The Power of Words to Upend a War

SELDOM IN THE HISTORY of mankind has a single word caused more upheaval than Donald Trump's post of April 7, 2026 on Truth Social: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again..." Words can be impactful.

- By Raghav Chandra

But the circumstance in which they are uttered can cause them to be more powerful than any missile or bomb. The civilization word transformed what might have been a military ultimatum to Iran into something far more toxic — a threat of collective extermination — with unmistakable echoes of genocide and cultural erasure, going beyond the scope of war. Days earlier, one of Trump's tweets had been laden with expletives — leading to general consternation about the direction in which things were headed. A civilian bridge had been targeted and destroyed in Karaj. A bomb on a school had earlier killed over a hundred school girls. The use of the word civilization was the last straw — transforming what might have been bluster into something that felt unhinged and inexcusable. Most critically, akin to the Chipko Andolan that had spurred an environment movement in India, it motivated the Iranian nation to rally and form human chains around civilian infrastructure — something that the Iranian regime had itself failed to manufacture.

In Indian mythology and scriptures it is believed that a single word can represent the power of creation, whence the phrase shabd brahm. In the story of the Mahabharata, the phrase “Andhe ka putra andha” is said to have been the seed that led to the war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. When the Pandavas hosted the Kauravas in the opulent Maya Sabha (palace of illusions) in Indraprastha, Duryodhana mistook a pool of water for a crystal floor and fell in, embarrassing himself. Draupadi laughed at the sight, taunting Duryodhana with this line — mocking his father Dhritarashtra's blindness and implying Duryodhana inherited that 'blindness.' This public humiliation deeply wounded Duryodhana's pride and fuelled his resentment.