COVID19, Lockdown Or A Pachyderm
War elephants won battles by shock, then trampled their own side. A lockdown is the same weapon: useful at first, dangerous if kept too long.
The elephant has an ancient relation with war often the elephants were used to charge the enemy line and break their defences.
Military contingents of elephants are called Elephantry. With the developing technology, the elephant got demoted to laborious jobs like hauling logs and got an occasional role in a circus.
You must be wondering what connection does lockdown owing to COVID-19 have in common with the elephants. We need to dive deep into history to understand the relation.
Use of elephants in war dates back to ancient times. From the Chinese, Indians to European armies have used Elephantry divisions in warfare. Right from the time of Rigveda, the king of Gods Lord Indra had lead many successful campaigns against the demonic beings using elephants.
Ramayan or Mahabharta had many episodes when the wild drunk elephants unleashed on the opposing army with outstanding results. Elephants were an essential part of the military from earlier times to very recent times of the Mughal Saltanat.
However, if you notice elephants were very successful in battle only when they appeared the first time on the horizon in a campaign. Alexander himself faced the elephants somewhere around Iran and had met severe consequences and incorporated hundreds of elephants after the battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC into his army.
By the time King of Macedonia reached India, he had understood the nature of elephants. He successfully used the elephants of King of Porus, against their army in the Battle of the Hydaspes. The light infantry irritated the elephants to turn back and run through and over the command of Porus paving the way for Alexander.
Hanibal crossed the Alps with his elephant’s before the second Punic war, initially, the Romas panicked to see the elephant on the battlefield. Once initial fear overcome, Romans brought trumpets to scare the elephants, and sure enough, the elephant in the hasty retreat trampled Hanibal’s army.
The pachyderm turned back and routed the humongous army
By the 16th century, technology was advancing, and the use of gunpowder was commonly, and the behaviour of elephant widely known. We have all read in our school history books what happened at the first battle of Panipat.
The pachyderm turned back and routed the humongous army of Ibrahim Lodhi and paved perfect gullies for the understaffed army of Babur to run deep into the defences of the Delhi Sultanate, thus laying the foundation stone of Mughal Empire.
In a nutshell, the point is that pachyderm is excellent for psychological warfare and to buy time, but it has never proven to be a durable weapon mostly prolonged use of it has harmed more than done well!
This COVID-19 is an attack on nations of this earth.
An attack deliberately done or by malicious design or by accident and aggression is an offence and must get a befitting reaction.
This lockdown is similar to use of pachyderm in war, it does buy you reaction time, but if used for long pachyderm may get emotionally upset and run through your ranks playing havoc.
We have seen countries bringing the lockdown too late has been devastating similarly keeping it for too long be equally threatening!
Now imagine had the armies brought the pachyderm, at the beginning of a war. Taken the advance of the surprise, confusion and monetary fear in the enemy lines and unleashed the skilled and agile infantry and cavalry instead.
Some countries like Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and many more did that; they brought pachyderm lockdown and immediately switched to social distancing, contact tracing and testing.
We in India are overconfident of this pachyderm we called it lockdown.
What if this pachyderm may turn back and run over us and rout our last line of defence called economy.
There are many ways of calculating casualties of COVID-19, first of all, direct deaths of this pandemic, secondly the indirect deaths. For example, suicide due to hunger, unemployment depression due to solitary confinement bad debts or millions of other reasons.
Every country is waging war with this enemy in many different ways we here in India are fighting only with the lockdown, why not artillery the cavalry and the infantry as well?
What if the lockdown like an elephant who has weapon tied to its trumpet turns around and stifle us! Lugs collapsing due to COVID-19 or busting under the weight of a pachyderm the outcome is the same.
References
Where to check the facts in this story.
- War elephant, Wikipedia
- Battle of Gaugamela (331 BC), Wikipedia
- Battle of the Hydaspes (326 BCE), Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps, Wikipedia
- First Battle of Panipat (1526), Wikipedia
- First Battle of Panipat, District Panipat, Government of Haryana
- COVID-19 lockdown in India, Wikipedia
