The Second Wave

The night after the sea-storm
Kind words
Condolences
Loving messages
Promised help
But when she tries again
To rebuild the brown bridge
Only she knows
How fiercely the tireless sun
Burns into her ancient back.

The Great Divide

There is a Great Divide within 'western' society today, and chances are slim that this Divide will be bridged in times to come, not least because there are so few people who are capable of or are interested in keeping up with what has been happening on either side of it. This is the Divide between what has come to be labelled as the 'public sphere' (PS) and what have been branded as the 'private dimensions' (PD), and this Divide has established itself as one of the foundational pillars of most 'western' democracies. According to the official version of the matter, at least, this Divide is quite clear-cut : PS refers to the legal machinery and the socio-economic policies of the nation-state where there shall be no discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, or political belief; PD effectively covers whatever has been left out, and includes, among other things, religious beliefs and other idiosyncratic notions that one is taught to keep to oneself.

It has become quite clear, however, over the last few decades that some of the most heated of contemporary debates are conducted precisely at the contested sites of this Divide. Debates over abortion, stem-cell research, and euthanasia, for example, cannot easily be placed either into PS or into PD. A woman who supports the legalisation of abortion with the argument, 'A woman has absolute rights over her own body' is not simply making a PD comment, for this argument has all sorts of wider ramifications of a PS nature about our understanding of what socio-political existence is like. On the other hand, somebody who opposes abortion with the claim, 'All life is sacred', is making a PS claim from a very specific PD standpoint, possibly, Islamic, Roman Catholic, or Jewish.

Smile, You Are On Reality Camera : Or, God The Projection, We The Projectors

Here is a cheery Roman Catholic nun on a sunny day who was smiling once upon a time into a camera and now you, the reader of my blog, can see her 'projection' on your computer screen. I wonder what she would have said if she were to be told that the God she believes in is Itself her own Projection. She would probably have heard of the redoubtable Herr Sigmund Freud who had, according to popular opinion, demolished the idols of reactionary superstitition by showing how it is we human beings who project our deepest wishes, hopes, fear and desires onto the world, and thereby create gods out of our own images. This argument stated with brilliant brevity in many of Freud's books has now percolated down to the masses for whom, as I am never tired of repeating, it is not Religion but an easy-going and unself-critical Atheism that has become the new Opium.

How coherent, however, is this wide-spread notion that God is a Projection (GP) of the human mind/heart? In what follows, I shall not attempt to do either of the following. Firstly, (a) I shall not give you any proof for the existence of God, primarily because the very notion of 'proof' varies from one context to another. I would sooner prove that a unicorn exists than pay God the compliment of reminding God that God does, after all, exist. Secondly, (b) neither I shall demonstrate that God does not exist, not because there is any lack of disproofs but because it is much easier to think that one has done this than to be sure what exactly has been disproved, the reality of God or the reality of what one has presumed God to be like. Just as philosophers often set up 'straw-men' whom nobody accepts, they can also take a juvenile delight in constructing 'straw-gods' who never existed anyway.

Nothing as majestic as either of the above shall be attempted in this post. Here I shall simply point out why atheists should not use the metaphor of Projection in their arguments, and the reason for this can be stated very precisely : the metaphor of Projection self-destructs atheism. That is, an atheist who uses the GP has already undermined her own case even before putting it across.

Our day to day conversation is peppered with all kinds of metaphors : we say that a friend has passed away, that we are killing time, that someone has hit bull's eye, and that the government is biding its time. It is extremely important that we do not forget the metaphorical nature of these expressions, and it is precisely when we do forget this that we jump to unwarranted conclusions by becoming enslaved to the bewitching power of language. One of the most famous examples in this context is the phrase 'selfish gene'. Looking back over the Gene Wars (which, by the way, are still going on, and will go on for a long time to come until all the Genes have mutated themselves in utter despair), one can see that this highly metaphorical phrase has generated more heat than light. Genes themselves are dead pieces of DNA, it is we human beings who think, rightly or wrongly, that genes are selfish. To say that genes are selfish is only as meaningful or as meaningless as saying that your hormones are unpredictable, that your chromosomes are patriarchal, that your heart is patriotic, that your medulla is reductionist, that your duodenum is politically correct, that your brain is feminist, that your blood is Maoist, that your liver is alcoholic, that your pineal gland is eccentric, or that your nerves are edgy : cool magnet-poetry for your fridge, but very slippery language especially for those scientists who think that the mathematically exact language of science should be kept free from the 'sentimentality' of poetry.

A similar problem arises with the metaphor : God is a Projection (GP). To see what this is, let us first examine the metaphor in its 'home context' which is that of a camera which projects a movie onto a (real) screen. From this phenomenon, we extrapolate and say that just as a camera projects a film onto the (real) screen, so too we human beings project our desires and fears onto something and we refer to this 'something' as 'God'. Once again, excellent poetry, but let us note how we have been swept away by the power of (the English) language across the barrier created by this simple word called 'something'. In the former case, there is 'something' real onto which the film is projected, namely the wall, the backcloth or the screen. Therefore, an atheist who uses the GP as an analogy is unwittingly saying, whether or not she realises this fact : there is 'something' out there onto which we humans project our desires and fears, and this 'something' is real, just as the 'something' of the screen is real. But this is precisely what an atheist cannot assert, for the atheist claim is that there is no such external reality to which our beliefs and desires conform, correspond or relate to. In short : the analogic use of the GP is severely flawed.

Indeed, a theist can use the GP and turn it against the atheist. This is how a theist can reply : 'Just as in a movie projector, the camera projects the film onto a real screen (the 'something'), so too we human beings project our deepest hopes and fears onto an external reality that we call God (the 'something' in this case). Now given the fact that we human beings are living in a fallen world, it so happens that very often we project the wrong beliefs, hopes, wishes, and desires; consequently our images of God are also defective. What the GP as used by the atheist does prove is that our human beliefs about God are often false, and this is an important lesson that we must learn from the atheist. However, the atheist version of the GP does not in the least prove that there is no external reality called 'God'; it only shows that our human views of what we think this reality is need to be revised again and again.'

Indeed, living as we do in a supposedly post-modern era, we can in fact see that atheists who use the GP are hopelessly behind their times, for a post-modernist uses the GP to subvert not only Religion but Atheism itself. This is, in effect, what a post-modernist could say to an atheist : 'Very well, my friend, you have used your GP to show that there is no reality called 'God'. Thank you for having brought a ray of light into this darkness that is the world that we live in. But, then, how do you know that there is a reality called 'The World', the World that you think is revealed to you through your science and your mathematics? Well, my friend, you must be consistent enough and apply the clean-cutting Occam's Razor all the way down. Not only is there no real God, there is also no real World : if God is a Projection, so is the World. If God goes out of the window, everything else does.'

My reply to such post-modernist claims will move along very similar lines to my above criticism of the atheist use (or, actually, abuse) of the GP. There is a certain sense in which both God and The World are our human projections, and there is no need to deny the elementary fact that it is, after all, we human beings who have produced these notions. However, and this is the extremely crucial point, the mere fact that these are our human Projections is not sufficient reason to jump to the conclusion that there is no external reality underlying or underpinning these Projections of ours. Whether or not this is the case cannot be settled by the whimsical fiat of the post-modernist, it must be carefully investigated from one case to another. Some of these Projections, say those of the 'unicorn', the 'ether', and the 'phlogiston' may turn out to be merely that --- Projections, nothing more and nothing less. Others, such as The World, Islam, science, human rights, Buddhism, freedom, suffering, Marxism, hope, technology, and progress are once again our human Projections, very much so indeed, but whether or not these are mere Projections is a question that cannot be settled at one stroke by applying some arcane post-modernist mantra. (I shall leave the reader to ponder on the Irony of Ironies : that post-modernism itself is a Projection. I hope your head does not turn around too much thinking about this one.)

Let us try to be a bit more precise. The basic issue is not whether X, Y, or Z is a Projection, for all human notions, conceptions and beliefs are Projections, but whether or not X,Y, or Z is a Projection that is associated with a reality that is capable of sustaining it in an inter-subjective domain. Let us therefore drop the metaphor of Projection as being either as meaningful or as meaningless as the other currently fashionable one that 'genes are selfish' : they produce too much heat, but too little light (though I have never understood the point of this metaphor itself, heat and light being both forms of 'energy').

Living in a Recycled World?

Is the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation 'true' or 'false'? That is, does the mechanism outlined by this doctrine correctly describe the structure of physical reality? There are two ways of approaching this question. One is to go around hunting for empirical data, say paranormal phenomena, psychic recollections of past lives and the like. (Though there is the complex question of whether such data would unanimously be regarded as ‘empirical’.) The other is to understand the reasons why the theory is put forward, and what possible arguments can be brought against it. In this post, I am interested in the second question. Let me first outline the theory of reincarnation. There are differences among the various Hindu philosophical schools in this matter, depending on whether they are monistic or theistic, but what follows now is a description that all of these would broadly agree to.

The theory of reincarnation is primarily a kind of theodicy. A theodicy is an explanation of how it is possible that if we live in a moral world there can be so much of grave moral disparity. How is it that we often find the good suffering and the wicked prospering? In other words, such experiences threaten to undermine our basic faith that we live in a world that is morally structured, down to the very ‘roots’. A person who is ‘moral’ could claim that she is so not simply because she chooses to be moral but also because she has a faith in her morality, a faith that ‘being moral’ is the ‘authentic’ way of being human. To put it bluntly, choosing to be moral is not like choosing to eat strawberry flavoured ice-cream instead of chocolate flavoured ice-cream. And to put it even more strongly, she could say that she chooses to be moral because she believes that there is no other way of 'being human'.

But we do see various kinds of disparities, physical, economic, temperamental, spiritual and so on, and the theory of reincarnation is an attempt to explain how these could have arisen. It argues that whatever we do (our moral actions or our karma) leaves behind a sort of imprint on our subtle bodies (suksma sarira), and over a period of time our good deeds and our evil deeds get collected there into a set of propensities. To be called good, a good man should not be someone who simply happens to do something kind and noble on one morning alone : rather, his goodness should flow from the very depths of his being. That is, his goodness should emerge from a set of good propensities.

One of the crucial claims of the theory of reincarnation is that when we die, this ‘death’ does not amount to the total annihilation of existence. If that were to be the case, this world will become, according to some proponents of this theory, a kind of moral chaos. Evil people will have a comfortable life at the expense of the sufferings of countless others and that will be, as we say, the end of the story. This will have grave implications, it is argued, for our faith that this world is a moral one : that is, the faith that being moral is not an idiosyncratic option but a genuine ‘necessity’ that produces ‘true freedom’.

Instead, the theory claims that the subtle body with its karmic propensities undergoes a transmigration into another pyscho-physical complex, called the gross body. Thereafter, this subtle body will be reincarnated several times until it attains liberation. There is no Hindu consensus on how this liberation is to be conceptualized or attained, but broadly speaking, most of the Hindu schools agree that the subtle body must purify itself of all human passions such as anger, hatred, and fear, and get rid of ignorance about the essential nature of the inner Self (atman). When this is accomplished, the subtle body will not be reincarnated anymore, and this cessation of transmigration is also the ultimate goal of human existence.

In a new existence, the person first has to face her karmic baggage (technically called : prarabdha karma) inherited from her previous existence, and this lays down the rules within which she can operate. For example, she might have inherited an irascible temperament and she will find it difficult, though not impossible, to remain calm and collected in this life. It is crucial to note that this is not the same thing as version of ‘predeterminism’. The past lives do not completely control the present life though they do exert a strong influence on it. So for example, the person with an irascible temperament still retains her free choice to try to remain calm, but her inherited baggage will ‘load’ him/her towards outbursts of anger.

Let me now come to some of the arguments that are given by proponents of the theory of reincarnation to show why it is superior to other cosmological arguments about the nature of our existence and also to some of the important counter-criticisms of this theory. Proponents of a theory of reincarnation claim that other religions (typically the three Abrahamic ones, Islam, Judaism and Christianity) cannot explain why there are so many disparities among human beings. Why are some people born blind, lame or ridden with terminal diseases? Why do some babies die stillborn, and some people die a slow and painful death? Proponents of this theory claim that the Abrahamic religions come very close to attributing these existential differences to God. It will not do to reply, they say, that a man is born blind because of certain genetic dysfunctions because the question can then be repeated by pushing it back by one stage : why did God not see to it that this dysfunctional behaviour did not occur? Since God is the creator of everything and everyone, it would seem to imply that it is God who has (ultimately) created people who are born with various limitations. And this, the proponents of the theory of reincarnation claim, is a serious inconsistency with the other claim that everything that God creates is good. Moreover, its proponents claim that the Abrahamic religions cannot 'make sense' of the reality of animal pain. Why are there so many forms of life such as animals and birds which seem to undergo apparently meaningless and unmerited pain?

These are surely grave problems that the Abrahamic religions have to deal with, but the theory of reincarnation too has its own nest of troubles. According to this theory, our present station in life can be explained partially on the basis of our (mis-)deeds in a previous existence. If that be so, this would seem to take away, so argue its critics, the very ground from every form of human compassion and love.

If I see a human being in pain I should not, on one possible ‘reading’ of the principle of reincarnation, do anything to help her. I have no right to interfere with her existence for she is working out the 'fruits' of a previous existence. Therefore, if I help her, I shall paradoxically be hindering her efforts to attain liberation; at the very least, I shall delay that attainment. Note that this is not to say that I cannot empathise with her; I can indeed feel her suffering deeply and be touched by it : I do not have to become an apathetic monster. But if I try to remove her pain in some way, that would hinder the working out of her previous karma : she has to live through the pain on her own.

Similarly, if a friend of mine dies tomorrow, I should not grieve over him : he died simply because his karmic balance ran out. I think that his death was sudden, but this apparent suddenness merely reveals my ignorance of the detailed working out of the law of reincarnation : if I had infinite knowledge, I would know why he had to die at that age at that time at that place on that day. Our suffering, therefore, ultimately is an illusion caused by ignorance.

Therefore, I might say that the ‘odds’ are evenly laid out between the proponents and the critics of the theory of reincarnation. On the one hand, the proponents of the theory of reincarnation have the merit that they are able to explain, without attributing 'evil' to a creator God, how there could be so much suffering in this world. Their answer is that individuals are only reaping the fruits of what they had sown in a previous existence. Strictly speaking, therefore, suffering is not a problem or a mystery : we do know why we suffer. The intricate details of why we are suffering in a specific context at a certain juncture in our lives may not be revealed to us, but we have a cerrain overarching principle of explanation. We may not know why John had to die at the age of 11, but we do understand that this was because of his previous misdeeds in an earlier life. In no way, then, is God responsible for his death at that early age, and that being the case, we cannot 'blame' God as being cruel or anything of that sort.

On the other hand, critics of the theory of reincarnation claim that it will cut the nerve of all our human interpersonal relations. Love/compassion will become a mere mockery of what we normally understand by that term. If A loves B and B loves A, they are simply playing out their roles governed (note that I say ‘governed’ and not ‘completely controlled’ : the latter is a predeterminism which the theory does not teach) by their past actions in previous existences. ‘Marriages are made in heaven’, but this is meant, so the critics go on, in a sense very different from the one in which the proponents of the theory might take it to be. In other words, it seems to reduce us to the status of actors who wear masks for a certain period of time, and then throw away these masks and put on a set of new ones in the next existence/s.

The Disputed Legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru

It is an integral aspect of what I shall call here 'intellectual honesty' that even when one disagrees with the views and actions of a certain individual, one is nevertheless willing to accept that s/he has made some lasting contributions, whether these are intellectual, social, political, economic, or literary. This point is related to the set of discussions that revolves around the 'disputed legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru' in various circles of contemporary Indian society. I shall not here come up with yet another list of 'what Nehru did', or 'what Nehru could have done', or 'what Nehru should have done'; several such lists have been doing the rounds since at least 1964. Briefly, Nehru has had his detractors from the left who claim, in effect, that he was not western enough (read Marxist); from the right who complain that he was, in fact, much too western; and from the centre who say that Nehru did not know where he really stood. (Given all this, it is quite a miracle how many of his contemporaries did consider Nehru to be a man of such great standing.)

What is forgotten in all such debates is a simple fact, which is all the more crucial because it is so easily overlooked. It was Nehru himself who made it possible for those who came after him to launch such criticisms against him. This he did by laying the foundations of a nation-state whose central features would be the existence of a multi-party system, a basic freedom of the press, and the possibility of engaging in mutual criticisms of one another's socio-political opinions. This comes out all the more clearly when we note that several post-colonial nations in the so-called Third World have often veered dangerously close to various forms of totalitarianisms, absolutisms, and dictatorships. Therefore, the point here is not how fore-sighted Nehru was in his socio-economic policies (I am not economist enough to comment on such matters), but that it was Nehru who ensured that this very criticism of his own policies would be possible within the Indian nation.

Therefore, the next time one launches into a diatribe against Nehru (irrespective of whether one leans towards the right, towards the left, or rests at the centre, or is just having a bad day and needs someone to shout at), one should remember that this very freedom to do so is part of Nehru's legacy to India. It is a gift that we Indians almost take for granted nowadays : this is precisely why it is so valuable to us, this gift of being allowed to freely criticise one another's socio-economic and socio-cultural views without any threat or intervention from any Big Brother figures, for many things that are valuable to us in life are specificially those ones that we have learnt to take for granted.

We, The Oppressed Women

Here is a familiar story, even for those of you who never made it beyond grade ten so far as studying history is concerned : one group of human beings (X) oppresses another group (Y), by drawing upon the vaster pools of socio-economic capital, and the more extensive resources of socio-cultural legitimisation that are at its hands, so much so that Y is even induced to believe, over a period of time, that this oppression is ingrained into the 'very nature of things'. So what do you do if you happen to be in Y (and this, by the way, is in no sense a hypothetical question)? I shall give one example of what people in Y have actually done, historically speaking, and are still doing as I write these lines. The example comes from the disputed territory of 'Indian feminism'. There are, as far as I can count (notwithstanding the charge that counting and categorising are typically masculine activities), three possible reactions to 'feminism' in an Indian context.

(A) The first goes as this : 'It never happened'. This is usually the reaction of an earlier generation of Indian women who have a profoundly ambivalent response to the sudden euphoria of freedom that their daughters and grand-daughters are beginning to experience. On the one hand, they wish that they had been born at least fifty years after their time. On the other hand, like the famous Tortoise tactic of the Roman army, they draw in their flanks, and claim that things were much better during the old days. Yes, the men were in power, but so what? That is the way things are destined to be, and why create any confusion in the divinely arranged scheme of things? Why muddy the waters when they have sprung from the very fonts of divine truth?And besides, in those days, at least the buses ran in time, people came home before 6 in the evening, everyone had their meals on time, everyone woke up at the crack of dawn, and so on and on. And, of course, most crucially, nobody knew what divorces were about.

(B) The second is something of this sort : 'The ship is sinking, but the holes can be plugged'. This reaction is a middle-of-the-road response, usually heard from metropolitian women who have had their fair share of 'European' education (a.k.a. 'convent education'). They find themselves in a somewhat sticky position. On the one hand, when they go out to college or university, they 'hang around' with the cool people, and find themselves surrounded by intellectuals who practise Marx and Lacan, deconstruct Patriarchy and Colonialism, and subvert Establishments and Institutions. On the other hand, when they come home, they find their parents stuck in a time-capsule from which they had never emerged, and their famed skills at deconstruction and subversion go out of the window when they have to meekly sit down and listen to a long list of prospective grooms who have been gracious enough, through the matrimonials (or shall we say patrimonials?) in The Times of India, to kindly agree to descend upon them and test their tea-making capabilities.

(C) The third is rather more straight-forward : 'The ship is sinking, and it cannot be repaired; so jump straight out of it into the wide, open, free, boundless sea'. This group believes in 'direct action' and it has a no-nonsense attitude towards the bygone centuries of piled up oppression. It puts forward its own brand of Reductionism in a world where there are already too many around on sale : everything that is masculine is corrupted, or corruptible. So it is not just the outer husk that must be removed, the inner core must be consigned to the flames as well. Consequently, they become supreme masters of the art of suspicion : all masculine influences must be tracked down, uprooted, destroyed, obliterated and forgotten. Such women, though only a handful on the landscape at present, will become, in the future, one of the greatest nightmares of Indian men who are only gradually learning to stammer difficult words like 'patriarchy', 'hegemony', and 'feminism'. Multiply their number by even a thousand in the next five years, and sit back and enjoy the spectacle of the men complaining that this world has become a living hell for them.

Though I personally believe that (C) is the only way out for Indian feminism (and, indeed, for any meaningful version of feminism), I believe that (C) is self-destructive as it stands. I shall therefore make a few brief comments regarding (A) and (B), and then point out how (C) can be made more self-consistent. (Yes, of course I know that women in (C) do not need a man to point out all of this to them, but I am offering these comments nevertheless, even if only to myself.)

Firstly, of course (A) is, as we say, way off the mark. So much so that this is, in fact, all that I shall say about (A). Secondly, (B) too is quite a painful affair for many women around in the country, and how they deal with this situation is anyone's guess. I therefore come to the case that I find really interesting, that of women in (C).

As I said earlier, (C) needs to be made more self-consistent. That is, (C) needs to be clear about its responses to three vital questions : (a) Where exactly is the dividing line between 'masculinity' and 'feminity'?, (b) Is this dividing line timelessly fixed or is it itself changing every decade?, and (c) Does the rejection of 'masculinity' go with the rejection of everything that has historically been associated with it?

For example, consider the notion of 'rationality'. In their hyperbolic moments, women in (C) sometimes claim that rationality itself is a masculine concept and needs to be discarded. Now if by rationality is meant 'a tool through which one seeks to persuade another person about the coherence of one's own position by developing a pattern of arguments', it is clear that women in (C) who debunk rationality are undermining their own position. Why should anyone listen to them, not to mention accept what they are saying, if 'rationality' itself does not exist? There are many other issues that are associated with this fundamental point. Should women stop studying 'science' (or 'pure mathematics'), given the fact that the scientific enterprise has traditionally been a male-dominated affair? Or even, should they stop using language itself, since masculine presence is so clearly inscribed into our linguistic conventions?

All of this is associated with another question : Is 'truth', in whatever way we understand this notion, itself gendered? That is, is it possible that something can be 'true' for men and 'false' for women, and vice versa? If it turns out, at the end of a careful discussion, that truth is, in fact, not gendered, are not women in (C) themselves guilty of 'sexism' by introducing gender into a context where it is irrelevant?

I shall not attempt the foolhardy task of settling such (epistemological/metaphysical) disputes in this post. The coherence of (C) will depend a lot on precisely how the above three questions are grappled with, examined, discussed, and continually re-examined by women in (C). Nevertheless, if I may be allowed speak in a prophetic tone for once, I would say that the future belongs to (C) alone. Or even more, it should belong only to (C).

New Dogs, Old Tricks



(1)

The young bird sings for the first time
And the wind fills
In the empty spaces.

(2)

Autumn afternoon
The leafless branches
Point in the direction
The spring went past.

(3)

Old man walking among the gravestones
Tries to think
Of a poem for his.

(4)

On the way to work
The young woman finds time
To throw a pebble
Into the green pond.

(5)

Mother sleeping
The only silence in the room
The breathful pauses
Of her young daughter.

(6)

At the street intersection
The young girl stands
With a bundle of yellow balloons
Though she knows
Nobody will ever buy them.

(7)

The homeless dog
Tries to catch some sleep
In the morning
The temple priest
Will kick him out.

(8)

The old stone temple
The young priest feeds
The sacrificial goat
With a new pair of leaves.

(9)

The old fox looks at the snowman
And wonders
If he too has a rifle
Hidden behind his hands.

(10)

With her eyes closed
She reads her son’s letter
For the tenth time.

(11)

Misty autumn morning
In the dusty skies
My favourite star sings for me.

(12)

The first leaves of autumn
Are falling around me
And the helpless sky looks on
Silently counting them.

(13)

The hills around the lake
Glisten in the morning sun
And on her waters dances
The tranquillity
Of the dawn air.

(14)

Now that is autumn
You can hear in the mornings
The faint cry of the distant skies
And in the wild fields
You can see her painting the flowers yellow.

The Reality of Change

How does one go about 'changing the world'? Historically speaking, there have been two major types of response to this question. The first I shall refer to as the 'extrinsic' one. It says that we human beings are born into hierarchical and oppressive systems of power-relations in which there is one group that exercises domination over another, and uses up all possible resources in legitimising, strengthening, and furthering this dominative relationship. But if you demolish the foundations of the structures which promote such oppression, the world will become a better place, indeed, the best possible place, for there would then be nothing left to be changed. Certain forms of Marxism, some versions of feminism, and a few types of ecologisms come close to espousing such an extrinsic method for making the world a more habitable place for us all : remove the external impediments in the form of socio-economic structures that have settled down, over the centuries, like a thick layer of crust over human beings, and they shall then become truly free to cooperate with one another in a world where all inter-personal relationships will have become transparent.

The second I shall call the 'intrinsic' response, and this says that there is nothing really wrong with the world 'out there', all the terrible things exist, and happen, only within the private theatre of the mind. After all, one does not have to be a psychiatrist to know that some of the greatest demons in human history have existed not in the world 'out there' but in the strange dark recesses of the mental life 'in here'. Therefore, there is no need to waste one's time to make the futile attempt of changing the world; one should first start with oneself, and change oneself for the better. If everyone does this, the world will automatically become a better place to live in. Some classical forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, various patterns of New Age thought, and certain versions of 'humanistic psychology' advocate this approach to the question of 'civilisation and its discontents' : you must first cast out the darkness from your mind, and when you do so, the world will become a better place at once, for the change is inside you and not in the world which requires no change.

History itself has taught us that both these responses, carried to extremes, will get us nowhere. The extrinsic response is based on too optimistic a view of human existence, and it fails to notice that even when genuinely oppressive structures have been removed through external measures, human beings do not start behaving in a benevolent manner all at once. Quite often, even when there are no power asymmetries that are legitimised by 'external' social norms, terrible ills can take place in 'privatised' zones that are shut off from the public gaze. For example, in most countries in the contemporary West, gender discrimination is being slowly phased out through legal measures, but there still persist high levels of domestic violence in several European countries. On the other hand, however, it is often not enough to (try to) change oneself without at the same time trying to change the external structures which favour the systemic oppression of certain groups of people. To take the example of the Indian cases of bride-burning over the failure to pay dowry, it is not sufficient to go around 'internally' changing the men (and, quite ironically, the mothers-in-law) involved in the matter : one must, in addition, uproot through legal measures the 'external' socio-cultural institutions that support this practice.

In, short, then, you may very well believe that all real change in the world starts inside you, but even if you believe this, you better make sure that others around you feel the same way!

Trying Hard Not to Believe

Our old man Nehru still stands out there, somewhat forlorn without an entry under his photograph. Till I fill in those blanks, however, here are some statements for anyone who reads them to think about, and especially so if s/he happens to live in the 'secularised West' :

"When a person stops believing in God, s/he does not thereby start to believe in nothing. Indeed, it is precisely then that s/he will start believing in anything whatsoever."