Suman Keshari: The Ghosts of Ararat
April 24, 2015, marks the centenary of the Armenian genocide: how many of us remember?
The Ghosts of Ararat
After all, who today talks about
the murderous dispersal of the Armenians?
Adolf Hitler, 1939
Hitler
is believed to have said this whilst commenting on the genocide of Armenian
residents of the Ottoman Empire during the period overlapping the end of the
nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth. History is
witness to the inspiration this might have given him in his murderous attitude
towards his enemies, and the Jews of Europe. To this day, the mere mention of
Hitler’s name causes a shiver to run down our spines - but what of Armenia? It
is indeed an irony that in India, nay, even the world at large, so little is
spoken about what by all accounts is accepted as the twentieth century’s first
act of genocide.
Prior to
the Great War of 1914-8, there were approximately 2 million Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire. Between 1915 and 1923 about 1.5 million of them were done to
death, and the remaining half million were forced to flee. To this day Turkey
refuses to acknowledge this act of genocide. Till this day most countries in
the world, including India and the USA, remain silent about it – only twenty
countries acknowledge this genocide - they include Russia, France, Germany,
Italy, Canada, Belgium, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile.
The
official position of the Turkish establishment has been that the fate of the
Armenians was a result of the so-called ‘re-settlement law’ and the conditions
prevailing in wartime. However, the re-settlement law was enacted on May 27,
1915 whereas the Interior Affairs minister Mehmed Pasha Bey had – under the
orders of Talat Pasha - ordered hundreds
of Armenian intellectuals, leaders, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and traders of
Constantinople (contemporary Istanbul) to be killed or jailed a month earlier,
on April 24.
The
decimation of their entire intellectual and social leadership on a single day
is why Armenians commemorate April 24 as Armenian Genocide Day. In just eight
years, from 1915 to 1923, an ancient, prosperous and industrious community lost
1.5 million people, three-quarters of its size. The entire Armenian population
of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared. Today, there is scarcely an Armenian
family in the global diaspora which lacks a memory of someone lost to the
genocide. The entire community is traumatized by loss. This year marks a
century of the genocide, yet Armenians are still screaming for justice and
acknowledgement for what was done to them.
The
forced displacement and violence inflicted upon Armenians has a long history.
But let us begin our story in the last decade of the nineteenth century. That
was when the Armenian revolutionary federation, the Dashnaktsutyun augmented its
demands for autonomy with the establishment of guerilla groups. This was a time
when nationalist ideologies were on the rise everywhere. It was also the period
when the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II was in perilous decline. Between 1894
and 1896, the Sultan caused thousands of Armenians to be put to death on
charges of demanding autonomy and other rights. This changed little. Later,
when a movement for better governance and against the Sultan’s despotism
convulsed the empire at large, Armenians took enthusiastic part, in the belief
that they were joining forces with democratic forces that would protect the
rights of ethnic minorities. But what transpired was the opposite, because in
the build-up to the First World War, the Ottoman Empire had joined the camp
within which the forces of extreme nationalism were fast emerging. This was the
atmosphere in which the incipient Young Turk movement was sharpening its
weapons, and the outbreak of war was their political opportunity.
The
Armenians lived in an area that was strategically significant, and it was their
misfortune that the eastern portion of this area fell under Russian control,
and the western part under the control of the Ottaman Empire. The Armenians
were followers of the Christian Apostolic Church, their branch of which was
established as early as the first century after Christ. In the year 301 AD,
Armenia became the first state to adopt Christianity as its state religion. On
the other hand, the Ottaman Empire (established centuries later) was populated
in the main by Muslims.
In such
a situation, when the territory of an ethnic minority is occupied by two sides
at war with each other, the patriotism of that minority comes under question.
Such doubts acquire a firmer basis if religious difference is added to the mix.
Armenia was no exception to this pattern. When the Ottoman Empire entered the
war against Russia, its ruler expected the Armenians resident in its eastern
territories to come out openly against Russia. When this did not happen, the
Young Turks obtained their opportunity to crush the Armenians. Between 1913 and
1918, the leadership of the Young Turks was held by three Pashas: Anwar Pasha,
Talat Pasha, and Kamal Pasha. Ultra-nationalist in inspiration the three were
very close to Germany. Turkey and Germany were on the same side during the
Great War, whilst Russia was aligned with their opponents, the Allied Powers.
The Ottomans had already decided upon a ‘final solution’ to the Armenian
‘problem’ – the first phase of which was unleashed on April 24, 1915, with the
attack on Armenian intellectuals and business leaders.
In the
next phase, thousands of Armenian men were rounded up for the ostensible
purpose of Army recruitment. They included peasants, teachers, shopkeepers and
shepherds. No social group was omitted, they were ordered to move as and when
and wherever they were, immediately. Once they arrived at the collection
points, there was no going back, nor were they allowed to bid goodbye to their
loved ones. As for the families left behind, even amongst them few were left to
tell the tale. The men who had been rounded up were not, after all, recruited
into the Army, even though the Turkish Army was in need of recruits. They were
forcibly made workers and porters. If they fell ill due to hunger and brutal
conditions, they were either killed or left behind to die. This wasn’t all -
thousands were attacked and murdered by armed gangs.
The
third phase was even more remarkable. All the elderly people, women and
children were ordered to march towards the Syrian desert. The Ottomans were not
to be found wanting in the brutal treatment that vengeful powers mete out to
women and children. So aside from being targeted by Turkish soldiers, they were
also hunted down by Kurdish and other tribesmen. Famine and sickness killed
them in thousands, and the wayside houses where some took shelter were burnt
down. Standing fields of food-grain were destroyed. The districts of Bitlis,
Agn and Khapert saw the murder of thousands of children, many of whom were
burnt alive or poisoned. Some were cut down and thrown into the Euphrates –
there are stories of the river waters turning red with blood. There were also
stories of forcible conversions. Armenians were not the only victims of these
depradations, which included Assyrians and other ethnic minorities.
Some
child survivors of this massacre were sent by the Allied powers to countries
where there were Armenian immigrants. Some even came to India – there is an
Armenian quarter in Calcutta, with its Apostolic Church. It is said that the
first Armenians to arrive in India had been soldiers in Alexander’s army.
Commercial links with Armenia go back across millennia. The first Armenian
settlement is believed to have been the one in Malabar, Kerala; and during
Akbar’s reign Armenian traders were reported to have been active in cities such
as Agra, Calcutta, Madras, Gwalior, Surat, Lahore and Dhaka. It is said that
one of Akbar’s wives was Armenian and so too, was one of the female doctors in
his harem. Akbar had permitted them to live and work in India. Armenians had
opened a printing press in Madras in the eighteenth century, as well as an
armaments factory in Lahore. They were so populous in Calcutta that an Armenian
College was opened there in 1821. Till today there is an Armenian Church there,
although the population is on the decline.
So
deeply embedded was the memory of genocide in their collective memory that it
became the well-spring of creativity for most Armenian writers and artists. Modern
Armenia lies close to the home range of Mount Ararat, the peak made famous by
the Biblical story of Noah’s ark. The ark, made by Noah at Gods command to save
all of earth’s animals from drowning in the cataclysmic flood, was believed to
have been brought to rest by Noah at Ararat. Although the mountain lies in
Turkish territory today, it remains an essential part of Armenian culture. The
Armenians call their country Hayk, after their legendary patriarch, a
descendant of Noah. The word Armenia is derived from the name of one of Hayk’s
descendants.
The
origins of Armenian culture may be traced to the copper age, beyond 4000 BC.
The fifth-century linguist Mesrop Mashtots, gave the Armenian language its
script in 405-406 AD. The period following this is considered a glorious epoch
in Armenian history. Mashtots remains honoured till this day, and a road in
Yerevan is named after him. This January, on a trip to Yerevan, my mind was
stirred by this. The naming of roads after writers and artists is a common
occurrence in Armenia. There is an entire repository of ancient manuscripts in
Matenadaran, in Yerevan. Museums and repositories of history, culture and the
arts look after the heritage entrusted to them. You can pick up a phone today in
Armenia and hear the songs of the poet and musical genius Comitas, the same man
who went mad upon beholding the genocide of his people. In his poem The Unsilenceable Belfry, dedicated to
Comitas, the well-known poet Paruyr Sevak commemorated the genocide in these
words:
They, the murderers
Tore open the breasts of mothers,
Whose laps had nurtured our
genius.
Before their eyes, they broke
open
The heads of those who had once
Seeded art!
In
much the same manner, did the poet Daniel Varoujan (born 1884) dedicate a poem
to his late father:
I came, small and alone,
To meet you, father,
In a dark prison
Mother was ill, and I,
Rudderless,
In that bed between mother and
prison
Daniel
Varoujan’s famous collection of poems entitled The Song of the Bread, was a celebration of Armenian village life
and traditional myth. It was confiscated in 1915, but miraculously survived the
genocide. On April 24, 1915, Daniel Varoujan, along with other Armenian
intellectuals, was brutally murdered by the Turkish authorities. He was 31
years old. In his famous poem Dantesque
legend, the poet, writer and public activist Yeghishe Charents (1897-1937),
still revered as Armenia’s soul, described an event much like this:
Water – whispered the lips
As I crawled to the well’s rim
And looked inside, to the surface
To impenetrable darkness; only
that darkness, as
I tied a rope to a bucket, swung
it toward the depths,
As in a moment, it crashed into
the water,
Intent, I pulled it out and
looked inside again
And saw, in that instant,
Body parts shimmering in the
water
There
are numerous such descriptions of the genocide.
Mothers and sisters would be molested in front of children, who would be
ordered to clap – failing which they would be murdered with lances in front of
the women. Adam Stephen Garebian was uprooted from Anatolia in 1915, and was
lucky to have survived. He took refuge in Bombay. Years later, he related the
story to his son Keith, now resident in Canada, but whose childhood transpired
in Bombay. Keith Garebian’s poem, Pain: Journeys Around My Parents describes the experience of a group of
Armenians who “walked for three days without food or water. Struck low by
severe hunger, cruelty and exhaustion, my grandmother agreed to give her
daughter Arshe into the care of a childless couple. In my father’s fleeting
memory, his middle sister was left crying under a tree, with the assurance that
her mother would soon come and get her. The vision of a five year old girl with
disheveled hair, weeping alone under a tree became indelibly burnt into my
father’s mind.”
Every Armenian family possesses stories like this,
and more frightening ones as part of its store of memories. This year, I spent the second half of January in
Armenia, where I met many people. There was talk of lost relatives, of their
material culture, and of course, of the genocide, to which a museum is
dedicated. But there is also awareness of the significance of September 21,
1991, when Armenia became independent of the dissolved Soviet Union, with the
determination to build a new Armenia. The path ahead is hard, but it represents
the re-iteration by Armenians of their determination to continue living.
This essay appeared in the Sunday Magazine section of Jansatta on April 26
Translated by Dilip Simeon
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