The hierarchy of grief—some lessons from Ukraine

Where there is war, there is grief. Nearly two weeks into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, even those of us who are thousands of miles away are grappling with the hierarchy of grief. Can there be 'greater grief' and 'lesser grief'? These are uncomfortable questions at any time. The stark reality is that prejudice and racism continue during war, and amid solidarity talk at war zones.

There have been numerous reports of African and Asian students in Ukraine facing discrimination at the hand of border guards while trying to flee. This can't be casually shrugged off, even amid death and devastation, and even as we grieve the loss of innocent lives, pounding of huge swathes of Ukrainian cities into rubble by Russian bombardment.

What has been even more troubling is the tone of some of the reportage and commentary in sections of the Western media.

Also read: Foreign students stuck at Ukraine border complain of racism

Here are some samples of grim bias and painful double standards:

"This isn't a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilised, relatively European — I have to choose those words carefully too — city, one where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it's going to happen."

"We're not talking here about Syrians fleeing the bombing of the Syrian regime backed by Putin; we're talking about Europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives…"

The privileging of suffering by Ukrainians simply because they are Europeans has not gone unnoticed. This has led to many sarcastically asking whether European suffering is somehow more grievable than suffering in places like Syria, Yemen or Afghanistan.

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"European" has become "a code word for white and a justification of the primary reason that people should care about the conflict, displacement, and killing," observed Dr Rashawn Ray, an eminent sociologist and a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution, in a March 3 essay titled The Russian invasion of Ukraine shows racism has no boundaries.

"Bloody conflicts in Syria, Somalia, and other places have not received the wide-reaching international media coverage—or urgent international government action—that the invasion of Ukraine has inspired. This is not surprising," Ray noted. He went on to emphasise that the differential treatment of victims of conflicts was part of a wider canvas, pointing to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the groups of people, communities and countries that have had equitable access to testing, treatment and vaccination. "Much like how the history of African enslavement in the United States still haunts our country in many ways, the legacy of African colonisation in Europe is still surfacing, even amid a war that threatens the very existence of an entire country," Ray said.

Does drawing attention to these uncomfortable realities in the time of the war in any way undermine the bravery of ordinary Ukrainians or puncture the very real narrative of solidarity?

I don't think so.

As I write, Russian shelling and bombardment of Ukraine continue. Resilience and everyday heroism by ordinary Ukrainians continue too.

And just as in peacetime, war or grief can't be reduced to just one grand narrative. There are multiple and often-intertwined narratives of war and grief and rage, and every emotion that intersects with these. Alongside the narrative of prejudice is the narrative of commonality in grief.

Grief for Naveen, the Indian student killed in Russian shelling while standing in a grocery queue in Kharkiv, and his family does not cancel out the grief for another parent in another part of the world. I was as moved reading about the man in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol whose 16-year-old son Ilya was killed in shelling while playing football. Ilya's father hugged his son's lifeless head. Shekhar Goudar, Naveen's father in Karnataka, said he had called his son just minutes before the young man was killed. The entire family used to make video calls to Naveen every day.

These individual stories are now part of a common thread of grief in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

There is a common thread in anxiety as well. In India, despite an ongoing pandemic and assembly elections, many of us have been glued to the small screen and the live images that are coming out of Ukraine, especially from the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, about 48 km from the border with Russia.

Hundreds of medical students from India and other countries are still waiting to be evacuated. A few days ago, there were video clips of Indian students in Sumy melting snow to quench their thirst. They said they had run out of food and water. One hears that the Red Cross has managed to reach them. The Indian government says they will be rescued very soon.

But it is a nerve-racking wait and choking anxiety for Indian parents whose sons and daughters still remain in the war zone in Ukraine. That is why this tweet struck a chord. "The Russians might bomb the Irpin cemetery where my father's grave is. I do not know what else to do, so please pray for my father…." wrote Anastasiia Lapatina, a Ukrainian journalist, currently in Poland.

Also read: Europe welcomes Ukrainian refugees - others, not so much

Arguably, the conscious and unconscious bias that showed up in some of the recent coverage of Ukraine isn't totally new. What is also not new is bias within our country. We need to look within as well. We have our own hierarchies and prejudices. That surfaces even in the absence of war. African students have faced tremendous discrimination and prejudice in urban India. And no one who keeps their eyes and ears open can be blind or deaf to the suffering of Dalits and minorities.

To talk about Ukraine's suffering, one does not have to dilute the suffering of others. As Harvard historian Moshik Temkin put it. "You don't need to talk about the glory of Ukraine or the greatness of that nation or what a marvellous culture they've had for a thousand years. You just have to underline that it is a sovereign country and the people there deserve to live free, without being invaded or bombed."

In sum, when it comes to grief, there can be no hierarchy. Each of us grieves in our way. Just as no one can tell us how to grieve and whether or not to make public one's deepest sorrows, we must not belittle the fears or the grief of others who look different or are in terrain unfamiliar to us. By doing so, we demean them and ourselves.

(Patralekha Chatterjee is an independent journalist and columnist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.