espite my fundamental disapproval of binaries—those reductive distinctions that often obscure more than they reveal—I find myself compelled, if momentarily, to sketch human history through a bifurcated lens. This division, while imperfect, draws attention to two psychological and cultural orientations that have persisted across time: those impelled by a reflexive instinct toward conflict, and those more contemplative, inclined towards restraint and reflective peace.

The former, exemplified perhaps most conspicuously by South Asia, has often displayed a proclivity toward passionate assertion—whether through political bluster, street-level aggression or a romanticised notion of martial valour. This stands in sharp contrast to the latter, observable in regions such as Scandinavia, Austria, Finland and Switzerland, where a culture of moderation, deliberation and institutional stability has taken deeper root. In Asia, countries like Indonesia and Malaysia—despite their own internal challenges—have exhibited a greater receptivity to peaceful coexistence, pluralism and pragmatic governance.

This divergence is not purely cultural or economic; it is historical. Or more precisely, it is the differing engagement with history. Hegel’s haunting dictum that “the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history” seems to find stark validation in the South Asian subcontinent. Unlike Europe, which has endured the apocalyptic devastations of two world wars—each an abyssal reminder of the consequences of unbridled nationalism, imperial ambition and demagoguery—South Asia has been largely spared such continental-scale tragedies. The absence of these cataclysms has perhaps incubated a form of political and cultural bravado, untempered by the sobering reality of collective ruin.

This is not a theoretical concern; it is playing out now, in real time. In the wake of the recent violence in Pahalgam, located in the heart of the contested territory of Indian-held Kashmir, tensions between India and Pakistan once again surged to alarming levels before a US-brokered ceasefire came into effect.

Two nations—each claiming descent from the ancient cradle of the Indus Valley Civilisation, often touted as the world’s oldest—keep on lurching dangerously toward military confrontation, driven by the ghosts of Partition and the unhealed trauma of a region perpetually on the edge. The tragedy lies is that both countries, heirs to millennia of civilisational wisdom, continue to squander their potential in a zero-sum game of nationalist bravado, religious majoritarianism and militarised posturing.

As Slavoj Žižek has provocatively noted, “The real tragedy of our predicament is not that we take it too seriously, but that we do not take it seriously enough.” The fever-pitched rhetoric, the sabre-rattling and the theatrical displays of strength mask the deeper fragility of two nuclear-armed states, locked in a psychological war as much as a geopolitical one. Each incident in Kashmir becomes not just a flashpoint, but a stage on which the failure to learn from history is performed with terrifying consistency.

In this farce of repetition, leaders like Narendra Modi, much like his international contemporaries Netanyahu and Trump, thrive not on vision but on division. Their popularity is not built on a programme for peace, but on the endless deferral of peace. As Žižek writes elsewhere, “We live in a moment when politics has become the management of catastrophe.” In South Asia, catastrophe is no longer an anomaly—it is the structure itself.

Alain Badiou, in his reflections on ethics and politics, reminds us that true fidelity to justice requires the courage to break with the status quo: “The only way to be truly universal is to be absolutely faithful to a singular event.” One wonders what such an event could be in the context of South Asia: a genuine reconciliation over Kashmir; a shared truth-telling project between India and Pakistan; or a demilitarised subcontinent united in its diversity rather than fractured by its ghosts.

Despite eventual aversion for all out war, peace today hangs by a thread—thin, frayed and trembling. It is less a condition than a suspension, a moment of stillness before the next upheaval. We are left to contemplate the bitter irony that those who champion division often rise more swiftly than those who preach solidarity. The media, ostensibly the fourth pillar of democracy, has all but abdicated its duty to temper hysteria in both India and Pakistan. Instead, it fans the flames with every breaking alert and theatrical prime-time debate.

Voices like Arnab Goswami, Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt, among others, and their likes on our side of the border, have turned journalism into a performative battlefield, where reason is drowned by noise and truth sacrificed for ratings. In this cacophony, the voice of sanity—cautious, reasoned, humane—finds no audience. It is rendered irrelevant, silenced not by censorship but by spectacle.

As Hannah Arendt once warned, “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.” This aphorism, deceptively simple, captures a disheartening truth of modern political life—the tendency of once-disruptive figures to swiftly become gatekeepers of the very systems they once opposed. The problem today is not that our leaders are too radical, too bold or too revolutionary; it is that their radicalism is performative, their gestures empty and their convictions shallow. What parades as bold action is often little more than cosmetic change and choreographed posturing that leaves untouched the deeper architectures of inequality, exclusion and violence. Beneath the surface spectacle lies a deeply conservative impulse—an instinct to preserve power, maintain hegemony and manage dissent, not engage with it.

This global trend is especially visible in societies grappling with fragile democracies, wounded histories and unresolved traumas—like those in South Asia. The leaders, media figures and state institutions that claim to represent the people are, more often than not, architects of their confusion. They speak in binaries, manufacture enemies and profit from division. In this atmosphere, the space for nuance, compassion and peaceful negotiation is not just shrinking—it is being actively erased.

Advocating for peace is no longer a passive stance; it is a radical and defiant act. It is not the romantic idealism of the naïve, but the moral clarity of those who refuse to be complicit in cycles of dehumanisation and retribution. To speak of peace, justice and reconciliation in the face of orchestrated hysteria is to risk marginalisation, ridicule and worse.

This refusal to mirror the aggression of our time is a form of resistance. It is, as Arundhati Roy reminds us, an insistence on another way of being in the world. “Once you’ve seen it, you can’t un-see it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.”

Peace is not a hollow slogan or a treaty between two regimes. It is an ongoing labour—a commitment to truth-telling, to dismantling inherited myths, to forging solidarities across constructed divides. It demands intellectual courage and emotional discipline, especially when every signal around us calls for vengeance, tribal loyalty or blind patriotism. To insist on dialogue amid the drumbeat of war, to invoke humanity when dehumanisation is currency, is not weakness—it is the truest strength. “Peace is not the silence after the storm, but the harmony that prevents the storm from rising.”

And so, the wager remains: that humanity, despite its habitual amnesia, might still learn; might still change; might still listen; not because history guarantees it—but because conscience demands it. We must remember as the aphorism says, peace is God breathing in the silence or the alignment of being with becoming.

The writer is a professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.