What is Truth and What isn’t

                                             What is Truth and What isn’t

It is more than three weeks since I wrote my last blog on my dreams for the nation on its 72^nd birthday. But the last few weeks were not weeks of non events  and so not worthy of  comments; on the contrary they were in every sense of the term, “News weeks” with headlines on Kerala floods,  India’s success in Asian Games, flip flop of the Indian Cricket team in England, the arrests of “Urban Naxals” on charges of plot to assassinate the PM and create chaos all over the country, Rahul’s press meets in foreign land with his all too familiar anti Modi jibes, the debate about the phenomenal  gains and the  disastrous losses of demonetization,  PM’s perorations back home that have no parallel to be measured against and last but not the least PM’s loyalists in their lowly best attacking Rahul as a  sewer worm.

I did not comment on any of them as I realized the futility of my comments that are more often than not  viewed,  and  misunderstood as subjective ranting of an old fossilized mind and therefore not suitable  or palatable either to the ruling establishment or to the opposition. Further what comment can a person like me make when I am not privy to the truth in all the contested issues raised by pro and anti establishment.  It is a fact that watching the present day theatrics on TV news channels, a majority of the viewers are confused as to what is truth, what is hype and what is not truth. No one will ever know the ‘truth’ on any issue, given the proliferation of comments on the social media to express even when there is nothing to express except to vilify and traduce one’s adversaries.

I decided to write today only to understand the meaning of truth and the innumerable changes that have happened with the word ‘ truth’. It was a serendipitous discovery for me when I came across an article by the famous lexicographer Kory Stamper who wrote about   “When truth isn’t truth”.  As a lexicographer, he traces the word ‘truth’ to its original sense of the word relating it to loyalty or fidelity to facts. Today this meaning has been adapted   to relate the word to “personal integrity or honesty, a confessed loyalty or faithfulness to a person or idea”.  It has become a tool to express one's loyalty to one/s master or to an idea or ideology. We see this happening in US where Trump’s loyal men and women speak the truth as the President wants.  It happens elsewhere also where the top leadership invites both implicit obedience and fear of incurring its wrath.  Similarly in India when a party spokesperson speaks the truth it is an expression of loyalty to his party and his leader. The truth is often glossed over by fierce commitment to be the voice of his/her master. Hence truth is the casualtys as it is overrun by allegiance and fidelity that a spokesperson has sworn to. Thus arises the disconnect between things as they are and things as they are presented in a particular context. Stamper explains this  disconnect between real defining and lexical defining. “While Real defining is the attempt to explain the essential nature of a thing, Lexical defining is … the attempt to explain what a word means within a particular context. As an illustration lexical defining answers questions like "what does the word 'love' mean in 'I love pizza’  and how is it different from 'I love my mom'? Lexical defining is as different from real defining as a teddy bear is from a charging grizzly”

This brings us to the hotly contested versions of the contemporary controversy on the Rafael deal. To the non partisan objective viewer, it is confusing about what the truth of the deal is. The Bofors controversy that peaked nearly three decades ago, with charges and refutation of those charges plying thick and fast did not result in any conclusive evidence. It drove home the  realization that truth will never be known as the leading players of the Bofors deal are no longer alive to affirm or refute the charges. The next best thing for the nation was to move on and bury the Bofors ghost though it can never be fully exorcized as it is a handy and useful weapon for those who want to brandish the Gandhi parivar when needed. So is the case of the Choppergate scandal where truth has again been the sole casualty. While former Air Marshal Tyagi was named in the FIR by the CBI along with the Italian CEO of Augusta Westland company,  the Italian higher court  overturned his conviction, absolving him of all wrong doing. It also exonerated Air Marshal Tyagi.  So where lies the truth? Was there exchange of money? So where has the money gone? Will there be a re-search for the truth, an investigation that would lead to where the money trail stopped? Even a still more imponderable question remains whether there was a money trail at all? Who will get to know the truth? The more we delve into what is truth, the more we are confounded and realize that no truth is the truth. The Rafael controversy will also go the same way as the Choppergate and the Bofors scam. All these controversies are useful and pivotal to electoral gains for the contending parties and therefore the truth will never be allowed to triumph.

 Today the burning issue is about the charge and arrest of five activists who have been charged as “Urban Naxals”, a phrase that seems an oxymoron (bringing together two  terms that are contradictory). It looks as though being an intellectual, with left leaning sympathies is enough to be labeled Urban Naxal. Will the truth stand up as to who these five people are! Are they genuine lawyers, writers, human right activists and committed intellectuals, working for the upliftment of the poorest among poor in tribal and rural areas or are they covert Maoist pretenders with an incendiary agenda to overthrow the present government? In this election year, framing of charges, disputing those charges, Media Mccarthyism, battering on the Social Media etc., will be the staple fare for the next few months on our news channels and newspapers, mirroring the modern dilemma about what is  truth.

Let us take two examples-one from the Bible and the other from the Mahabharata that raises the questions- what is truth and where is it to be found. Truth is caught between two contending parties when both claim to speak the truth.  When Jesus told Pontius Pilate “the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens”, Pontius Pilate asked: “What is truth ?”  Apparently Pilate went along with the idea that truth is relative. But he was convinced of the “truth” that Jesus was innocent, whereas for the Jews the “truth” was Jesus was guilty. So Pilate in all “fairness” washed his hands and let the Jews follow their truth.  The result was for all to see- Jesus was crucified because in the mob’s version of “truth” he was a criminal, and their truth was considered as valid as Pilate’s realization of truth that Jesus was not a criminal.  This Biblical illustration shows how from those early days , truth has always been relative. Jesus is not the first victim of relative truth, nor is he the last.

Today we continue the Biblical question about truth which almost proclaims, there can be no universal truth. Truth has become contextual and changes from person to person, from situation to situation. Plato writes about Protagoras who tells Socrates, “What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me.” It is this idea of truth as something relative that is prevalent today as it is transposed on to the views of the majority and the minority. No one can affirm that the majority always speaks the truth or the minority is the repository of truth.

Let us turn to the Mahabharata. We have the disturbing question about Yudhishtra’s reference to the death of an elephant that had the same name as Dronacharya’s son- Aswathama.  Krihsna asks Yudhishtra, who is truth personified, to say Aswathama  atha kunjara( Aswathama, the elephant is dead). When Yudhishtra utters the first two words referring to the death of Aswathama(Aswathama atha), Drona hears those words.  But when he mutters the third word ‘Kunjaraha’ (the elephant) Krishna blows the bugle and the word is lost. Dronacharya on hearing the half truth of Aswathama’s death loses heart and does not continue to fight and is at once killed. His death is crucial for the victory of the Pandavas who stand for Dharma.  In these two different examples, we see how in the first case, ‘truth’ brings about the death of a good man while in the second, hiding the truth results in the victory of good over evil.

Truth today continues to be elusive. Do we go in search of truth or abandon all searches taking umbrage in its relative character? If truth remains relative, then it is necessary to understand whether the end result of accepting a particular version of trut  may cause more harm than good to the society at large.  What is right and what is wrong has to be predicated on ethical grounds and not simply on majority vociferation and minority noise. Bentham’s utilitarian formula of maximum gains to maximum number may not be applicable to the question of truth as truth hinges upon ethics and moral principles. 

Truth cannot be a predominant public opinion; it cannot be subjective. It has to be based on a shared agreement between contending claimants. Contemporary issues like homosexuality, abortion, capital punishment, what is national and what is anti national, what is democracy, what is pluralism and what is monism etc., cannot have a black and white perspective. There is no universal rightness or wrongness of things.  In today’s polarised world truth has to remain a shared truth that carries the greatest overtones of ethics and morals. For those who may be quizzical about ethics and morals and wonder who decides them, my answer, however naïve it may sound, is ethics and morals are within us and they have the inherent potential to satisfy our responsibility to fellow humans and society, irrespective of our individual differences. Truth is that which places a premium on fidelity to one’s conscience over fidelity to persons or ideas.  The best example from the Mahabharata is that of Karna whose fidelity to Duryodhana blinds him to fidelity to Dharma. Ethics and morals are genetic to human conscience. We are born with our conscience. Conscience is a shared human awareness of ethicsand  morality.  We all  know what is right and what is wrong.  Truth is truth and truth is not what is not truth.

Kory Stamper’s concluding remark with a quote from  Samuel Johnson, the famous 18^th C British lexicographer, is worth following. Johnson said that though the meanings of words change, their primary purpose is to communicate clearly, not obfuscate. "When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave, and seek prey only for himself." Today we have the opportunity to walk out of our caves in search of shared consciousness . But many of us citing loyalty to men and women prefer to dig in the cave forever pondering the question what is truth and what is not.