mindwanderings | the weblog of som benegal

The Jaipur terrorist blasts have brought on the usual recriminations, accusations and counter-accusations, the scoring of points, the utter helplessness and renewed assurances of strong action, the ruthless pursuit and punishment of the guilty.  But all this misses the fundamental and basic point.  Violence is the cardinal motivation of all living things in the world as we know it, on land, sea and air.  Meaningless or meaningful conflict is the hall-mark of this violence.  One does not know, and perhaps will never know, the scheme of things in the vast universe of which we are but an insignificant dot.  Our own human history is a transgression from one darkness to another with some flickering points of bright light called generously “golden ages.”  Individuals, tribes, groups, societies and nations are engaged in perpetual violence of one kind or another, - wars, genocide, terrorism, imperial conquest or sheer banditry and barbarism.  One man’s freedom-fighter is another man’s terrorist, and other such variations, depending on the view-point.  We have individual, group or state-terrorism. Each war, increasingly more horrendous than the previous, with deaths counted in millions is justified with high-sounding principles but, shorn of hypocrisy, are only terrorism by other means.  I need not go into a tiresome recital of human history, illustrating my point.  But one thing is clear as the poet Eliot, (echoing many others in time) said, “The world turns and the world changes but one thing does not change…the perpetual struggle of good and evil.”  In other words, it will be everlasting no matter how you define good and evil.  That is the bald and awful truth.  And nothing can change it!

From the islands of Japan in the Far East striding across a wide swath or chain of Manchuria, Korea, Mongolia, China and the rolling steppes of Central Asia, carrying with it island clusters, archipelagoes, peninsulas - India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Indo-China, the Philippines and north-westwards through Afghanistan, Iran, numerous other states and territories to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea at Lebanon and Israel is called Asia.

This enormous geographical configuration traverses towering snow-bound mountains, mighty rivers, inland seas and other sculpting of nature and man. Its history goes in time beyond imagination.  It is peopled by diverse and bewildering races, cultures, ethos, mother of the great faiths of the world, home to great, intellectual citadels, incessant curiosity and quest for the meanings of the mysteries of life in this mystic planet, child of the Sun.

Asia!  Is it a unique entity in a planet of seven continents?  There is much controversy about it.  Each continent, it is claimed, has its unique qualities, and Asia is nothing special.  Indeed it has been quite backward. Its diversity makes for confusion, its excessive devotion to metaphysics deprives it of scientific realism and pragmatism unlike Europe.  But others - great visionaries of the past and the present hold that Asia is the trigger for all the advances of the rest of the world.  Its contribution to the mainsprings of scientific, ethical and cultural grandeur cannot be under-rated or demeaned.

The march of materialism today, the tearing transit of technology seems to have given pause if not wholly eliminated the virtues of peaceful, spiritual tranquility which formed the ultimate bedrock of all Eastern, which we now call, Asian, views of life in this worldly sojourn despite the sessions of violence and horror which marred it from time to time.  The saving grace was the underlying quest for knowledge moderated by the cautionary prescription: “it is important to know, but more important is it to know what to do with what we know.”

That, I would say, is the Asian Identity which separates it in a unique sense from other identities on this earth.  Today we need its renaissance, its reawakening.

Just about twenty years ago, a fantasy film called “Back to the future” made quite an unexpected hit.  Unexpected, because it was what was described as a light-hearted twilight zone fantasy which had nothing to it but seemed to interest audiences world-wide.  I did not see it but the title always intrigued me.  What could “going back to the future” mean?

Now I am beginning to see some meaning to the tile though not to the theme of the film.  And it means something very relevant and very upsetting to our country and people.  Anyone who stops to think will realise with horror that we seem to be heading to the future what we had rejected very firmly and resolutely back long ago - in the very first years of our hard-fought and hard-sought freedom.

Against all odds after the partition of our country and its further feared break-up our visionary leaders of that theme resolutely decided that the unity in our diversity would be supreme and the country would be welded as one. The Chief Engineer of this welding assignment was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and he made a grand job of it, with patience, dedication, diplomacy and tremendous drive.  There were forces then which were restless and wanted to divide and go their own way but were finally dissuaded and the question of secession from the Indian Union and forming sovereign states was firmly and decisively ruled out.  One had thought that that was the end of the matter.  The idea of east, west, north and south was dismissed though it seemed to lurk in minds.  But such parochial thoughts were laughed away.

And yet today we are faced with the looming dangers of narrow-minded discrimination by region, community, caste and state which are gaining ground.  I need not go into details.  But can you imagine each state wanting its own national and international identity and representation? Shall we split up like the Soviet Union into warring states and factions?

Shall we in the future instead of pressing forward to new glories and enterprise to a resplendent envied power return to a divided, broken, turbulent land of turmoil?  Back to the future?  This kind of future?

There is no time like the present to make a balance sheet of our gains and losses, our victories and defeats, of our dreams and their fulfillment, and our vision of the times ahead.  And since the present is always with us this exercise of evaluation is a never-ending one.  The result is that the present always seems critical, the future foreboding, the past either utopian or just hellish.  Few take a sane view that all times are good or bad and only thinking makes them so.

But practical as we must be if we are to survive we have to mix optimism with reality and take a course that steers clear of unfathomable depths or treacherous quicksands or perilous formidable rocks.

This long and somewhat obvious introduction seems necessary because we tend to take either a rosy view or one seen through a glass darkly.  Today we seem to be caught in a web of confused thinking and actions with contradictory pulls in a bewildering set of directions.  But, frankly, this need not be so.  I think in the past six decades with our earlier long time heritage of some very clear-headed, noble ideas of society, living, ethics and morality (no doubt contaminated and distorted through time and usage but capable of going back to basics) we should be able to achieve a just-society and honorable governance, co-existing peacefully with the rest of the world.

Some people see in our recent economic success (confined to a small vulgarly affluent class) a vision of great power status ignoring the millions mowed down by poverty.  Others see ourselves hemmed in by neighbours and other inimical forces which are foreboding, conspiring, incomprehensible and indistinct.  No.  We must see ourselves with confidence that we can hold our own with dignity, purpose and unity above all.  I do believe, and I would ask my fellow Indians that we need not fear the USA, Russia, China, Japan, all the continents and peoples put together as enemies.  They can all be friends or be made friends if we move around with honour and strength, head held high.  Only at their own cost and folly will our detractors learn that they cannot humble and degrade us.  Let us therefore go forward toward a confident future.

What transformations politics and public life can bring about!  And in democracies particularly.  Leaders once reviled, jeered at and abused become heroes and icons.  Leaders once hero-worshipped end up defamed, defiled and denigrated.  Some rare souls have the privilege of being a pendulum swinging from one side to another, and getting away with it!

We have many examples in world history and in our own.  Quick-change artists have, of course, met with ridicule for their opportunism and even unprincipled behavior and melted into obscurity.  Others have risen from the dumps.

In the past few weeks we have witnessed the remarkable conversion or change-over not by the regeneration or transfiguration of a person but by the overwhelming popular appreciation of an unhindered, free and fair expression, preceded by a stick-at-nothing campaign reaching to pretty low depths of conduct and speech.  And that person was Narendra Modi who wore a coat of many colours - ruthless communalist who carried out pogroms, caring democrat who took his people through pride towards a paradise of prosperity. It all depended how you looked at him.

And now Modiphobia has turned to Modiphoria - an incredible euphoria, from horror to honour.  Well might he now swagger but being what he is, expect him to show unexpected humility.  “I will be CM and only CM forever!”  The broad hint was that he had no ambition higher - not for instance to be PM. Well, our history in recent times shows us that a self-proclaimed “pooor farmer” has become Prime Minister, a minor Raja has become PM, a small time “Turk” has become PM.  Surely Modi stands head and shoulders above them!

But there is a thing called “hubris” - a false sense of self-confidence and assumption that one is indestructible that leads from hubris to debris - the garbage dump.  Time alone will tell, what the future is going to be.  Modi as PM or only CM.

When the idealistic, visionary but innocent souls who had successfully won the freedom of India, though at the bitter and horrifying cost of Partition, set about to fashion a new land they had little idea of how the world would change beyond the most fantastic imagination of science fiction writers and other more practical persons grounded on what they thought was practical reality.  There was, of course, even then the early sprouting of the roots of renewed conflict and new forms of terror and aggression, and the assertion of hegemony in the name of idealism and ideology.

And so our founding brothers and sisters sought the most dynamic, and to a large extent a breath-taking, astonishing decision to create a democracy in which the voice of every adult person would be sought and accepted in governance and the formation of a civil society based on equality, equitability and justice.

Democracy, proudly a daring Indian democracy, came into being.  And the first years were imbued with the highest exhilaration, dedication and optimism.  But as we know, to our sorrow, here in India, as in history, when a high-water mark is being reached, an undertow starts to bring about a down-slide driving down from the peak of the shallows and below.  And this is what we have been witnessing, especially those who have had the privilege and pathos to live through these exciting and saddening times beyond a half-century.

Democracy has suffered the world over the most punishing blows even in its so-called citadels.  It has been mangled out of shape.  Terrorism has evolved into hideous, horrifying, senseless shape beyond logical understanding.  And technology instead of serving humanity has made it its slave, through human willingness itself.  Has humanity come to the end of its limits?

Has Gujarat brought us Indians to the lowest depths?  No!  We have the strength, dedication, generosity of mind and heart and the broadest horizon to create a new world of our own.  We must will ourselves with determination not to enter the dustbin of history.

Relations with China have always been at the forefront of our foreign policy. No need to emphasise that they have had highs and lows. But in the overall course they have fluctuated between friendship (rather exaggerated) and hostility (not less exaggerated). In recent times they have had an eerie inexplicable zig-zag path – inscrutable, yet very scrutable. There will always be differences but we can and should say as in French, “Vive la difference!” (long live the difference !). And why ? Because the difference is fundamental, and never can be bridged. It is the most realistic and most painless position.

The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, (a friend and person of integrity) held up a recent speech of the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, as worthy of our notice. The Prime Minister could not have expected us to learn lessons from the Chinese in the conduct of our drive towards a new progressive, dynamic, society and world power. The Chinese claim to be socialist but what kind of socialist one cannot fathom – but this much is certain: they have renounced the excesses of Mao Tse-tong, overturning the Communist concepts of his, and opted for an “Open and Inclusive Nation” based on accepting reforms in economic development to the extent of inviting foreign capital and technologies and innovating them for Chinese use, and at the same time being inclusive which calls for respect for different cultures. The question of democracy as we know it, including dissent does not arise in this context, unless it has a Chinese meaning which is beyond our understanding.

The fundamental difference between India and China is most striking. China has renounced its past heritage and culture. It takes no pride in its ancient wisdom in its contemporary pragmatism. But, on the contrary, India cherishes its tradition, culture and heritage going back into thousands of years. Even in its drive towards modernity and contemporary participation in world affairs at their highest level, it has a lively sense of its throbbing history, its freedom, democracy and constructive, even at times destructive, dissent. India has its own special spectacularity.

India and China? Vive la difference!

If there is one thing that is painfully obvious it is that coalition dharma is nothing but drama - in fact, just empty, negative melodrama.  When people talk of the coalition era which has come to stay in India’s politics and polity they are talking too hastily on ill-founded presumptions and suppositions.  These are compounded by the torrent of misleading opinion surveys and forecasts which only reveal contradictions and off-the-mark results.

History shows, not only in other countries and regimes, and notably in our own, that coalitions never succeed for long and their course is fraught always with dispute, dissension, discord, intrigues, one-upmanship and final dissolution.

We do not have to look far back in our past when the coalition era was supposed to have arrived in our midst.  Indira Gandhi’s defeat in the 1977 elections threw up the hastily quick-fixed Janata party which was the first coalition in India.  It was appropriately named a “khichdi” and its tenure was marked by such spasms of infighting and personal rivalries that it could not last very long, and brought Indira Gandhi back.  Afterwards many opportunist coalitions came and went like a passing parade.  Even the much praised and admired NDA, the coalition led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee came to an inglorious end, through over-confidence.  The present coalition, United Progressive Alliance is a remarkable architecture that is living on a tight-rope on a loose-end!

This sorry state of affairs needs a thorough examination of our own history to realise that within the confines of democracy which India will not abandon there has to be discipline, dynamism, devotion, dedication in party and in national affairs to the people.  There can be discipline without democracy but there can be no democracy without discipline.  These are the lessons which Congress learnt in its glorious days.  And that is what Sonia Gandhi correctly emphasised in the just concluded AICC meeting.  

When the people said, “I’m for Congress because Congress is for me”, the Congress won hands down.  Now it remains to be seen whether that spirit will be engendered and revived.  Otherwise it will be fragile coalitions or plain defeat.  In our contemporary history no other party, alas, has offered and worked for so broad a national life and living uncluttered by discrimination in some form or other, as the Indian National Congress.

The certainty of the weather man is well-known and consequently as uncertain as the weather itself. The vagueness of the meteorologist is as vague as the astrologist. When the meteorologist says it is likely to be overcast and rainy in some area, you can be sure it will be clear and sunny. And vice-verse. Like when the astrologist says don’t be surprised to run into a romantic fling, you can be sure to be surprised to run into an unromantic sting. Both meteorologist and astrologist look at the heavens to seek the inspiration for their predictions. Or they look into their mumbo-jumbo books to arrive at their forecasts. But have you noticed that they are both never specific? It is always either/or and never neither/nor. That is their uncertain certainty or their certain uncertainty.

The met man warns of a tsunami and everyone runs for cover after one bad experience when they were not warned and are fortunate to be alive. But now there’s no tsunami, only a calm, gentle, undulating ocean. And everyone feels foolish. Or when an earthquake is predicted, and there’s not even a shake or tremor. Or a volcano does not ever rumble except when you are assured it is dormant or extinct and suddenly it erupts spewing fire and brimstone and lava running all over overwhelming people. Not for me to tell you how often you are told that the end of the world has come, and you wake up next morning to the twitter of birds and you know, as the poet Browning said, “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.”

Recently, we were told in a blazing headline “Met Predicts Wet Diwali.” Next day Diwali was dry and sunny and everyone had a happy noisy time.

As far as I know there was one absolutely trustworthy forecaster. She was one of Adolph Hitler’s Secretaries – Miss Heidi Durchsichtigkeit (meaning Heidi Seethroughness, or transparent). Every morning Hitler would ask, “Heidi, how is the weather going to be today?” And Heidi would look out of the window, inspect the sky and say, “Mein Führer, it may rain; on the other hand, it may not rain”. And everyone said, “Heidi is always right!”.

It would be sad, indeed, if we in India, should feel a sense of glee and vicarious pleasure in the tumultuous goings on in Pakistan today.  The situation there is so complex that it would take a political or mathematical genius to sort out the meaning of the moves and counter-moves, each more baffling than the other.  It is a fact that the division of India on the quaint concept of the two-nation theory was a tragedy of Himalayan dimensions.  Much controversy on the subject, hot controversy at that, goes on even today.  But it is a futile one, and indeed a sterile one.  Only a miracle, and miracles exist only in fantasy, can bring the two countries united together.  But what can without miracle be achieved is to find ways of peace, friendship and harmony of co-existence.  Steps have been taken but somehow faced by inscrutable self-defeating hurdles.  One of those - one step forward and two steps backward.  But the effort by our two peoples must continue.

Easier said than done, alas.  And now the turmoil, the anguish, the torment of the Pakistan peoples must give us pause while we understand the incredible, frightening and frightful ferment laced by blood and gore.  It is not just a fratricidal fight to the finish, as it were.  We can at least discern that behind and beyond the mayhem are sinister forces which seem to have seized an opportunity congenial to their fanatical purpose which they consider most legitimate in the light of their philosophy.

On the surface is the real legitimate yearnings for the people of Pakistan to acquire some democratic system and governance which allows them to live in peace and prosperity without autocracy and terror lurking ever in the shadows or openly baring its fangs.  This yearning is something which India and the Indian people must sympathise with and wish them well.  We need not rush into the scene and complicate matters.  But, please no ecstasy for Pakistan’s agony.  It is against the heart and soul of India’s psyche, heritage, proud heritage, and history to bear hatred for none and affectionate friendship for all.