Wednesday, 24 February 2016

To Perish by Silence




                                                 To Perish by Silence
“The mark of the educated man is not in is boast that he has built his mountain of facts and stood on top of it, but in his admission that there may be other peaks in the same range with men on top of them-  that their views too are legitimate”- E.J.Pratt
These words have special relevance to us today. It is equally relevant to the rest of the world as it is to us. This is because the new age seems to worship those who precisely do not fit with Pratt’s definition of the educated man. It seems to applaud only those who brag about their own views and admire them for their boldness to assert that only their views matter. They hold sway over a large number of people by projecting themselves as strong, sinewed and superior in their physical dimensions with a corroborative implication that their machismo on display is equally applicable to other dimensions, notably intellectual, moral, psychological and knowledge dimensions. The new age displays a fervor similar to that which gripped Germany and Italy in the first half of the 20th Century, leading to the emergence of fascist parties. Both Mussolini and Hitler used their concept of “nationalism” to whip up mass passion and hysteria – passion to endorse their assertive leadership and hysteria to denounce all those opposed to it. The shocking and gruesome happenings in the 21st century- especially in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Turkey in the Middle East, in Libya, Algeria, Egypt  and Nigeria  in North Africa, in Pakistan and Afghanistan in Asia and now in the overwrought exercise of atavistic nationalism in India-  resonate with the fascist reins of the first half of the previous century. It is increasingly getting accepted that leadership is to be bestowed on those who aggressively claim that they have the last word on anything and everything.
What is alarming is the absence of or the feeble resistance to such aggressive claims of individuals and their supporters who are intolerant of ideas and ideologies different from their own and who insist on total obedience to their words and actions. Democracy is in peril, increasingly yielding its place to dictatorship or as in the case of ISIS, the rule of one man- the Caliphate who according to Shia Islam is the Imam chosen by God. But even a country like US, which has the pride of being the oldest democracy in the world is veering towards Trump who prides himself for being crude, irascible, offensive, divisive and a bully. He uses his nativist and hardline jingoism and taps and thrives on people’s fears and promises them jobs that he would wrench  out of the Indians and the Chinese. His simplistic rhetoric about good and evil gives the naive Americans the goose pimples and very likely they will vote him as their next President. His vulgarity  and demagoguery is funny and yet frightening what is known as the Grotesque in Literature. An American political correspondent writes “Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory. He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he's a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he's also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it's hard to know if he even realizes he's lying. He delights in schoolyard taunts and luxuriates in backlash.” Trump’s trump card  is not his money power alone, but his authoritarianism. It is difficult to predict who will be the next US president, but the sizeable following for Trump is an indication of the new thinking of our times with an underlying emphasis: “the Winner takes it all”.  Putin has made Russia almost a monolithic entity and is seen as the 21st Century Czar, “distrusted, feared and revered”(Comment from the Guardian). Russia today presents a different kind of totalitarianism – not one based on fear, as in the Stalinist times, but on a Russian desire to be acknowledged as a great power. It does not matter if the facts are true or false. The Caliphate’s violence unleashed by a vast contingent of IS terrorists-that includes mercenaries from the West – again betrays the assertion of might, money and ruthlessness – far removed from Pratt’s endorsement of the educated man.
India has also shown its weakness for admiring strong men who have been elected to the parliament on the basis of muscle power and money power. Though India prides herself as the world’s largest democracy, this pride may be short lived once we allow the subjugation of all dissenting voices as a democratic endeavour to impose a new trend of nationalism as the only one form of loyalty to the country. Often this tends to become belligerent chauvinism that is against the openness that goes with democracy. However exaggerated may be the report by foreign media and Amnesty International, there is a kernel of truth in the  scathing indictment of  the  climate of intolerance fuelled by provocative speeches and violent actions, by police cracking down on dissent through arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings of rationalists  and attacks on freedom of expression. As in every party, there is a fringe group to prove itself more loyal than the party and unfortunately for reasons best known to it, the present government has not been able to rein in these hyper-nationalist, hyper-hindutva groups. The opposition party is also not curbing its tendency to shout anti government slogans and has hardly attempted to find a middle path that reconciles hyper nationalism with rightful limits of democratic dissent.
JNU row should be an eye opener. In the last seventy odd years the left slanted JNU has been known for debates, discussions and freedom of thought and expression. If the present  argument that it is a breeding place of anti nationalism, there has to be a corroborative evidence that it has incited violence and has been instrumental in the breaking of law and order all these years. To my knowledge, no such evidence exists and JNU has only contributed outstanding academics, administrators and scientists who have served the country with distinction.  Youth is that phase of life when the argumentative mind works at its best. It is the phase when the mind is open and receptive to diverse views, intellectually trained to sift and analyze all that it learns and grows in maturity to form its own judgement.  The essence of graduation lies in this cultivation of maturity. JNU has not faulted  once to indulge in anti national activities even when it had more of a left leaning contrary to the government in power that was left of Centre for a major part of our post independence era as well as to the government that was right of centre  for a brief period. No earth shaking event had taken placeall these 70 years  to invoke the spirit of Nationalism and to warrant the arrest of the President of the JNU students’ union.
A University is the place for the discovery and germination of ideas that relate to the advancement of society. Pratt’s definition holds true of University where teaching is centred on exposure to thoughts and philosophy from different quarters and an openness to gain knowledge by means of thesis-anti thesis and synthesis. The truly educated person emerging from the university portals  is one who admits the right of others to have perspectives different from one’s own and cultivates the ability to accommodate and reconcile the differences .
India needs such educated leaders. So does the world. In the absence of such genuine literacy, the world is likely to descend to a dark age.  Literacy must reaffirm its authority against jargon, jingoism and pseudo slogans that appeal to the emotions ofmasses  but shorn of truth.
 If dissenting voices are plugged, we are in danger of losing our fundamental democratic right to speech.   George Steiner in one of his brilliant essays quotes these two lines from Pervigilium Veneris, a  Latin poem assigned to the 2nd or the 3rd or the 4th century. In English translation it reads: “To perish by silence; that civilization upon which Apollo(Greek god of music,poetry,learning) looks no more,  shall not long endure.”


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