Some things never change; or, Why Milton still matters today.

“There are some irrational bigots who, by a perversion of justice, condemn anything they consider inconsistent with conventional beliefs & give it an invidious title – ‘heretic’ or ‘heresy’…To their way of thinking, by branding anyone out of hand with this hateful name, they silence him with one word & need take no further trouble.” - John Milton, de doctrina Christiana

Yesterday morning I opened my book and these were the first words that greeted my eyes. Only a few seconds ago had I finished reading the news, and looking at peoples’ tweets: people were abuzz about the same thing. Salman Rushdie wasn’t going to be attending the Jaipur Lit. Fest (happening now), and worse, he had been persuaded to not go by the fact that (allegedly) there would be assassination attempts on his life.

Given the sheer irritation that probably affects any (even semi-?) rational person when confronted with news like this, it was nice to open my book and find my irritation echoed by Milton, and to realise that things like this are nothing new; Milton wrote the above words in the 17th century. It’s possible – no, necessary – to question the linear idea of ‘progress’ that we are so self-congratulatory about every now and then. It’s equally necessary to question the labels societies apply to themselves and the ideals they allegedly defend: are so-called ‘secular societies’ really that? Is free speech really universally and indiscriminatingly allowed? (Easy answers, I guess, but at least let’s stop stuffing ourselves with false rhetoric when we want ego- & morale-boosts in the media or in conversations.)

I’m really enjoying my class on secularism this term, and have been thinking a lot about religion and the way its rhetoric creeps repeatedly into our daily lives and allegedly religion-free, secular politics (this is as true of India as of the United States, really, every time I look at someone running for the Republican candidacy…..). I’m coming increasingly to feel that it isn’t enough for countries to valorize their secular politics (or even take it for granted) when all it seemingly does is function as some sort of political shell, one still repeatedly susceptible to the demands of religious factions and ideologies. The divorce is really not that simple (or effective). But what do I know……these is jes’ thoughts.

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On a happier note, I like libraries.

I discovered a beautiful website recently – http://bookshelfporn.com/ . It is full of the most awe-inspiring bookshelf photos, and inspired – I tried to emulate its pictures a bit myself. A website any bibliophile must visit!!

 

Amartya Sen & the Indian media.

I came across this Op-Ed in The Hindu today, by Amartya Sen (Nobel Prize for Economics etc., list of accolades so long they take up a good sixth of his Wikipedia page, etc.) on the Indian media.

So many things to be said about it: what an enjoyable read it is, because he states his points so precisely, so clearly and so lucidly – something that I feel very few people do these days. Either they get bogged down in technicalities incomprehensible to the poor layman, or they make criss-crossing never-ending train tracks of their sentences. (O! The hypocrisy, I hear you cry. Yes, well. I ain’t writing for no big newspaper!)

It is one of those rare articles which not only highlights some very real problems with the Indian media (kindly, gently) even as it actually attempts to offer some suggestions for corrective. The Indian media is a critique extraordinaire – it rages, raves and incessantly accuses, but as I have always held and believed, thousands of rants later  the subjects become immune to criticism, it rolls off their backs like water off a duck’s. And then there is the perennial defense: You don’t understand the practicalities of the situation; we are doing the best we can under the circumstances. What is so wonderful about this article is that it makes some headway in resisting such defenses: I understand the practicalities of your situation, but here are a couple of things you could and should do, for the reasons outlined above. It is actually a critique which incites action, as opposed to taking a public blow at something wrong. I think this is perhaps an exemplar in itself for the Indian media: take notes, take notes. (I understand by & large this will have no place for the wider reporting of news, the purpose of which is – allegedly – just to convey what happens. But Op-Eds and analyses pepper the pages of the Indian news, and so perhaps it would behove them more to rope in experts from different fields to offer a more proactive type of criticism. As The Hindu has done!)

And then of course there are the critiques themselves, especially about the media’s complicity with class divisions and bias. I cannot say anymore on this, except how much I agree with him, and how much I hope the media is actually taking his words to heart. A few choice quotes from the article here, for those who won’t sift through it:

 There tends to be fulsome coverage in the news media of the lifestyles of the fortunate, and little notice of the concerns of the less fortunate.

…..

The problem here does not, of course, originate in the media, for it is social division that feeds this bias in coverage. But the media can play a more constructive part in keeping the reality of India persistently in the view of the public. The bias in coverage, even though it is by no means unpleasant to the reader, contributes quite heavily to the political apathy about the urgency of remedying the extreme deprivation of the Indian underprivileged.

With a voting percentage of under 50% in the most recent last elections (I think?), and a famously low voter turn-out from people in urban locations and the educated middle/upper classes, there can be no question of some degree of apathy in terms of political action. There is too much armchair criticism and too little active political engagement, even through something so simple as voting! (Well, I say simple – Indian bureaucracy might be enough to scare anybody.) It might sound ironic to call Indians apathetic, given the whole Anna Hazare business: but would it not do as much, if not more, good to vote the right people into office, as to starve and protest on the streets?

Kim Jong-Il. In memoriam & some poor comfort.

The death of Kim Jong-Il (the last and grandest of that triad of losses, following Vaclav Havel and Christopher Hitchens) was a great loss to the Internet, whatever else may be said about it. For no more, as so many people aptly noted on Facebook, will Kim Jong-Il look at things. His sweet eyes have closed forever.

On the day the news of his demise broke - aptly looking at a wreath.

 

But the Internet being so vast, so reproductive and so accommodating of everything – from natural disaster to death – I wanted to make this quick post to comfort the many who might be mourning. Images of Kim Jong-Il live on, for your pleasure and mine. Not only will he continue looking at things, even post-mortem, but he will also be dropping the bass (a wonderful Tumblr, testimony to the incomparable powers of Photoshop when used right and well). Likewise, he has left this world and Internet (and poor North Korea) a predecessor, who shows great promise to be as great an onlooker as his dear father/leader was – this has not gone unnoticed, and a few preliminary images of Kim Jong-Un looking at things have begun sprouting. Hungry generations tread thee and thy looks down, dear Kim Jong-Il.

‘Learned helplessness’

I think the West missed a trick, because it adopted — certainly in Africa and many of the poor emerging economies — an attitude of “do what we say and not what we do.” The whole idea of incentives, which has been the backbone of the success in Western economies, is not something the West transplanted into places like Africa. The approach to economic development in Africa has been focused on aid; it’s been focused on what someone called “learned helplessness.”

From article, ‘The Seesaw of Power‘ (Dambisa Moyo in the NYT. May I add – she is so beautiful!)

Fascinating.

I have always been a believer in that pithy statement on the subject (whose statement, I don’t know!) – “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Aid is like a dumping a boatload of fishes in the man’s village. Necessary of course, at times of pandemic and natural disaster – but I don’t feel it is really viable in the long term. Certainly in places like India, aid is horribly misused, and very little (if any) of it actually trickles down to the impoverished masses who need it.

I wonder if it makes more sense for people to invest directly in infrastructural development &/or institutions, instead of relying on governments to do it or doling out lots of money without really looking at what ends it is used for, to whom and where it goes.

My parents (and wider family generally) have an interesting way of dealing with the whole business of charity, one that I admire significantly (not only because it appears to make vast amounts of sense, but also because it has shown results).

That poverty and suffering will not be eradicated through a momentary dumping of money somewhere-or-other is evident. India, and various parts of Asia generally, are highly unequal societies: in Malaysia (for example) people have “maids”, who live sometimes a very cloistered life, and India anyone from the middle-middle to upper-middle class probably has maids, drivers, cooks & cleaners. Vast amounts of serving-people, and a stark domestically-concentrated juxtaposition between the have and have-nots. The terms in which the latter are viewed by the former are often disturbing and sometimes, disgusting – the paradigms of possession, class superiority, etc. all play into it.

But this is an issue stemming from some wider social malaise – the means of alleviating it lie not in said individual family’s hands, but really, the country’s hands generally. My parents, however, seem to have found a really inspiring and effective way of doing their bit – they pay for the education of their workers’ children. My mother put it this way; “we can’t really change the first generation, but what we can do is ensure that future generations have the skills & abilities to live a better life, & bring up their children with better opportunities.” And of course look after their parents in their old-age, as is demanded by many of Asia’s cultures.

The stories of laundrymen’s sons in boardrooms and the cook’s daughters in software companies at the end of the day really is very inspiring. Education has the potential to change the future of generations to come; material gifts would have helped perhaps one or two people, if anybody at all.

Image via Wikipedia

Notes on India (II)

From outlookindia.com - Protests in Kashmir.

Scarves-over-mouths in this context could be read as many things: it could be read as a hiding of one’s identity; as a religious necessity; or as a symbol of voicelessness and impotence. Kashmir is an issue about which much has been said, and very little understood. Kashmir is an issue that many speak about, and very few reach consensus on. I am not here to discuss Kashmir, because I know too little and can decide on what I support or feel even less – suffice to say, there are some real atrocities committed there, and yet it seems to be more complicated than any easy dialectic of oppressed/oppressor.

What I do feel strongly and passionately about though is this: the cancellation of a literary festival that was to have taken place in Srinagar next month. It was to have been the first ever literary festival in Kashmir, but has been dogged by criticism and questioning – and rightly so. Over 200 people signed an open letter which took issue with various aspects of holding a literary festival in Kashmir: the juxtaposition of the intellectual and political freedom represented by literature, and the oppression and lack of freedoms in Kashmir; on the way the literary festival might (might) have been yet another state ploy to convey a sense of ‘normalcy’ about Kashmir; on the literary festival’s self-professed ‘apolitical’ character, in a region of the world which grapples with so many pressing, dangerous political issues.

All of these concerns are valid. The open letter demands the utmost respect for having pointed the flaws of this ‘literary festival’ out, and for forcing the public – who perhaps, otherwise, would indeed have accepted a sense of normalcy in Kashmir too glibly and unquestioningly – to rethink the political significance of even such an ‘apolitical’ event (although importantly, even the letter notes that only the event is ‘apolitical’ – does this mean that they were not expected to be similarly so?)

But now that the literary festival has been cancelled, I cannot help but feel strongly that it is a great loss to India and to Kashmir, and above all to the Kashmiri people. These authors and intellectuals had a chance to be in Kashmir and engage directly with the people. Their fears about complicity in being figures in the state-propagandist image of a ‘normal Kashmir’ is entirely legitimate, and the problem arises when one weighs the pros and cons of a festival such as this: on the one hand, taking part means possible complicity with a freedom-curtailing state, a legitimation of their acts and stance. On the other hand, taking part means that people have a chance to initiate dialogue, share ideas, talk – about and with Kashmir. And to me, that far outweighs the evils that accompany participation.

What many people called for is a revolution – what they had the opportunity to do was to question and subvert the system from within, a far more effective and less harmful method of questioning and reforming any system (I feel). And they rejected that opportunity. What they had the opportunity to do was go to Kashmir, and engage in conversation – to make not only their own but other voices heard, to listen to the people. What they have ultimately succeeded in doing is writing a letter that was published on a fairly obscure corner of the Internet, which will ultimately pass into the vault of Kafila’s archives – and they have left the Kashmiri people with nothing. I cannot support this. The pen has satisfied itself with one little letter on the Internet, falling silent before the very idea and possibility of the sword! How tragic!

The same faults of Anna Hazare seem to be in lesser form reflected here: a desire to have one’s way – all – or nothing. The sooner people realise that while revolutions and rebellions work in the world of dictators and tyrants, they are not so feasible an option for imperfect democracies, the better. Imperfect democracies require reform, and reform requires dialogue. Reform requires ideas to be shared. And for this sharing to take place, sometimes one has to make the sacrifice of working within the very systems one is trying to change; this does not necessarily betoken complicity (one still has a voice, and a mouth, with which to point out a certain institution or event’s flaws and mistakes, right?).

My darlings, it’s extremely extremely easy to type away on a blog and pick holes in things (see, even I’m doing it!) – but it would have been much more of a heroic thing to make something special of this literary festival, regardless of all its intentions – its intentions are not yours, after all. It would have been much harder, and much more meaningful, to go to Kashmir University and share wonderful, brilliant ideas with those young people, who are probably starved for intellectual freedoms and opportunities such as this.