Some Brief Reflections On Tribalism


I read Romeo and Juliet sometime when I was in Class 6; and I thought it was a rather cosy fairy-tale for old men and old women nodding by the fire. A few years later, I was at a cousin's who gave me a copy of Linda Good(wo)man's Star Signs. I was a student of physics around that time, and what amazed me about the book was how it had 'categorised' human beings into twelve neat groups on the basis of their zodiac signs. (And they blame men for being analytical, :-)) What astounded me even more was something that it said about the Aquarian Man : that the Aquarian Man was someone who was passionately devoted to opposing all sorts of Tribalism.That word, Tribalism, is mine, not hers, and over the years I have often been struck by the number of Aquarians who were vigorously anti-Tribalists in the not too distant past. Simone Weil was one, she actually starved herself to death, eating only what the soldiers in World War II were given through their rations; Jurgen Habermas, a German neo-Marxist, with whom incidentally I even share the same birth day, was another; Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a Pakistani Urdu poet who was a communist was a third; and the abolitionist Abbe Lincoln, a fourth.
These examples have perhaps made it clear what I mean by Tribalism. If a definition is required, however, here it goes : Tribalism is the lamentable human tendency to form enclosed systems that too easily become inward-looking instead of remaining forever open towards the 'aliens' across their boundaries. Tribalism is the attempt to glorify in what we possess at the cost of others around us, whether this is cultural heritage, linguistic capacities, economic prosperity, moral achievements, racial superiority, social prestige, national wealth, political clout, or intellectual abilities.
It is perhaps impossible for human beings (including myself) to become completely free from the taint of Tribalism, and given my strong antipathy towards Tribalism, I am forever on the lookout for any traces of it within myself. Hence I love being in the company of Assamese people, but never too long; I phone my relatives for the occasional 'polite conversation' regarding which cousin is getting married next, but feel anxious that I might have been swept into the tribalism of the family; I delight in discussing Rabindranath Tagore and the Bauls with Bengalis, but feel uneasy that I might have overdone it; I enjoy talking to Indians about India's shining glory, but never for more than a few minutes; I read books every now and then about Spain, my spiritual homeland, but try to ensure that I have not gone overboard; and, finally, I live within the walls of the Academy, but am constantly aware of the possibility that the Academy might have become my disguised tribalism.
(Incidentally, anti-Tribalism is not the claim that all heterogeneities among human beings, the socio-cultural specificities which make a concrete individual who he or she is, should be flattened out and everyone reduced to an anonymous mass. That itself would ironically become yet another form of Tribalism! Indeed, some forms of communism are guilty of attempting to achieve precisely that.)

By way of conclusion, let me return to Romeo and Juliet with a somewhat wry remark : the most basic problem with some of the Romeos and the Juliets of this world is that they are not Romeo or Juliet enough; that sooner or latter they succumb to the sinister pressures of one of the most powerful Tribalisms that this planet has known, that of the family which fears 'love' as a truly 'anti-systemic' anarchic force that threatens its downfall. I therefore 'read' the play Romeo and Juliet not just as a celebration of the 'personal' or 'private' dimensions of 'love' (this is what H/Bollywood routinely does) but also as a call to arms against all forms of Tribalisms. Indeed, I would go further than that : 'love', understood in the above sense, might be one of the few political weapons that we have at our disposal today. It sounds cliched, yes, but some cliches should be fervently repeated until they become too 'real' to need any further repetition.