HOLY INDIAN CASTEISM

 

Whatever I might be writing here today might seriously offend a lot of my friends and relatives,close and distant. I had never thought that I would be seriously writing on this socio-cultural issue,which was essentially a non-issue for me till today.Yet something compels me to write here,and I am curiously willing to look at the responses I might be getting because personally I need to 'feel' the sociological status an important aspect of contemporary circumstances,common to me and the reader.I need to know where we stand.

 Sleepily cursing,over a mug of cold coffee,through the front page headlines of The Times Of India,dated 29th.September,2009-Mumbai edition,I felt a tight slap on my face,the persisting echo of the moral resonance of which I am still reeling under.
"Nepal ditches India,says caste system is akin to racism",screamed one headline.

"..despite Indian opposition,the United Nations all set to dub it a Human Rights violation",continued the headline in smaller fonts.

 

 Nepal has emerged as the first country from South Asia to declare full support to the principles of a draft of guidelines expressed in a document issued by the United Nations Human Rights Council(the UNHRC)in May,2009 for "effective elimination of of discrimination based on work and descent"-the United Nations terminology for caste inequities.The fact that a conference-session of the UNHRC is going on in Geneva at the moment is of significant relevance here. The United Nations document seeks to activate"regional and international mechanisms" through the UN and its organs to negate all forms of caste discrimination.

 India has always expressed formal aversion to internationalisation of its inherent caste problem ever since the issue was actively drafted in the UN platform.A close look at the documented draft guidelines announces that discrimination based on work and descent is associated with the notion of a purity-pollution antithesis,practices of untouchability,and that approximately 200 million people in the world are affected by it,which is deeply rooted in societies and cultures-a clear pointer towards India.

 We all know that strict demarcation of castes in social interactions and untouchability are still unabashedly practised in rural India with medieval zeal,perhaps in dominant majority,both in Northern and Southern India.Significantly,the political dynamics has been markedly intricated with caste-based policies,particularly the Dalit issue taking centrestage.

We read about the "upper and lower clan" clashes of violence,mostly in the Hindi belt-Bihar,Madhya Pradesh,Uttar Pradesh(and the new states squeezed out of this region-Note:this new geographical configuration is the result of regional politics favouring casteim to a large extent),Rajasthan and Haryana.Gujarat and Maharashtra are no holy exceptions of course.
 While the Hindi belt is afflicted with Thakur-Yadav mutual hatred,the sub-Deccan states which throw up pictures of advancement in all fields,better quality of academics and neo-intellect with higher literacy rates,present a paradoxical picture when it comes to casteist demarcation.We hear some of the cruellest stories of degradation of humanity,with 'superior' Brahmins(especially from the 'pristine' segment) oppressing the Untouchables in an vulgarly medieval way,seemingly taking inspirational references from ancient,holy texts that have lost their sacrosanct status long back in front of the educated and the learned.Quite a combination though - neo intellect and medieval casteist oppression! Shameful as they are,this picture of our country is nothing new.

But does this demographical picture round off the issue of casteism completely?I don't think so at this very moment.

 When I look back upon my own bloodline,I discover some of the most shameful episodes of casteism a comparatively educated lot can manage to offer.I have seen marriages being arranged Strictly on the basis of caste(the attitude being matter-of-factly),ostracisation of people who got married outside the "permitted standard",and comments of sneer and demeaning jokes about people with particular surnames or apparent social backgrounds in everyday common-talk blossoming in kitchens as well as sitting rooms.In fact I have grown so used to this shameful carteist undertone(overtone at times)reflecting itself in my own blood in varying degrees,that I hardly bat an eyelid when I brush my eyes over advertisements of matrimony in newspapers and magazines of of intellectual distinction. I find casteism Everywhere. 

 

Before I look around to identify casteism elsewhere, I should to look at the tradition of my own blood-line otherwise I shall be the biggest hypocrite in my own eyes.To identify distasteful episodes of casteist demarcation,I don't need to go back beyond 2 generations,both in the maternal and paternal lines.While certain ethics prevent me from specifically pointing out relatives( whatever goodwill is left between blood brothers and sisters in this age of fragmented relationships will simply bite the dust the moment they read this,and I am too coward to be ready enough to forego that ),I cannot deny the fact that they are guilty-of bluntly practising social exercises that have encouraged caste discrimination,of setting a poor example for the next generation,and of being blatantly ignorant of the fact they have been committing the same Social Sin of which they have had the gump of criticising more blatant discrimination which they might have observed to feel.Now that is Hypocrisy at its most pathetic personification.
 Their children have observed the same right from childhood,and grown up to do the same without a tinge of guilt.So have I in a way because since I became a mature young adult,I have never felt in myself the urge to denounce the 'familial tradition' and come out with strong vocal protests.I have gone along with the tide,and might have even laughed with and enjoyed the sarcastic sneer relatives might have exhibited during informal conversations of frivolous moods. I have seen very close relatives fixing up matrimonial bonds after long periods of "omission and commission",purely on the basis of caste and even sub-caste(if that can replace GOTRA/GOTRO in English).
 Today I am angrily speechless at my own past actions when I have gone on to attend to such ceremonial displays of blatant social discrimination of caste and class.I feel all the more angry and pathetic because I never felt that those social interactions were wrong when at the same time I have never refrained from criticising with hatred,incidents of social oppression on casteist lines elsewhere in India which I came to know of from newspapers and television.

An alter-ego of mine is seemingly voicing a meek protest against my belated realisation."India,with its glorious Unity in Diversity,is different from the entire world.You are wrong to correlate your bloodline's familial and social prejudices in the same bracket as the coarsely risque prejudice that underscores the social oppression of humanity along the line of caste in unenlightened rural India",it says. I am afraid I can no more agree with this voice which is perhaps an escapist fragment of my conscience. Ignoring everything else,I cannot aesthetically support anymore,the matrimonial texts highlighting Preconditions of Caste Equity in the "classified columns".If these are not gloriously examples of the caste-apartheid that continues to exist comfortably in our own educated minds to express itself in family attitudes over generations and resultant social interactions,what do they stand for to reveal?
And this is not the only example.I can immediately identify scores of behavioural episodes of discrimination that my ownbloodline has/had displayed as 'naturally traditional,and continuation of family heritage'.

Today I am likely to draw angry criticism from relatives and friends with hurt or offended sentiments.I am sorry for that.But I need answers which can make my own conscious self feel better.The coffee tastes too bitter.

TAGORE ON NATIONALISM

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This blog is dedicated to the luminous wisdom of Dr.(Prof.)Rakesh Biswas,a physician,a scholar,a teacher,a philosopher,a visionary,a non-compromising humanist,and above all a truely great human being.Years after sharing,in our medical college,six long years of frienship that was restrained by cultured sophestication,he continues to Lead Kindly Light and inspire me in all walks of life as a guiding philosopher to this very day.

 

A couple of  days back he mailed to me the following lines. 

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"A nation, in the sense of the political and economic

union of a people is that aspect which a whole

population assumes when organized for a mechanical

purpose . . . it is merely the side of power, not of human

ideals . . . but when with the help of science and the

perfecting of organization this power begins to grow

and brings in harvests of wealth, then it crosses its

boundaries with amazing rapidity. For then it goads

all its neighboring societies with greed of material

prosperity, and consequent mutual jealousy, and by

the fear of each other's growth into powerfulness. The

time comes when it can stop no longer, for the

competition grows keener, organization grows vaster

and selfishness attains supremacy. Trading upon the

greed and fear of man, it occupies more and more

space in society, and at last becomes its ruling force

. . . when this organization of politics and commerce,

whose other name is the nation becomes all-powerful,

at the cost of the harmony of the higher social life,

then it is an evil day for humanity . . . This abstract

being, the Nation, is ruling India . . ."

 

- Rabindranath Tagore,

 Nationalism, (1916)

 

 

 

 It is a feeling of haunting bewilderment that grasps me when I read and re-vise Tagore's lines again and again,written almost a century back.I remember reading this prose-piece in vernacular named "Jatiyotabodh" in a series of articles grouped together in a literary piece called "Shobhyotar Shankat"(of which my poor translation would be somewhat like "The Crisis of Modern Civilisation").Written in a confused socio-political environment in India(which was changing with rapid dynamism in relation to a proactive nationalist movement against colonial rule)and against the backdrop of a mindless war that had engulfed the entire world with frenzied desparation,it is amazing to note how correctly Tagore had noted to qualify the innate psychology of Indian humanism and the prognostic picture of its dynamic interactions.

 
 Tagore is not particularly famous as a political observer and I'm sure he would have loathed at the prospect of being tagged one by commoners like me. Yet I just cannot help but rue the fact that while we(again mostly commoners like me)have continued to bathe blissfully in the sublime brilliance of Tagore's artistic creations,we have not evaluated to the full,the philosopher in Tagore.Of course,we do 'feel' the philosopher in his musical compositions,verses and prose-pieces and keep on contemplating on his personna on a personal and social level on a daily basis,our appreciation seems to fall grossly short of the superlative adjection that should have been there,then and now.And we still need a 'push' from sudden exposures to literature like these dug out of the subconscious mind in a moment of inspired vigour ,to wake from a vain,collective stupor which seems to have engulfed the Indian mind(and the universal mind too),resulting in humanistic values(of which Tagore must have dreamt while writing these words)being degraded to a frustrating inert state,and which seems to hold back an evolution of consciousness as a whole.

 It seems to be an utopian exercise now but had we read Tagore's lines correctly,dentifying the visionary that he was,today's situation wouldn't have been exactly similar to what the great man had thought of,a 100 years back.He seems to have dissected the story of pre and post-Independant India to the core,and today as a nation India has managed to position herself qualitatively in the exact state globally that Tagore had identified then. It clearly exposes the utter futility of the philosophy underlying the socio-political exercises that the country has taken part in since then,both nationally and at the global level. It would be grossly wrong to assume(if one reads this article and looks around today) that the revered fore-fathers who had grafted the foundations of independant India and those who have taken up the responsibility of guiding the nation forward,had done so with a self-less humanist ideal. We have always tended to visualise a nation as just a formal integration of  individually diverse social,ethnic and economic entities forced by non-scrupulous politics,to stand together with a distorted definition of nationalism under one flag.

 

 This,unfortunately,does not hold true for India alone.All countries,developing and developed,have retained/or developed the same distorted pseudo-nationalistic pattern in mind to earn their respective places on the global map.The cause-effect profile of the international scene is there for everyone to see.Countries have grown into units of 'power'.We have diplomatically made friends or become enemies of others,we have aligned ourselves with diametrically opposite axes of power for selfish benefits and(shamefully so)for mere survival. Scientific and economic progress have resulted in wars and battles which have left not an inch of habitated world space unscarred.Nuclear arms proliferation,biochemical warfare,militant movements guided by distorted ideals ultimately resulting acts of violent terrorism,illegal international trading of arms and substances of addictive abuse,periods of cruel dictatorship with black records of mass genocide under the guise of governance have dominated the global scenario through the 20th.century only worsening to flourish in the new millenium.

 

 All the benefits advancement in knowledge has endowed upon human civilisation tend to get significantly nullified when 40 million people are wiped off the face of earth by a pre-planned,calculated act of genocide which gets imprinted in the pages of history as a World War.Yet we don't seem to learn from history still. 4 years after the Second World War in which genocide in one of its most brutal forms was facilitated by volitional use of nuclear technology,2 countries coaligned in the war became polarised into 2 global 'superpowers' with concepts of democracy which annihilate each other in theory and in practice - exactly what Tagore theorised to write(here I am wilfully refraining from using the word "Predicted"as we are talking about Tagore and not Nostradamus,and we shouldn't be in the mood to marvel over and glorify the results of prediction-intellectual or by divine interference.We've had enough of morbid
glorification!) 34 years before human history attained the shameful landmark of an event.

 One of the foremost and most direct results of this political polarisation(under the excuse of differences in Nationalistic Approach!)was that we engaged ourselves in developing more lethal devices of mass destruction by thermo-nuclear kinetics in the form of hydrogen bombs et al.The Cold War followed which saw through the abject surrender of nationalistic philosophies of countries in front of political empowerment of identities,the major countries madly aligning themselves with the power axes for survival and control-again exactly echoing Tagore's lines to the very word. And since then,nations continue to stand as pawns in a global game of chess played by elements of power,jealousy and corrupt greed.

 

 Nobody,not even Tagore,has ever dared to dream of a world as one nation.But in his lines Tagore wanted to underline the concept of Humanism as the basic element to build a nation.He clearly shows the potential results if humanism could not be imbibed into our consciousness with evolved spontaneity while we were building our nation. But we have smugly kept humanism away from our consciousness,from our daily lives,from society and from our philosophy of nationalism.(And India is not the only country).We have proceeded mechanically to put to practice,policies interacting between sociology,economics,human resources,politics and military power.And one has to just look around,or open the daily newspaper to see the result.

 I seem to be satisfied with the state of affairs.Because my little retreat was not bombarded  yesterday.I do not want to think of tomorrow.If  I've woken up now,this time I better not go back to sleep.

 

DEATH BY CHOICE

It was definitely an eerie sensation when I opened the papers a few days back to read about the suicide of a 32yr.old housewife.She had taken her own life because she couldn't face her own conscience after watching an episode of 'Sach Ka Saaamna',the TV reality show I had written about last week in my blog,coincidentally just 2 days before this reported suicide.She had taken the stupid yet drastic step after writing in her suicide note that "she had failed as a mother,as a housewife and as a daughter",pretty much in the same line as I had written myself about being(not failing though,though an episode of the same show had stirred up my own conscience to a significant extent),"a father,a husband and a human being".No doubt this TV show is really making people face themselves.I hope the above-mentioned mishap doesn't stop the TV show from being aired,it already being dubbed Controversial and throwing up a stormy debate.
It is not my intention today to keep on writing about the TV show or the social storm it keeps on throwing up.

It is always good when man,intentionally or unintentionally,faces his conscience from time to time.Simply speaking,it is a healthy way 'rinsing one's soul' of possible guilt feelings and start living life from tomorrow on a healthier note.But this woman had not done so.Without showing any sort of sympathy or trying to empathise with her psychology,I shall bluntly brand her unfortunate death as Stupid,Senseless and Selfish.I write Selfish because the woman was a mother of 2 children.Giving birth to a child and then living it in the lurch in the mercy of the frenzied world is definitely not an act of charity.

I was in 2 minds whether to write publicly about a suicide,as the subject is morbid and apparently a dissection does not seem to serve any purpose other than exposing the eager reader to dark emotions,completely unwanted.But I decided to write finally,as the topic is somewhat related to my own life and I want to draw attention to the mindless fallacy of such an act,whatever the excuse might be.

I strongly believe Nobody has got the moral right to take his/her own life.A premature,selfish death is definitely not the reason man is gifted a life to live by nature(or God).I,personally,do maintain a drastically opposite opinion in the subject of euthanasia - another controversy which man hasn't quite come around,decades after mercy-killing took the fancy of the philosopher,the physician and the common man,and a million sentences having been written about it over the years. It is difficult to come to a moral consensus about euthanastic death 'by choice',and one of the reasons we have not been able to come to a consensus on euthanasia is that we have tended to reflect upon the process of euthanasia as a subject with moral and objective homogeneity which certainly is not the case. The question of mercy-killing arises case-wise and every case is different from the other just as every soul is different from one another.It is not at all fair to relate one case to another on grounds of meaningless suffering where there is no practical possibility of preserving a life the way it is meant to be lived.

 A few days back,an Australian gentleman in his late 40s died months after he won his case challenging the reason behind continuation of total parenteral nutrition where he,in his full senses,was totally quadriplegic,unable to perform a single physiological function apart from staying alive,and conscious enough to observe and feel the frustration of not being able to 'Live' the way he wanted to(or rephrasing it - the way he was supposed to live when he was born a healthy child).He would have gone insane-a point the deciding judiciary took special note of.(An insane quadriplegic is worse off than a conscious,level-minded quadriplegic in any given situation). He was not brain-dead - a situation where the topic of euthanasia arises with well-publicised vigour. Every case deserves to be treated by individual merit and I doubt if we shall ever be able to come to a universally moral consensus as long as we keep on looking at euthanasia with subjective uniformity.Yet we Have to,as once man has become conscious of the concept of mercy-killing,he shall continue to dabble with it at random which underlines a dangerous state of affairs and which must be curbed by Law-the only way at the moment to control proceedings on such a sensitive issue. No doubt,it shall be a near-impossible,harrowing task for lawmakers to come out with a 'Perfect' law.

Death by choice(either one's own or by connected responsible people)does not comprise of euthanasia alone. In India,the concept of Sati has survived for thousands of years,allegedly mentioned in the Holy Scriptures(Ancient spiritual literature in my opinion)though I have not come across any such topic in the Vedas,the Vedantas(or the Upanishads)and the Gita.(I do not know of any other existing literature which can be qualitatively mentioned in the same breath). In medieval Rajasthan,queen Padmini became a 'Sati' with a hundred royal maids when she faced the threat of being captured by Alauddin Khiljee who had defeated her husband in the battles of Chittore.Indians continue to glorify the associated historical narrative for reasons that are beyond rational comprehension,apart from a clear intention to dominate women and keep them socially chained under the guise of 'holy' acts. Though the respected queen took a conscious decision to
take her own life(with a cruel non-sensical decision to force a hundred more women to do the same,taking undue advantage of royal authority),her act cannot be justified in any way,even taking the socio-cultural and religious profiles of medieval India into account.

On the other hand,it left behind a shameful legacy which man would exploit to murder a million freshly-widowed women by forcibly burning them at the funeral pyres of their dead husbands for the next 450 years under the pretext of 'Divine Will and Order' until it was legally stopped in the 19th.century in Bengal by Ram Mohan Roy with the help of the British colonial government which had just taken up the reins of ruling India from the British East India Company.(Shamefully it exists still,not to forget the infamous case of Roop Kanwar of Rajasthan in the mid 1980s.) Sati is not death by choice.It is brutal murder-the same brutal fervour with which Queen Padmini had got a hundred women murdered during her own suicide.

The act of suicide has been 'glorified' all over the world,for thousands of years.This is one of the reasons that the concept of this senseless act continues to romanticise the human mind morbidly to the day,strongly embedded in the subconscious mind and people of all shapes and sizes continue to take their own lives. The people who had romanticised the idea of suicide were clearly not aware of the long-lasting repercussion it would have on the human society and on the human mind. Even William Shakespeare cannot be absolved of this 'artistic sin'. Nor can be Don Maclean who composed the immensely popular song 'Vincent'(on Vincent Van Gogh) where he romanticises(and glorifies) Van Gogh's suicide through the lines – "And when no hope was left inside on that starry,starry night,You took your life as lovers often do;But I could have told you Vincent-This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you." - a seemingly
'beautiful' justification all right! While the song excels artistically and continues to be one of my favourites,I cannot but rue the irresponsible absence of vision of Don Maclean.Everytime one will listen to the song,man shall continue to romanticise the idea of suicide in the darkest depths of his mind until one day someone shall take his/her own life.The idea is quite unacceptable.

Sensitive beyond measure to any sort of suffering,I know first-hand the numbing effect of tragedy by choice on a family,a family which just broke to pieces once.And as long as people like this 32year old woman will continue to take their own lives,I shall continue to unemotionally antipathise with them.Most importantly,I do not think that the 2 children will ever forgive their mother for the senseless,selfish act of pseudo-lunacy.The woman doesn't deserve any respect. Neither does my own mother. At least I won't be able to forgive her lifelong,for reasons best known to me,since she took her own life.

ODE TO EINSTEIN

Life is full of incidents,and of co-incidents.In my previous blog-post,I'd written about the ambiguous reaction and an uncertain dualism that my conscience had thrown up to face my own self,when I had watched a TV reality show last week.That was an incident.The reason I mentioned co-incidents is that only 2 days later I was happily forced to think to depth for a long time about another dualism and uncertaintly which is universally well-known,the dualism and uncertainty principle of quantum physics.

[I must thank in this platform,with his permission,Dr.Rakesh Biswas,a distinguished physician,academician and a research-scientist in the field of internal medicine and community medicine.I've been fortunate enough to have him as a friend since my college days when we studied medicine in the same medical college.I've been all the more fortunate because this friendship has withstood the test of time after our respective graduations till today,and I have learnt a whole lot of things from him,ranging from medicine,philosophy of science(and the science of philosophy),anthropology,sociology,and about life in general,not to forget the fact that he has been a constant source of inspiration and tolerant encouragement behind my amateur effort to pen down the eccentric expressions of my own mind.]

To come to the co-incident point directly-Dr.Biswas had sent me an highly enlightening article recently,about Einstein and quantum physics.I enjoyed reading it all the more because physics has always been passionately close to my heart,the domains of quantum mechanics and theoretical physics fascinating me to the moment.It was through this article(which my dear friend had sent me out of his own interactions with HQR-Holistic Quantum Relativity-a brilliant concept of an internet group founded on holistic academics),that I came to learn for the first time,about the concept of Quantum Entanglement.
 

Quoting directly from the article in bits and parts,
"Quantum Entanglement is at the heart of understanding how significant events across the universe operate at the macro- and micro- level in split-second synchronised unison despite considerable distance between them."

…"Quantum Entanglement seems to throw out the whole notion of cause and effect, as we know it! It is possible for a particle to interact with another particle in such a way that the quantum states of the two particles form a single entangled state." 
 …"That was why Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen dreamed up the idea of what we now call "Quantum Entanglement" in 1935. It was to show that either quantum theory was incomplete, because it said there was no hidden information, or it was possible to instantly influence something at a distance." 
…"Quantum Entanglement does underline the fact that quantum particles really do only have a range of probabilities on the values of their properties rather than fixed values. And while it seems to contradict Einstein's theory of special relativity, which says nothing can travel faster than light, it's increasingly likely that entanglement challenges our ideas of what space and time really mean!"

 

Talking about Einstein and the duality of quantam physics,one needs to ponder upon the history of classical physics so that one can compare and comment upon the subtle nuances of both.The regularities observed in nature and the subsequent laws of classical physics seem to have strongly emerged in the last 300 years.And a continued success of these laws led Laplace to postulate the philosophy of scientific determinism,where he suggested that there would be a set of laws that would determine the evolution of the universe precisely,given its configuration at one time.

 I think Laplace 's determinism was incomplete in 2 ways. It did not say How the laws would be chosen,and it did not specify the initial configuration of the universe.These aspects were presumably left to God,who would choose how the universe began,but He would not intervene once it got started. Laplace's hopes in determinism cannot be possibly realised,now that we know that the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics implies that certain pairs of quantities,such as the velocity and position of a particle,cannot both be predicted with complete accuracy.

 

Quantum mechanics implies that certain particles do not have well-defined positions and velocities,but are represented by a wave. Quantum theories are deterministic in the sense that they give laws for evolution of the wave with time.In effect,we seem to have redefined the task of science to be the discovery of laws that will enable us to predict events up to the limits set by the uncertainty principle. But a question still remains in my mind - How or Why were the laws and the initial state of the universe chosen? When one combines quantum mechanics with general relativity,there seems to be a possibility that space and time together might form a finite,four-dimensional space without boundaries or singularities.This idea seems to explain many observed features of the universe,such as its large-scale homogeneity,and also its smaller-scale departures from homogeneity e.g.galaxies and stars(perhaps even human beings?!)

 

But one thing I cannot understand-if the universe is so completely self-contained,that leaves serious implications for the role of God as a Creator.Einstein is once believed to have asked-"How much Choice did God have in constructing the universe?"

God does not seem to have any freedom at all to choose the initial conditions.(He,of course,seems to have the freedom to choose the laws that the universe obeys.) Speaking of the quantum 'wave',the element of unpredictability or randomness comes in only when one tries to interpret the wave in terms of positions and velocities. I do not intend to throw up a controversy here Maybe there are No particle positions and velocities,but only waves?(This question used to bug me when I was in my higher secondary years when I was gleefully exposed to the quantum world through the physics syllabus).Could it be just that we try to fit the waves to our preconceived ideas of positions and velocities?

 

When I think about a possible ontological origin of the theory of Quantum Entanglement,I cannot help but but ponder about the socio-political profile of Albert Einstein.Einstein's connection with the politics of the nuclear bomb is well-known-he signed the famous letter to Franklin Roosevelt that persuaded the USA to take the idea seriously,and he engaged in postwar efforts to prevent nuclear war.But he was a scientist who was dragged into politics. He had witnessed the massive genocide in the First World War as a professor in Berlin.He became involved in anti-war demonstrations.

His second great cause was Zionism.Although Jewish by descent,he rejected the biblical idea of God.A growing awareness of pre and peri-World War I anti-Semitism drew him closer to his own community and to Zionism. This hardly earned him friends amongst his own colleagues associated with research and advancement of physics.The alignment of Einstein with a possible theory of quantum entanglement in the mid 30s,which is a major shift,to say the least,from his General and particularly Special Theories of Relativity perhaps reflect the frustration the deep sadness and frustration of Einstein the man's social profile.But he had always been phlegmatic: when a book was published entitled-"100 Authors Against Einstein",he retorted back,"If I were wrong,then one author would have been enough!"

Throughout his life,Einstein's efforts towards peace perhaps achieved little to last long and certainly won him few friends.But his support for the Zionist cause offered him the Presidency of Israel in 1952,which he declined saying he thought he was too naive in politics.Once again quoting him – "Equations are more important to me because politics is for the present,but an equation is for eternity".

 

Up to now,scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe What the universe is,to ask Why.On the other hand,philosophers(the people who ask Why)have not been able to keep up with the advancement of scientific theories.In the 18th.century,philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge,including science,to be their field and discussed questions such as:Did the universe have a beginning? However,in the 19th..and 20th.centuries,science perhaps became too mathematical and technical for the philosophers.Wittgenstein,the famous philosopher,once said,"The role remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language." What a philosophical comedown,from Aristotle to Emmanuel Kant!
However,if man does discovers a grand unified theory which would explain everything around us right from the Big Bang,it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason.Because then,we would know The Mind of God.

  

{I apologise for my audacity to write about Physics here because I am not even an amateur physicist.I just find myself in a bewildering world.And we all want to make sense of what we see around us to ask-What is the nature of Nature(which spans the entire universe)?What is our role in it?Why is it the way it is?

I'm sure your mind asks these questions too.}

THE PRICE OF TRUTH

THE  PRICE  OF  TRUTH

 

 

 

 

It was an interesting time spent the other evening,watching the now-oft-discussed TV show-SACH KA SAAMNA. The concept,which perhaps needs no elucidation,has been borrowed from a popular American reality TV show where a contestant is bluntly asked to answer highly sensitive questions about his/her personal life,in front of family members and close relatives,a live audience present in the show set,and in front of cameras which present the entire show in front of a million TV viewers. The topics touched by the questionnaire are about socially controversial incidents that might have occured in one's life,realities which one would like to hide from his/her social and family profiles.A instant polygraphy is done to determine whether an answer given by the contestant is correct or incorrect. The contestant proceeds to win considerable amounts of money in millions with every 'correct hit',to move to higher levels where the questions get more and more personally sensitive,and the amount of prize money increase substantially.

A few weeks back I had read in the newspapers about the controversies the show had created,with protests coming in from some of the contestants themselves seemingly embarassed(who often happen to be celebrities)questioning the deterministic accuracy of the polygraph which deemed certain answers "incorrect"(which essentially mean that the answer was a Lie),and also from a section of the audience following the TV show,questioning the ethical propriety of the concept of such a show as the questionnaire covers confessions about cheating,stealing,infidelity,abuse of 'banned' substances,acts of sexual aberration and immorality,to name a few.

The protests of some of the contestants seem ungamely,at least from a relatively superficial referrance,as they had volunteered to contest in full knowledge of the flavour of the show and the nature of the probable questions.It is useless and irrelevant here to comment on that.

The wave of protest voiced by detractors in the audience is understandable.It is truely difficult to judge the show's propriety as the audience consists of children and adolescents who might be subjected to unwanted and 'unsavioury' feelers about the qualitative validity of the ethical code standardised by our society around social and personal life in general which they shall grow up to follow one day.Also such gross public confessions in front of one's family,close relatives and friends-all near and dear ones,can potentially create disharmony in and even a complete breakdown of relationships.The detractors have even protested against the confessions by the contestants,commenting on the 'taste' of such confessions,and questioning the correctness of the very act of 'such' confessions.

 

This "protest" seems paradoxical to me and it perhaps reveals an inherent insecurity deep inside us.Maybe we are not prepared yet to face upto the situational precedence and a possible moral demand in relationships in future which such public confessions might be setting up. That is how our society is,and that is how we all react in our preconditioned masks of cognition and comprehension,in paranoid guard ly guard of our deepest fears and weaknesses,and our darkest secrets. Supporters of the show have reacted back,seated in the cushion of Moral Freedom,to thestrong protest of detraction saying that the confessions have all been volitional acts,and if one doesn't like a TV programme,he may as well switch it off or simply choose not to watch it,instead of crying hoarse to stop airing the programme altogether.

 

Personally I find internal support,how much thinly balanced it may be,to this point of view.I am a member of the human society.If I ponder upon the thin strength of my internal support,I find myself weak,my conscience seated on a fence between an urge to break free and a possible fear of the circumstances my breaking free might lead to.Otherwise how do I explain my confused weakness to qualify the very propriety of the voices of protest against the TV show? How do I explain my stark inability to Strongly question the very act of protest that tend to hold wrong an effort of a human being to confess and come clean,the effort to be Honest once and for all?If I am not afraid,my conscience is not strongly prepared yet to Face the Truth at least.And perhaps I am afraid.

 

The TV show will cease to exist soon,and so will the commendable efforts of bravehearts to embark upon a journey destined to end in honest acts of confession on my TV screen.I might choose to ignore everything.The TV show is after all a commercial venture and not a social reformist movement.It thrives on TPR ratings,and on our weakness to give in to the saucy meal called Controversy.The lure of monetary prize attracts applications to be part of such TV shows from all over the world.The voices of both detraction and support get their parasitic nourishment from Publicity.

 

Yet the stormy ambiguity of my own conscience or the moral confusion that I discovered in myself that evening in front of my TV set(that I shall continue to guard as one of my darkest secrets),is here to stay for quite sometime,it having been churned out of my own subconscious code of judgement by watching man wanting to cleanse his soul and man trying to choke the effort,drawing archaic arguments from the very code of ethics that cradles humankind's universal conscience.Even this storm will wear away.But I discovered one truth - everytime I shall be subject to self-introspection by observing human behaviour,a new storm shall rise.

I wear so many masks everyday and I have been doing so for such a long time,perhaps since I developed cognitive consciousness,that I cannot identify my original face anymore.All my masks are polygonal mirrors and I choose to identify my face through polygonal reflections.Yet I continue to live as a member of human society,as a husband,as a father and as a doctor.

The eldest of the Pandavas had identified the Heaviest thing in the Universe as Sin.Perhaps the burden of Conscience is heavier.Perhaps not.I am confused.

Rabindranath Tagore and Western Music

It was exhilarating to receive a mail recently from one of my college-mates who is now working as a consultant psychiatrist in the United Kingdom.It was refreshing because Music was the subject of our discussion.

 

I know that my friend used to play the sitar during our college days though I am not sure whether she finds time now to pursue the music of her passion.Her daughter is taking lessons in piano and violin – she has written. In the mail ,my friend has mentioned about a situation which,if one delves a little deeper to discuss,throws some refreshing light into an aspect of Rabindra Sangeet which I feel has remain neglected over the years through all the research,debates and discussions Tagore's songs and music have been subjected to by luminaries in the field of music.

 

It so happened that during her last trip to India,Kolkata to be precise,my friend had discovered some invaluable sheets of music containing conventional Western classical stave notations of a number of Rabindranath Tagore's songs,Rabindra Sangeet – as they are popularly known all over the world.And she had taken the written music back to UK for her daughter to have a go at.It seems her daughter's music teacher is facing a strange predicament with the lessons in front of the piano.I guess the music teacher is feeling the same intrigue which has blighted many a Western musician.I'll beg to go a little deep into this.

 

In Tagore's songs there are a segment of songs which the master himself has loosely clubbed as "Scotch Bhupali" in his memoirs(Chhinno-Potro)- a rather queer name.These songs do not follow the notes of the Bhupali Raaga at all.Regarding the Scotch part,I guess he had the traditional Scotttish Highland music in mind from which he has drawn inspiration to compose a lot of songs throughout his life.e.g. Auld Lang Syne has given birth to 2 different compositions at 2 different phases of his life - Purano Shei Diner Katha and Anandaloke Mangalaloke Birajo .{I must add here that Auld Lang Syne was penned don in Old Irish by Robert Burnes as a poem but a Scottish cobbler who remains anonymous to history till date "transformed" the poem into the song that we all know of by attaching a traditional Scottish tune at least 300 hundred years older.I guess during Burnes' time the cultural boundary between Scotland and Ireland was much more blurred(and healthily so.)}The latter was composed when the poet was in his late 20s,and during this phase the compositions of  Jyotirindranath,his elder brother(who had really goaded Rabindranath into serious music compositions),seem to have influenced Tagore's compositions to a great extent.

 

Jyotirindranath himself was a talented and a prolific composer,though the philosopher was never really keen on publishing and popularising his own music and he kept his efforts mainly to compose prayer-songs - Brahma Sangeet which he has composed in hundreds.One can find a deep influence of Scottish Highland music in these compositions.This effect has seeped through to Tagore's music,both individual compositions and the dance-dramas penned in his youth like Tasher Desh and Balmiki Pratibha .

 

The brilliance of Tagore becomes easily perceptible when one discovers how the composer has adopted Western note patterns(read traditional Scottish) in the more intricate 'Tagorised' patterns of  "Taal" and "Loy".In all the songs,the right hand(on piano reeds)goes out of its way to give shape to the subtle nuances and the left hand seems to hold the corresponding chords.But Tagore has kept a silent but vast scope for the left hand to create impromptu ornamentations and inspired improvisations  - an aspect unfortunately overlooked by many music maestros of Shantiniketan.Here I cannot but mention another Indian stalwart.One has to just listen to the piano rendition of  Phoole Phoole Dhole Dhole ,Satyajit Roy has used in his movie Charulata as background score in 2 different situations.Roy has played the piano himself here and one can pick up the brilliant rendition he has brought out, ably and aptly recognising the scope for individual ornamemtative improvisations Tagore has left behind.

(The puritans who have and still try to harness Tagore's music in disciplines too strict,don't seem to have identified Tagore's message - he believed in Inspirations,and has subtly and silentlyleft behind his message for subsequent generations to follow.Regrettably Bishwa Bharati hasn't done justice to this unique facet of Rabindra Sangeet.I might be hanged in public by Shantiniketan puritans for this comment though!But sadly Tagore's music in printed and published  Western classical stave notation remains chained.That's not the spirit for which the Great Poet stood for.) 

 

Perhaps it is a little too demanding to expect a British music teacher to understand  Tagore's silent message left behind so philosophically in and for his music.But I'm sure my friend's daughter will be able to "feel" Tagore's music the more she spends time with 'him' and his music.And it would be wonderful to listen to her one day,playing Sokhi Bhabona Kahare Bole or perhaps Jyotsna Raate Shobai Gachhe Bone on piano without Western stave notations,both her hands free,as free as she shall be feeling inside,understanding Tagore's philosophy of Freedom of Spirit.

 

My blessings remain with the budding musician.