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Started: 05th August, 2019
Completed: 05th August, 2019
Added P.P.S: 25th October, 2020.
Added P.P.P.S: 27th October, 2020.
This was a remarkably easy piece to start and finish, all of one and half hour: because what is so obvious hardly requires much laboured reflection.
Is it for this that daddy died?
What have we done, Maggie what have we done?
~ The Post War Dream, The Final Cut (1983), Pink Floyd
In the name of Allah, most benevolent, ever-merciful.
Time and Age are witness
Man is certainly in loss,
Except those who believe,
and do good and enjoin
truth on one another,
and enjoin one another
to bear with fortitude
(the trials that befall).
~ Surah 103, Al-'Asr: Makki (Time and Age), The Qur'an
khudaa-e-bartar
terii zamiin par
zamiin ki khaatir
yeh jang kyon hai?
har ek fatah-o-zafar
ke daaman pe
khuun-e-insaa kaa rang kyon hai?
zamiin bhii terii
hain ham bhi tere
yeh milkiyat kaa savaal kyaa hai?
yeh qatl-o-khuun ka rivaaj kyon hai?
yeh rasme jango jadal kya hai?
jihnen talab hai
jahaan bhar kii
unhiin kaa dil
itnaa tang kyon hain?
~ Khuda-E-Bartar, Sahir Ludhianvi, Taj Mahal (1963)
Imagine you run an enterprise, an association, or an organisation of people. Imagine you have been entrusted that responsibility by the very people whose affairs your role is to manage. For that you have been vested with discretionary powers and necessary authority. And then imagine you turn upon those very people?
Under what law, man-made or natural, is this forgivable? Under what act of conscience is that justified?
But then sample this: there are persons of eminence, pre-eminence and non-eminence who celebrate demonetisation, and now forced usurpation of Kashmir. Only if they would look at some of the figures reported today: nearly 200,000 employees disengaged in front-line positions of auto-dealerships; over a million, and possibly more, jobs at stake due to a slow-down in the auto sector, contributed by a host of factors, but perhaps none stronger than the (expected) blow-up of a large-scale financial institution like IL&FS. An economy grown on the artificial steroid of debt must eventually pay its dues.
This is not to say of continuing farm distress, submergence of a town like Baroda under water, unrelenting rains in Bombay and many parts of Maharashtra, following an obstinate spell of heat. The coastal areas are anyway doomed for disaster so why bother at all? Now imagine if you were in charge of managing affairs of a billion plus people what should really disturb your sleep at night? Abrogation of Article 370? Or how to initiate policy measures to ameliorate, improve and nourish the ordinary lives of ordinary citizens?
One does not need any kind of formal education to answer a question of this nature. What matters and what does not is finally a matter of acute common-sense. Why then do men behave in the way they do? If it stopped simply at willfully avoiding what matters, and engaging in what is superficial, trivial, ephemereal, and non-substantive it was really a different matter. But it is simply not only not heeding what matters, but purposefully engaging, inciting, triggering what is harmful: to not only those who must bear the immediate pain of the deployment of over 35,000 troops in Kashmir, a curfew with no deadline, and an overnight change in laws concerning property, right of residentship; but the consequences must also come to bear, by definition, on the generations thereafter in form of continued anguish, resentment and a deep sense of betrayal, and spread, by association, to a sense of unbalance, anxiety and restlessness to the rest of the nation.
For, just as, if one farmer pollutes his land through indiscriminate exploitation of his land and water resources it also affects his neighbours, so does a corruption of civility, grace, decency, and importantly, honouring a long-held compact with a people of a federal State, must also necessarily affect the destinies of other states. It is sad indeed that there are parties in the Opposition who, for whatever political reasons, must back a non-constitutional and historically sinful amendment in the highest legislative body of the country.
It is all the more bewildering that there are voices that rejoice, voices who do not share in the ideology of that poison-reeking entity called the RSS. They rejoice despite having hard facts at hand of the way of making decisions of the present dispensation: most ably brought out in the disaster deceptfully termed demonetisation. Some of these same people rejoiced then, believing that whilst they suffered, the rich suffered more. Look what that sense of rejoicement has done to the SMEs, to the informal sector of the economy, and to their very own livelihoods. There is a reason envy is listed as a vice and not a virtue.
They also rejoice knowing that decisions of this nature, while taken in the name of the people, of the nation, and nowadays, of the Gods, are never in the benefit of any one of them. They are political decisions of a peculiar nature: the kind which flows from an understanding of politics as usurpation and maintenance of power at any cost. The idea of politics, as being a bridge to bind differing points of views so that society holds in balance, is certainly not the motivating factor behind them. And whilst we still happen to label politics of the former kind as 'politics', it is actually, what the scriptures would term, covetousness and greed in their naked forms.
Now, covetousness grows on a certain kind of soil: one irrigated by seeds of ignorance. In this case, ignorance grows out of a specific brain-washing: one which gratingly trumpets Pakistan, Muslims, and Kashmiris who profess and practise Islam, as enemies of the State. This brain-washing thereby engenders a sensibility that celebrates that which is hard, machoistic and reviles, disdains and looks down upon what is gentle, refined, subtle, sublime, flows from the conception of contentment, compassion and brotherly love.
Mind you, this kind of ignorance is not the ignorance of the knave or the fool, or Dostoevksy's Idiot. It actually is endowed with sufficient intelligence of the sinister and vindictive kind, which is what makes it so harmful, dreadful. It is like a parasite: it never allows the one whom it inhabits to ever come to peace with himself. But before its host meets its dutiful end, it also takes the shape of a virus: it disturbs the calm and peace of others too.
For there is only one reason a man is angry, resentful, hateful, disdainful and commits acts such as saying certain things on 27th February, 2002; 08th November, 2016; and 05th August, 2019: he is unable to love himself. He is unable to be at peace with himself. He is driven with a kind of desperate despair which refuses to abide. He is, what Dante would say, in Hell. For a man who is at ease with himself does not know what is unease. And hence, how can he ever put others at ease? Ever?
People will find various ways of explaining these actions: of a way to divert the attention of the public from the real hardships they face today, to realisation of an ideological dream --- one which looks upto the modern Zionist state and how it has inflicted misery on the lives of the Palestinian people as a role model to aspire to. But these are insufficient enough to really explain what is happening underneath. A man's actions are nothing but the projection of his own spirit. And the more tortured a spirit is, the more infused with vice are his actions likely to be.
The country is unfortunate to be living through times to bear witness to the tortured karma of a tortured soul, one who really needs to go to the Himalayas to seek post-election relief, and publicity. It is fortunate, though, to be given sufficient evidence of how its citizens ought not to behave. Admittedly, it is a heavy price to pay for the citizens to learn this. The question is, will they learn?
For that one must turn to the question of, what in the first place creates tortured souls? Souls who are animated by a spirit which refuses to relent on its aversion to certain things, and is unable to get rid of this idea of demonstrating one's muscular strength through nuclear tests, through self-created wars on the Line of Control, and now this latest act of self-destructive behaviour. What is it in that spirit which allows men to sleep at night unmindful of the consequences of pursuing that mythical concept called nationhood while neglecting the very real, tangible, felt and concrete facts that stare back at them?
It follows, first and foremost, from an inability to make sense of your condition. For, if you were alive in 1925, borne to an upper-caste family, and that too a Brahmin one, and you gradually see the traditional power, respect, authority you once held fade away, you search for an explanation. In searching for that explanation you turn to history and you torture history, you bend it, you beg of it, you pierce its belly for an answer to emerge. But there is no ready or simple answer that comes through but the cold fact that you are fated and destined to be where you are.
The law of karma has been hard to accept and digest over the ages: hence while the philosophy of the land east of the Sindhu River talks much about it, those who claim affinity to finding nector in that rat poison of Hindutva find it very difficult to integrate it into their reasoning. So, while a close reading of history reveals a complex picture, one which seems to incline more towards validating the law of karma, the anguished soul is finally forced to simplify: it was the bloody Muslims and then the British who brought me to where I am.
Convenient. But it does not stop there. How can any man be satisfied with finding an answer that only explains his position. He feels it acquires teeth and substance only when it can be generalised, when it can explain the plight of others, who he feels to be like him, too. For only when a self-conjured fancy becomes a theory can a man rest in peace: for he starts feeling convinced that his magical trick is but reasoned science. And from there is borne the theology and ideology of that thing called Hindutva. It helped rationalise to a group of men their own predicament, and more importantly, their distastes and disdains.
Only if they had instead turned really to the scriptures, they would have found much grace and moral strength to accept their lot, and find their way out of it. But that, unfortunately, was not to be. And when they birthed this thing called Hindutva, they unleashed a spirit which reeked of the fumes of anger, possessed the feel of the slime of envy, provoked a permanent burning sensation in the stomach caused of jealousy, carried a false pretense at occupying the moral high ground, and was joined at the hipy by an attendant restlessness and anxiety by their minds being consummed by a theology which never ever will get them any closer to satisfy that primal question: what explains my condition?
Indeed the minds ensnared by this ideology are, again to use Dante's imagery, in a permanent state of Hell, or in a situation analogous to Abhimanyu's Chakravyuh. Once you get in, you just cannot get out. The more you allow that ideology to spread roots in your mind, the more agitated you remain, the more you contaminate minds of others, including forcing a 17 or 18 year to leave his wife, then rise up the ladder of a political party to land upon that fateful evening of 27th February, 2002 to commit a verbal act that by any act of law, secular or heavenly, made him unfit to hold any public office thereafter and illegitimised his very existence.
It is perhaps some unfathomable working of the law of karma which brings an illegitimate and unfit political figure to the second highest public office in the country. And to bring along-side with him a soul infested with greater vileness and meanness that post independence India has yet to witness.
But then that strain of nationalism, which has fevered many a minds, has its silent roots in other minds too. Kashmir was a gentleman's compact between India and the State of Kashmir to hold a plebiscite at a suitable point in time to decide its future. Behind the excuse of geo-strategic reasoning that compact never got exercised. It is to the discredit of all public officials of responsibility that this stain and stigma shall remain attached to them. But none more so then persons consummed by their nationalist zeal and coveting power like few have coveted before.
There is a simple question that every man must ask of himself: all that I am thinking and doing, and ideas under whose influence I am acting, is any or all of it getting me any closer to being a better man? A man who may behave well? A man for whom a mother might say: Son, be like this man, for he represents all that is Godly on earth itself. If it does not, why behave that way in the first place? For whose benefit? For whose advantage? Is feeding one's vanity the end of it all? If so, then, one can only say: Son, what awaits him is nothing but the nether realms of Dante's Hell, where even the most dreadful of sinners shiver to step into.
One may dare venture to say that perhaps it was reserved only for Judas for betraying Christ. In our case, it might well be reserved for men who betrayed those who put them in office in the first place. All this while my economy weeps and puts a dent in the stomachs of men who can't square off their meals. Who cares about the myth of the nation (rashtra) when the country (desh) itself weeps?
To those in the grips of this ideology which only serves to agitate and disturb the mind ask yourself: what have you accomplished? What will you answer when it is asked of you: what goodness you really brought to bear on those around you? Didn't all your actions fit in the frame of extracting real revenge for imagined grievances? Isn't that the height of ignorance (what the Buddha would say 'moha', the root of all evil)? Is that the culmination of all your earthly exertions: your education, your intellect, your powers of reason?
It is a real tragedy, all the more so, because it is so easy to disengage from these thoughts and engage instead with another that is so easy to validate in life: when you do good, good does happen to you. The opposite holds true with alarming rapidity. A certain iron lady called Indira Gandhi rose and fell. Hitler effectively went mad and killed himself. Rajiv Gandhi had to face the brunt of his meddling in affairs of another country. Thatcher was, insultingly, thrown out of her own office by her own party members. Why then take a chance: there is still time for those who continue their mendful ways.
Why also get caught in a perpetual web: The Germans murdered the Jews, the Jews murdered the Arabs, the Arabs murdered the Americans, and Americans murdered, well, they have no clue who they murdered because for them they all look alike. (Well, Roger Waters said the first three, the author added to the list.)
Here is a clue, Marx was and is right: it is finally, and always is, about the economy stupid. The highest sin is the sin of raiding the coffers of the public treasury to finance troop movements to accomplish imagined victories. It is a sight to behold: a king gone mad aided by a conniving crook raiding the very purse that will sustain his hold on his kingdom, and those contributing to that purse clapping their hands. And then they ask: why doesn't this nation develop? With such lack of discernment is it any wonder if the only answer people find credible is: because we are not national enough. An ode, and a glass of the most expensive of foreign made wine to an idea of nationhood that perpetuates stupidity. Amen. And ouch, that glass of wine did further weaken our trade balance.
While people in some pockets pray for rain and in others fight rain, the rest shall celebrate the arrival of a nation. Those with some sensibility left, ought instead, to focus not upon the question of what explains my condition to find answers that blame others. They shall instead direct their inquiry to the question: how can I take responsibility for my situation and behave with grace, responsibility, stand along-side my generation, and find ways to enact the heavenly law onto the secular realm. (Again the first three are picked up from an interview with Charlie Munger, and the last is the author's little secular flourish.)
That will, hopefully, take us all, from Dante's Hell to Dante's Purgatory where we must repent for our sins. A step in the right direction I'd say. Perhaps we should really offer a plebiscite to the people of Kashmir. Like the touch of the Ganges, it may hasten our collective journey through purgatory onwards to the Heavens.
P.S.: In an earlier era, I would scrupulously read through and compile columns of A.G.Noorani on my website in the hope that they would be of value to someone at some point in time. Now time no longer permits such diligence. I would have, however, never imagined that I would have to point towards them on an occassion like this. But perhaps this is the best time to bring them out, and maybe also the reason they were written. There might have been a sixth sense pervading some minds that a day like this would arrive at some point in Indian polity. Ambedkar foresaw and declared the corrosion of the constitutional spirit back in 1956.
Hence, out of vanity of my own, I direct the reader to my labours in the other section of the website titled 'A.G.Noorani' and request her or him to seek out articles related to Kashmir. At a personal level, that might hasten the reader's passage through their own little purgatories.
P.P.S.: Kashmiriyat is a distinct creation of the lands east of the Sindhu river. It is difficult to see how effacing it can be matter of jubiliation: A world we have irretrievably lost (2015).
P.P.P.S: An extract from a correspondence about something else leading to something else.
Subject: Re: Ray Dalio on China in FT
I (this author) have never said this regime is to blame. I have said the propensity of the polity to rely on individuals against institutions is (to blame). It has reached its most extreme version right (now) because a segment of the polity has a combustible combination of two things: covetousness for a better material tomorrow combined with an envy, and hatred, of a specific community.
Such a combination always proves untenable when it is allowed unbridled expression. An explicit abrogation of Article 370, in my opinion, is the nadir o of India's collective conscience: not because a bunch of goons in Government did it, but because a sizeable portion of the polity clapped in glee.
In Urdu there is a fine word called Tehzeeb. All pretense of it was lost on that day. Its immediate ramification will be financial and geo-political. It's long-term moral. People nowadays think moral laws have no bearing on anything. Those who devote themselves to philosophy understand that a country (US) built on murder of 25 million Red Indians and subjugation of an entire race (Blacks) will not have time be kind to it (for long).
Your analysis is mechanical. I believe life is not very complicated: one does not need to think much. If you do right you are taken care of, and if you behave dishonourably, you will be robbed of yours.
Indians will not lose what they have. Indeed they will continue to survive well. They will simply fail to gain what they could've. Perhaps that has already come to pass, and that alone counts as an abject failure. The efforts hereafter are akin to fishing for bread-crumbs.
I am remarkably surprised that people still manage to commend a government whose entire basis is built upon deception and criminality. The error of this polity was only one: to elect man despite knowing the happenings on 27th February, 2002. Based on the limited common-sense I have, I would say the country failed then and will remain in limbo till it has purged itself of that sin.
Reforms are just what the word means: to form something again. Reforming labour laws (or farm laws) does not change a crowd, a reform of its heart does. It is the only reason India got independence, and was able to remain sensible for some time after it.
For India to change, its people need to realise: you do not cheer the humiliation of the Kashmiris. It is equivalent to what Kauravas did to Draupadi. I write-off this country only because I see little feeling of shame in people. Shame results in integrity. Integrity results in repentance. Repentance results in gratitude. Gratitude results in humility. Humility results in patience. Patience builds character. Character builds the 'wealth of nations'.
One may count policy reforms. I prefer to take a simpler course: assess the worth of a collective's character. I do not need to crunch numbers to know that the country of 1.3 billion has entered a multi-generational funk.
Evicting a murderer from PM's post is the first step. Restoring dignity of a State is the second. Rediscovering the deep influence of the Islamic tradition on our culture is the third. Keeping the Brahmins at bay is the fourth. For what we are living through is nothing but the revenge of the Brahmins.
We need a new moral system but we threw out one of the greatest (Buddhism) and demonised an equally finer one (the Quranic world-view). If our souls are bankrupt it seems a little puzzling to believe our purses can be full.
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