Earlier this week, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine picked up place, I joined a group of about 100 people arching down Goa’s Arambol beach to demonstrate solidarity with the people of Ukraine and to demand a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Many of those around me carried Ukrainian flags. Some had signs saying, “Stop the War.” Other signs were more blunt” “Fuck Putin”
Goa is a popular destination for tourists from both Russia and Ukraine. Before the pandemic, between October 2018 to May 2019, approximately 90,000 tourists from Russia arrived in Goa. This season, only 3,000 Russians have arrived in the state so far.
Among the marchers in Arambol on Monday were many Russians, Ukranians Belorussians, a few from other European nations and some Indians too.
“Glory to Ukraine,” a Ukrainian woman sang. “Glory to our heroes.”
The most popular chant was: “We want peace!”
“We didn’t know this would happen,” said a Russian woman from Tatarstan, one of the country’s 22 republics. “This is not our choice. I want to support Ukraine but I also want peace.”
A young Indo-Russian woman noted that war in the 21st century is crazy. “Putin will destroy Ukraine, Russia and the world, if it goes nuclear,” she warned.
A Belorussian woman was angered by Russia’s decision to move troops and arms through her country: “Putin is using our country to attack Ukraine.”
A teenage Russian boy had his own take on the situation. To being with, he was appalled at “Russian police attacking peace demonstrators in my country like crazy”.
Then he added: “You must understand the background to this story. America controls Ukraine. The media won’t tell you this. And all the neo-Nazis have gone there to fight the Russians. But, again, the media won’t tell you this.”
He was referring to the dismissal of the elected pro-Russian Ukraine president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014 in what many regard as a US-inspired coup, and the fact that the country’s current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a comic actor, leans towards NATO.
The march ended with a message of solidarity for the people of Ukraine and chants for peace that were echoed by the crowd.
That’s when I stepped up to make a little speech at this impromptu peace. “War is no solution,” I noted.
I said that those of us with long memories would never forget what had happened during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. When India was fighting a war against Pakistan on two fronts and the US sent its Seventh Fleet to bolster Islamabad, it was the Soviet Union that came to our help.
I also pointed out that Indians and Third World people support all the nations that formed part of the old Soviet Union – including Russia and Ukraine – and wished them all to live in peace.
The evening ended with the sound of drums pounding this peace message across the Arabian Sea, under a blushing rose-petal pink sunset.
Pink is the colour of rose quartz, an adamantine symbol of undying love.
Only love – and its handmaiden, a courageous willingness to examine the truth of any situation – can conquer fear and hate.
Yes, as the anti-war anthem by Edwin Starr from the peace movement in the US in the seventies sings it: war is good for absolutely nothing.
Except for the military industrial complex that runs the world.
Harsha Prabhu is a journalist and photographer based in Goa.