Smash thine enemy?

It is sort of normal for me to see people exalting Tamil in Tamil movie posters but that exaltation very seldom carries over to actually excerpting anything from Tamil literature in the posters. So, it was a bit of a surprise to see an excerpt...but, yeah, if there would at all be an excerpt it would be from good old Tiru's work.

Uyirrpa ularallar mandra seyirppavar semmai sidhaikkalaa Thaar - Tirukkural

He who destroys not the pride of his enemy shall not exist to breathe - Loose Translation

Tiru does get blood-thirsty at times. Especially when it gets to writing about how best to treat enemies. He is clearly not of the 'turn the other cheek' school of thought. At least not till he has ensured that his enemy is properly chained up so that he can do nothing about the invitation to slap the other cheek. No wonder, his pieces do get picked up every now and then by today's movie-makers. I mean, like, they are hardly likely to find Ahimsa a fit subject for making a movie...especially considering that their heroes are more the 'bash the lessons into the other guy's heads' sort.

So, this one rather fits the bill. It does not go so far as to say that the only good enemy is a dead enemy. But Tiru may as well have said it. When he says 'destroy the pride of the enemy', it is essentially a euphemism for rendering the enemy powerless to retaliate. What he says is that, if you leave your enemy with even a smidgen of ability to act against you, you will not live long thereafter. So, you either have to completely break the will and power of your enemy or, obviously, your ENEMY must cease to breathe.

This is one of those areas of ambivalence. Talking purely pragmatically, a live enemy is always a potential source of danger even if he will not instantly cause you to 'cease to breathe', but then what is poetry without hyperbole. On the other hand, there is always the morality question including that of what it will do to your character to be perpetually unforgiving.

THAT, though, is for other people to worry about. I have hardly ever been in a position to decide what to do about any enemy. The boot has always been on the other foot!