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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