One of the most distasteful aspects of social life, in my (dis)taste, concerns brothers and sisters taking recourse to legal means for the division, distribution, or acquisition of property, wealth, and land. Consider, for example, a 'typical' Indian family with 2 sisters and 3 brothers whose parents draw up a 'will' dividing the family land and property among them.

What does the act of drawing up such a legal document reveal? Is it not the truth that deep down under their skins the brothers and the sisters suspect one another of being thieves, crooks, or robbers, craftily waiting to take advantage of those among themselves who are not watching out?

In this connection, the Indian mystic Ramakrishna Paramahangsa once wrote :

'God laughs when two brothers draw a dividing line on their farmland and say : 'This side is mine, that side is yours''.

The Pakistani Patient

I was then a young boy of 19, on the run from the war in the North, who had found an unexpected patron in an old wiry Khan Saheb who had apparently known my grandfather during the turmoil of the Afghan Wars. One morning, the Khan Saheb barged into my room when I was still enfulged by sleep and told me that there was an old woman I would have to attend to from that morning. He took me to Peshawar's Military Hospital even as the 8 o'clock army siren was piercing through the morning sky.

She was wrapped up in the purest white linen and was staring at the distant lake through the brown window. When we stepped closer to her, she raised her frail right hand slowly and tried to reach for me. The Khan Saheb whispered to me to move nearer to her. She gently touched my right cheek with her fragile fingers and slowly let them run down to my chin.

'Ah, Qasim ... Qasim ... Qasim', she softly sighed to herself, and looked out through the window again.

I was there with her during the last three months of her life. When she found out that I could write Urdu, she asked me if I would write down her autobiography as she dictated it to me. For ten weeks, she spoke, in a tirelessly ferocious stream, of various things, events, and people, as I desperately struggled with my pen to keep up with the pace of her narrative.

The day before she died, however, she told me to keep my papers away. She asked me to come closer to her and began to whisper in my ears.

'There is something that I want to say, but when I speak this to you, you must pretend that you are not in this room, that you are not hearing what I am going to say, that it is as if I am talking to those blank walls in front of me. I speak because I want some human being to know this truth before I am dead.'

I silently nodded my head.

'You can burn all those pages that you have written. Some historian might someday find them interesting, but they tell nothing about me, about who I really was. My entire life was nothing but a long never-ending attempt to escape from the dark prison of the family. What did I not do to earn and safeguard my freedom? First, I got attached to this band of wandering Sufis in Iran. And then, yes, I even joined the Communists in the United Provinces. Hah, can you believe that? Me, this old bag of bones, struggling with the reds? And finally, I joined the Muslim League in Lahore and listened to the Quaid-e-Azam's speeches. People would sometimes come up to me and say, 'How noble of you! How generous of you!'. Bah! If only they knew why I was always running away from one place to another!'

After the Partition, I went to the University of Islamabad where I became a student of the Islamic philosophy of Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sinna, and Al-Ghazzali. It was then that I first became aware of how elusive the 'I' is, how the 'I' is but a fragmented entity that is constantly being built out of our own stories and the stories of those around us.

Even today, however, I do not know whether I am the first-person who speaks in the posts on this blog or whether I am just the collection of the disconnected third-person voices through which I try to hide myself.

Perhaps I shall never know in my life-time.

Perhaps it is only after I am dead that the Transparent Ironist will reveal who I was when I was alive.

Why Intellectuals Hate Mass Culture

Why are intellectuals always bemoaning the spread of what they have labelled as Mass Culture? Why have they made a categorical imperative out of their tea-time habit of lamenting how everyone is wearing Levi-Strauss, drinking at Starbucks, gulping down Nescafe, guzzling Pepsi, listening to MTV, watching Hollywood, and eating McDonald's? The politically correct response, of course, is this, in all its bluntness : It sells to be anti-American these days; and, yes, Che Guevara is back in fashion. There just might, however, be another reason for this modish antipathy to the spread of Mass Culture that is wide-spread among intellectuals.

Even a hundred years ago, though, things were rather different, and intellectuals were then very fond of Culture which served as an umbrella-term for the set of human dispositions, propensities, tastes, and practices that are malleable and that can be moulded through 'education' so that the end-product would be an individual who was 'refined', 'sophisticated', and, in short, 'cultured'. Immense efforts were made by the intellectuals, in alliance with the administrative, judicial, and legislative apparatuses of the modern states, to ensure that more and more human beings became 'cultured'; and the intellectuals, as the self-established experts in emerging disciplines such as 'psychoanalysis' and 'sociology', sold their services to the states to enforce universally applicable norms of social organisation and individual conduct, as these were defined by them. Thus the states spawned entire arrays of 'reform centres', 'correction/reeducation wards', 'psychiatric camps', and 'welfare zones', all of them geared towards the extirpation of local ('retarded', 'retrograde') and indigenous ('superstitious', 'reactionary') cultural differences in order to establish, propagate, and reproduce the Official Culture as prescribed by the intellectuals.

Today, however, things look very different : Culture has become swept into the vortices of the market, a system over which the intellectuals have no power. Consequently, literature, music, art, and sculpture, all of which were earlier viewed by the intellectuals as symbols of a Culture sanctified by their hallowed presence have now become commodified as objects for amusement, free-play, parody, and entertainment. Publishers of books and magazines, owners of art galleries, and managers of record companies, do not need the help of the intellectuals to find out what the market wants to buy and what can be sold in it.

And it is therefore no wonder that the intellectuals are highly offended and enraged by this unexpected snubbing that they have received from the market forces, and like a disgruntled and spiteful school-boy they have hit back by accusing Culture of having run away from their benevolent patronage and having become degenerate, decadent, and debauched. Having been dethroned from their earlier supreme position of being able to dictate what the Official Culture should be, the intellectuals make a feeble attempt to strike at their detractors by accusing them of homogenizing, totalizing, and uniformizing culture in the form of Mass Culture (glibly forgetting, overlooking, or hiding their own earlier totalitarian record of swamping down on cultural diversity).

So the next time you meet an intellectual on the road who accuses you of lack of taste and discernment, of crudity, of coarseness, and of uncouthness simply because you are drinking a Starbucks coffee, listening to an iPod, and wearing a Lee jeans, do not be ruffled at least. Patiently listen through the outburst (without, of course, lowering the sound-volume on the iPod), then pat the intellectual on the shoulder, and walk on to enjoy your Starbucks. The intellectual is simply doing what anyone in that position would do : lament on one's devastating loss of cultural power through knee-jerk invectives at whoever has taken away this power.

On Words and Mystics

He had once told her that words are everything. Even when we lie submerged in a fathomless ocean of silence, words make their presence felt through their very absence. Even when you cannot speak, it is the wall of speechlessness that enshrouds you that suddenly makes you seem so alive.

'Out the very depths of my misery have I called out to you O Lord' runs one prayer in the Old Testament.

He would sometimes wonder why people go to art school and mess around with paints and pastels when you can quietly sit down at home and sketch with your words. Colours are to a painter what words are to a lover of language. Landscapes are to the former what mindscapes are to the latter.

He often used to think that what people call 'religion' is largely irrelevant. Irrelevant to whom? To him, maybe. But not to some of the great mystics of Europe whom he would avidly read about. There was a common feature of their lives which used to fascinate him.

St Teresa of Avila, for instance. She knew that there was a God of Love waiting for her, and yet she also knew that this side of the grave she would never attain that complete beatific vision of her God.

To go through an entire life-time knowing that the Beloved exists, waiting for you, and also knowing that the Beloved can never be truly possessed with your mortal frame --- that is a pain, a most overwhelming pain, that would crush the heart of any human being. Any human being but a mystic.

The -F-r-a-c-t-u-r-e-d- Male Ego

Here is a middle-of-the-week fairy-tale for all of you; feel free to 'read' it as mythical, genealogical, archaeological, farcical, mythological, ironical, literal, sociological, philosophical, comical, historical, or a mixture of all of these.

In the beginning was the Man, and the Man was with Himself, and the Man was God. And yet, the Man was alone ('alone = all + one'). One day, however, the Man stumbled over a Woman in the course of his explorations, and in confrontation with this Woman the Man at once became aware of his loss of suzerainty and autonomy. This experience painfully shook him out of his narcissistic stupor and cast him on the wild seas of anxiety and fear in the face of the Other, the Woman, whom he had to dominate and repress to the farthest corners of his world.

Consequently, the Man's world became one where there could be neither mother, nor sister, nor wife; and where he would allow the Woman to define herself only with respect to what she does not have, that is, autonomy and independence. Thus, the Woman is banned from the realm of the public to that of the private, from the light of culture to the darkness of nature, from the glories of civilisation to the barbarism of the curse of repetitive reproduction. The Man lives in the domain of justice which is characterised by change, historicity and novelty, while the Woman pines away in the shelter of intimacy which is the frigid zone frozen in time.

However. However, this fissure between the public realm of the Man and the private domain of the Woman is internalised by the Man so that a parallel dichotomy opens up within the Man who is himself split between the public official and the private individual. There rages deep within the Man a titanic clash between the clarity of reason and the darkness of emotion, between the instrumentality of cognitive thought and the bonding of empathetic relatedness, between the glorification of his autonomy and independence and the desire for receptivity and responsiveness.

Since then, so we are told (by whom? by the Woman, of course), the Male Ego has always been -f-r-a-c-t-u-r-e-d-.

Some Brief Reflections on India And The Mughals

(i) Mahatma Gandhi is called the Father of the Nation. I wonder how Indians generally 'interpret' that statement; I 'read' it in the most literal sense. Gandhi is the Father of the Nation because the Nation was born on 15 August, 1947.

(ii) What that implies in turn is this : 'India', as a politically sovereign nation-state, did not exist before 15 August, 1947.

(iii) What existed earlier then? Well, you can invent a term for it : call it 'proto-India'. On August 14, 1947 we had proto-India which blossomed into India on the morning of 15 August, 1947. So, simply by definition, people such as Bahadur Shah Zafar, Lord Clive, and Rabindranath Tagore (to mention only three names) never lived in 'India', though they were all inhabitants of 'proto-India'.

(iv) Why this concern over words like 'India' and 'crypto-India'? Because a certain inattentiveness to the question of the putative reference of the term 'India' has resulted in the monotonously bland manner in which statements of the following nature are thrown around : 'The Mughals invaded India'. But which 'India' is being referred to in this last statement? The (non-existent) 'India' of the 5th century, the 11th century or the 17th century? If Gandhi is the Father of the Nation (born on 15th August, 1947), how could the Nation have existed in the 14th century when the Mughals were around? Therefore, it would be more historically and linguistically accurate to say : 'The Mughals invaded that piece of earth which we today, that is, the 'we' who hold an Indian passport for pragmatic and political reasons, refer to by the English word 'India''.

(v) Therefore, if someone were to come up to me and say, 'The Mughals invaded that piece of earth which we today call 'India'', my only reaction can be, 'Thank you for enlightening me with this historical fact, for that is just what it is : a historical fact, nothing more, nothing less. But everyone is invading everyone else at some point of time or the other. Are you aware that even today as you talk about the 'foreign Mughals' there are quite a lot of people in North-east India who claim that 'alien Delhi' is invading the North-East? So why blame it on the Mughals alone when, even as you speak, Delhi is allegedly doing it?'

'But don't you see that the Mughals killed thousands of Hindus?'

'Yes, I see that. But what are you going to do about it? Publish an essay about it in the newspapers? I have no objections to a report that will state precisely how many Hindus were killed, but the more important question is the one of what follows from the historical fact that thousands of Hindus were exterminated in the 15th century. Does it prove that some of those Mughals were blood-thirsty monsters? I readily admit that. And that some of them were savage beasts? Once again, yes. And also that some of them brutally persecuted Hindus? A third time, yes.'

'But it is a matter of national importance that Hindus are made aware of the persecutions that were unleashed upon them by the Mughals.'

'Which nation are we talking about here? The nation of the 15th century? As I said above, the nation did not even exist then. Nevertheless, suppose you are able to prove to me that there is a Muslim somewhere out there whose (Mughal) great-great...grandfather killed my (Hindu) great-great...grandfather. Will it make any difference to my life? I don't have the faintest clue as to who my great-great...grandfather was, and I want him to remain just where he is today, solidly buried under the forgotten debris of the past. So if tomorrow I were to meet this Muslim whose (Mughal) great-great...grandfather committed that act of murder, I would sit down with him for a coffee, find out what he does for a living, and who knows, maybe we can even go on to have one of those 'philosophical discussions' over the 'meaning of history''.

A Message From An Old Friend

The first time I met the Transparent Ironist was way back in 1992 when I was a Class X student of St Mary's Convent, Guwahati, India. He was a student of our 'sister-school' Don Bosco and I thought that he would be a useful person from whom to find out more about that school. We didn't talk much about Don Bosco though; that was the time when I liked to 'essentialise' people by putting them into neat categories, and one of the first questions that I asked him was, 'How would you summarise yourself in one phrase?' Looking back at those days today, I smile at my foolish demand. I also smile, however, at how astonished I was at the Ironist's immediate reply : 'An implacable foe of the Family.'
In the weeks immediately thereafter, I began to dislike the Ironist for that reply. A spiteful angry young man carrying a huge burden of hatred within his heart --- that is what I thought he was.
Today, however, nearly thirteen years after first meeting him, I feel somewhat weird having to say that unknown to myself that is what I too have always been : an implacable foe of the Family.

(The following is an extract from my diary, dated 23 July, 2002, that I have asked the Ironist to publish on his blog.)

We were three sisters, and I was the youngest. Father was a police officer who was almost always away from home, leaving mother to do most of the house-work and bringing us up.

Mother seemed to be very happy that she did not have any boys, and sometimes when I would sit down beside her during the long evenings, watching the sun go down, she used to tell me what a relief it was having three daughters and not three sons.

'Boys? Do you know what a terrible mess boys are? At fourteen, they will start answering you back; at eighteen, they will jeer at girls from the windows; at twenty, they will come home drunk; at twenty-five, they will bring home some girl they have picked up on the street; and at thirty, they will leave home never to return again. Compared to them, girls are a gift from Paradise. They are so much easier to train, to control, and to civilise.'

One day, however, my eldest sister told me, 'Don't you know why she keeps on talking that way in front of you? Don't you see that she was never able to forgive herself for having you instead of a son?'

Something very deep within me changed that day; I think I lost an innocence that I would never recover again, a trust in human beings that I have never found again.

I told the Ironist about this the other day. He smiled to himself, looked at the blue sky and repeated to himself, 'Girls are so much easier to train, to control, and to civilise.' And then he added in his ironic style, 'Yes, I know. That is why girls hardly ever recover from the effects of that education.'

He did not say it with even the slighest iota of cynicism in his voice. Indeed, if there is one thing that I am sure of about the Ironist, it is that he has a singular inability to be cynical about anything.

At that moment, I felt a powerful sense of fellow-feeling with him, as if he too were a being just like me who was trying hard to recover from the very same effects.

The Supreme Observer

Sometimes I take a break from reading my book by sitting down on a black steel bench in front of the library and observing the passers-by and those who are standing under the green trees. On a few occasions, it so happens that the people whom I am observing are themselves observing other people. Once when I was observing a young man observing an old beggar trying to light a cigarette, it so happened that I looked up and saw an old woman observing me. So this is what she was observing : she was observing me as I was observing another man observing another man ...

But what if someone else was observing her too?

(According to Vedanta, of course, there is the omnipresent Great Atman silently observing all of us. Me too, even as I am typing this post. I am already beginning to feel a bit spooky.)

(And yes, you too will be observed if you try to comment on this post.)

The Question of 'Inclusivity'

Notions such as 'toleration', 'inclusivity', and 'egalitarianism' are very dear to my heart. But, and this is an extremely vital But. But I believe that this side of the grave (and who knows what awaits us on the other?), they shall remain regulative ideals in the sense that no social system can become perfect embodiments of these. That is, what seems to be tolerant enough from one side of the wall can be experienced as highly intolerant and biogted from the other; thereby only augmenting the mutual lack of comprehension across the divide.

To 'see what I mean', here are some snatches of a conversation that I had with a school-friend when I was in India in 2003. After talking to him for a few minutes about the 'old times', I realised that he had (unfortunately!) developed RSS-sympathies. (If I were the Education Minister of India, I would introduce a compulsory course in all Indian colleges. It would be called 'A History of European Anti-Semitism : 200 BC to 1945 AD'.)

With a gleam in his eyes, he said : 'Ah, I see. So you have now become a scholar of religions, eh? Have you studied the Hindu texts in the original Sanskrit? Have you spent a year meditating in the Himalayas? Or are you simply parrotting the views of the Western scholars? And what about Islam, then? Don't you think that Hinduism is more tolerant than Islam?'

That notion, that Hinduism is more tolerant than Islam, is so widely-heard and so unthinkingly-repeated throughout the length and the breadth of India that the only thing that prevents me from branding it a 'typical Hindu fallacy' is the fear that I shall be thrown out from the Academy on the unforgivable charge of being a neo-Orientalist.

So, then, here is the question once again : Is Hinduism more tolerant than Islam?

Let's focus on the word 'tolerance', and consider two types of it, 'theological tolerance' (TT) and 'sociological tolerance' (ST).

As for TT, Islam does not, I readily admit, have a good track-record. Islam has an urge to move out into the world making (and, sometimes, compelling) other human beings into becoming 'Muslims', that is, submissive creatures obedient to the will of Allah. In this regard, Hinduism, in many of its (non-RSS!) forms, can be said to be very theologically tolerant : so long as you don't violate the Indian Penal Code (and also, of course, the wishes of the omnipotent Indian Family!), you can believe, practise, and do whatever you feel like and still call yourself a 'Hindu'.

However. However, what about ST? Here I can only state that so powerful was my distaste, during my teenage years, for the Hindu caste-system that till this very day it is with a great sense of uneasiness that I write 'Hinduism' as my 'religion' when filling up official forms. Indeed, I remain convinced that casteism is the one immortal blemish on the face of Hinduism, so that when it comes to the question of ST, Islam has, for me at least, a refreshing breadth of egalitarianism that is missing from many traditional forms of Hinduism. (I am not blind, of course, to the socio-empirical fact that many Indian Muslims have incorporated some Islamized version of Hindu casteism into their social systems. However, this is not a practice that is inbuilt into the Qu'ran.)

Finally, let me return to the question of TT : what makes us think that Islam is anti-TT? First, what is Islam? Here is a concise one-line answer : There is one ultimate reality, 'God', referred to by the name Allah, and the only way to reach Allah is by living in accordance to the Qu'ran.

Is this claim in itself anti-TT? Perhaps, it is; but then consider some other parallel claims.

(1) There is one political institution, referred to by the term 'Indian secularism', and the only way to be a secularist is by living in accordance to the Indian Constitution.

(2) There is one world, referred to the by the term 'reality', and the only way to be a realist is by living in accordance to the findings of the physical, the mathematical, and the biological sciences.

(3) There is one social structure, referred to by the term 'Communist society', and the only way to be a Communist is by living in accordance to the laws of historical materialism.

(4) There is one economic system, referred to by the term 'globalisation', and the only way to be globalised is by living in accordance to the laws of the international(ised) market.

(5) There is one norm of orthopraxy for all Indians, referred to by the term 'Hinduism', and the only way to be an Indian is by taking pride in the Hindu past of India.

I shall leave you to draw whatever conclusions you may wish to from the above. Just one line of commentary from my side. I have not 'proved' that Islam is not anti-TT; but I have tried to show that we should first be careful to ensure that we are not hiding some form of (quasi-)anti-TT within ourselves when we throw stones at the glass houses of other people.

To See The Whole World

Someday I want to go walking along that long winding red dusty village road.

I wonder if the long bamboos will still be there, bending over in the gentle wind, welcoming me to the village. And if the village children will mill around me, asking me who I am, reminding me that I am none the wiser for having digested a hundred tomes of philosophy.

And I wonder if on both sides of the road the golden rice will wait, reflecting the silent joy of the autumn sky.

And then I will point out the tallest tree on the horizon and ask her.

'If I get up on top of that tree, do you think I will be able to see the whole world?'

And she will smile at me.

'You are still soooooo young. How can you possibly believe in such a thing? No, dear, the world is much much bigger. You won't be able to see the whole world even if you climbed up that tree.'

'But how can I see the whole world?'

'That's why we send you to school, don't we? So that some day you shall be able to read all the books in the world and see the whole world.'

This time, though, she will not be around to tell me that.

And I too would not wish to listen to her advice.

I would walk up to that tallest tree, if it is still around, and climb it.

From its top, I shall finally see the whole world.

But Just For Once


Once
But just for once
I had touched
The brittle sky
And let its pallid wealth
Sink into my tired bones.
But that with time
We have both
Grown an eternity old
I now wish
That for once
But just for once
I could paint
The anguished face
Of your unblemished youth.

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.

Nature And/Or Nurture

Biology And/Or Culture

: Work In Progress

I have not commented so far on these most famous dualities, Nature And/Or Nurture and Biology And/Or Culture, in these posts; and this is mainly because, as they say, I am still 'working on it', trying to understand the views of those entrenched, almost Ostrich-like, on either side of these seemingly impregnable barriers. However, here are some brief comments to indicate the 'fruits' of my work in progress.

Perhaps the easiest way to introduce the reader to the contours of this debated terrain is by invoking the Original State of Adam and Eve. According to the Naturalists, Adam and Eve would have manifested differences in cognitive and affective abilities, dispositions, temperaments, talents, and sensitivities because of their different types of hormones, genes, and brain-structures. According to the Nurturalists, however, there would have been absolutely no (non-anatomical) differences between the two : Eve would have been equivalent to Adam in all (other) ways. Now, however, the 'sensitive/empathetic' descendants of Eve have become socialised into certain distinctive biased patterns of emotional and cognitive behaviour, these called 'feminine'; and the same holds for the 'cold/analytical' descendants of Adam whose modes are called 'masculine.'

Thus the debate rages over an impressive list of dichotomies : Men are said to be intrinsically predisposed towards placing the individual over the community (but just try saying that to Lenin and all the Communists!), women to setting a higher value on the family (but 30% of the current female population in the UK labels itself as 'single', no?); men to be having an ephemeral penchant for 'things' with women seeking durable bonds with 'persons'; and the list can be easily extended.

I shall not here carry you through a whirlwind tour of the contested disciplines of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience (fields in which I am not 'professionally' trained), except to state a somewhat 'dogmatic' summary of my 'investigations' so far.

We do not need to choose between Nature and Nurture which are, in any case, abstract concepts that we loosely play around with in these debates. It is highly possible that there are biological bases to the cognitive and the affective differences and dispositions between men and women, but these variances are routed, developed, and expressed through specific cultural channels. For example, because of the divergence in the number of (prenatal and postnatal) sex hormones and brain structures, women may be biologically 'hardwired' towards forming 'empathetic' relationships with other human beings more easily than men. That would be an empirical biological claim which must, however, not be confused with the cultural question of whether or not this capacity for 'empathy' is to be cultivated, developed, or repressed. In some cultural contexts, empathy may be highly valued as 'ennobling' while in others, it may be scorned upon as 'frivolous'; but the latter modes of evaluation emerge not from biology but from cultural beliefs and appraisals.

This, by the way, is not to deny in the least the paramount role that the cultural norms of what it is to be 'masculine' and 'feminine' play in our highly gendered existence. The man who would not buy a pink-coloured car, and the woman who would not wear a 'man's watch' are all playing out these gender-roles that they have internalised from their childhood. None of these observations, however, rule out the possibility of discovering through careful empirical methods that men and women have distinctive cognitive and emotional responses and skills that are biologically rooted.

Now let me respond to a possible objection from those with feminist sensitivities : Have I not left the door open towards some sort of 'genetic determinism'? Are you not saying that men are this way ('cold', 'violent', and 'calculating' or whatever), women are that way ('sensitive', 'gentle', and 'responsive' or whatever) and that this is all there is to it? What would I reply to a long-time wife-beater who put forward the claim, 'We men are just like that. It is in our genes to behave this way towards women.'

To this, I shall repeat the distinction that I made earlier, but now in a slightly different form : there is no one-to-one correspondence between biological abilities and cultural norms so that you cannot always derive moral principles from genetic reports. So even if it is established, on good biological grounds, that men have a greater 'tendency' or 'bias' towards violent behaviour than women, this does not in itself settle the next, and definitely more important, question : Is violent behaviour to be valued or encouraged? How we answer the latter will, as I said above, vary depending on the background cultural contexts and maxims; if you are in the First World War or in the Sicilian mafia, the answer will be yes, but if you are in a Buddhist monastery, it will be a resounding no.

Therefore, there are two distinct issues here, which must be kept carefully separated : one is the experimental question of whether or not there are any biological bases to the perceived gender differences, and the other is the moral issue of whether the existence of these differences is to be taken as a vindication of the stance of gender-discrimination. The first does not logically (or 'necessarily') lead to the latter; I myself accept the former but not the latter. That is, even if a biologist, cognitive psychologist, or a geneticist were to affirm the former in some scientific journal next week, I would happily accept it without reversing my moral conviction that there should be no discrimination against women in matters where gender is not relevant to the issue (which I take as a summary definition of 'gender-discrimination').