The MITS argument

Some introductory text-books for issues such as the philosophy of mind, cultural relativism, literary theory and so on, construct a figure which they refer to as the Man-in-the-street (MITS). It is argued that the MITS believes in every possible kind of intellectual heresy, though precisely what this heresy is will depend largely on the academic allegiances of the writer. Sometimes the MITS is a fundamentalist, sometimes he believes in mind-body dualism, sometimes he thinks that there is such a thing as 'truth' with a (capital) T, and sometimes he holds the opinion that science is an instrument for human liberation. Again, in other contexts, it turns out that the MITS is actually a post-modernist, or that he argues for eliminativist reductionism, or holds that truth is fiction, or claims that science is a form of imperialism.

Living in the heart of an industry that constructs MITS, one begins to wonder who the MITS really is. If I were to go out into the street immediately after typing this and asked the first man I bumped into to express his views (on any issue from Abortion to Zen), would I find that they can be described in terms of any of the above labels? Perhaps he will just sink under the burden of the views that are attributed to him in the scholarly literature. (Besides, one also wonders why it is the figure of the MITS and not that of the WITS - the Woman-in-the-street - that is invoked in such arguments. Given the common demonisation of women as irrational, surely the WITS would be just what we are looking for?)

Indeed, one could even write a book trying to summarise what role the MITS plays (and has played) in the texts of different writers from different academic disciplines. It could be asked what exactly the MITS looks like in a textbook of Indian history, of philosophy of language, of medical anthropology, of environmental studies, of literary criticism, of art theory, and of film studies. Moreover, one could take one specific discipline say the one that goes by the name of 'developmental theory' (in economics/sociology), and see how the MITS in it has changed over the years, say from the 1950s to the 1990s.

For all we know, it might then turn out that in constructing these evanescent MITS we are actually looking down into a deep well and seeing our own reflection at its bottom.

The Individual and the Universal

It would seem that most of us have two 'tendencies' within us, with which we have a sort of uneasy relationship, and which may be called the individualising and the universalising. The first is to be observed in our drive towards self-affirmation, and in the process of the construction of self-identity. By entering into various kinds of social relationships with others around us, we seek to establish our-'selves' as in-dividuals with an impregnable core untouched/untouchable by the 'external world'. In this manner, we seek to develop a self-image that will be unique to our-selves, that will express our characteristic styles of thinking and behaving, and that will, we hope, be accorded a recognisable status in the social millieu. In short, somewhat paradoxically, the more we try to establish ourselves as individuals, the more dependent we become on people around us : we wish (and often, even demand) that others see us as a unique being with distinctive patterns of thought and behaviour.

The second tendency expresses itself in our urge to flow along with the 'social stream of humanity'. Instead of seeking to separate ourselves from others around us, we rather wish, under its influence, to lose ourselves in some greater collectivity. So we willingly give ourselves up to various forms of 'totalitarianisms', whether these are of a racial, social, intellectual, academic, economic, or political nature. In this manner, we almost attempt to reverse the process of individuation which is activated by the first tendency, and are driven by a desire to obliterate the distinctiveness that is intimate to ourselves. So to give a specific example, a software engineer working in a multinational company is on the one hand, being led by the individualising tendency to seek to rise higher and higher in the echelons of power in his company, while being urged, on the other hand, by the universalising tendency to accept, with a calm resignation, the fact that he is but a mere anonymous cog in a gigantic set of machinery. On the one hand, then, there is the attempt to vigorously establish the distinctive boundaries of one's subjectivity, and on the other, the desire to be liberated from the seemingly oppressive weight of such a subjectivity by immersing oneself in a ceaseless sequence of activities.

Caesar Versus Christ

With the re-election of President George Bush, his detractors have become busy once again pointing out that the 'separation of 'politics' and 'religion' (or, in more archaic prose, the act of 'rendering unto Caesar's what is Caesar's) has been the hallmark of 'liberal democracies' such as the USA. What exactly, though, does this 'separation' refer to? Primarily, the stipulation that there shall be no discrimination in a ('public') court of law on the basis of one's ('private') religious belief; that is, to put it bluntly, an American Jew, an American Catholic, an American Protestant, an American Muslim, and an American Hindu are all equal in the 'eyes of the law'.

This has been the predominant interpretation of the First Amendment in the American Constitution which has been taken to imply that the 'public square' is agnostic about the truth-claims of various religious traditions. In other words, the American Government neither affirms nor denies the validity of the different claims that are made by the inhabitants of these different religious worlds. Or, at least, that is how the usual story goes. However, is it true that American administrations (even before George Bush et al.?) were able to maintain an agnostic perspective towards such claims, and thereby prevent the nakedness of the public square from being clothed by apparel which has come from a religious wardrobe? Consider the following three examples :

(a) In 1998, the USA Supreme Court ruled that Native Americans may not use peyote in their religious ceremonies, and also declared that this ruling was not an infringement of the First Amendment. In other words, the Native Americans were making a religious truth-claim X, such that X : The use of peyote is necessary for conducting our religious rituals, and the Supreme Court was claiming that this truth-claim was false. Moreover, this implies that X is false not only for Native Americans but for all Americans whosoever.

(b) In 1968, the USA Supreme Court ruled that the children of the members of the religious sect called Jehovah's Witness may be given blood transfusions, even if this was contrary to the wish of their parents. This time we have a religious truth-claim X, such that X : We, the members of Jehovah's Witness, shall not accept blood transfusions, and the Supreme Court was rejecting X.

(c) In a series of ruling starting from 1895, the Supreme Court ruled that the members of the Latter Day Saints (more commonly known as the Mormons) may not practise polygamy. This time, X is : We, the Mormons, believe that God requires us to practise polygamy, and it is precisely this X that is being rejected by the Supreme Court as false.

So, then, is it the case that the US Constitution believes that all religious claims are on par with respect to truth? It is obvious from the above examples that it is not; for if it were otherwise, it could not forbid Mormons from practising polygamy and members of Jehovah's Witness from refusing blood transfusion to their children. (By the way, my basic point, in this context, is not over whether 'truth' exists or not. Perhaps there is no such thing as 'truth', but the US Supreme Court, and, for that matter, the Supreme Court of any other country, regularly passes judgement on the assumption that there is such a 'thing'.)

There is more trouble to come for someone who wants to claim that the US Constitution is agnostic with respect to religious truth-claims. For example, here is a possible Islamic truth-claim : The laws of any country should be passed in order to implement what has been commanded by the Qu'ran. It is only too obvious that no American administration has accepted this truth-claim, and this is tantamount to saying : There is at least one religious truth-claim that has been rejected by the American Constitution.

In giving these examples, I do not mean to imply that the American separation of 'state' and 'religion' should be abruptly given up. Rather, it might be better if we went 'back to basics' and asked ourselves the following three questions :

(a) Is it possible to demarcate one sphere of human existence as 'religious' and the other as 'political'?

(b) If it is, what should be the 'state policy' towards those who refuse to believe that such a demarcation is possible?

(b) If such a demarcation is indeed possible, is it also possible that people may disagree with one another over where these lines of demarcation are located (or, should be located)?

'First love, and then do whatever you will'

The great Danish existentialist Soren Kierkegaard referred to Christianity as the supreme Paradox; Christianity is the 'historical' faith rooted at the intersecting-point between 'time and eternity' through the life of a Jewish carpenter's son. Not possessing Kierkegaard's powers of penetrative insight, I shall point out here, today on Christmas Eve, a less profound 'paradox' at the 'sociological' level.

On the one hand, we live in a world that is, so to speak, over-swamped by 'love'. It is in the 'name of love' that teenagers rebel against their parents, trans-religious and cross-cultural alliances are formed, separations and divorces happen, a billion-dollar music-and-video industry fleeces the 'children of love', protracted and seemingly interminable legal disputes are conducted, music stars and movie actors are idolised, anti-Establishment slogans are voiced, and so on and on. And yet. And yet, on the other hand, ask the apparently simple question, 'But what is this thing that you call 'love'?', and be prepared to face the full onslaught of a barrage of replies of the following type : 'Oh, but it all depends on what you mean', 'Well, who knows? Who even cares?', 'I have no clue, you tell me!', 'Love is a loss of valuable energy', 'It never existed anywhere', 'Oh, if only I knew what love is!', and 'You know, love is 'just relative'. The list never ends.

Surely, I shall say, that is a paradox? That a generation that swears by the word 'love' (and is willing to die for it, or at least that is what it claims) is prepared to let that question go unanswered. Before I proceed, though, here is a disclaimer. I do not intend to imply in what follows that a person must first be able to define 'love' before s/he can experience 'love' (whatever that is). That could be called the 'fallacy of misplaced definition', the fallacy of arguing that you cannot experience X unless you have clearly defined X in so many words. With 'love', in particular, it may indeed be the case that you are in a position to define it only after you have, as we say, 'been in love'. So why, then, is it necessary to write about 'love'?

In response to that question, I offer an axiom : If A is something that we believe is intrinsically valuable in our lives, it is also a valuable enterprise in itself to try to understand what A is and whether A is possible. So if A is 'love', in this context, it is necessary to understand something about the 'reality/possibility of love'.

I shall now go on to describe two notions of 'love'. Broadly speaking, for those who are interested in 'intellectual archaeology', the former is the Advaitin Hindu and the latter is the Roman-Catholic Christian notion; but here I shall not bring in any religious terminology so as to allow the discussion to flow on as smoothly as possible.

(a) Love is not only impossible but also pointless :

According to the first world-view in which this notion of 'love' is located, we human beings are self-enclosed monads. That is, we are essentially complete/perfect within ourselves, but because of various reasons (such as our 'cosmic ignorance') we fail to 'realise' this essential plenitude deep down within ourselves. Consequently, love becomes for us a kind of(reproachable) 'need', and our love is actually a (masked) form of self-seeking through which we try to 'possess' the Other. We love only in order that we may receive something in return, and consequently our love becomes a ceaseless sequence of self-referential acts.

Therefore, to carry on with this line of argument, love becomes (but) a sophisticated form of narcissism. Since we are metaphysically complete within ourselves and cannot, strictly speaking, 'need' anything 'outside' ourselves, our yearning for love is a product of our false ego-centredness. If we succeeded in dissolving this false centre and became truly 'con-centred' in our-self, the infinite ocean of supreme, unqualified, and ineffable bliss, we would then realise that the outward-looking turn through which we seek 'love' is actually an ego-centric move through which we try to 'project' ourselves onto the Other.

To summarise, therefore : (a) love is impossible, because the word 'love' refers to no (substantial) reality, and (b) love is pointless, because the more we 'love', the more we entangle ourselves in our 'cosmic ignorance'.

(Before moving on to the next notion, I may point out that a 'secular' version of this Advaitin Hindu understanding is also quite well-known. According to this version, love is a disguised form of the 'will to Power', so that by loving the Other we are actually seeking to dominate the Other. At best, all love is a kind of (disguised) paternalism. The problem with all such Nietzsche-inspired versions is this : Are these supposed to be 'sociological descriptions' of how some 'lovers' behave, or 'essentialist definitions' of what 'love is/should be'? In truth, they are the former, but one is skilfully led to believe that they are the latter.)

(b) Love is not only the 'supreme possibility' but is also the 'whole point' :

Though this notion is diametrically opposed to the former, there are certain perspectives associated with it that are quite parallel to the ones that we have already examined in the previous world-view. (I have referred to this notion above as the Roman-Catholic one for the sake of brevity, and I shall continue to bring out the specifically Roman-Catholic overtones in what follows; in fact, however, most traditions of Judaism, Islam, and South Indian Vaishnavism, will also accept some version of it.)

According to the world-view in which the latter notion is 'embedded', we human beings are essentially/metaphysically incomplete within ourselves. However, we forget this fundamental truth about ourselves and instead try to seek self-completion through the wrong means of trying to possess/grasp the Other. That is, we are unable to accept the 'anxiety' of (our metaphysical) incompleteness that is a necessary co-relate of our 'creaturely' status, and seek to overcome this in the false ways of seeking to brutalise/dominate the Other, an act which diverts our attention temporarily from this gnawing 'anxiety'.

This is why we human beings in the 'fallen' state are incapable of 'true love'. Our frail human loves are always tinged with a certain element of self-seeking, a component of self-referentiality, and a 'care' for our own finite 'projects' which we seek to achieve through the instrumentality of the Other.

In certain ways, therefore, this second ('Roman Catholic') understanding has certain resonances in the first ('Advaitin Hindu') world-view which tells us that 'love' is a form of self-seeking. The differences, though, between the two notions of 'love' are these :

(a) According to the world-view we are currently discussing, there is nothing 'illusory', 'unreal', 'contemptible' or 'impossible' about love. Indeed, if anything, Love is the highest metaphysical Reality. The word 'metaphysical' is crucial here : that is, love is not merely a subjective emotion or a transient psychological state that one might have for five minutes (though love is that too). Love is also, more fundamentally, a Real metaphysical entity, and this entity is termed (in English) 'God'.

(b) It is this Love that makes human love possible. That is, if Love were non-existent, so would human love be. Note that this is not, by the way, an argument 'for the existence of God'. We are not saying : Because (human) love, therefore Love (and hence 'God'), but : Because Love, therefore (human) love. In other words, it is only because Love operates through our innermost existence, opening us outwards, that we become capable of loving the Other without seeking to dominate It. In the remarkable words of that 'pessimist', Blaise Pascal : "I would not have gone looking for You if You had not already found me'.

(c) We have seen that the first world-view says that we are basically complete within ourselves so that love is a form of (unreal) 'need'. We can hear an echo of this claim in the second world-view too which says that our human loves are always 'fallen' unless they are regenerated by Love, and consequently we shall continue to experience love as a kind of 'ego-centric need'. The difference, once again, is this : whereas the first world-view condemns this need, the second claims that this need is one of the fundamentally constitutive features of 'being human'. Indeed, from the perspective of the second world-view a man who says to his beloved : 'I don't need your love' is displaying not 'high-minded spirituality' but 'pride/arrogance', for he is (wrongly) claiming that he is so (metaphysically) complete/perfect within himself that he does not require anything 'outside' himself. Indeed, one way of defining 'pride' would be : 'The claim that one does not need love/Love in the (false) belief that s/he is metaphysically complete'.

(d) To repeat, all of this does not mean that we are actually capable of loving the Other without an element of self-seeking. The whole point of the above argument (about Love enabling love) is that we human beings, all too clearly, do not have this capability (as yet). But the 'prayer' that could be raised within the horizons of the second world-view on Christmas Day could go as follows : 'O' Love, fill us more and more with Your presence so that we may learn to love the Other without seeking to dominate the Other, or seeking to find our own self-reflection in the Other. As long as we live on this earth, we know that this perfection shall not be realised within our mortal frames. We hope, nevertheless, that this shall be a most perfect reality in the life eternal, when all our impure loves shall be purified by the holy flame of your Love and like molten gold shall then flow into You'.

(e) To conclude this section, here is a possible argument from within the second world-view to followers of Nietzsche : 'But of course, human beings often disguise their brutal will to Power under the cloak of 'love'. However, what all of this shows is that not love is impossible (for it is Love that makes love possible) but precisely what happens to human beings when they wilfully discard the offer that is extended to them by Love. As long as they are unregenerated by the indwelling of Love they shall, sadly, continue to seek 'power' in the 'name of love''. It is in this context that we can begin to understand the comment, from St Augustine, at the beginning of this essay : 'First love, and then do whatever you will.' This can be paraphrased as : 'First allow love/Love to fill you, and whatever actions you perform thereafter shall flow from this love/Love which shall progressively spread outwards into the world from you as its centre.'

To summarise, therefore : (a) love is the 'supreme possibility' for this is realisable (only) through Love, the supreme reality, and (b) love is the 'whole point', for that is precisely what Love is, the 'whole point' why this world exists in, as we say, the first place.

In conclusion, three remarks.

(A) I must emphasise that my argument is a not an exercise in 'social anthropology' (I am not even qualified to conduct such an exercise). That is, I have not carried out any sociological investigation into the question of what 'percentage of the urban/rural population, so to speak, believes in love', 'what college-students/software-engineers/house-wives/street-beggars/homeless-children mean by 'love'', 'what fraction of the population is cynical about love', and such (extremely interesting, sociologically speaking) questions. My 'investigation' above is of a metaphysical nature, that is, it is about what can exist and what cannot exist. It is not quite an argument against it to say that, for example, '23% of the urban population in Soho, London, believes that love does not exist'. That might well be a very interesting sociological datum, but that is just what it is - a datum, nothing more, nothing less. Just as the question of whether an electron exists or not cannot be conclusively decided simply by carrying out a statistical survey of opinions of people in Tanzania as to its existence or non-existence, so too the question, 'Does love exist?', can be conclusively answered neither in the affirmative nor in the negative simply by collecting 'people's' opinions in this matter. (By giving this analogy, I do not mean to say that the (putative) existence of 'love' can be 'proved' in quite the same manner in which we go about 'proving' the electron's existence, but that just as in the latter case we base our investigation on the principle that 'numbers do not guarantee truth' so too in the former case we should follow this same principle.)

That sounds 'elitist', even 'academically' so. Am I saying that the 'people' have 'no say in the matter?' Actually, the opposite. It is always the 'people' who must speak on what they think 'X' is, where X is anything from Abortion to Euthanasia to De-centralisation to Love to Parenthood to Reservation (in fact, who else could answer such questions? Angels? Spirits?Martians?), but it is precisely for this reason that we must also remember, at the same time, the simple rule that 'numbers do not prove anything.' To carry on, this is exactly the reason why we must not allow the 'cynics of love' to perpetuate the illusion that they have given us an 'essential definition' of 'what love is/should be', when all that they provided us is someone's Ph.D. conclusion on what percentage of a certain population in Outer Mongolia believes that 'love is an illusion'.

(B) Neither is the above a 'phenomenological' enquiry into the various manifestations of 'love', such as parental, filial, (hetero/homo-) sexual, romantic, and so on. It is an enquiry into the 'reality/possibility' of 'love'. It would be quite pointless (or would that rather be precisely 'the whole point'?) to make an extensive list of the various 'forms of love' if we secretly believed that this 'love' is ultimately an illusion, a pointless diversion, or a dispensable option.

(C) For example, consider these two claims : (i) 'We human beings are essentially complete/perfect within ourselves, and therefore any 'outward turn', in the 'name of love', is not only unncessary but also pointless, futile, and destructive of our true natures'; and (ii) 'We human beings are radically incomplete/imperfect within ourselves, and therefore any 'outward turn', in the 'name of love', is not only necessary but also the 'supreme point', meaningful and genuinely creative of our true natures.'

I have tried to bring out here, as clearly as possible, the distinction/s between these two world-views and their respective notions of 'love', through these two summarial claims. As one can see, these are 'metaphysical' claims; that is, no amount of sociological-anthropological data-collection about what people think 'love' is (or is not) will either prove or disprove either of these claims. However, and this is the crucial point, one might suspect that when people's views on 'love' are closely examined these views may be found to fall, sooner or latter, into either one of these 'ideal-types'. That is, most people who are cynical about the existence of love might be harbouring, even perhaps unknown to themselves, views which are localisable within the first world-view, and those who believe in love as the most fundamental reality in the world and are yet dissatisfied with the fragmented reality of our human loves may happen to hold views which belong, perhaps at long reach, to the second world-view.

By all of this I mean, quite simply, that I have no straightforward reply for someone who comes to me and says : 'But I don't believe in love! It's all a majestic sham.' To that person I can only say, somewhat weakly, though, perhaps, in the spirit of one of my masters, Soren Kierkegaard : 'I am sorry, but I believe it is, ultimately, the only sham that is meaningful.' And yet. And yet 'mere Kierkegaard' is never enough. On the one hand, we are perhaps condemned to live in the prison of the 'broken middle'; on the other hand, there is a hope for the liberation through a promised resolution.

Is that hope an illusion? Words begin to break down under the strain.

'Religion' and 'Homosexuality'

Why do so many religious traditions have such a bad reputation when it comes to the issue of 'homosexuality'? I shall offer a rather reductionist reply to this question. The reason for this is that one central purpose of religious belief/practice is to establish that having babies is a 'good' thing. Therefore, most religious believers live within a conceptual universe that is characterised by the following series of consequences, 'love' leads to 'marriage' leads to 'babies'. In other words, it is only that 'love' that is sanctified in marriage and fructified through babies that is accepted/acceptable within a religious world-view. Which is why I refer to 'organised religions' as 'Machines for blessing the Baby'. In other words, the reason why homosexuality is condemned by (all?) religions is for the simple reason that such sexuality does not lead to the production of babies.

I am of not course suggesting that there is a logically inevitable connection between being 'religious' and being 'homophobic', for the one does not necessarily lead to the other. For example, one could still be religious and accept a form of love that does not seek babies as its culmination, and such a person may be able to accept (or at least 'tolerate') homosexuality.

So far, then, so good (or should I say so bad?). But why then are some people who claim to be non/anti-religious homophobic too? Once again, a reductionist reply : this is because such people are still holding on to some relic from a broken-down religious world-view that they otherwise claim to have discarded, and thereby continue to believe (a) that it is a good thing to have a baby, and (b) that the purpose of sexuality is to produce babies.

Here, then, are two basic questions : what makes us so sure that having a baby is a good thing? and, how can we justify this valuational claim? I personally view the claim that having babies is a good thing as a (carefully disguised) religious claim; and it is precisely for this reason that I refuse to regard atheists who have babies as 'true atheists'. I define a 'true atheist' as a person who believes that absolutely everything in this world is futile and meaningless; what, then, could be 'the point' of having a baby? By saying this I do not imply that atheists, whether they are 'true' or 'false', should stop having babies; only that they should acknowledge that the claim that bringing new life into this world is a good thing is a claim that cannot be justified according the canons of 'scientific rationality' which dictate that 'there are only 'facts', and all 'values' are figments of the human imagination'.

On 'Equality'

Are all human beings 'equal'? Or is the proposed 'equality' of human beings, as we say, a 'useful fiction'? One dictionary definition of the word 'equality' is : sameness in quantity, measure, value or status. So when we declare all human beings to be 'equal' which type of sameness is it that we refer to?

It cannot obviously be a reference to sameness in physical quantity or measure, for all humans have different weights and heights. Nor can it really be that in 'value'. We might say that we equally value all human beings, but few of us actually live in accordance with this claim. The truth is that if we are Marxists, we would (tend to) value Marxists more highly than capitalists; if we are atheists, atheists more highly than the religious; if we are religious, the brethren of our religious tradition more highly than the rest. So it is not true, generally speaking, that we regard all human beings as having the same value. Finally, status. Surely all human beings do not have the same (social) status or (economic) privilege in this world; so this too cannot be used as a criterion for equality.

In what sense/s then are human beings said to be 'equal' to one another? I believe that there is no non-metaphysical answer to this question. By this mean that whatever answer we give to that question will ultimately depend on some metaphysical principle/s. Here are four examples :

(a) Human beings are 'equal' in the sense that human existence is the highest value in itself. Therefore, whoever is a human being, irrespective of his/her status, privilege, caste, creed, or religion, is worthy of respect. In other words, it is being claimed that there is an intrinsic value in being 'human', and therefore all human beings are equal in the sense of having this inherent value. This is a metaphysical reply since we are making the assumption that human existence is valuable in itself. There are, however, whether you like it or not, many who do not share this assumption. And here I am not referring just to psychopaths, misanthropists, misogynists, criminals, those who commit suicide, and the like. All debates over abortion, eugenics and euthanasia too ultimately boil down to this question : is human existence the highest value? Some would say yes, and some would say no.

(b) Human beings are 'equal' because all them are 'comrades' who have absolutely the same status/privilege/wealth and so on. This is the anarchist/nihilist definition of 'equality'. This too is a metaphysical reply since it assumes that the defining characteristics of human beings are entirely socio-economic in nature, so that human beings can be, so to speak, exhaustively reduced to the same set of socio-economic attributes, and equality among them thereby established.

(c) Human beings are 'equal' in the sense that they are all made in the 'image of God'. That is, since they are all children of the one (creator) God, they are all equally valuable. Along these lines, religions often talk about the 'infinite value' of the 'individual soul', and some of them forbid practices such as abortion. Once again, this is a metaphysical reply since it assumes the existence of a supra-spatiotemporal reality which is Personal, and has specific purposes for humanity. Consequently, this religious argument about human equality is located within a world-view that is thoroughly metaphysical. Most religions, however, do not claim that human beings should give up their wealth and throw it away to the poorer sections of society. (The only exception that I know to this rule is the Franciscan Order in Catholic Christianity : 'If you love God, sell everything you have and serve the poor'.) They would say, rather sophistically, that in 'the eyes of God' all human beings are equal in every manner, but that in this 'fallen' world there will always be some people who are better off than the others.

(d) Human beings are 'equal' in that they all have the formal capacity to try to fulfill the 'basic desires' in their lives, and initiate courses of actions that will lead them towards their proposed goals, and all of this without suffering any discrimination in a court of law on the grounds of race, gender or religion. This is again a metaphysical stance because it assumes that equality in the legal sense is a higher value than socio-economic equality. That is, according to this view-point, it is not necessary that human beings have, to put it bluntly, the same level of wealth to be called 'equal'. Consequently, a man with a salary of $100 and a woman with a salary of $ 10,000 will both be called 'equal' in a legal context.

How would I, then, understand the notion of 'equality' of human beings? I would accept certain aspects of each of the above four views, though my 'definition' of equality would be in rather different terms. I would say that all human beings are 'equal' in the sense that they all have the potentiality to experience suffering. To be sure, the manner in which they express their suffering and locate it within the wider context of their respective world-views will vary trans-culturally. Again, some people may be better suited to deal with their suffering than others; some may even claim that they have completely overcome suffering. Nevertheless, the potentiality for suffering remains, in some form or the other.

Definitions, of course, can be 'read' in various ways. A 'right-wing' reading of my definition would be : Yes, suffering is so intrinsic to the human condition that there is no point in trying to remove it; a 'left-wing' one would be : Yes, because all human beings have the potentiality to experience suffering, let us all try to remove one another's suffering.

There is, in other words, no 'deductive' logical jump from this definition to either 'reading'. I myself go with the 'left-wing' reading; though in order to explain the precise reasons for this, I shall need many more thoughts, many more words, many more silences, and, perhaps, many more sighs.

Two Notions of 'Simplicity'

As times change, so do words. We have learnt to refer to certain groups of people as 'simple', meaning thereby that they are stupid or idiotic. In other words, it is a bad thing to be simple. At the same time, however, we continue to operate with another (older) sense of the word meaning something like 'lacking in any embellishments or frivolous ornamentations'. (Though in the messy world that we live in today, the notion of 'simplicity' itself has become, so to speak, very complex. Simplicity too is gendered. A woman is usually called simple when she is 'homely' and filled with 'domestic tendencies'; so most housewives are set forward in social circles to young girls as the epitome of simplicity. A man, in contrast, is referred to as simple precisely when he has rather anarchist tendencies; so we say that Swami Vivekananda was a 'simple' man.)

One may make, in this context, a distinction between notions of simplicity, and call them Simplicity 1 and Simplicity 2. People have used varying terms for these two such as 'pre-critical innocence' and 'post-critical innocence'. In a somewhat Blakean fashion (that is, al a the poet William Blake; though much of what Blake said was rather bleak as well), we might also refer to these two as 'innocent experience' and 'experienced innocence'.

Simplicity 1 lies in this. Every world-view that one inhabits (or may learn to inhabit over a period of time), say Islam, Marxism, atheism, 'science', Buddhism and so on, is based on some foundational principles or axioms. These are what might be called the 'bedrock assumptions'. Often these assumptions are hidden from the view of those who live, move, and have their being within a specific tradition. Simplicity 1 lies in realising how historically conditioned, and perspectivally contextual one's views are.

From Simplicity 1, however, one can move outwards in (at least) two possible directions. One is that of nihilism. A nihilist says : 'Every world-view is based on axioms which I cannot justify beyond any doubt. Hence, I cannot accept any of them. So I annihilate myself.' I myself do not reject such nihilism as a possible option, but for reasons that I cannot detail in this specific context would put forward Simplicity 2 as another ideal to be strived for.

This is what Simplicity 2 would 'look like'. To begin with, though, this Simplicity 2 is only a goal to be attained, and attained, if it is at all, only through a long process that shall continue throughout our existence. Simplicity 2 accepts that all our views are historically located, but nevertheless ventures out onto the 'ocean of knowledge' with the flickering lamp of the axioms on which these views are based. It realises that there is no non-circular manner in which these axioms can be justified, but does not believe that this logical impossibility makes human existence impossible as well. Rather, it believes that it is through the light of this lamp that more and more of the uncharted seas will be explored. It will be accepted in the spirit of Simplicity 2 only too readily that those who have other (epistemological) lamps will see the seas in a 'different light' (in both senses of the phrase). It will try to accomodate the other sights that other navigators have reported down the centuries and in different oceanic environments.

For example, to carry on with this marine metaphor, some navigators would have charted detailed maps of various local seas; some have reported strange or unexpected observations; some have claimed to have discovered new islands; some have devised better tools for such navigation, and so on. What we shall seek, as we move deeper into the foggy seas with our lamps, is a 'global' map that will incorporate as much as possible of these various reports. We shall trust that our fellow-navigators do not have any sinister intentions in deliberately deceiving us with false reports (though this, to be sure, is a great trust that we place in them, and a trust we shall hope is not misplaced), and we shall hope that we shall be able to further an environment of mutual learning from one another.

None of this, incidentally, rules out the possibility that some navigator may propose a 'global map' which s/he claims is the only true map. If that is indeed the claim, so be it : we shall examine that claim too without ruling it out of hand as being 'exclusivist'. To be truly 'inclusivist', we must be able to accomodate the alleged 'exclusivisms' of our fellow-sailors. We must also accept, ironically perhaps, the hidden form of 'exclusivism' which claims that no such 'global map' can exist.

One might of course brand all of the above as being 'utopian'. In response to which, one could make a distinction between two kinds of utopia. One is the backward-looking one which alleges that the state of affairs being described was actually obtained in some past historical epoch. The other is the forward-looking one which acknowledges that the described environment has never existed in the past or in the present, but stakes the claim that this environment is valuable enough for us to strive towards. Whether or not it is valuable will itself be a claim that must first be examined.

I would argue for now that Simplicity 2 is valuable enough an ideal for the Academy to move towards. Not that it shall actually attain it tomorrow; for the fundamental point about Simplicity 2 is that it is not a state whose perfection can be realised at one stroke but rather a state whose values are continuously argued for, reasoned out carefully, and laid down as one possible future ('futurible') out of many for the Academy.

The Violence of Education

To call education a form of violence is, in a certain sense, a stretching-too-far of the term 'violence'; nevertheless, education often leaves behind in its trail certain violent repercussions in a person's later life, especially because of the commonly held association between 'education' and the ambiguous notion of 'sanity'. In spite of all their internal disagreements with one another, educationists will hardly wish to deny that one purpose, at least, of education is to make people more 'sane'. One of the most common ways in which this claim is understood is through the perspectives of a 'black-box model' of the educational system : you put children into it at one end, and they come out 'sane' at the other end, say ten years later.

What is forgotten in the process is a series of important issues.

(A) Firstly, the crucial fact that sanity is not a static accomplishment to be attained once and for all, but a dynamic process that goes on as long as we are alive. To exaggerate slightly, we must continuously keep on striving to preserve our sanity. Perhaps sanity and insanity are but the extreme points on the same continuum, and we traverse through various resting-places on this continuum during different stages of our lives, and perhaps, these days, even on different days of one week. That is, sanity is a 'project', albeit one that can never be perfectly attained.

(B) Secondly, a lot depends on how this term 'sanity' is defined. At its narrowest, a person is 'sane' if s/he follows some kind of a 'scientific rationality' (though defining the latter in precise terms is itself yet another headache). If this were truly to be the canon for sanity, the number of people who would have to labelled as insane is truly mind-boggling. So in a less restrictive sense, let us define 'sanity' as some kind of 'logical consistency' : a person is sane if the beliefs s/he holds do not directly inhibit the attainment of goals that follow, implicitly or explicitly, from such beliefs, or if s/he holds a set of views such that it is not possible to derive both a theorem and a negation of this theorem within this very set.

Once we are prepared to understand sanity in such terms, we can appreciate that different world-views will require us to define and re-define the word 'sanity' with due respect to the surrounding context. Here is just one example. Religious believers have received, over the last four hundred years in Europe, a lot of bad press : they are, to put it bluntly, simply insane. However, consider the following set of beliefs/practices :

Belief 1 : There is a supra-spatiotemporal Reality called God.
Belief 2 : God has given us, through a Revelation, some rules to follow in our lives.

Practice 1 : We must therefore live in accordance with these rules in order to reach God, the supreme Goal of our endeavours.
Practice 2 : Following these rules is our symbolic way of expressing our gratitude to God.

In other words, here we have a perfectly consistent 'system' of beliefs and practices, and since we have defined sanity in terms of such internal consistency, there is nothing insane about having the above consistent set of Beliefs and Practices 1 - 2. To be sure, one may reject Beliefs 1 and 2 on various grounds, and hold them to be unjustified. Nevertheless, unless one defines sanity in terms of rejection of the belief that a supra-spatiotemporal entity can exist, there is nothing insane in holding Beliefs 1-2, and thereby taking up Practices 1-2 in accordance with these Beliefs.

(C) So far, then, the point is quite clear : Sanity is a statistical construct. Why, for example, did religious believers run the risk of being labelled as insane in the Moscow of 1970? Simply because there were, statistically speaking, more people who described themselves as anti-religious (in fact, as 'militant atheists') than people with the opposite self-definition. On the other hand, in a small town in Utah in USA or in Abu Dhabi in Saudi Arabia in the year 2004, it might be atheism which is regarded as insane out there, and this because there are more religious folk there than 'blasphemers of God'. There is, however, a more interesting point : Sanity is also a gendered construct.

To put it bluntly, sanity is the special privilege of women. In most cultures down the centuries, women, more regularly than men, have been associated with some form of insanity. (St Joan D'Arc and Ophelia are only two names that come immediately to mind.) Such beliefs have, of course, now been swept under the carpet by the force of legal measures which have compelled the menfolk to become 'politically correct' overnight. However, it remains extremely doubtful to what extent 'we, the menfolk' have really overcome our age-old notion that women are more prone than ourselves to suffering from 'fits of insanity'. Perhaps somewhere inside us we continue to harbour the suspicion that, appearances notwithstanding, women 'deep below' are really sentimental, irrational and ureasonable. A woman's beauty, they used to say, is but skin deep; in this case, perhaps, we men still suspect that a woman's sanity could be but skin deep, that under her 'fair skin' there lie vast, unexplored, and 'untamed' resources of dark, seething and 'uncivilised' insanity.

(D) So far I have been taking 'sanity' and 'logical consistency' to be largely co-terminous. However, any student of the history of ideas will know that even this is too restrictive a definition. Some of the greatest ideas have come out of thinkers/artists/philosophers/composers/scientists/writers who were regarded by most of their contemporaries as being insane. So much has this association of 'greatness' with 'insanity' become entrenched in the 'popular psyche' that we have the most ironical spectacle of some academics, who for all their high-talk about the importance of sanity, force themselves to behave in a way that they know will appear to be insane to their compatriots and students. Such people condemn themselves to the agony (or is it a bliss?) of leading two parallel (and, consequently, unconnected) lives : they continue to swear by sanity to maintain their academic credentials, on the one hand, and try to establish their insanity, on the other hand.

Be that as it may, the basic point here is that 'mere consistency is not enough' and that such consistency is, as it has been said, the hobgoblin of small minds. I am not denying, of course, that there is a supreme aesthetic beauty in a set of inter-related views that are consistent with one another (much of the scientific enterprise is, in fact, based on the search for such highly formalised beauty). However, most 'paradigm changes' have been initiated by people who were dissatisfied by the level of consistency attainable within an earlier paradigm, and strove to attain a higher consistency within a newer paradigm. In other words, the very notion of 'consistency' is itself historical, so that what seemed consistent enough to our intellectual ancestors does not seem so anymore to us.

(E) Consequently, the question-begging association of 'education' with 'sanity' is one that must be vigorously resisted. Our schools and colleges have become temples to Sanity which 'we, the menfolk' have erected as a God in our own image, and demanded that billions of students who come out of these institutions shall pay homage to this God at all costs. As a result, the world becomes more and more a fragmented place where those who happen to be left behind in the rat-race, or those who may consciously choose to stay out of it, or those who for various reasons are never even to able to join it, are cast into one gigantic heap of anonymity, a heap summarily dismissed as being 'insane'. A very popular reading of the Christian 'Dark Ages' runs as follows : these were the miserable, unenlightened times when millions of guilt-ridden monks and nuns crossed themselves at the altar to the unknown God seeking expiation for their sins. It is not my intention here to point how this is yet another 'atheist myth' which is shamelessly peddled in the public square masqueraded as 'dispassionate historical truth'. Rather, even if that reading were to be accepted, it is also true that our own educational institutions have now become the old monasteries of yore where billions of sanity-obsessed students are churned out every day, to live the rest of their lives paying unquestioning obeisance to that newly-invented divinity called Sanity. A few do somehow manage to raise some rather impolite questions about this Deity, but these questions are immediately downplayed with abuses such as archaic, mediaeval, uncivilised, and other unspeakable heresies.

Am I then arguing that we deliberately revel in 'insanity'? A very common post-modern argument runs as follows : X was rejected by modernity, so let us now celebrate X. As applied to specific instances such as feminism, post-colonial theory and so on, that is very good advice : women, the Blacks, and the 'third world' must now be allowed to speak with their 'own voices'. But if that argument were to be accepted as an absolute rule, its dangers become evident at once. Among the notions that 'European modernity' rejected, though somewhat hesitatingly, are those of slavery, persecution of social-religious dissidents, and Ptolemian cosmology. Shall we then revive, in the 'spirit' of post-modernism, the last three with the claim that these are 'repressed voices'?

In other words, the mere fact that modernity rejected X does not give us any straightforward access to making the claim that we must now accept X. Much will depend on, in addition to other things, what this X actually is. Similarly, to claim that 'insanity' must be revived by us post-moderns simply on the grounds that modernity had suppressed expressions of it would be too trivial an argument. The basic questions that we must first deal with in this context would be : (a) What exactly is sanity? (b) Where do the 'boundary lines' between sanity and insanity lie? (c) Who has laid down these lines? (d) Why is sanity a value? (e) If insanity is valuable, for what reaons?

To summarise the whole of the preceding in one sentence : we human beings are forced to suffer so much because of our Sanity. Does 'liberation' then lie in insanity? This is, allegedly, the Romantic approach taken by some English poets and some German savants, but even this will not do, for it assumes all too easily that there is a strict dividing line between sanity and insanity. Instead, we must realise that the relation between sanity and insanity is far more 'dialectical' than we, the sanity-ridden products of 'education', are willing to admit.

We must be sane enough not to try too hard to remain sane, for it is precisely such an attempt that leads to insanity. On the other hand, we must be insane enough to persistently question where the limits of our sanity lie, and having realised those limits try our best to accept them as a part of the 'human condition' and humbly live within the horizon of this sanity.

The Principle of 'Charity'

I have often wondered how I would 'defend' myself (if such a defence were to be called for) if I were to be asked why, considering the fact that I am not a practising believer of any specific religious tradition, I spend so much (though not all!) of my time reading about the nature of religious belief/s and practice/s. Surely, it might be argued, one should actually live what one studies : if one studies mathematics or physics, for example, one should 'see' mathematics and physics not just inside a textbook but also in the extra-textual world. The point applies even more to religions : religions are not entities that can be detached from specific world-views and then examined under microscopes. To truly understand the nature of religion, it could be claimed with a lot of plausibility, one must live as religious people themselves do.

Consequently, by claiming to be a student of theology while not being 'religious' (in some immediately definable sense), have I not misunderstood the 'whole point'? To a significant extent, yes; perhaps, that is to say, I have become a mere 'textbook student' of religion. The reason, however, why I nevertheless study about religions is because I practise, in the academic world and outside it as well (assuming, for the moment, that this is a distinct boundary), a principle which could be called the Principle of Charity.

By this I mean that when one is presented with a view, or a set of interconnected ideas, the first question that should be asked is not : 'How do I know that this is true?' but : 'How do I know that this is false?' Let me explain this by giving an example of one specific view in all its 'bluntness' :

There exists a divine power, referred to by the Arabic word 'Allah', and this Personal power has a definite plan for humanity. This plan, eternally existent with Allah, was revealed to a Prophet called Muhammad, and it was then inscribed by him onto a text called the Qu'ran.

Express it in that 'raw' manner within the 'academy', and be prepared to face downright ridicule. 'But of course, how do you know that this claim is true?', would often be the first question. That in itself is nothing problematic; what is worrisome is that very often that is also the only question that people are willing to ask. Instead, if one were to ask : 'But of course, how do I know that this claim is false?', one immediately begins to realise what a huge burden of home-work one will have to bear in order to answer that question. In other words, when presented with any view, no matter how ridiculous/childish/stupid/absurd it may seem to us, this Principle says that we must be charitable enough to take upon ourselves the 'burden of proof', instead of smugly replying : 'Ah, well, the burden rests upon you!'. All of this is in analogy with the Christian notion of Caritas : Caritas enables us to overcome our self-obsessions and love our neighbour; similarly, the ('intellectual') Principle of Charity urges us to look outwards and try to know/understand what our neighbour is trying to claim.

That is, to continue with the above example, we must ask ourselves questions of the following nature. How do I know that a supra-spatiotemporal being cannot, in principle, exist? That such a being cannot have Personal relations with humanity, and purposes for the latter? And that this Personal being cannot reveal the divine will through a human intermediary?

By putting these questions in this manner I do not intend to imply, of course, that these views are transparently 'true'; if that were to be the case, I would probably be writing this as a Muslim, and I am not. I simply wish to suggest in this context that one should exercise, in such matters, the Principle of Charity and reply : 'Let us accept that these views are true, and try to see where they are 'coming from'.' Incidentally, it so happens that even within 'science' we usually operate with this Principle most of the time. Usually what distinguishes a 'scientific' theory from a 'non-scientific' one is not that the former can be verified but that it can be falsified; that is, most 'scientific' theories come with a set of conditions under which they would be falsified.

By using the notion of 'charity' in this manner I do not mean to suggest that it is an 'optional extra' for academic life; rather, it is one of its most defining features. That is, only to the extent that we are charitable enough to the other, and are willing to try to 'see' the world through the other's perspectives, shall we ever know what the other is actually claiming (or trying to claim). For example, the above Muslim views may not be a correct 'representation of reality', but only to the extent that we are charitable enough to enter into that world, alien to us, shall we even know what these views really are about. That might very well be the case, it might be replied, but how 'charitable' should we be then? Shall we exercise this Principle when talking to someone who says that she believes in the existence of unicorns, alchemists, witches and the like? To this one could reply that human charity, alas, is not as infinite as the divine, and our reserves of charity will run out 'at some point'. Much depends on where exactly that point lies : for some it would be unicorns, for some the existence of this world, for some the universal applicability of the 'laws of nature', for some the futility of existence, and for some the benevolence of Allah.

Am I then saying, to put it bluntly, that 'charity' is more important than 'truth'? That it is more important to be charitable to the Muslim, the Marxist, the atheist, the feminist, the Buddhist, and so on, than to find out whether or not his/her truth-claims are valid? To put the matter in these terms would, however, be a mistake. 'Charity' towards others is not a form of condescension, as if in being charitable one knows that the other is mistaken but nevertheless 'empathises' with him/her. (The latter is actually the condescension that goes by the name of 'tolerance' in some academic circles. People in such circles often claim, for example, to 'tolerate' Islam but without having read a single page of Islamic (religious/social/political) thought.) When these two notions of 'truth' and 'charity' are carefully examined one shall see that they are inextricably intertwined. It is impossible to be charitable to a view without, at the same time, raising the question of its truth-value, and on the other hand, only when we know that a certain view is true shall we really become charitable towards it. So, for example, the more we begin to 'see' the world through Marxist perspectives, the more we begin to ask how truthful these perspectives actually are; on the other hand, the more we begin to believe in the truth-claims of Marxism, the more we become charitable to Marxist interpretations of socio-economic existence.

'Charity' and 'truth', then, are the twin pillars on which the 'academic' enterprise is based; take away either one and the edifice starts tottering. Take away charity, and academic reports begin to read like dry compilations of statistical figures suitable, perhaps, for a government office but not for those who might wish to understand the 'other in its otherness'; and take away truth, these reports are nothing better than fanciful hallucinations useful, perhaps, for occasional diversions but ultimately damaging to the health of those who believe that it is the duty of the academy to 'describe things as they really are' (notwithstanding the pitfalls associated with the attempts to fulfil this duty).

It could be one of the duties of the academy therefore to create an atmosphere of 'truth and reconciliation' first within its boundaries, and then to foster such an atmosphere outside its domains. To hope for reconciliation without raising the difficult question of truth-claims is to hope too little, for nothing but an extremely fragile peace will come out of the wilful neglect of such claims. To give a specific Indian example, to distort the history of its mediaeval centuries and deny that (some) Hindus were persecuted by the Muslims in those times might be a fine pragmatic move for the sake of 'public peace', but it remains to be seen how stable this peace really is. On the other hand, it is only through such a painstaking process of soul-searching for the truth that we may hope, if hope at all, for some kind of reconciliation to be attained. This is a process that cannot be imposed from high above through political/legal measures, but must be one that every individual has to go through. To carry on with the above example, it would mean that a Hindu asks herself whether or not she can live next-door to a Muslim who might be descended (in some way) from her mediaeval Muslim forefathers. This suggestion would, to say the least, horrify politicians because of the anarchic potentialities associated with people digging up their past, but it just might be the case that it is only when people know what the truth is that they become empowered to forgive. So for example, once one raises the historical 'truth' of who persecuted whom in the past, one will also have to raise a subsequent question : does the truth that the grandparents of X persecuted our own in the past give us the moral right to persecute X now? That is a 'hard question' that everyone must ask for him/herself, and perhaps through asking questions of a similar nature we may look forward to a genuine reconciliation.

Suffering and the 'Polarity Argument'

Can suffering be 'justified'? This is one question that has troubled religious thinkers down the ages in various philosophical-religious traditions, such as Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The basic issues in this context can be summarised in these terms : If there is an omnibenevolent God, why did such a God create a world with so much suffering?

Various kinds of strategies have been developed to deal with such issues, and it is not my intention to sift through all of them, one by one. I shall merely point to one argument, often repeated in various religious circles, and curiously enough in non-religious ones too, which I believe to be, to put it mildly, inhuman. This is the one that I shall call the 'Polarity Argument', and this goes as follows :

You would not be able to appreciate the meaning of X unless you were in a position to know what anti-X is. You would not enjoy the beauty of the dawn unless you experienced the gloom of the dusk, the importance of light unless you knew what darkness is, the value of heroism unless you faced some danger, and so on and on.

Suffering, that is, has an educative value. If that were the end of the matter, I would have, of course, no cause for complaint. It is undoubtedly a truth that the burnt child, as we say, dreads the fire; unless we experienced some form of suffering when jumping into a fire we would not know that this activity, to put it bluntly, reduces our survival fitness. Trouble starts brewing, however, when this mundane observation is put forward as a justification for the existence of suffering.

To take a simple example, what could be the justification for the blindness of a woman who is walking down the street? One reply could be : by seeing her plight, we could be induced to help her, and to develop feelings of 'altruism' (whether 'altruism' is possible is a debate for another day). In other words, the suffering of other people has an instrumental benefit for us, and this is what I referred to above as an inhuman argument. To justify suffering in this manner is to imply that without the existence of this suffering of other people we could not develop certain qualities ourselves, whatever these may be, mercy, compassion, kindness and so on. And all of this even without mentioning the suffering on a much larger-scale that human beings have had to live with, such as the distress caused by natural calamities, political upheavals, outbreak of epidemics, and so on. To take the example of the (Nazi) Holocaust, for example, it may indeed be the case that by reading about it we learn a 'lesson from history' (though even that seems highly doubtful), and that by going through the journals and diaries of Jews of that time we experience feelings of empathy with them. But does any of this 'justify', in any way, the Holocaust? Would we not say that we would rather not experience such empathy and compassion if it is necessary that the Holocaust should have happened for us to experience these emotions?

Perhaps it is true that had there been no form of illness, disease, misery, agony, and distress, we human beings would not have been able to develop feelings of compassion and kindness towards others. Perhaps, the development of such other-directed emotions requires, in some way or the other, the existence of suffering. But, granted that these assumptions are valid ones, do they justify the suffering in the world?

Let us return to the 'light-dark' example. It may be true that when we stand in the light of the day after a dark night, we are better able to enjoy its brilliance. But it would be a very strange thing for someone to use this example as a 'justification' for the night. The night is simply a period of time without the sun's light and needs no justification or, for that matter, any condemnation (with due apologies, of course, to poets and novelists). Notions of 'justification' and 'condemnation' apply only to those dimensions of human existence that we call the 'moral'. For example, a glass of water in itself requires neither justification nor condemnation, though the act of drinking this glass might, depending on the circumstances or the intentions of the drinker, require either of the two. Similarly, 'suffering-happiness/mercy/heroism' may be, in some respects, a pair analogous to 'light-dark', but just as in the latter this polarity does not justify (or condemn) either pole, so too in the former. All that this 'suffering-happiness' polarity does is to summarise the common observation that after experiences of suffering, we sometimes (though not always) feel happy; and that our moments of happiness are often followed by experiences of misery. It does not, in the least, either justify or condemn our suffering or our happiness.

Religious traditions, therefore, that try to justify suffering with the claim that without suffering we could not learn virtues such as those of kindness, mercy and so on, are guilty not only of making unwarranted extrapolations from the 'natural' to the 'moral' but also of bordering on the inhuman by implying that we learn something through the suffering of others. However, what about 'us atheists'? Have we atheists, who claim to have rejected God, truly come to grips with the consequences of living in a world where suffering is pervasive?

A proper engagement with this question will require a detailed reply, tabulating the various forms of atheism. For the moment, however, I shall conclude with a few questions. Supposing that an atheist couple agrees that suffering is an 'evil', and that a world without this 'evil' would be a good thing. (The case of the manic/clinical depressive is an interesting challenge to much of what I have written above, and I shall return to this in another place.) Is it ethical for this atheist couple to have a baby, knowing that in the act of producing this baby they shall be casting a new form of life into a world filled with this 'evil'? If we cannot do anything to make the world a 'better place' (or, belonging as we do to a post-colonial, post-modern world, even have doubts that this can be accomplished), should not the very least that we are capable of doing be to take a conscious decision not to actually increase the amount of suffering in it? And even if we argue that when the baby grows up, s/he will then realise the truth that there can be no happiness without suffering, who are we, the deniers of God, to 'play God' and predict that this is exactly what will actually happen in the future? What if the grown-up baby instead fails to realise this truth, if truth it be, and steadily descends along a spiral of depression, misery, and self-destruction? Shall we not then be morally responsible for adding to the pool of suffering in the world? Are we atheists, who have burnt all the bridges of faith, ready to take such a 'massive leap of faith' and declare, without being able to justify this claim, that it is a good thing that there are human beings in this world even if their existence is associated with suffering? How do we know that it is indeed a good thing that human beings must exist in this world, no matter what the costs?

The Tyranny of the Persecuted

The last fifty years of European thought have taught us some very useful lessons. For one, it has become clearer than ever before how what was proclaimed throughout the world as 'modernity' (with its emphases on 'externalised' and 'objective' truth) was, in fact, a socio-historical construct specific to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of European civilisation. In the process of its forced propagation (through its 'meta-narratives' such as 'science', 'colonialism', and the like), the voices of various groups of people such as the slaves, the Blacks, the religious, the womenfolk, the Gypsies, and others were repressed, and these people themselves were thrown into a great anonymous heap which was banished from the 'public square'.

Now we have learnt the art of what is called the 'hermeneutics of suspicion' : we immediately suspect anyone who gives us 'grand theories', or claims that his/her world-view will make the world a 'happier place', or announces a coming Revolution, or propounds a view that claims to be 'universal'. So massive indeed is the weight of this suspicion that has slowly sunk into us that it has begun to exercise a paralysing effect on us, 'we the post-modern'. We scorn any politician/poet/thinker/writer who promises the world anything better as someone who is, at worst, a bungling trickster, or, at best, a naive chap, and go about excavating into his /her past life to explain why s/he happens to be making such childish promises. So overwhelmed are we, at least in the Academy, by the darkness of the colonial past of Europe that we have started to believe that whatever 'theory' comes out of Europe must be subject to the greatest possible suspicion (if not actually rejected at once), and that whatever views come out of the post-colonial world must be printed and circulated, irrespective of how plausible these latter views may be. The demand that the views of the once-persecuted people must be heard at any cost is suddenly felt, in some circles of the academy and the media, to be more important than the demand that these views must also be truthful, meaningful and coherent. (Indeed, the latter demand for 'truth' itself is demonised as 'imperialistic'. Which is highly ironical because most, if not all, independence movements, such as the Indian, were based by their leaders on a search for the truth.)

This state of affairs could perhaps be described as the tyranny that the once-persecuted come to exercise, after their liberation, over their previous persecutors. For example, British/American writers are upraided and penalised at once if one detects in their texts even the faintest trace of racism, 'Islamophobia', imperialism, colonialism, and such heresies. On the other hand, an ever-burgeoning literature from the post-colonial world is allowed to go scot-free with its 'constructed ignorance' of the 'West' as a land of intrinsic immorality, depravity, selfishness, fragmentation, and every possible evil. My intention here is not to deny in the least that racism and 'Islamophobia' remain, sadly, only too grim and ever-present realities in the 'Western' world; but that for the very same reason that we refuse to allow 'Islamophobia' to receive a public sanction, we must also reject in the same breath the post-colonial world's construction of 'Westernophobia'.

To declare that the post-colonial nations of the world must today be allowed to speak with whatever voice suits them merely because they had been persecuted once upon a time in the past is, in effect, to invite groups of people to invent a scale of 'comparative martyrdom', and situate themselves on that scale with respect to others (though, in truth, every group would want to place itself at the highest end of this scale). To put it in other words, one must not confuse 'truth' with what might be called 'populism', although nowadays this confusion is sometimes made within the academic world itself.

I shall conclude with one example of this. 'European science' occupies a very high position in the demonology of (certain strands of) feminist literature. These strands of 'feminism' tell us that this science, with its associated notions of 'rationality' and consequent development of 'technology', has produced untold evils, led to the destruction of the environment, marginalised women as 'sentimental', resulted in the exploitation of the colonies, and so on and on. As a historical report of the evils that 'science' has committed in the past and as a warning of what it can inflict on us in the near future, this feminist analysis is impeccable in its 'reading' of the past and its 'prognosis' for the future. However, one can accept of all this and declare, at the same time, that this feminist analysis has not impugned, in the least, the 'truth' of scientific theories. Shall we reject Newton's laws as false because Newton was a man, or discard Einstein's theory of relativity to the intellectual dustbin because of its author's masculinity? Such scientific theories may be the product of the 'male mind' (whatever that is), but unless feminism establishes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that there is a logically necessary connection between 'products of a male mind' and 'falsity', a scientist/mathematician cannot but reply that the feminist has not even raised the interesting question of what the criteria for truth are.

Here then is another example where we must indeed listen to the persecuted, women in this case, but this without giving in to the 'populist' stance that feminism has found the 'royal road to truth'. Because we men may happen to be suffering from the guilty conscience of having persecuted our women-folk in the past, we do not now need to add intellectual sloppiness to our guilt by declaring that feminism has settled, once and for all, the question of 'truth'. Indeed, in a somewhat ironical manner, it might turn out that this bland equation of feminism with the truth is actually a subtle and masked refusal to listen to what feminists are actually trying to say, in the manner of an impatient husband who declares to his wife : 'All right, all right, whatever you say is the truth. Now please keep your mouth shut!'

Living with Paradoxes

The word 'paradox' is perhaps one of the words that should be avoided by those who regard themselves to be 'straight-thinkers'. A straight-thinker I shall define as someone who believes that his/her ontological landscape must be populated by as few entities as possible, and that there is a necessary connection between 'truth' and this 'depopulation'. Consequently, anything that smacks of the paradoxical will appear to such a person as an invitation for woolly-headed thinking, or simply as an excuse for intellectual laziness. Arguably, such straight-thinking is the only one that is allowed today within the boundaries of West European and American academies.

The irony of the matter, however, lies in that even such straight-thinkers, especially those who believe that we are steeped in a 'post-modern' culture, live a somewhat paradoxical existence. Here are three examples to illustrate my point :

(a) One of widely-hailed features of the Academy is its alleged rejection of authority. You might, in the confines of your private life, accept the authority of the Pope, your next-door pastor, your neighbourly mullah, your grandparents, and so on and on, but inside the Academy, so runs the story, you shall not accept any authorities. But do academics themselves really allow their proteges to live by such an absolute rejection of authority? As a matter of fact, it so happens that much of academic life is deeply divided along lines of disciplines and sub-disciplines, and academics in each of these try hard to maintain these intellectual boundaries, and delegate to their students the thankless task of policing them very carefully against infiltrators. So that, for example, a student of sociology who might wish to take a peek at what anthropologists in the next room are doing might need, for all the supposed rejection of authority, to take the permission of his/her supervisor, and if this permission is denied to bow down to his/her authority. (And, of course, similar boundary disputes between philosophy and theology, economics and history, political theory and sociology, the 'hard sciences' and psychology, 'pure mathematics' and 'applied/applicable sciences', and so on, are legion.) So, then : Has authority really been rejected in/by the academic world? What has, in fact, happened is that many academics (though not all) have taken the following stance : 'Reject all possible sources of authority --- reject the Pope, reject your elders, and every one else. But do not reject My authority for I shall be a God unto you.'

Which is why the proclaimed academic rejection of authority verges on the paradoxical.

(b) The Academy, and especially its humanities departments, talk a lot nowadays about the death of the subject/author/viewer/reader. The tag 'death of the author' is taken to mean that his/her subjectivity has been annihilated, and that his/her 'personal' views do not matter. It is all 'relative', so goes the 'story', and this is a 'story' that continues to be 'narrated' in an endless number of places starting from the coridoors of academic power to the coffee-houses which conveniently forget to 'deconstruct' this power. It therefore is surely amazing that book after book continues to be written by post-modernist writers with their (personal) names on the very first page of those books. If the subject has been truly annihilated, such books should come to us with their author's names erased from them. Not only that, such writers take offence to criticisms of their views with replies such as : 'But you did not understand my point', or 'You have got me wrong', or 'That is not what I was trying to say'. Whence the justification for such responses if the first-person stance has been dissolved? To be a truly consistent post-modernist, the writer should say : 'Oh, is that what you have made of my writings?' and not, 'You missed my point', for if the subject is truly dead, there is no 'right' or 'wrong' way of singing an elegy for this death.

It might seem a trivial point to make, and indeed, in a sense it is, for to attain perfect consistency in thought and action is a privilege that is not granted to us mortals. However, consider this. Many books translated from say Latin/Greek to French/English/German by members of Catholic orders such as the Benedictines or the Dominicans sometimes come to us without the names of the writers on them. If anything, it would therefore seem that it is these Catholic members (who still hold on, in various ways, to some form of 'modernity'!) who have attained (or come much closer to attaining) the true annihilation of the subject than their post-modernist brethren.

Therefore, to claim that the author is dead, and to put this very claim in a book with the author's name on its first page has a hint of the paradoxical.

(c) The Academy swears by a motto that has now even entered into what might be called popular jargon : 'Let a thousand flowers bloom'. We are invited to savour the mental image of a beautiful garden that stretches on mile after mile, filled with every possible floral delight. The trouble with this idyllic image, though, is this : we know that even a Garden of Paradise is filled with inner dissensions, that it quakes now and then with soft rumblings. To carry on with the horticultural image, every gardener knows that to keep a garden beautiful, one requires to uproot, every now and then, all kinds of nasty weeds. We may very well wish that a thousand flowers should bloom in our garden, but what about those subterranean weeds?

Now I take it that some of the most vocal opponents of President Bush's war in Iraq are members of the academy in Western Europe and America. But if they are to call themselves post-modernists, whence this distress? Indeed, if I were to be a full-fledged proponent of post-modernism and also a member of Bush's inner circle, I could turn the tables on the post-modernists and retort, on Bush's behalf : 'Well, you see, we need to have a garden with a thousand flowers, as you yourself admit. This war on Iraq happens to be one of these flowers. Too bad you see it is a weed, I am sorry!'

In other words, a post-modernist who claims that the war on Iraq is 'illegal' must stop swearing by that shibboleth of a garden-with-a-thousand-flowers, and rather do some botanical home-work on setting down rules to distinguish a flower from a weed. Such home-work, however, is far from being started in most of these academic circles which, therefore, seem to be quite happy to live with the paradox of claiming : 'We do need a garden with a thousand flowers, but it is we who reserve the right to pronounce what a flower should look like!'

Is 'Religion' relevant anymore?

Sociologists in the 1960s came to the conclusion that 'religion is dead', basing this conclusion on their belief that there is a logically inevitable connection between the advancement of 'modernity' and the spread of 'secularisation'. In 2004, it would seem necessary to come to a rather different conclusion : the more that 'modernity' spreads to different parts of the world, the more 'religious' these (have) become.

One reason why conclusions of such nature do not really 'say much' is because of the difficulties involved in defining terms such as 'modernity', 'secularisation' and 'religion'. What, for example, is 'religion'? If religion is viewed through sociological perspectives, it is indeed the case that the number of people going to churches, synagogues, and mosques has been steadily declining in Western Europe. Does this sociological observation in itself prove that religion has been cast to the shadowlands? Much would depend on how 'religion' is defined.

All that this observation points to really is this : in the specific socio-historical context of Western Europe, the trajectory of modernity includes in itself a rejection of certain forms of institutionalised religion. It does not show in the least that (a) the majority of the people, even in Western Europe, have become less religious, if by this is meant a rejection of any belief in the transcendent, or, even more crucially, that (b) people in other parts of the world too will become less religious with the spread of 'modernity'.

It is indeed (b) that is interesting, given the fact that the United States (the standard-bearer of 'modernity'?) has always been a standing refutation, since the early eighteenth century till the present day, of the popularly-held belief that the spread of modernity has a corrosive effect on the religious fabric of a community. How, then, can one explain the persistent belief that 'modernity' and 'secularisation' are two sides of the same coin, in spite of so much overwhelming evidence to the contrary from different sections of the globe? Irrespective of how that question is answered, I wish to bring out one reason why what is often vaguely referred to as 'religion' has not become irrelevant, and this reason has to do with the 'decision' either to have or not to have a baby : I submit that this decision is ultimately of a 'religious' nature.

Suppose that John and Mary wish to have a baby. By playing the Devil's Advocate of a person who believes that human beings should not have babies, I shall try to demonstrate how this decision ultimately requires 'religious' backing.

I : Suppose a woman, Susan, walking down a road is hit by a car, who is to blame?
JM : The car-driver.
I : So if the car-driver had not been there, Susan would not have been injured?
JM : Yes.
I : Why was the car-driver there in the first place?
JM : Proximately, because he was rushing to a party; ultimately, because he was born into this world nineteen years ago.
I : So if the car-driver had not been born into the world nineteen years ago, there would have been no Susan injured in a car-accident?
JM :Yes.
I : Which state of affairs is better? A world with a reckless car-driver and an injured Susan, or a world with a careful car-driver and a non-injured Susan?
JM : The latter.
I : Now which is better, a world with the potentiality of reckless car-driving and an injured Susan, or a world without the potentiality of reckless car-driving and a non-injured Susan?
JM : The latter.
I : Extending this example in space and time, think of all possible ways in which Susan could have got injured in her life. Which is better, a Susan who lives but has the potentiality to experience suffering at any moment of her life, or a 'Susan' who was never born into this world and hence will never suffer in any way? That is the fundamental 'religious' question in this context. Which is better : existence, and its necessary co-relate, suffering, or absolute non-existence and hence absolute non-suffering?

Now a lot depends on whether JM are 'religious' or not. First, let us say that JM are 'religious'. Under this heading, let us make two sub-divisions (A) and (B), so that the replies will take the following form :

(A)

I : In what sense are you 'religious'?
JM : We are Buddhists/Jains.
I : Do you then believe that existence itself is suffering, and that one of the first steps towards liberation is therefore, to say the least, not to produce yet more life into this world?
JM : That is what we have been taught.
I : So why do you not live according to what you have been taught?
JM : Well, we are perhaps not enlightened enough.
I : Do you see any contradiction here between 'belief and practice'?
JM : Unfortunately, we do.

(B)I : In what sense are you 'religious'?
JM : We are Jewish/Muslim/Christian.
I : Do you then believe that you have been given a commandment by God to 'go forth and multiply'?
JM : Yes, we do.
I : So there is no contradiction between 'belief and practice' in your case?
JM : No, there is none.

Let us now move on to consider the atheist reply/replies, continuing my role as the Advocate of the Devil who will try to persuade an atheist couple not to have a baby.

I : In what sense are you 'atheist'?
JM : We deny the (possibility of the) existence of any transcendent entity.
I : So why do you want to have a baby?
JM : Well, to begin with, why not? Everyone else does, and so why not us?
I : Is it not a part of your atheism not to leave any belief unexamined, and not to do something simply because others around you do it?
JM : All right, then, we want to have a baby because it is good to have one.
I : Is it not a 'tenet' of atheism that the distinction between 'good' and 'bad' is ultimately an illusory one, in the sense that it is a human fiction?
JM : Yes, it is our subjective fiction that having a baby is 'good'. For others, it may be 'bad', but that is their idiosyncratic belief.
I : So, then, having a baby is 'good'. But 'good' for whom?
JM : Good for us, of course. It will make us feel happy.
I : Is that not a ruthlessly capitalist attitude to take towards the world? That a baby is 'good' simply because the baby will make you feel happy? Have you considered the happiness of the baby itself? How can you be sure that the baby will be happy in this world, full of misery and suffering?
JM : Well, we have enough money to feed, clothe, and shelter our baby, and later to pay for our baby's education and growth.
I : Yes, but that concerns only what you refer to as 'basic needs'. Consider this. Suppose when your baby grows up, s/he suffers from cancer at the age of 30. Who is responsible for his/her suffering? At a proximate level, it is the cells in the body multiplying in a bizarre fashion. But at the ultimate level, are you not morally responsible for his/her suffering? Had you not produced this baby in the first place, his/her suffering at 30 would have been non-existent.
JM : But that is such a pessimistic world-view, a world without babies! You are such a coward, running away from life! Come with us, and we shall teach you how to accept life, and revel in its various experiences.
I : One should be careful in throwing labels like 'optimism' and 'pessimism' at people. You see a world without babies, and consequently, without human beings, as a bleak world. I, the Advocate of the Devil, see it, on the other hand, as a most joyful prospect : that there will be a world without the potentiality of producing manic depressives, cancer patients, starving refugees, victims of natural calamities, political detainees, premature babies, and so on and on. Besides, is yours not a highly anthropocentric view, to believe that the world exists for the creation of new human beings? Are you not fond of castigating religious believers as being anthropocentric, claiming that they make 'God' in their own image? Are you not now guilty of making the same, or at least a similar, mistake? Are you not making the 'world' in your own image, believing that the universe is 'hospitable' to human beings, that is a 'good' thing to have babies? Whoever told you that it is a 'good' thing to do so? Your parents? Your religious instructors? Your school teachers? But, then, does not atheism imply the rejection of all authority? If you have indeed made such a rejection, why accept the authority of the past on this matter of having babies?
JM : Well, if we were given a choice between (i) a world with human beings, and associated suffering, and (ii) a world without human beings at all, and no consequent suffering, we would always choose (i).This is why we have decided to have a baby though we know that our baby might grow up to be a woman of 30 who will suffer the agony of cancer, and that we shall then be ultimately responsible for having produced a being with the potentiality of such future agony.
I : Perhaps so, but according to your own admission, you cannot declare (i) to be a universal 'good', since according to your atheism, 'good' and 'evil' are idiosyncratic fantasies that individuals suffer from. That is, you have no grounds for justifying your acceptance of (i) : just as some people like tea and hate coffee, so too you happen to accept (i) and reject (ii). There is nothing 'rational' or 'irrational' about your choice of (i).
JM : Yes, I agree that (i) is, for us, some kind of a 'faith-claim'. We have no way of proving that a world under (i) is better than a world under (ii). It is just a 'gut-feeling' that we have that (i) is a 'good' choice.
I : Do you not regularly claim that religious belief too is a 'gut-feeling'?
JM : Yes, we do.
I : So it would seem that when you decide to have a baby, and hold (i) to 'be superior' to (ii), you too have your own pet 'gut-feelings' which you cannot justify?
JM : So it would seem!
I : In that case, I, as the Advocate of the Devil, who believe with my Master Lucifer that non-existence is the highest value, must declare that you are not atheist enough for us. You have not truly rejected God, you have rejected only your subjective fantasy of who you think God is. For there is at least one statement that you subscribe to without being able to justify or prove it, and this is E : Existence is a Good. As the Devil's Advocate I most resolutely reject E, and refuse to give you the coveted title of 'True Atheist'.

What has been brought out through these (somewhat) imaginary conversations? That every couple who decides to have a baby --- implicitly or explicitly --- does this on 'religious' grounds. This is, of course, clearly evident if the couple are say Jewish or Muslim; they can share the belief that the world is 'hospitable' to the production of babies, and that this 'good' activity is in some way or the other willed by the divine reality. I have tried to show, however, that even in the case of an atheist the decision to have a a baby is of a 'religious' nature. This is because such an atheist must make the claim :

X is a higher or more valuable world-view than Y, where Y : there should be no babies, and consequently no potentiality for future suffering, and X : there should be babies, even if the production of babies leads to future suffering.

I cannot share this 'religious faith' of the atheist in this matter, for I do share the conviction that X is indeed superior to Y. For all I know, Y may be superior to X (and some forms of Buddhism such as Theravada Buddhism say this in so many words, though, to be sure, for their own specific reasons). This is one reason why, as I said in the beginning, 'religion' has hardly become irrelevant, 'modernity' notwithstanding. Even after all religious temples, mosques, synagogues, and churches have been de-populated, the gynaecological wards in hospitals all around the world will, perhaps, continue to be be populated, and if that is the case, these wards will remain the birth-temples of what I have here called the 'religious'. (And, incidentally, this is my explanation for why Stalin's Russia ultimately failed to abolish religious belief; this is because it failed to abolish gynaecological wards. 'Religion' is not always about asking seemingly abstract questions such as 'the number of angels who can dance on the tip of a pin'; it is more often about more 'down-to-earth' realities such as parenthood. Every parent who has decided that it is a 'good' thing to have a baby in spite of the potentiality of future suffering has already made, even if unbeknownst to themselves, a choice that I can only describe as 'religious'.)