day, but it doesn’t change right and wrong.
Disclaimer Disclosure: I believe that the same logic which puts me on the losing side of the Lenni Lenape vs White Man dispute, puts me on the winning side of the Jews vs Everyone Else dispute over the Holy Land, seeing as how the peoples who ruled that area prior to the Jews do not have any identifiable descendants nowadays. That’s a comfortable position to be in, but others do not have that luxury. I hope that my sense of right and wrong would be the same even if I did not have a homeland to go to after ceding my current residence to its original owners. But we’ll never know.
Your analysis fails on many levels. Let’s look at the Israeli situation as an example.
You do not win the “Jews versus Everyone Else” argument on two levels. First, the “criminals” who threw the Jews out of the Holy Land cannot be identified any longer. They were the Romans, not the Palestinians. Second, the Jews’ claim to the Holy Land came about through a “criminal” act - war against the Canaanites. While the descendants of the Canaanites cannot be identified any longer, it does not follow that the Israelite’s act in throwing them off their land becomes Right, rather than Wrong. Should the descendants of the criminals have a claim just because the descendants of their victims can’t be found? If that’s the criteria, then genocide makes a lot of sense.
These problems apply universally. The Albanian Kosovars are not the Ottomans who threw the Serbs out of Kosovar. And, of course, Kosovo was occupied in historical times by the (Greek) Macedonians, who were kicked out by the Serbs.
Overall, your “descendants of victims/descendants of criminals” concept is unsupportable. Example - a Scotsman migrates to Northern Ireland in 1920, well after the Irish were deprived of their land in the 15th-18th Centuries. Is he a descendant of the criminals? Example - an old roommate of mine is a convert to Judaism. Is he a descendant of the victims?
One of the greatest advances in legal and moral philosophy was the development of the concepts that “guilt by association” is invalid and that the sins of the father are not visited on the son. Can you explain how your perception does not violate either of these concepts?
You need to do a bit more research. The Palestinians have a fair claim to have been the Philistines. You’ve just pushed the feud back with no better resolution. It also strikes me that your argument is more than a bit disingenuous: You’ll hang around until everyone proves that there was never any problem with the “other side”? That would appear to be simply a way of saying that you are not going to move, regardless, as it is always possible to throw up some sort of difficult to disprove allegation.
(You might want to be careful with your current position, as well. Based on your contention that no one could be identified as one from whom the Hebrews stole Canaan, it would only take the discovery of some 4,000 year old mtDNA in human remains from that area that match current residents to–by your new standards–indicate that the Jewish Israelis should simply pick up and return to Ur.)
I’m sorry, but the idea that we should even attempt to trace back “ownership” beyond a generation or two is utterly unworkable (especially in light of the apparent ulterior motive to which you have pinned it).
Thanks, Sua, for giving me an opportunity to throw out some ideas I’ve been chewing on for a while.
When is the past the past? When do old wrongs not matter anymore? It depends on your point of view.
If your ancestors were the conquerors, and you are living fairly prosperously in the resulting society, your attitude will tend to be “Sure, that was wrong, but being angry about it is so 1492. When will people just move on? After all, there’s nothing that can be done about it now.” Whereas, if your ancestors were on the losing end of the bargain, and find themselves still largely on the losing end in the subsequent order of things, they might be far less likely to just forgive and forget - especially if their anger serves a purpose in helping them get what they want in the here and now. If your ancestors had their land stolen in the past, but were living like kings in the new world order they might not be so angry.
However, it’s not just about economic and political power. Collective anger about past injustice might be one of the forces that holds them together as a culture and helps differentiate them from the larger society. Depending on the actual circumstances, feelings of powerlessness, hatred, and anger can become part of one’s cultural heritage and identity. Unfortunately those feelings, the permanent “chip on the shoulder,” will last long after treaties are signed, elections are held, and landmines are cleared in some of the world’s hellholes.
Getting back to political and economic power for a moment: The founding of the State of Israel, to an extent, the 16th century land dispute you use in the OP, and Robert Mugabe’s rhetoric against white farmers in Zimbabwe, the debate about reparations for slavery that surfaces in the U.S. every now and then; are based on what you could call a self-serving exaggerated sense of history. I’m using a lot of different examples so that we don’t get into value judgements or nitpicky debates about the specific validity of each claim. The reality is that people can go as far back as they want to go provided that they have the necessary power (public support or military and economic might) to back up their claims. In service of present goals, the right or wrong of past claims doesn’t matter if they rally enough people to the cause and get the job done.
Mags, excellent points, though I wonder if there is another side to the coin - diversion.
Stealing a quote from the Washington Post, taken from Sumit Sarkar, a professor at Delhi University, the leaders of the Hindu Ram temple movement “have remarkably little to say about the crucial problems of Indian society, above all mass poverty and social injustice. Endless harping on the past misdeeds, real or imagined, of other religious communities is an excellent diversion.”
I also wonder about the positive drain cultural victimization has on societies. Ireland has undergone a remarkable economic acceleration in the past 20 years. During that same time, I have anecdotally noticed a marked decline in anti-British rhetoric amongst my (southern) Irish friends. Is it possible that there is a corrolation or causation between these trends? I’m just thinking that if all of the energy and bright minds that have been expended on various “victimization” causes, from Northern Ireland to Sri Lanka, had instead been expended on economic development, perhaps there wouldn’t be a need for a fight to return to a “glorious” past.
I think improved economic conditions - solving India’s poverty, for instance - would definitely make moderates and fence-sitters back off from religious causifying, but would not affect the people who have made it part of their identity. Some people will always feel aggrieved and try to change society to fit their vision. The reverse is also true - a relatively prosperous peaceful multicultural society will fall to hell in a time of severe economic crisis. There is something to the Western idea that greater prosperity = greater peace.
I also think you are onto something with the idea of religious conflict as diversion. You have a history of oppression and poverty, THEN, enter someone who wants to channel that hatred for a political or economic goal, and you get Robert Mugabe. Add religion and you get Osama bin Laden. Yasser Arafat is the prime example of this - he could never lead a free Palestinian state because so much of his legitimacy comes from being an opposition leader, someone who carries the wounded pride and the injustice of his people onto the world stage. When he tries to speak about peace and actually govern, Hamas tries to pull the place down around his ears, because they want to fight, to struggle. It’s who they are. But it’s not the whole picture. And Arafat himself uses the struggle to divert criticism of his government.
What got me started thinking down this path was a Chicago Council on Foreign Relations session on Islam and the West. In the discussion someone asked about foreign aid - how could America stop future terrorism by increasing and applying foreign aid and correcting some of the economic conditions that make terrorism seem like an attractive choice? I pointed out that we were already pouring aid into the countries that wanted us, and an African audience member piped up with an interesting comment.
Your land is taken. Your father and your mother are killed. Your children grow up in crushing poverty. You are angry. And eventually, nothing anyone can do will make you stop being angry. Restoring the land won’t make you stop being angry - will land bring back your father and mother? You teach your anger to your children and they pass it down to theirs as naturally as breathing, because over time the anger and the injustice has become a part of who you are, it’s your identity. That is the true horror of oppression - that the cycle doesn’t break once the wrong is righted unless there is a conscious effort by the oppressed person to say “This makes no sense. It’s unprofitable and unproductive. I’m moving on from here.” Peace doesn’t come anywhere without someone taking that step. So how much of getting someone to take that step comes from economic/political incentives? How much of it is economics, and how much of it is hearts & minds? How much do we blunder when we try to make it about economics?
I just heard a Blackfoot elder on the radio saying 4 generations is their limit for grievances. “If it goes to five generations, then it does not affect you,” he said.
If I knew the answer to that, I’d be a lot richer than I am. 