Controlled Aggression

                                                     Controlled Aggression

Nearly four weeks have passed since I wrote my last blog. It is not as though nothing happened that called for a response; on the contrary, these weeks have seen a lot of happenings that merited blogging but I chose to remain impervious because I had learnt that my blog was not going to alter the events. Four years into Modi rule, it  is increasingly becoming evident that blog or no blog, expressing one’s views or not expressing made no difference and one has  to come to terms with the almost fatalistic recognition, que sera sera, whatever will, be will be.

Yet during these four weeks, two things stood out in the midst of the daily drama of political slugfest over many contentious issues, chief among them being the annual budget, the reopening of  the case of the mysterious death of Justice Loya in 2014, PNB fraud, Nirva  Modi’s impromptu disappearance besides the prospects of elections in advance of the next year schedule.  The news of the U-19 team winning the world cup in New Zealand and, Kamal Hassan’s(the new kid on the political block) response to the Supreme Court verdict on the sharing of Cauvery waters between Tamilnadu and Karnataka were notable for being free from political bitterness. These two events revived my hope  for  India’s Generation Next which, for me is Gen 19+ ...  For selfish reasons, I have added the dots  after 19+ without signifying  any number, since I do not believe in any kind of ceiling on upper age, rendering people like me as Margdarshis. After all, the older the wine, the greater is its taste.  

The U-19 victory coming on the heels of the senior team’s recent  defeat in South Africa in the test series was for cricket aficionados like me a pleasant  change from the lingering sourness of Indian senior team’s winless returns from foreign soil to agreeable sweetness of the younger team’s win in New Zealand. It was indeed a great victory, showcasing the superiority of the young players and holding out bright prospects for more victories in the coming years.  In fact, U-19 victory seemed to have had a catalytic effect on the seniors who dusted off their  rustiness and won the one day series in South Africa after being winless in the test matches.

U-19 had the good fortune to have Rahul Dravid as its coach- a brilliant and astute player, endowed with cricketing brains, intelligent and wise beyond his years, solid like a wall ( he was nicknamed  ‘wall’ during his playing days for his tenacity to stay in the crease), whose fluency with the bat always  matched his fluency with words. He was to the young team a mentor, friend, counsellor and guide who was a 24x7 coach both on and off the field.

The young team was understandably euphoric at holding the coveted cup that had slipped out of its hands in the previous year. They followed Virat’s style of  punching in the air when they crossed a landmark or jumping on to the players back at the fall of a wicket or making the hi-fi over every big or small success. These gestures are no doubt expressions of excitement and an outlet for the flow of the adrenalin but they have to be limited to the playing area and not be allowed to cross the boundary ropes.

 Dravid was as delighted as were the boys, his face beaming with pride over their achievement. In the midst of the joyous celebrations, he spoke to them about the need to erect a wall between euphoria on the field and uncontrollable exuberance off the field which he, in a professorial language termed as ‘controlled aggression”.  Aggression on the field is essential as a motivating force. The army on the battlefield marches forward to the battle cry of the commanders. It inspirits them to cast off fear and nervousness and focus on the enemies with the single-minded purpose of destroying them. But once off the battlefield, we see them like any one of us-enjoying life, singing and dancing to the Bollywood numbers and meeting the film stars or cricketeers like Tendulkar and Dhoni and acknowledging their contribution to the glory of India. In their camps, there is no discrimination in the name of caste or class or religion. In their admiration for the Bollywood heroes and heroines and for outstanding sportspersons, we notice their humility and cheer , almost minimizing and even forgetting what they  endure in their unenviable task of guarding the security of the nation. This is what Dravid meant by controlled aggression where aggression and the tempering of aggression have equal space in our lives. The problems that we face today are due to the blurring of the line between aggression and the tempering of it. The newspapers are full of pistol and gun wielding bad characters who shoot at will with no rhyme or reason. Though we are a few years behind US where shooting children in schools has become a frequent occurrence, we are all set to go the American way as evidenced in the recent shooting of a principal by a student, the killing of a young boy by his senior in a prestigious school in the capital, the raping and murdering of young girls by young adolescents who invariably are school drop outs. Road rage is increasingly a common happening, often with fatal results. Acts of aggression have become a daily affair.

Aggression is usually associated with acts of hostility, often leading to abhorrent violence towards weak and innocent people. Alexander Dumas wrote that we should make war with aggression, but aggression has to be used only when it meets with an equal and opposite force of the same degree in a combative field.  Shakespeare’s Polonius in Hamlet advises: “beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,

   bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.

But all forms of aggression off the battle field,  with the intention to assert and impose one’s arrogant and egoistic superiority, amount to inhumanity. It is one thing to play with aggression to win, but since it is a game, once it is over neither the victor nor the vanquished shall have any use for it.  Dravid’s advice to the young team during their hour of celebration is a lesson for life. It is the absence of control over one’s emotions that turns positive aggression to brutal hostility leading to mindless killings, rape, mad rage snf vengefulness. The Ecclesiastes says:

    There is a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
    a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
    a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,…
    a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

 Let us in the modern context add:

There is a time for aggression, there is a place for aggression;

there is a time for celebration, there is a time for moderation.

It is this controlled aggression that Dravid spoke that is reflected in Kamal Hassan’s response to the Supreme Court’s verdict on Cauvery water sharing. While the verdict reduced water to Tamilnadu so as to benefit Bengaluru which is currently experiencing drinking water crisis, the Tamil political parties vied with one another to agitate against the verdict. It is clear that any order from the highest court  pleasse one side and disappoints the other. But those who are disappointed with the verdict agitate and even advocate violence thus making a mockery of the highest court’s judgement. In recent times despite the judgement of the Court with regard to the screening of Padmavat, the defiance by a few states of that order  is a clear indication of frenetic passions overriding rational and legal pronouncements. One can sense the same unease with respect toAyodhya Ram janma Bhoomi verdict likely to be announced in the next few months. Politicians on either side will ignite the passions of their respective groups and precipitate a bloody crisis. None of the politicians will ever ask himself/herself about the rightness of stoking communal fire.

Thus there was a creeping fear that the Tamils in frenzy, instigated by one Dravidian party or the other would turn violent over the reduction of Cauvery water and take the agitation beyond the Court.  It is in this context, Kamal Haasan’s mature response to the Cauvery issue merits special recognition. His response has a double effect- safeguard the supremacy of the highest court of the land and promote civic awareness among his people. He said that they should respect the Court’s verdict and take this opportunity to conserve water, as water is a precious commodity. When Arvind Kejriwall issued the new tariff for water consumption in Delhi two years back, he gave the Delhi citizens the option to choose between judicious use of water or pay higher tariff for consuming beyond the ceiling fixed for free water. Most of us opted for the former. I have had no water bill for the last two years. The conservation of water by Delhi citizens with civic awareness has helped Delhi Government to supply water to colonies that had till then a parched existence. Kamal Hassan’s stress on conserving the water and not go in for agitation had its salutary effect both on the people and the political leaders. This is yet another example of controlling aggression through channelizing angry passions towards a constructive way – to conserve water, a precious but an increasingly vanishing commodity  without which we are in fear of parched extinction.

Gen 19 + must salute the two mentors for their invaluable and most pertinent advice for our times:  “ Practise Controlled Aggression.”

Messianic Utopianism

                                                         Messianic Utopianism

I came across this eloquent and weighty phrase ‘Messianic Utopianism’ in an article by the learned Prof. Pratap Bhanu Mehta as he recounted the best of writings in the year gone by.  I could not root this phrase out of my head as it comforted me against all the heinous happenings of the year that had gone into sunset. I could not join the artificial euphoria of ringing in the new year and ringing out the old with bursting of crackers, cutting of cake, raising a toast to the arrival of annus mirabilis and with induced excitement greeting family and friends on the skype, through the net and over the phone. (The pleasure of those days when one went shop after shop, searching for the best of greeting cards, writing personal notes and signing the cards and the postal addresses and posting them in the mail box are no longer there; on the contrary, such activities are today regarded as antediluvian, time wasting tasks). Wordsworth’s sonnet The World is too much with Us summed up my state on the First of January- one of profound despair but paradoxically and mercifully pressed down by a glimmer of hope that protects humanity from turning into lemmings which follow a course towards suicide or mass destruction. The first four lines of Wordsworth’s sonnet published in 1807- more than two centuries back- seem prophetic as we are today engulfed in our material pursuits that we hardly have any time to appreciate the lovely world of Nature that the Creator has bequeathed to us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The fact is we are out of tune with all that continues to remain beautiful around us. Nothing moves us, nothing excites us, and we have to artificially hype excitement and hysteria over the dawn of a new year. Hence this longing for messianic utopianism kept popping up in my mind. We are as Browning says in his  Bishop Blougram’s Apology

All we have gained then by our unbelief

Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,

For one of faith diversified by doubt:

We called the chess-board white -- we call it black.

We all know utopia is only an intellectual construction as no utopia exists in the world. Utopia is a term to signify our impulse toward some sort of ideal society that embodies a broad framework of values such as righteousness, justice, humaneness and ethicalness – values that lend themselves to implementation in our daily lives. These values when translated in social terms, will mark a period of abundance and fertility, longevity, health and absence of mental illness and physical disease. In Hinduism and Zionism practiced in India and Israel, messianic utopianism is something equivalent to Ram Rajya, an ideal that is desired and practicable, though unattainable.  Even Lord Ram’s efforts at establishing Ram Rajya could not bear fruit as it meant sacrificing his consort Sita in a unjust manner.

But this does not alter human desire for a divinely blessed utopian world order and more so now than at any other time, when a unprecedented churning is taking place in our personal, social and political spheres. There is a perceptible change in today’s outlook, attitude, aspiration and wants. Today’s generation is the selfie generation or the self absorbed generation. This in conjunction with the social media have changed the ways people connect, communicate, and relate to the world outside of themselves. Somewhere the mistaken notion that selfie stands as an image for self empowerment has  turned the  inherent selfie narcissism on its head and  affirmed  selfie’s negative values of vanity, self obsession, lack of empathy, fragile self esteem  and a deep need for all time admiration as positive virtues. The plusses of the new age of internet in terms of excellent and swift connectivity have been overtaken by an obsession with Facebook and Twitter resulting in physical and psychic isolation. It is virtual reality that has overtaken factual reality. The mental and personality disorder, the increase in bipolarity, the illusory excitement of being in a crowd where the crowd is no company have changed human relationships that had earlier been bonded by sharing and caring for fellow beings. As the  English poet, Philip Larkin in Vers de Societe^’ writes “All solitude is selfish”. The present day preoccupation with net surfing and twittering or facebooking with selfies has brought a new connectivity sans connectedness. On the political front, President Trump with his no holds barred tweets has devalued and debased language. Though he is no trend setter but  only a follower of many crass tweeters, one dreads the coming of a new age of dark illiteracy that shuns all niceties, politeness, etiquette and civility in the use of language. Political discourse in India has reached a new low that encourages violence in action as much as in words. The newspapers and the news channels headline gruesome violence against women, political murders , juvenile acts of rage and killing, brutal assaults that seem to have the blessings and approval of people in power and acts of terrorism  causing mass destruction. This is not an Indian phenomenon; it is globally seen in the US-North Korea nuclear missile one upmanship, the Dragon’s systematic intrusion into other territories , building its military outposts, the perennial war between IS and the rest of the non Muslim world, the daily firing at LOC between India and Pakistan with mounting fatalities on each side, the solution-less Palestine problem with Israel and last but not the least, the environmental disaster, the thoughtless rampage and plunder of Natural resources resulting in  aggravation of climate changes. All these  never ending conflicts  pit Man against Man and Man against Nature in all spheres of the world.

The silver lining in the midst of the darkness visible is the fact that only a minuscule minority indulges in such heinous acts while the majority wants peaceful co existence transcending all divisions of religion, caste, class and gender. My bonding with messianic utopianism is founded on the strength of this silent majority that believes in humanity. While messianic utopianism is a divine ideal and not an earthly possibility, the only thing left to mankind is to aspire for it. As Robert Browning says: “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,/Or what's a heaven for?

Let us individually and collectively seek Messianic utopianism in our words and actions. Again to quote Browning “ Love, hope, fear, faith--these make humanity; /These are its sign and note and character”. Is it difficult to understand that there is only one God who created this world? We call God by many names but no one disputes the truth about one Power, one God,  one Creator. All humanity is one in paying obeisance to that one Power it believes in. It can be Allah or Vishnu or God the Father or  Let each man follow his faith without necessarily expecting everyone to follow him/her. Swami Vivekananada in his famous Chicago speech stated: “As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea , so O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies , various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee”.

On the social front, there are only two main genders and a cross between them is the third gender. Again it is a ‘given’, bestowed on everyone of us as his/her  gender. Why thendiscriminate one against the other or privilege one gender oer the other? Can anyone of us feel fine and healthy if our one little finger throbs with pain? All parts  of the body have to be free of pain and discomfort to make one feel happy and healthy. Can I be safe if my neighbour’s house is on fire? Can humanity survive if we convert the world into a jungle and fight one against the other on matters that are personal to every individual both as a genetic trait and hereditary acquirement? Let us recall what J.Krishnamurti wrote: “We are second hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclination or tendencies or compelled to accept by circumstances. We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us.” Once we understand that we are what we are through our genetic inheritance, we can abstain from frowning upon the rest of humanity for their genetic inheritance.  Man alone among God’s creations is endowed with the reasoning faculty. Do we give it up and allow animal passions to overtake us and  turn this world into a jungle?            

We have to ask ourselves this question: Can we live happily if we assert a new aesthetics of tastelessness over aesthetics of beauty or aesthetics of hate over aesthetics of love, or aesthetics of violence over aesthetics of peace or aesthetics of barbarity over aesthetics of dignity- in short, can we be happy and at peace if we assert aesthetics of inhumanity over aesthetics of humanity? Do we give up looking  for peace, happiness, love and beauty in this world?  If the answer is no, let us aspire for messianic utopianism however distant it may be.

The Power and the Lightness of being a Woman

                                 The  Power and the Lightness of being a Woman

The concept of Ardhanareeswara in Hindu religion dates back to the first century B.C representing the synthesis of masculine and feminine energies of the universe (Purusha and Prakriti).  It also shows how Shakti, the female principle is intertwined with the male principle, Shiva. In the Hindu belief, everything in this universe originates from this synthesis and the two are inseparable.

In Christian faith, Mother Mary, the mother of Jesus and known  as Virgin Mary symbolizes  faithfulness, devotion, humility, purity exemplified in her virginal love for God the Father, her maternal love for her son Jesus, and her compassionate love for all people.

The Holy Quran, the central religious text of Islam says, “Your wives are a garment for you, and you are a garment for them” (Quran 2.187). The implications are man and woman are garments to each other and therefore have equal status. They complete and complement each other - each one takes on a new aspect of their common humanity and thereby adds a new depth and dimension to his and her personality.

In traditional Judaism, women are for the most part seen as separate but equal. Women's obligations and responsibilities are different from men's, but no less important. The equality of men and women begins at the highest possible level: God in Judaism, unlike in traditional Christianity, has never been viewed as exclusively male. Judaism has always maintained that God has both masculine and feminine qualities.

The above extracts from four major religions of the world formed the central tenet of ancient tradition to recognize and appreciate the complementarities and equality of men and women in society. It is strange and defies logic when we see today a lot of Gender polemics with heated discussions on Gender Rights and Gender parity denied to women who constitute one half of the population. The emergence of “ Me –too hash tag” that started in US in October 2017 and has since spread all over the world  including India, has brought to the fore the sexual harassment of women in their professional work places, not to speak of the domestic violence inflicted on them. The daily reports of rape- as lethal and fatal as Nirbhaya -go beyond sexual harassment to tell a tale of masculine brutality and violence. Juvenile crimes against young girls are worrisome and disturbing. Not a day passes without a mention of extreme provocation aimed at women by men of all age groups.

In India, the last 2000 years since the celebrated Kushan period of the first century B.C(when the concept of Ardhanarreswara took root), have seen an opprobrious decline of manly values that were earlier founded on the principles of liberalism, democracy and human rights. The traditional manly values that have been identified since the early days are “prudence (doing the right thing at the right time); courage (required to take risks), temperance (self-limitation of the passions) and justice (equality under the law for all)”. All these values have since been turned on their head as freedom is today interpreted as unrestricted license to live without any limits imposed -a far cry from Rousseau’s famous statement, “Man is born free; he is forever in chains”; courage is seen as machismo, an exaggerated sense of masculinity that places great value on physical courage, virility, domination of women, and aggressiveness; temperance is replaced by hedonism and justice has become nothing more than a veneer of equality.

Given this state, the disturbing question is how to create a society that ensures freedom, equality and security to all – in particular to women who are today regarded as subordinate sex or second sex in our male dominated society holding on to a system of  patriarchal  rule. The current arbitrary classification of society as patriarchal and matriarchal, has led to the collapse of all human values of equity, equality, liberty, justice and humanity.  Is it possible once again to embrace feminine values to bring about the synergy of masculine and feminine power and establish equality between men and women? If the society is conceptualized as a triangle with a broad base and its two sides deemed as men and women, the apex becomes the meeting point of the two sides. The scriptures’ conception of society in the early days was structured on the pattern of an isosceles triangle where the two sides are equal and whose interior angles inclined to the base are also equal. But today’s society is structured more like a right triangle with the hypotenuse, longer than the base and the other side,  and its incline of 90⁰ is more than the sum of the  other two angles of the triangle.  The tension, imbalance and skewed gender bias is because of the extra length and angular incline given to the hypotenuse.  We have to revert to the isosceles pattern to re-establish an equal and just society.

This, prima facie requires acceptance of feminine values as equal to the male values and equally intrinsic to a humane and civilized society. What are the feminine values? How different are they from the masculine values? Are they so divergent that the two cannot and will not meet? Is it valid to privilege one set of values over the other? It is evident that the two sets of values are different but complementary. They are like two sides of the same coin. Feminine values are thoughtfulness, intuition, patience, compassion, and empathy. They also include maternal love, devotion, commitment and humility. These values have been wrongly labeled as soft virtues in contrast to the tough and strident manly virtues of heroism, courage, swiftness, aggression and violence. But both values are needed in society. Heroism without intuition, courage without thoughtfulness, aggression without compassion, swiftness without patience and violence without empathy results in the decline, evenness and balance of society. The manly virtues have the force of protection and defence while the feminine virtues have the force of sustenance and nourishment. The two have to be harnessed together to get our society back on its wheels.

Women by nature are genetically wired to be patient, kind and considerate. They are not endowed with physical strength adequate to handle difficult situation. As the Bible says “A soft answer turns away wrath”, women have the power to douse a fire. They have the patience and sensitivity to act with peaceful diplomacy when the vital interests of the state are challenged. This does not in any way show them to be weak or less courageous, for whenever there is the need to combat, they do not hesitate. History is replete with courageous acts of women who have won wars. In the ‘70s of the century gone by, India’s Indira Gandhi and Israel’s Golda Meir have proved that they can be a force both during peace times and wartimes. Indira Gandhi’s strength and action in standing up to President Nixon during the victorious Bangladesh liberation war and her magnanimity in returning the 93,000 Pakistan soldiers who had surrendered to go back home, unharmed  and unscathed is proof of what women can achieve through a blend of courage and clemency, humanity and forbearance. Similarly Golda Meir emerged as a forceful spokesman for the Zionist cause in negotiating with the British mandatory authorities. Even after Israel won the six days war against Egypt, Jordan and Syria, she  pressed for a peace settlement in the Middle East by diplomatic means.

But the important thing to note is neither Indira Gandhi nor Golda Meir could have accomplished victory without the support of the army. Under Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, India won both the 1965 and 1971 wars against Pakistan. It was the combination of feminine power of firmness and humanity of Indira Gandhi and the masculine power of bravery and courage of Sam Bahadur Manekshaw that gave India both a moral and military victory in the 1971 war.

Our scriptures quoted above have stressed on the synergy between the female and the male power in the service of humanity. India has constantly marched towards such a synthesis, but its progress more often than not has got derailed by the aggression and demonic male forces especially in the last few decades. The media coverage of these ugly incidents involving male brutishness against innocent women has increasingly revealed  the outrageous happenings in our society though the judiciary with its low and delayed rate of conviction of the rapists, the  police with its refusal to register complaints of sexual harassment and the law enforcers’ inability to catch and punish these  dregs of the society have made all of us hapless witnesses to the horrid and ghastly happenings all around. It is distressing and painful to learn about young adolescents and even younger teens indulging in sexual assault and sexual abuse. This new breed of sexual predators has been greatly influenced by cinema that gives them a distorted vision of masculine virility in such sexcapades. 

What we need is not just law enforcers as much as trusted and wise mentors who can educate our young adolescents into understanding the physiology, psychology and social dimensions of sex. While home plays an important part in the bringing up of our young men and women, schools have a much greater role to play. To start with, there should be mixed schools and not separate boys and separate girls’ schools. Boys and girls should grow together and should learn to appreciate and respect each other. It is time to give up our squeamishness about teen age crush. It is normal for any growing young man and woman to get attracted to the opposite sex but they have to be taught to understand the problems of sexual union and the need thereof to practice self control and restraint. How to achieve this which sounds easy to read and listen to?  How to mould young minds that are under the influence of drugs, films, porn videos and sex abusive contents on the Net?

It may seem incongruous to discuss the measures to be adopted in an article highlighting the female virtues. But I have given myself the indulgence to spell out possible measures to combat sexual predation among young boys and young male adults. The universal problem plaguing the young minds is the TINA problem. There is nothing in schools and colleges to engage his mind and attention. Classrooms are dreary, teaching is pedestrian, examinations are farcical. If the mind is not engaged at the tender age to learn and find avenues to satisfy its curiosity, it runs after things that excite it erotically. Teachers complain that students are not interested. Parents complain that children don’t respect their advice. We are a notorious generation of whiners and snivelers. No one addresses the questions how to engage young minds in a constructive way. The early years –what we term as Brahmacharya- are the years for learning discipline. The brahmacharya (bachelor student) stage of one's life as conceived in our philosophy is up to 25 years of age. It is the period to focus on education and learning and imbibe the practice of celibacy. In this context, it connotes chastity during the student stage of life for the purposes of engaging the mind in learning without any distraction. In another context, brahmacharya represents a virtuous lifestyle that also includes simple living, meditation and other behaviors. It is the duty of the family as well as that of the school to teach the young boys that only by respecting women, you become human. Catch them young, teach them the art of self discipline, train them to respect the opposite sex as worthy of dignity and esteem.  To quote Santayana: “Our dignity is not in what we do, but in what we understand”

While the article sounds like a homily on manly conduct, it is important to note that women have to share the blame for their present state of unfair treatment, harassment and discrimination at home and in professional places. They have to learn and esteem  the value of their potential , their innate strength and rise up to change their victim status. No point in asking others to change, if change does not come from within. Let them not beg and fight for inclusion; let them set their bar far higher by discovering their potential.  If they want parity, they must show that they are a valued and necessary part of success. It is important to identify the problems facing them, but while that is the first and the most essential part to chart a path towards gaining dignity and self esteem, they have to prove that they are no less than their male counterparts. Let women remember gaining dignity is not by constantly complaining, whining and demanding, but by making their worth centrestage for others to give them dignity. Milan Kundera’s famous quite is worth keeping in mind: “Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo.” Do women  give up aiming for a higher goal or do they defy and conquer vertigo without compromising the goal they  strive for? Their claim to dignity lies in the choice they make.