Note:
This was written two days ago
when we were still in 2018
Two days to ring in 2019 and ring out 2018.
Hopefully these days will pass off without any cataclysmic upheaval that December
has always experienced- notably since the last quarter of the 20th
C- the continuous downpour in Chennai in December 2015 resembling the flood fury recorded in the Bible (before
Noah built his ark at God’s command to save all God’s created species on earth) or the 2004 tsunami that struck Chennai in the last
week of December, or the terrible Bhopal Gas tragedy in early December of 1984,
or the last day of the Soviet Union on Dec 25, 1991 before it disbanded.
I have
an instinctive dread of December as it signals the inalterable fact that the
world has aged by one year, which ipso facto signals all of us ageing. Who
likes to grow old? That too when one is approaching the last quarter, assuming
oneself to be wired to hit a century! Like the sales advertisements that fixes
the price of commodities at 99p or 199
rupees – always one short of the next hundred, we prefer to say that we are in
the late twenties or late thirties etc even after we are well into the next
decade of our life. I am 29, 39, 69 or 79… but not 30, 40, 70 or 80… Hence my dread of ageing whenever we ring in
the New Year. Every year at 12 midnight as the new year dawns, I make a firm
resolution that I shall not be tense when the year end approaches, only to find
myself repeating the same old resolution at the stroke of midnight making it as
my new one for the next year. So much for all our New Year resolutions!
This year I have made a different resolution.
I resolved not to allow age to dictate my life. We all know age is always on
the Y axis; in fact it stays static in the X axis only at the end. But in
practical terms, age is just a number though it takes a toll on our physical
strength. But it has no power over our cognitive abilities unless we allow it
to do so by indulging in mental lassitude and torpor.
As years roll on, I find myself like Eliot’s
protagonist of the Wasteland dipping into the fragments I had shored in the
past against future ruins. Like him I
see myself standing in the middle of a
waste land that is littered with splintered pieces from a glorious,
high-cultured past from where I have collected these fragments and which I wish
to pile up and make the present wasteland a fertile one. Before I am bracketed with
all other seniors of my age and accused as living in the past and regressing
into childhood nostalgia, I make it clear that all things were not right with
the past just as is the case with the present, but whatever was well then, was worth
preserving to shore them against future decay when it happens. Our present world resembles Eliot’s
wasteland- emotionally arid, culturally lacking in civility, intellectually
bankrupt and morally decadent where we have forgotten what it is to be civil, loving
and compassionate, cultured in what we say and how we conduct ourselves, intellectually
tolerant and accommodative and ethically truthful, honest and public spirited.
What is happening today is not singularly an Indian phenomena, but it is spread
worldwide making the 21st Century slowly regress into an era of
egocentrism, greed, violence and intolerance, bereft of intellectual
aristocracy, far removed from the altruistic principles that endorsed
liberty, equality and fraternity two hundred and thirty years ago in
1789.
I will confine myself to India, where despite
the strides we have taken to become a modern nation, we have regressed faster on
civil liberties, freedom of speech, superstitious beliefs, and last but not the least on human index. The
2014 elections started it all. (This is not an indictment of the ruling
establishment of the last four and a half years, only a factual statement).The
public domain which is increasingly that of the social media is now used vigorously
to settle private scores and to let out personal deep seated animus. It was first used in the run up to 2014
elections to show the scam filled ruling establishment of Congress and its
alliance partners.
The language used was coarse and uncivil.
There was nothing to distinguish between form and content, as both were
unrefined and churlish, offensive and rude. The elections were won as people
wanted change from a government that was increasingly corrupt and saw in Modiji
a saviour who projected himself as the Knight on a white charger to drive away
the black hoarders and scamsters off the face of India. The election campaign
was demagoguery at its best, making impassioned appeals to the prejudices and
emotions of the people. Man Mohan Singh’s silence and his party’s disconnect
with the people and its inability to showcase
any of its innovative actions (such as RTI, MNREGA, anti
rape laws, idea of constituting a Lokpal, Direct Cash transfer, Aadhar, nuclear
deal and increased use of nuclear energy, the idea of GST- though aborted by
the opposition, terror containment through bold decisions to hang Afsal Guru
and Kasab etc) were further helped by the multiple scams that tumbled out of
various government schemes and
activities to consign Congress led UPA to ignominy and Modi’s voice rose like
the Goonj uthi shennai and reverberated all over India. His caustic attack and
berating of the erstwhile Prime ministers soon after sitting on the PM’s chair and announcing his goal to make India a
Congress Mukht Bharat without ever wondering whether democracy can survive
without a strong opposition and his personal hatred and venom for the Nehru-Gandhi family
resonated with everyone of his huge followers .It was sometime before the mauled
opposition learnt the lesson that to win, one should have the courage to descend to the lowest common denominator
of using abusive language The Congress
began to use the social media to lambast the ruling government and reached ignominious heights when it vilified the
elected PM as a chor. If anything that has drastically changed in the last four
years, it is the demise of civility in political discourse. If this trend
continues one dreads to visualize the retreat of civil language in our country.
I hark back to the past when political
discourses were on policies, principles and ideologies and not on
personalities. It was never the case that if you don’t like me, you are anti
establishment, antinational and anti Hindu. The political arguments in those days till the BJP’s tenure under
Vajpayee were always on issues and never on the opponent’s genealogy or
nationality or religion and caste. To speak of the ex Prime Minister’s wife as
an Italian woman and his son as having Italian blood in his genes or
questioning the patriotic credentials of the previous PM and attacking him as a
Pakistani agent showed the level to which personal dislike can bring the
discourse down. The fragments I have shored are from the freedom days when
Bapuji and his true lieutenants never stooped low to vilify the British even
when they fought for freedom from their rule. Let us now turn to a number of
such voices in our midst that have shored these vignettes of grace and decency,
elegance and etiquette though they remain silent and mute witnesses to
incivility and tastelessness in the speeches of all those who appear on the TV
channels, whose words of ‘wisdom’ are published
in the dailies as though an oracle has spoken.
Let us move to the issue of temple hopping.
India is in the cusp of tradition and modernity but slowly receding towards
superstition in the guise of preserving our tradition. The spirited enthusiasm for Hindutva has made
a large number of people conscious of Hindu religion. A large number of small icons
in different corners in different cities are mushrooming as though the country
was short of temples. Our netas are on yatra specials to make a case for
building Ram Mandir. What an irony! Maryada Purush Ram, known for his just rule
will be aghast at the idea of mob taking law into its hand and defying the
order of the Supreme court on
sabarimala and preparing an offensive to
counter the possible judgement in the next few months on Ayodhya that may
militate against the construction of Ram Mandir at the disputed site. What is
mooted for Ram Mandir will be later replicated in Mathura and Kashi. When the
ruling party and its allies have centre staged Mandir issue for electoral
gains, can the Congress be far behind? Temple hopping seems a much easier hop, step
and jump for Rahul and the Congress to grab power and not take the secular route laid down in the
Constitution of India.The Congress flip flop on Sabarimala is far more
troubling than the BJP’s open defiance of the S upreme court verdict allowing
women of all ages to enter the Sabarimala temple. Hence election debates are neither on
development nor on scripting a new roadmap to make India economically,
ethically and intellectually strong but on non sequitur issues such as whether
Rahul is a Brahmin, a Parsi or an Italian , whether he has a genuine Janehu(
the sacred thread that Brahmins wear as
the rite of passage to the brahminfold) We have regressed into such
crass arguments of caste and religion which are farthest from the idea of a
modern India. The politicians are driving India backward by keeping the caste
cauldron boiling. Caste discrimination and religious conflicts have long been
the bane of Hindu society. They are incorrigible aberrations of Hinduism which is
the only religion that does not advocate conversion, which inter alia speaks
for accommodation and tolerance of all other faiths. It is important for
teachers, scholars and academics to articulate the basic tenets of Hinduism to
the younger generation through the works of Vivekananda, Gandhi, Rajaram Mohan
Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Keshabchunder Sen, Pt.Nehru, Dayanand Saraswati,
Helena Blavatsky, Aurobindo Ghosh and many other modern writers. These are the fragments that we have shored
from our illustrious past against the misinterpretation and ruination of our
great philosophy. It is high time we started an Indian Institute of Political Culture(
as one of my friends deeply concerned about the low level political abuses of
today suggested) to provide our leaders an understanding of the imperative not
to mix religion and politics and also
learn the basic tenets of Hinduism towards promoting harmony and peaceful
living among people of different faiths. Our writers listed above and many more
I have not mentioned have given us rich wisdom that can protect us from hatred
and violence that is currently spread in the name of Hindutva. To be proud of
one’s religion is sacred; to preserve and sustain it but not at the cost of
other religions is an equally sacred duty. Leaders should be trained in IIPC
before standing for elections. Just as we need executives with a MBA degree to
run a company , we need political leaders who have been trained in political
management to administer the nation.
We cannot remain fossilized in caste
politics. Reservations for the underprivileged have brought many thousands of
them to participate in mainstream political, economic and social activities.
But for the sake of votes, continuation of reservation has become a sacred cow
that cannot be touched. The incalculable damage reservations have inflicted on
these classes have offset all the gains of reservation. No politician has the
courage to look into the ill effects of reservation. What has been attempted is
making the underprivileged class lame and weak and always in need of crutches.
Even the little birds are taught to fly by the mother birds. Centuries of
hardship and discrimination cannot be wiped away simply by reservations. It may sound utopian, but there is no harm in
trying to create a utopia where everyone is enabled to acquire basic knowledge
and one or two skills that would make them employable. Reservations have proved
to be more of a curse than a genuine attempt to uplift the poor and the
marginalized groups. In fact this group is so large that its claims are more
than those of the well heeled groups. The IIPC should train our politicians to
draw new schemes that are useful and accessible to all without the odium of
hypocritical reservations. Again the fragments we have shored from our Varnasrama
dharma, a much misunderstood social system which had the purpose to provide
a structure that allowed people to work
according to their natural tendencies and to organize society so that everyone,
regardless of their position, made a contribution to the society. If we
sweep the cobwebs that had accumulated over the Varnashrama dharma that was
basically a system to bring an egalitarian society, we can attempt a social structure that meets the aspirations
and needs of a burgeoning population that are at a subsistent level.
Education is the most powerful weapon to
change people from clinging to superstitious beliefs, far removed from rational
and logical understanding of issues. I have often argued that tradition is like
the strong tree that brings forth leaves, flowers and fruits. These contain the
seeds for propagation. Seeds that are whole and healthy give rise to new shoots
and those that rot go back into the soil and turn manure for the new crop.
Tradition stands tall and strong, but the strong seeds are the fragments we
shore while the weak ones automatically get re engineered and make the soil fertile. Marcus Garvey, the
Jamaican born political leader and writer said: “A
people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like
a tree without roots”. Education is
the key to eliminating gender inequality, to reducing poverty, to creating a
sustainable planet, to preventing needless deaths and illness, and to fostering
peace.
Educators, academicians and scholars
have this great responsibility to reform our education sector and synergise one’s
potential for learning with his/her ability to acquiring skills. Technology is
useful for acquiring skills but knowledge is essential to put to use the skills
in a positive way. Technology has given us enormous powers, but it brings with
it a new set of challenges. Computers are excellent source of information, but
they are used as a short cut to learning rather than to acquire knowledge. They
have bred greater degree of passivity in young minds instead of their active
participation in the learning process. Unless we are aware of the challenges,
we may end up using technology for destructive purposes. The students at all levels should be introduced
to seminal books that have shaped human thought and life so that they are
equipped well to tackle the difficult questions arising out of modern world and
modern technology. These are the fragments
that they will have to shore as they grow to counter the present state of
dehumanization in action, speech, conduct and behaviour. The fact that these fragments are available
gives us hope to protect our fragile world from destructive and dehumanized
forces.
Note:
This was written two days ago
when we were still in 2018
Two days to ring in 2019 and ring out 2018.
Hopefully these days will pass off without any cataclysmic upheaval that December
has always experienced- notably since the last quarter of the 20th
C- the continuous downpour in Chennai in December 2015 resembling the flood fury recorded in the Bible (before
Noah built his ark at God’s command to save all God’s created species on earth) or the 2004 tsunami that struck Chennai in the last
week of December, or the terrible Bhopal Gas tragedy in early December of 1984,
or the last day of the Soviet Union on Dec 25, 1991 before it disbanded.
I have
an instinctive dread of December as it signals the inalterable fact that the
world has aged by one year, which ipso facto signals all of us ageing. Who
likes to grow old? That too when one is approaching the last quarter, assuming
oneself to be wired to hit a century! Like the sales advertisements that fixes
the price of commodities at 99p or 199
rupees – always one short of the next hundred, we prefer to say that we are in
the late twenties or late thirties etc even after we are well into the next
decade of our life. I am 29, 39, 69 or 79… but not 30, 40, 70 or 80… Hence my dread of ageing whenever we ring in
the New Year. Every year at 12 midnight as the new year dawns, I make a firm
resolution that I shall not be tense when the year end approaches, only to find
myself repeating the same old resolution at the stroke of midnight making it as
my new one for the next year. So much for all our New Year resolutions!
This year I have made a different resolution.
I resolved not to allow age to dictate my life. We all know age is always on
the Y axis; in fact it stays static in the X axis only at the end. But in
practical terms, age is just a number though it takes a toll on our physical
strength. But it has no power over our cognitive abilities unless we allow it
to do so by indulging in mental lassitude and torpor.
As years roll on, I find myself like Eliot’s
protagonist of the Wasteland dipping into the fragments I had shored in the
past against future ruins. Like him I
see myself standing in the middle of a
waste land that is littered with splintered pieces from a glorious,
high-cultured past from where I have collected these fragments and which I wish
to pile up and make the present wasteland a fertile one. Before I am bracketed with
all other seniors of my age and accused as living in the past and regressing
into childhood nostalgia, I make it clear that all things were not right with
the past just as is the case with the present, but whatever was well then, was worth
preserving to shore them against future decay when it happens. Our present world resembles Eliot’s
wasteland- emotionally arid, culturally lacking in civility, intellectually
bankrupt and morally decadent where we have forgotten what it is to be civil, loving
and compassionate, cultured in what we say and how we conduct ourselves, intellectually
tolerant and accommodative and ethically truthful, honest and public spirited.
What is happening today is not singularly an Indian phenomena, but it is spread
worldwide making the 21st Century slowly regress into an era of
egocentrism, greed, violence and intolerance, bereft of intellectual
aristocracy, far removed from the altruistic principles that endorsed
liberty, equality and fraternity two hundred and thirty years ago in
1789.
I will confine myself to India, where despite
the strides we have taken to become a modern nation, we have regressed faster on
civil liberties, freedom of speech, superstitious beliefs, and last but not the least on human index. The
2014 elections started it all. (This is not an indictment of the ruling
establishment of the last four and a half years, only a factual statement).The
public domain which is increasingly that of the social media is now used vigorously
to settle private scores and to let out personal deep seated animus. It was first used in the run up to 2014
elections to show the scam filled ruling establishment of Congress and its
alliance partners.
The language used was coarse and uncivil.
There was nothing to distinguish between form and content, as both were
unrefined and churlish, offensive and rude. The elections were won as people
wanted change from a government that was increasingly corrupt and saw in Modiji
a saviour who projected himself as the Knight on a white charger to drive away
the black hoarders and scamsters off the face of India. The election campaign
was demagoguery at its best, making impassioned appeals to the prejudices and
emotions of the people. Man Mohan Singh’s silence and his party’s disconnect
with the people and its inability to showcase
any of its innovative actions (such as RTI, MNREGA, anti
rape laws, idea of constituting a Lokpal, Direct Cash transfer, Aadhar, nuclear
deal and increased use of nuclear energy, the idea of GST- though aborted by
the opposition, terror containment through bold decisions to hang Afsal Guru
and Kasab etc) were further helped by the multiple scams that tumbled out of
various government schemes and
activities to consign Congress led UPA to ignominy and Modi’s voice rose like
the Goonj uthi shennai and reverberated all over India. His caustic attack and
berating of the erstwhile Prime ministers soon after sitting on the PM’s chair and announcing his goal to make India a
Congress Mukht Bharat without ever wondering whether democracy can survive
without a strong opposition and his personal hatred and venom for the Nehru-Gandhi family
resonated with everyone of his huge followers .It was sometime before the mauled
opposition learnt the lesson that to win, one should have the courage to descend to the lowest common denominator
of using abusive language The Congress
began to use the social media to lambast the ruling government and reached ignominious heights when it vilified the
elected PM as a chor. If anything that has drastically changed in the last four
years, it is the demise of civility in political discourse. If this trend
continues one dreads to visualize the retreat of civil language in our country.
I hark back to the past when political
discourses were on policies, principles and ideologies and not on
personalities. It was never the case that if you don’t like me, you are anti
establishment, antinational and anti Hindu. The political arguments in those days till the BJP’s tenure under
Vajpayee were always on issues and never on the opponent’s genealogy or
nationality or religion and caste. To speak of the ex Prime Minister’s wife as
an Italian woman and his son as having Italian blood in his genes or
questioning the patriotic credentials of the previous PM and attacking him as a
Pakistani agent showed the level to which personal dislike can bring the
discourse down. The fragments I have shored are from the freedom days when
Bapuji and his true lieutenants never stooped low to vilify the British even
when they fought for freedom from their rule. Let us now turn to a number of
such voices in our midst that have shored these vignettes of grace and decency,
elegance and etiquette though they remain silent and mute witnesses to
incivility and tastelessness in the speeches of all those who appear on the TV
channels, whose words of ‘wisdom’ are published
in the dailies as though an oracle has spoken.
Let us move to the issue of temple hopping.
India is in the cusp of tradition and modernity but slowly receding towards
superstition in the guise of preserving our tradition. The spirited enthusiasm for Hindutva has made
a large number of people conscious of Hindu religion. A large number of small icons
in different corners in different cities are mushrooming as though the country
was short of temples. Our netas are on yatra specials to make a case for
building Ram Mandir. What an irony! Maryada Purush Ram, known for his just rule
will be aghast at the idea of mob taking law into its hand and defying the
order of the Supreme court on
sabarimala and preparing an offensive to
counter the possible judgement in the next few months on AYodhya that may
militate against the construction of Ram Mandir at the disputed site. What is
mooted for Ram Mandir will be later replicated in Mathura and Kashi. When the
ruling party and its allies have centre staged Mandir issue for electoral
gains, can the Congress be far behind? Temple hopping seems a much easier hop, step
and jump for Rahul and the Congress to grab power and not take the secular route laid down in the
Constitution of India.The Congress flip flop on Sabarimala is far more
troubling than the BJP’s open defiance of the S upreme court verdict allowing
women of all ages to enter the Sabarimala temple. Hence election debates are neither on
development nor on scripting a new roadmap to make India economically,
ethically and intellectually strong but on non sequitur issues such as whether
Rahul is a Brahmin, a Parsi or an Italian , whether he has a genuine Janehu(
the sacred thread that Brahmins wear as
the rite of passage to the brahminfold) We have regressed into such
crass arguments of caste and religion which are farthest from the idea of a
modern India. The politicians are driving India backward by keeping the caste
cauldron boiling. Caste discrimination and religious conflicts have long been
the bane of Hindu society. They are incorrigible aberrations of Hinduism which is
the only religion that does not advocate conversion, which inter alia speaks
for accommodation and tolerance of all other faiths. It is important for
teachers, scholars and academics to articulate the basic tenets of Hinduism to
the younger generation through the works of Vivekananda, Gandhi, Rajaram Mohan
Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Keshabchunder Sen, Pt.Nehru, Dayanand Saraswati,
Helena Blavatsky, Aurobindo Ghosh and many other modern writers. These are the fragments that we have shored
from our illustrious past against the misinterpretation and ruination of our
great philosophy. It is high time we started an Indian Institute of Political Culture(
as one of my friends deeply concerned about the low level political abuses of
today suggested) to provide our leaders an understanding of the imperative not
to mix religion and politics and also
learn the basic tenets of Hinduism towards promoting harmony and peaceful
living among people of different faiths. Our writers listed above and many more
I have not mentioned have given us rich wisdom that can protect us from hatred
and violence that is currently spread in the name of Hindutva. To be proud of
one’s religion is sacred; to preserve and sustain it but not at the cost of
other religions is an equally sacred duty. Leaders should be trained in IIPC
before standing for elections. Just as we need executives with a MBA degree to
run a company , we need political leaders who have been trained in political
management to administer the nation.
We cannot remain fossilized in caste
politics. Reservations for the underprivileged have brought many thousands of
them to participate in mainstream political, economic and social activities.
But for the sake of votes, continuation of reservation has become a sacred cow
that cannot be touched. The incalculable damage reservations have inflicted on
these classes have offset all the gains of reservation. No politician has the
courage to look into the ill effects of reservation. What has been attempted is
making the underprivileged class lame and weak and always in need of crutches.
Even the little birds are taught to fly by the mother birds. Centuries of
hardship and discrimination cannot be wiped away simply by reservations. It may sound utopian, but there is no harm in
trying to create a utopia where everyone is enabled to acquire basic knowledge
and one or two skills that would make them employable. Reservations have proved
to be more of a curse than a genuine attempt to uplift the poor and the
marginalized groups. In fact this group is so large that its claims are more
than those of the well heeled groups. The IIPC should train our politicians to
draw new schemes that are useful and accessible to all without the odium of
hypocritical reservations. Again the fragments we have shored from our Varnasrama
dharma, a much misunderstood social system which had the purpose to provide
a structure that allowed people to work
according to their natural tendencies and to organize society so that everyone,
regardless of their position, made a contribution to the society. If we
sweep the cobwebs that had accumulated over the Varnashrama dharma that was
basically a system to bring an egalitarian society, we can attempt a social structure that meets the aspirations
and needs of a burgeoning population that are at a subsistent level.
Education is the most powerful weapon to
change people from clinging to superstitious beliefs, far removed from rational
and logical understanding of issues. I have often argued that tradition is like
the strong tree that brings forth leaves, flowers and fruits. These contain the
seeds for propagation. Seeds that are whole and healthy give rise to new shoots
and those that rot go back into the soil and turn manure for the new crop.
Tradition stands tall and strong, but the strong seeds are the fragments we
shore while the weak ones automatically get re engineered and make the soil fertile. Marcus Garvey, the
Jamaican born political leader and writer said: “A
people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like
a tree without roots”. Education is
the key to eliminating gender inequality, to reducing poverty, to creating a
sustainable planet, to preventing needless deaths and illness, and to fostering
peace.
Educators, academicians and scholars
have this great responsibility to reform our education sector and synergise one’s
potential for learning with his/her ability to acquiring skills. Technology is
useful for acquiring skills but knowledge is essential to put to use the skills
in a positive way. Technology has given us enormous powers, but it brings with
it a new set of challenges. Computers are excellent source of information, but
they are used as a short cut to learning rather than to acquire knowledge. They
have bred greater degree of passivity in young minds instead of their active
participation in the learning process. Unless we are aware of the challenges,
we may end up using technology for destructive purposes. The students at all levels should be introduced
to seminal books that have shaped human thought and life so that they are
equipped well to tackle the difficult questions arising out of modern world and
modern technology. These are the fragments
that they will have to shore as they grow to counter the present state of
dehumanization in action, speech, conduct and behaviour. The fact that these fragments are available
gives us hope to protect our fragile world from destructive and dehumanized
forces.
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