HARMONY : SATISH BAGAL'S BLOG ON BOOKS AND BIBLIOPHILES

“Knife: Salman Rushdie-----------Book Review

2025-01-04T23:17:00.010+05:30

I have just finished reading Salman Rushdie’s latest book, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder”. Amongst contemporary writers, Rushdie stands out as one whom God has repeatedly selected to undergo several rigorous tests of commitment to writing. I know of no other living writer or an artist who has faced wrath of the world the way Salman Rushdie has faced. And yet after experiencing every such fierce attack, he has emerged and re-emerged like that proverbial phoenix bird that rises from its own ashes. One would naturally wonder what makes him so controversial and why his writing evokes such hatred in many people around the world. But equally, one ought to wonder, perhaps more, what makes him rise above all the vilifications he is subjected to. At the end of this book, one cannot but conclude that he owes his ability to rise through ashes to his undying and eternal commitment to the art and craft of writing.

All this began in 1988 when his book “Satanic Verses” was published. A part of the book was regarded as a great insult to prophet Mohammad. Iranian cleric Ayatollah Khomeini issued a Fatwah, a religious order, awarding him death penalty. It was an appeal to the Muslims in the world to execute him. It was a serious matter; he could not have protected himself even with all security provided to him by the British Government. So, he had to go underground to escape bid on his life. That drove him away from his family and shattered his personal life. He spent a long and dark period of fifteen years under death threat. During this period of wilderness, he lost his wife; his family suffered and he spent lonely life of a fugitive running from place to place escaping killers who never left his back. At the turn of the century, threat to his life waned, or so it looked like, and he began new lease of life. It appeared that all he wrote in 1980s and death threats he received in turn were left behind. But alas, the Fatwah and the death penalty it decreed did not leave him. It followed him, as it appears in retrospect, secretly, unbeknownst to him and to his well-wishers. When everyone thought that the dark period of dance of death was over and life was brighter again, it struck suddenly and more ferociously. And this time tragic fate overtook him more dramatically too, with greater irony. For, in August 2022 Rushdie was brutally attacked in a New York theatre by an assassin; a greater irony was that he was attacked when he was delivering a lecture on “Guarding Writers’ Freedom of Speech”. So ferocious was the attack that Rushdie suffered twenty-seven deep wounds, lost an eye and was almost given up as dead. It was a great medical miracle that he somehow survived. The present work “Knife” is an account of that dark period and his resurrection, both physical and spiritual.

The first part of the book deals with meticulous details of attack, injuries he suffered and detailed descriptions of critical and crucial medical treatments he underwent. It is a brave story of how with courage and fortitude he came out of pall of death and pain. The later part is a creative meditation on our precarious and troubled existence and the purpose of art, especially the art of writing. These meditations show Rushdie’s great qualities as an artist who comes to terms with himself. His writing extensively dwells and philosophically lingers on broader issues of art and its purpose. Although the assassin and his motives bother Rushdie and he tries to explore them, there is no anger or bitterness in his mind; all the while he is trying to make sense of his assassin and his motives. There is no hatred in his writing. Instead, there is an attempt to comprehend the enormity of the phenomenon. Ultimately, there is revelation in his writing about the purpose of art. Rushdie seeks to engage his killers and violent opponents through his writing. He appears to be saying to his opponents, “If you hate me that’s fine; but I will go my way and will engage you through my art; for art is more enduring and powerful than all the violence you want to unleash on me.” Rushdie’s writing on art and its purpose is lucid and luminous; it has its own light and aura that shines on what he writes. He may call himself an atheist and yet his love for art, for humanity, for human civilization transcends his atheism. This is perhaps the most beautiful part of his writing.

There was another reason why I was curious to read Rushdie’s “Knife”. Many years ago, after the years of “Satanic Verses”, when the clouds of death hanging over his head started clearing and he began breathing somewhat easily, Salman Rushdie wrote his famous memoirs “Joseph Anton”. I had reviewed this book immediately after its release in 2012, for a Marathi newspaper, “Maharashtra Times”. I was truly fascinated by his uncompromising and awe-inspiring courage and struggle he raised for freedom of expression. Apart from its great literary merit, his memoirs were also a chronicle of a great fight he put up on behalf of the artists of the world. And yet, I carried an impression that Rushdie had not fully come to terms with his tormentors. Somewhere in his narrative I had sensed a small but discernible complaint. In contrast, the narrative of “Knife” is admirably free of any complaint even about the killer. Rushdie’s writing, therefore, rises above the ordinary, the mundane and the everyday!

Here, Rushdie uses a novel literary device, an imaginary dialogue with his assassin. I have not come across anywhere such a dialogue between a murderer and his victim, both sitting facing each other and talking it out openly. This literary technique ferrets out aesthetically what goes on in the minds of the enemies of art. The dialogue and the conversation bring up a picture that shows the civilizational mindlessness we are heading for and also the challenge it poses to the sanity of the world. For, the dialogue elicits nothing except a deep nihilistic void in the mind of Rushdie's assassin. Rushdie and his readers alike are shocked to learn that the assassin had not read a single page of Rushdie’s writing. It is this nihilism, born of the hate speech and hatred peddled through the ubiquitous social media, that is the greatest existential threat to the world and to our civilization. This reasoned dialogue with the murderer is not merely a literary device; it’s much more than that. It is art at its divine work. Rushdie may be, as he claims and others endorse, an atheist; but this work flows with great warmth and love that transcends all that circumscribes and defines atheism.

I have no hesitation accepting that through his book Rushdie has reached great literary height few other contemporary writers have reached.

Ezra Vogel : Deng Xiaoping and Transformation of Modern China

2017-05-01T17:51:00.003+05:30

Professors at the Harvard University are often foremost in exploring new subjects for writing books; accordingly, during the last decade the Harvard University saw a frenzy of book writing on China. Much of this resulted in a fairly good number of books on Chinese economy, business, governance and politics. By comparison, Ezra Vogel's "Deng Xiaoping and Transformation of Modern China" is a scholarly and solid work of contemporary history and it brings out detailed political biography of Deng Xiaoping and his tryst with the destiny in the post-Mao China that was bedeviled by excesses of Cultural Revolution.

This work, running into 800 pages, is a political history of a period that saw a monumental change in the way China reshaped itself and challenged the world order. To a patient reader it is a lucid and detailed account of economic reforms Deng initiated in a China whose economic growth had been stifled under violent Cultural Revolution unleashed by Mao. Deng's reforms, within a period of thirty years, were to hurtle China ahead of all the big nations and pose a serious economic and strategic challenge to the mighty US. In 1977 at the time of the death of Chairman Mao, the country was in the throes of ravages and moral degradation brought about by the Cultural Revolution. It was a providential arrangement that a statesman of vision like Deng Xiaoping blessed with capacity for relative moderation was available to carry the mantle of leadership.

For several reasons Ezra Vogel’s job of writing the story of Deng’s leadership was a tough one. Chinese ways of chronicling leaders’ lives, normally stuffed with excessive praise, in accordance with the relative importance and hierarchies of leaders have to be understood first. Reconciling these difficulties with the western writers’ penchant for painting an intimate and informal portrait of the subject of the biography also has its own problems. At places, therefore, Vogel hurries through Deng’s personal details and delves deeply into drab policy making, presumably because the official records are full of such details. Despite these inadequacies of resources and materials required for a biography, Ezra Vogel has largely succeeded in presenting a portrait of Deng Xiaoping that is authentic and riveting. He is portrayed vividly, both as an eminent political leader of China and as a human being torn between the compulsions of a huge complicated governing machine and his own conscience.

A few points need to be made here on the portrait of Deng that stands out from Vogel’s long work. Deng may have lacked Mao’s charisma and other attributes but he was a man of details and of performance. He did not have Mao’s capacity to move masses and lend them a grand vision of future; but Deng had a pragmatism and a great sense of his times with which he could deliver and decide what was good for people. Mao held sway over people’s hearts, and in turn people were ready to be led blindfolded wherever he led them, at times with disastrous results. Deng put road-map before his people, broadly agreed to a blueprint and basic tenets of execution, developed consensus among colleagues and followers and gave freedom to his people to show results. And this worked immensely well in a society that had suffered from absurdities and violence of Cultural Revolution.

Mao was a visionary and a dreamer and a poet who subsisted on books and a sense of history. Pragmatic Deng was not merely an astute administrator with a keen eye for details; he had an ability of peeping into the future and preparing for it. Mao had hardly traveled outside China and cared little for the world. Relatively, Deng had traveled extensively through the world and knew that he had to keep China appropriately on the world map through alliances and friendships. He had been to France as a student apprentice at the age of 15, worked there and cut his teeth working with the Communist Party there. He was also in Russia for a fairly long period and was conversant with communist movements in other countries. He had firsthand experience of war and conflicts during the Communist Revolution and served as Commissar with the Red Army, administering and managing the territories occupied by the Army. And after the Communist Revolution he occupied important positions in the government. All these stood in good stead for Deng when he became preeminent communist leader and administrator and made China an engine of world economic growth. Deng was a tough diplomat but knew how to cultivate personal relationships with heads of states and win friends. He took personal interest and initiative to improve relations with countries like US and Japan.

Deng had always been an efficient administrator and he initiated administrative reforms whenever he had been entrusted with important positions by Mao. Twice he fell out of Mao’s favor due to maneuverings and machinations of Mao’s close aides including politically ambitious Jiang Qing, Mao’s third wife who ruined several careers during the Cultural Revolution. Despite these disruptions, he survived and kept his spine straight.

Putting China on the path of high economic growth needed some economic reforms that ran counter to the socialism. It needed adopting some aspects of open economy, abandoning system of collective farming, committing to international trade, system of incentives for agriculturists and farmers, encouraging FDI (Foreign Direct Investments), liberalizing system of administered prices etc. And yet Deng managed all this while retaining his hold on the Communist Party. Managing this change and moving on the high trajectory of economic growth needed deft political management. Although the economy was being run like an open economy, China still continued to loudly avow its socialistic credentials. Managing these contradictions and developing consensus among various factions tested Deng’s skills and mettle. And he succeeded.

Apart from economic reforms, Deng’s contributions proved outstanding in two important sectors. After Cultural Revolution and especially after he took over reins after Mao’s death, Deng moved decisively in reforming education sector, especially universities, higher education and research and development. He freed the universities of the socialistic leaders and their pernicious ideologies and promoted merit/performance based systems. If Chinese universities and higher education are gaining universal acclaim today, it is mainly because in late seventies and early eighties Deng took up an intense program of University Reforms and gave priority to research and development. His second important contribution pertains to creating internal mechanism for peaceful and consensual succession of political leadership from one generation to the other.

Private Deng was a family person, given to wife, children and grandchildren. Although not very educated himself, he had great respect for education. His wife was a university teacher and taught physics. During Cultural Revolution Deng was under political attack and his son was targeted and roughed up by red guards. He ended up being crippled for the rest of his life and Deng nursed him during his illness. Deng was not vindictive but nursed strong personal emotions for the excesses committed during the Cultural Revolution.

Clearly, Deng occupies a unique position in the History of China. Without him China would not have become a world leader. And yet, it seems that at times Deng’s role has remained somewhat ambiguous and even negative in certain aspects. Especially, in issues relating to political reforms, he failed to appreciate democratic and intellectual aspirations of a China that was in the process of momentous transformation. It appears that he was somewhat apprehensive, even timid when it came to issues of political reforms. May be, perhaps he had seen how political reforms unleashed by the Soviet leaders in eighties brought the mighty Soviet Empire to a tottering end. And this could be a reason why in 1989 he chose to crack down on the agitating students in the Tiananmen Square. Deng may have been much softer and far more positive than Mao; however, there is no evidence that he did anything to further the interests of liberalism and democracy in China. On the contrary he appears to have always stifled even the slightest dissent that he feared would snowball into demand fro political freedom. Historians and scholars still argue whether he could have handled the Tienanmen students' demonstrations in 1989 somewhat differently so as to keep the doors for political reforms slightly open. Further, intellectuals as a class in China never looked to Deng with any confidence the way they looked to Zhou. During the Great Leap Forward and Mao’s other earlier disastrous adventures, Deng does not appear to have made any attempts to protect liberals and critics.

Ezra Vogel’s book on Deng Xiaoping tries to capture all these and other aspects and presents a fairly balanced portrait of a great statesman, who brought China on the world map of high development. It's a work on political economy of Reforms in China that provides insights into interplay of forces that shape and mold the way we develop. It’s a book teeming with great details on how Chinese leaders managed the great challenge of tight rope walking between capitalism and communism.

Steven Pinker :Degenerate Past, Idyllic Present

2017-04-27T08:52:00.004+05:30

How many times, during the last week, were you overcome with the feeling that in general things are going from bad to worse? How many times were you beset by the nasty thought that people are becoming disagreeable and dishonest as compared to their ancestors in the past? And ask yourself honestly, whether or not you felt seriously that people are becoming more and more violent these days?

May be perhaps you are watching too much of television where experts keep on talking of all things that are bad with us. Taking up from a few bad examples and isolated cases from here and there, that are surely not representative of the human race, these experts start building up future scenarios and in the process they frighten you into believing that we are all, the whole world for that matter, going from bad to worse.

But wait; don’t be so pessimistic about your present or future. Perhaps we have been taught to treat the past with reverence, present with suspicion and future with despondency. Professor Steven Pinker, the well-known Harvard Professor of psychology does not think that the world is becoming more violent! He says that we are better and luckier than our forefathers in that we are living in an age that is perhaps the least violent in human history. His researches on human behavior and history of human violence tell us that if anything, human race is steadily moving away from violence and increasingly embracing new ways of cooperating and co-existing peacefully. He argues that there is every reason to believe that in future human beings would co-exist more peacefully than they ever did.

Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angeles of Our Nature” is a huge book that very assiduously argues that there has been decline of violence in history. The thought that “things are going from bad to worse” is so deeply engraved on our mind and it comes so easily and effortlessly to mind that we do not feel any need to systematically explore truth in it. And Steven Pinker has carried out the task of studying the past violent behavior and our conceptions of our own nature competently. The book may have become somewhat unwieldy and his argument longish; but he succeeds in convincing us.

He argues that we compulsively believe that human beings harbor an innate drive of aggression; and even if under certain circumstances it is repressed, it still keeps simmering there inside us and surfaces with greater force. In a nuanced and reasoned argument, backed by historical evidence, he shows that man is not innately violent or aggressive and that human violence has different motives. He also argues that during the evolution of societies human violence has been shown to be amenable to being tackled fairly effectively. Violence enters in human beings and societies via different survival and existential strategies. These may include basic predatory violence, violence from urge to dominate over adversaries, violence from desire to take revenge etc. Human beings are not inherently violent and hence violence can be contained by creating certain conditions in society and groups; conditions that reduce violent behavior.

Human beings may not be innately good, but neither are they evil. Moreover, they have a better side of their nature where they can co-operate and be altruistic. They have conscience and can feel pain of others. It is with empathy that man cultivates higher faculties, shows altruistic behavior and creates art and literature. During the last few centuries, reason, empathy and other better faculties of human beings have combined to forge more humane forms of cooperation and coexistence. Abolition of slavery was an important stage in human history that ushered in an era that culminated in acknowledging dignity of human beings. Decolonization of a large number of societies/nations after or around the Second World War was another step that recognized innate dignity and worth of human beings and contributed to diminishing violence. After the Second World War the idea of Human Rights has so much underlined the universal foundation of our existence that it has become a dominant theme of relationship between societies and nations. Feminization and increasing concern for dignity of women in societies is another reason for bringing down violence. Increasing commerce and international trade has engaged human beings in meaningful activities and peaceful behavior. Large business organizations that operate throughout world constitutes influential site that greatly contributes to peaceful behavior.

This is not to argue that all is well and violence has been abolished. What he has argued is that in last several centuries, man has been able to create conditions and mechanisms through which human beings have come to recognize dignity of human beings and it has helped reduce violence.

Steven Pinker’s book is all about this. But it’s also much more than this. He has carefully researched our long history and here you find valuable insights in the progress made by man. It sketches journey through wars and economic activities as humanity’s major vocations. There are details of cruelties associated with religions and empires and cruel punishments of the past. There are harrowing details of slavery and also narratives on how slavery was abolished. He identifies various forces and factors that led to this transition in human history. There are interesting stories drawn from history and basic insights in human behavior through history.

It is sobering to see that Professor Pinker is very discerning and cautious when it comes to making sweeping and optimistic statements about future of man. Pinker tells us that traversing the path of peace is like tight rope walking, difficult and requiring calmness of mind.

Pinker’s book, however, does not tell us that in human life stupidity and wisdom exist side by side and human race has not always chosen wisdom over stupidity. He also does not explain why the twentieth century was the bloodiest century in human history that saw more than 180 million people die of war and violence. He does not tell us very frankly that history presents cases where people forget what good they have learnt for a few moments and lapse in their old habits with disastrous results for the posterity. He does not tell us that all the progress we talk about comes with a rider that there is a need for constant vigilance on our own behavior!

And yet I am impressed with his argument for it is based on reason and evidence; and it is based on deep insights into man who, despite moments of stupidity, moves ahead with hope.

Book Review “Ignorance”: Milan Kundera

2016-06-07T12:26:00.002+05:30

Yearning to return to our native lands and original places of abode is not merely a noble feeling; it is also one of the strongest emotions that rules and drives us. But for Milan Kundera, who was born in Czechoslovakia and later settled in France, nostalgia is a far more complex feeling that comes with different significances.

Czechoslovakia was born at the end of the First World War, disappeared during the Second World War and reappeared thereafter. It was literally effaced from the map of European Civilization during Russian occupation till about the fall of communism in 1989. How would a fine novelist like Milan Kundera find such changes in the status of his motherland land when he is swept by that noble feeling of nostalgia? And how would that generate different possibilities of human existence? Milan Kundera’s novel “Ignorance” is deep meditation on the feeling of nostalgia as it comes up with moving pictures, insights and some important questions. The story moves around two strangers---a man and a woman who had earlier met but once----who are visiting their motherland after a long gap; it’s a story about what happens to them and what happens between them.

Yearning for our origins, homelands and native places is a powerful emotion that makes people do great things; it is also at the core of great narratives, literature and creative acts. It is a theme that runs deeply through our shared history and literature. Two examples are worth mentioning: Odysseus (in Odyssey) in western mythology and Ram (in Ramayana) in Indian mythology. Odysseus returned to Ithaca after a gap of about twenty years, ten years of war and ten years of search for motherland. After great struggle he returns ultimately to Ithaca only to get embroiled in further killings and adventures. He comes back to Penelope, his wife, his own men, his own land and nation; and he finds himself in some murky and violent affairs that had precisely been created due to his long absence from Ithaca. Even Penelope first refuses to believe him. He has to prove himself to her and to others. How much do the inhabitants of Ithaca care for him after his leaving Ithaca? Not much! In his absence they lived their own time they did not share with him. There is a long discontinuity in time, life and events. To them he belonged to a period that was not theirs. He lived outside the pale of their existence, in darkness and nobody wanted to know where he was and what he did. And hence after his return he finds that painful distance and abyss that separates him from his own people.

This distance and abyss is also manifest in Ramayana, the famous Indian epic where King Ram and his wife Sita return to Ayodhya after a period of fourteen years! Even during the fourteen years, Ram and Sita were separated for some time as Ravana, the villain, had abducted Sita; she was rescued after Ram killed Ravana. Ram ultimately returns to Ayodhya with Sita. But this sense of satisfaction proves only short lived as under the pressure of public opinion Ram was required to abandon his own wife. Sita had been abducted by Ravana and remained in his custody for a fairly long time, a fact the Indian people at that time would hardly accept. Ramayana ends in the tragedy of Ram and Sita. Again the longing for the homeland generates a complex set of events!

Returning to one’s own motherland with after a long gap may apparently be a happy affair. But not always; at times it would be far more complex. We mostly leave in the presence and the present concerns; our memory of the past is buried under layers of later experiences and these past memories surface sometimes only under the powerful pull of nostalgia. The shared memories may under such circumstances be available to the one who is plagued by nostalgia and not to others. Such asymmetries of memories make people strangers even in their homelands.

No wonder then Milan Kundera finds “Nostalgia” a powerful theme that becomes far more fertile in generating different experiences and different possibilities of existence. Alienation, nostalgia and home-coming runs through Milan Kundera’s “Ignorance”, which is a beautifully crafted novella. This is the story of Irena and Josef, two strangers originally from Czechoslovakia, who had left Czechoslovakia in the past, had met only once when they left Czechoslovakia and who later on meet briefly in Prague while on their respective short visit to their motherland. Their love story, that began and apparently ended in their only visit twenty years ago, remains deeply etched in their minds. How do they react to each other when they meet after twenty years under similar circumstances? Were they really welcome in Prague? Was their visit spiritually and historically redeeming enough that would elevate nostalgia that propelled them to go to Prague?

When Joseph and Irena ultimately return to their homes from Czechoslovakia, they had seen, in bits and pieces, the reality of homecoming. The contrast between surge of longing and the belittling hard realities they face in Prague is the high mark of this novel. And in this story Milan Kundera finds large spaces for meditating on such concepts as alienation, yearning for motherland, love and nationalism; he explores and demonstrates some dynamics of how the communities and nations (and even families) look to estranged people who had once left their homelands and yet carry a deep sense of belongingness to their erstwhile nation. He also shows how lofty feelings of nostalgia that elevate and raise men from the ordinary and the mundane, ultimately encounter the petty concrete details that make loftiness feel its own weight.

The Year of Lear: James Shapiro

2016-05-29T12:58:00.003+05:30

I have never been a formal student of literature and never studied Shakespeare in class room. I read Shakespeare as I went along and that’s greater reason why I feel that Shakespeare is perhaps the world's greatest explorer of human nature. James Shapiro's "The Year of Lear" is an important contribution to the ever increasing body of scholarly works on Shakespeare and it shows how Shakespeare's observant mind used the contemporary debates and concerns in shaping his major creative works! That such a passionate work of great scholarship should appear during the year that marks 400th death anniversary of Shakespeare also proves that with time posterity's interest in Shakespeare has not declined a whit, and that Shakespeare still continues to be an important industry that keeps generating quality works on his life and works! While reading "The Year of Lear” I was impressed by James Shapiro's marshalling of facts as also his passionate exposition of the spirit of the period he has written about.

James Shapiro argues that the year 1606 was truly eventful in social, political and religious life of the English people. The year saw great upheavals and tempests that continued to reverberate for many decades to come. It was also the most important and productive year for Shakespeare, for he wrote three major celebrated works during this year, "King Lear", "Macbeth" and "Antony and Cleopatra". Shapiro further demonstrates that the happenings of this period have deeply etched high creative contours of these three major plays written in 1606. His book is not merely about Shakespeare’s creativity. It goes beyond Shakespeare and gives a live demonstration of how great writers and artists deeply engage with complex social forces that shape destinies of societies and give rise to dominant narratives and literature of people. In that sense Shapiro's "The Year of Lear" provides deep insight into Shakespeare's Act of Creation. As such it is a great contribution to the study of creativity in literature.

After an intense survey of major themes unfolding in the third year of the reign of James I, Shapiro shows that the period was marked by three interrelated dominant social, political and religious themes. And he shows that these themes were uppermost in the mind of Shakespeare during this period and they powerfully resonate in his three creative works of this period. If literary works are deep meditations on life and all its afflictions, then here was Shakespeare deeply reflecting on the tumultuous events and themes that were sweeping the English nation.

The first theme concerned with the union and the division of the kingdom/s---the issue that became important after James I succeeded Queen Elizabeth---- and this forms the core of King Lear. King Lear's very scheme of dividing the kingdom among three daughters was fraught with political unwisdom and ineptitude! Shakespeare also built around this politically unsustainable proposal a wretchedly unethical and immoral scheme emanating from the senile king's lack of judgement. The story of King Lear was thus modified by Shakespeare in the light of the contemporary acrimonious debates, and what resulted was perhaps his greatest work "King Lear".

The second was the deep simmering religious disharmony that surfaced violently in the form of seditious "Gun-Powder Plot" that would have blown up the entire parliament along with the King. In November 1605 the nation was shocked to learn about this conspiracy when the plot was busted. This brought to the fore the old rivalry between Protestants and Catholics and passions started running high. The spirit of sedition, murder and conspiracy was already in the air. As it echoed and reverberated in the air it found its way into Shakespeare's mind. And then he grafted it on a Scottish story to present Macbeth, one of the greatest tragedies of Shakespeare.

The third theme in the year 1606 was the high profile visit of King James's brother-in-law (King of Denmark) and the accompanying atmosphere of courtly manners and styles masquerading social biases and deep conflicts in the society. And this formed an important influence in the writing of Antony and Cleopatra. With detailed arguments and impressive facts and records James Shapiro shows how general debates arising from this visit are reflected in the making of Antony and Cleopatra, one of the masterpieces of Shakespeare.

The fourth important contemporary theme was about witchcraft, the toxic atmosphere of miracles and psychic phenomena. Considerable debate was raging on this issue and in many cases it was argued that such phenomena were either tricks or the reportage of the gullible and the simpleminded. Moreover, many such cases were shown to be closely related to Catholic/Jesuits giving it a political undertone. This theme of witchcraft has recurred in Macbeth and in King Lear and has aesthetically enhanced magical suggestiveness of various events in these works. 1606 was also a year that saw ravages brought about by plague and its social and psychological implications and personal tragedies. All these found reflections in Shakespeare’s plays.

James Shapiro's book demonstrates that all literary and artistic creativity stems from the 'Now and the Present' of the life; and the great literature, however fanciful it may be in terms of its presentation and rendering, is always rooted in the life of people and the mores of the society. Passion with which James Shapiro writes is unique. His book is also a contribution to history of England during the reign of King James I. As one continues reading the book, one feels as if one is a part of the then society of the 16th century England of King James I. It was great pleasure reading this book that was timely brought out during the Shakespeare festival.

If Shakespeare has survived for over four centuries and has emerged stronger and greater, it is not merely because of the merits of his literary works alone. It is also because of abiding faith and total devotion of scholars like James Shapiro.

Voltaire's Candide

2015-12-25T19:40:00.005+05:30

At last, a few days ago I could finish reading Voltaire’s “Candide”. Like many other classics in my personal library, “Candide” had long been queuing up in my reading list, and it remained there patiently for quite some time without much movement.

“Candide” is a convoluted story of adventures of a young man, Candide, as his fate takes him to distant lands. Candide comes from almost a royal family except that he is an illegitimate child. He is taught by his tutor, Pangloss, who is a philosopher shaped mainly by ideas of Leibniz. Leibniz believed that all that has just happened is not merely result of some grand and divine design but is also something that is the best under the given circumstances. Nothing could have been wiser or better for human beings than the situation obtaining here. “Candide” denounces and negates this philosophy mercilessly and loudly! No wonder “Candide” is a classic that ushers in new European thinking of enlightenment and of human triumph that seeks to accord central place to man.

“Candide” is a short work, of only about 150 pages, full of adventures and fantasy stories we normally find in adventure books. But this story of adventure though fascinating, is not entirely enjoyable. It’s funny as also dark. It is this contrast between the hilarity and the crudity, light and the darkness, hope and despair that is a source of troubled thought for the reader. The contrast continues as more adventures continue to pour in, sometimes to complicate the story and at other times to simplify it. The entire series of adventure is designed to test Leibniz's idea that whatever happens, happens for the best and that the situation that is obtained is the best possible one in the world. The characters (except the hero, Candide) simply go ahead with events as if they are acting according to a script written for them. Everything is accepted uncritically, everything is justified and rationalized. How can it be otherwise for this world is the creation of the God himself? And how would God create something that is not perfect? Pangloss and Candide keep on arguing tediously as the train of adventure moves on. The trouble in the mind of the reader is that he senses a medieval world that is at loggerheads with the spirit of enlightenment!

Voltaire’s Candide is thus a biting satire and a mordant travesty of Leibniz's philosophy that justifies everything that comes to the lot of man. Candide moves out of his protected environment and tests the philosophy he has been nurtured in; and he finds something shockingly different. He finds that the world outside is not merely cruel but continues to be inhumane to the hapless players who experience hierarchies of cruelty, violence, indignity and inequity of every kind. As one reads and follows Candide’s and his colleagues’ adventures and their tryst with their misfortunes one wonders what good is there in this world! Violation of human beings and its acceptance without a finger being raised against such acts of cruelty by the victims of religious, social, political and economic realities forms the core of Voltaire’s Candide. At the end of the novel Candide gets thoroughly disillusioned by the philosophy that seeks to justify this world and decides in the end that gardening perhaps is the best activity for human beings. In this work, Voltaire excoriates contemporary philosophers, politicians, statesmen and religious and social leaders for continuing to peddle the philosophy that leaves little volition, freedom and dignity to human beings.

Candide, though a satire, presents a pessimistic view of the world and makes a gloomy reading. It is full of violence against human beings, with basest violation and worst indignities reserved for women. At once dark and funny “Candide” is a great work of criticism against a world order that thrives on the annihilation of the spirit of the weak.

In the end Candide, thoroughly disillusioned with the philosophy of his mentor, concludes that the best activity that human beings can do is to nurture and develop “Garden”. Gardening here may signify a simple and positive activity that supports life; it may also mean tending with love and affection all human activities. It may also mean confronting the world and bringing about great forces that are life enhancing and life perpetuating. It also means an attempt to demystify philosophies in the face of robust life and live it in simple ways.

Though “Candide” was written in 1750s it is still a modern work for it creates and endorses a tradition of asking fundamental questions about existence of human beings. I find Voltaire’s “Gardening” a good solution to the troubled mind and to the troubled world beset by the exasperation of choosing between complex options. For it supports and enhances life. It is the simplest available philosophy that needs perhaps no justification through first principles.

“War and Peace”: From Literature to Subaltern History

2013-03-18T13:58:00.003+05:30

“War and Peace”, both in terms of its scope and message is an extraordinary novel. It has a special significance in Tolstoy’s literary oeuvre. It brings out a great artist’s strengths and peculiarities, and also discontinuities, contradictions and ironies. With all these, it stands out as an original work of great beauty and substance. But what is generally not acknowledged is that it is also an important commentary on history and makes outstanding contribution to the discipline of historiography. The dominant view of history in the nineteenth century, until the coming of Hegel and Marx, was that the political leaders, emperors and the aristocracy were the makers of glorious history and the common man was merely a consumer of this history and someone who draws inspiration from it. “War and Peace” was the first major literary experiment that tried to demolish this view and made serious attempt to place the common man and his life at the core of history. It was a unique literary attempt that tried to reclaim for the common man the central place in historiography that is always largely expropriated by dominant classes, powerful political interests and those who claim to run the powerful business of peddling history.

It was almost about 150 years ago, in 1863, that the first draft of the novel was completed, though it was not until 1865 that it started getting serialized in a magazine. Some sources doubt these dates and indicate that Tolstoy may have started writing the novel in 1865. Not satisfied with these earlier drafts, and having made many changes, Tolstoy almost rewrote the entire novel to bring it to the text that we today know as “War and Peace”. Whatever it is, reading this novel of over twelve hundred pages is a difficult project. In addition to the 1200 pages, there is a 60-70 pages long chapter, known as Part II of the novel, where Tolstoy somewhat gratuitously and often to the increasing annoyance of the tired readers, unleashes his own ramblings on what, according to him, history is.

I could read this mega- novel, somehow, only because I was on a longish leave and was convalescing from a long drawn fever. But not all Tolstoy lovers are so happily lucky. I feel that sheer size of the novel could be problematic to many book lovers who approach “War and Peace” with enthusiasm. It is likely that book lovers who decide to read this classic and leave it unfinished at various stages may constitute a goodly number. It was tenacity born of passion for Tolstoy’s works that sustained me through, for I read the novel again after 15 years when I was on my sabbatical. But luckily this time I was guided to “War and Peace” by no less a person than the great Isaiah Berlin, whose famous classic essay “The Fox and The Hedgehog” even today continues to provide deep insights into works of Tolstoy, especially his “War and Peace”.

Tolstoy’s Views of History and Historiography

During the 1850s Tolstoy was increasingly being drawn to historical writing. But he did not want to write historical romance and was certainly not interested in fictionalizing history. Like all intellectuals of the nineteenth century Tolstoy was influenced by various strands of historicism. If history is a clue to understanding everything about human beings, he certainly, especially as an artist, wanted to understand how history is made, created, recorded, and its myths perpetuated. He was interested in showing discrepancies between the actual unfolding of the history and it’s often deliberate and one-sided recording and writing by the political establishment. And this he wanted to demonstrate through work of art, through a novel.

Tolstoy was not merely critical of the manner in which historians write political history selectively. He denounced the practice of traditional history writing and described it as selective chronicling of political and military events from the view point of political establishments. He came heavily on such great historians as Gibbon and Buckle and dismissed their histories as empty and devoid of all meaning. According to him they were sweeping and rambling narratives from which were removed all that was human. He was also not very happy with Hegel’s view of history. He had read Hegel, but was not impressed by his idea of Directional History where flow of history moves relentlessly irrespective of the human beings that participate in it. He despised the idea of movement towards a predetermined and preordained goal or objective. He felt that such an idea would preempt human beings and would leave no volition to them in their universe. As an artist he viewed freedom of human beings in different situations as central to life and human drama, and hence he was not enthused by Hegel’s project. And yet like Hegel and Marx he too believed in some arcane law that governed unfolding of history irrespective of historical players; but he could not precisely articulate it.

Tolstoy believed that the existing practice and art of writing history missed many dimensions of human motivation and creative activity. An ideal history to him was a larger history of Man who negotiates his universe in all its creative aspects, social, economic, aesthetic, artistic, and literary. Tolstoy was looking for a much larger, grander and livelier narrative. He wanted a history, kicking and bustling with innate human activity, of which war and political maneuvering was merely an outer, if rabid, manifestation.

More than heroes and emperors he was fascinated by the common man who continues his life in all its complexity. He believed that history was not made by emperors and the so called great heroes. It was made, according to him, by common man who lives his life courageously despite all the turbulence he finds himself in. The common man, the ordinary man at work and in his own home, was thus the hero of Tolstoy’s history. He rejected all versions of history in which this ordinary man, who is evolving spiritually, is absent.

The Art, Vision and Aesthetics of “The War and Peace”

“War and Peace” happens on the background of the Napoleonic Wars that were fought between 1800 and 1812, especially Napoleon’s Russia war. It is the story of four Russian aristocratic families, Bolkonsky, Bezhuhov, Kuragin and Rostov. It is the story of their private relationships and public responsibilities and important off-war happenings in these families. The three heroes, young aristocrats from these families---- Andrei, Pierre, and Nikolai--- experience war in all its gruesome and absurd reality. Although nations avowedly wage war in the name of such lofty concepts as nationalism and patriotism, in reality in the theater of war and on the actual battlefield, there reigns confusion, crassness, cowardice, madness and a great cloud of meaninglessness. Still more frightening is the prospect of these events being presented by historians to the posterity as great heroic events unfolding from the brilliant strategies and grandiose plans of the military leaders, generals and others who stand tall and appear to dwarf all that is around them.

The emptiness and meaninglessness of designs and the plans of the emperors and generals and their irrelevance to the common man who conducts his affairs courageously even under such dispensation of madness and disaster is the theme of the “War and Peace”. The heroes of the “War and Peace” carry with them this dark vision of meaninglessness in their life as they strut back home with dull heavy feet: a false history written on the basis of events that were a disgrace to humanity, as great meaninglessness descends on such concepts as nationalism, patriotism, valor, glorious national history and so on. And from this dung of activities rise grand heroes of the history, the Napoleons and the Alexanders whose contrived images and reputations distort the vision and the values of the generations to come.

Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” contains several pages of moving descriptions of events that occur on battlefields. There are passages and pages that do not merely make scenes alive in the minds of the readers but radiate pure light of human wisdom. Tolstoy works with words and phrases to carve out rare sculptures that shall live as long as human race lasts. Many critics, however, detested Tolstoy’s commentaries on history that are sprinkled throughout the novel. Turgenev and Flaubert, Tolstoy’s contemporaries, adored “War and Peace” but felt that serious references to history and commentaries jarred on the literary achievements. It is this dazzling vision and great aesthetics that made readers, especially historians and social scientists neglect Tolstoy's philosophy of history! They regarded Tolstoy as an amateur and a dabbler and dismissed his views of history as his passing views in literature.

Tolstoy’s Fragmented Vision: Aesthetics of art and Ascetics of Spiritualism

Despite his great literary talent and ability, Tolstoy is more known as a philosopher of divinity, simplicity and ascetics. And hence perhaps, when it comes to his views on history he is, unfortunately, simply dismissed. This is mainly because Tolstoy’s enduring reputation was founded more on his later works such as “What is Art?”, “Confessions” and his later literary works such as “Resurrection” etc. Not that his better works such as “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina” are not acknowledged. They are regarded as his masterpieces; however, rarely is an attempt made to reconcile the earlier masterpieces with the later day literature that is written in the language of a high priest, a teacher of humanity and a quaint spiritual leader. When it comes to Tolstoy's art, his earlier works such as "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina are often cited without referring ever to his philosophy of history! And when it comes to Tolstoy's philosophy or thought, it is generally his later works that are cited. Unless, therefore, one understands evolution of Tolstoy from an aesthete and a philosopher of history to a saintly preacher of humanity, it is difficult to understand the continuing presence of the two opposite movements in his mind. In absence of such an attempt of tracing his thought and philosophy, his musings and critique of history and history writing went largely unnoticed; and when it was noticed it was dismissed as jarring on novel's aesthetics and natural flow.

Isaiah Berlin wrote a beautiful essay on Tolstoy with a catchy title “The Fox and the Hedgehog” where he brilliantly brings out Tolstoy's philosophy of history. He discusses many strands of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and concludes that Tolstoy’s literary vision was fragmented and that it had much to do with two very strong internal currents that moved in opposite directions. One was a great artist of humanity recording aesthetically everything that went with Man with all contradictions there are. The other was the spiritual nihilist that was set to negate and even destroy everything that fell short of his own spiritual ideals. With increasing age this opposition in his mind increased; and in his later days (especially after publication of “Anna Karenina”, which immediately followed “War and Peace”) the spiritual nihilist got the better of the aesthetic and artistic Tolstoy. But these opposite traits in his vision become louder and more pronounced in “War and Peace” where his art and his spiritual nihilism manifest through the long and yet fairly cohesive narrative of over 1200 pages. In understanding this drama and the aesthetics, readers have often not paid much attention to his important views on history in which he tried to place the common man at the very center of the history. He stands for a Meta narrative of the history where the Man is the centerpiece and is depicted in his entirety, with all his contradictions and achievements.

Tolstoy’s Contribution to Subaltern History

Subaltern History is a fairly new trend in history writing. It is writing of history from the point of view of the common man, from the point of view of those who have been the victims of an unjust order. We do not acknowledge it but Tolstoy’s attempt of reclaiming for the common man the center of the history writing was one of the greatest things that happened in literature. This was Tolstoy’s contribution to the history of ideas and to the history writing. He sought to give dignity to the common man by trying to put him at the center of the universe.

Most of the historians and thinkers did not look at the “War and Peace” from the point of view of any serious historical discourse. As pointed out above this may have to do with the size and complexity of the “War and Peace”. Moreover, many serious readers get enamored of the pure aesthetics and the literary vision and pay little attention to the discourse on history that runs throughout the novel.

History of ideas is a strange discipline; it is difficult to say when and how an idea becomes popular, powerful and then perpetuates its dominance. It is significant too, that while Karl Marx was busy explaining how history unfolds, Tolstoy too was revealing great insights in history and history writing and was trying to place the common man at the center of history and history writing. Marx’s project claimed to be more scientific and was written in the language of science that was becoming a norm in the nineteenth century. Tolstoy’s project was equally ambitious, one may say. However, its language and medium was different; it was literature.

We often regard literature as something that is unsubstantial and peripheral to our hard disciplines such as science, technology, economics and sociology. There are, however, powerful works of art and literature that affect us in great measure. We often fight shy of acknowledging such influences. But literature is one great way of evaluating and criticizing and representing our very life that is shaped by these hard disciplines. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” is such a work that reminds us of the power of literature.

Two Hundred Years of "Pride and Prejudice"

2013-03-03T11:12:00.002+05:30

Milan Kundera tells us that each great work of art and literature has its own inner voice and that its creator creates work while listening to the inner voice of his work. It is this inner voice, the sum total of all the wisdom that human race possesses collectively, that drives and shapes great works of art and literature. Such works, therefore, hold a continuous dialogue with successive generations of readers. We call such works "Classics".

Jane Austen's novel, "Pride and Prejudice", first published two hundred years ago in January 1813, is such a great classic. Today, even after two hundred years of its publication, the novel entertains and speaks to the old and the young alike in the same measure as it did perhaps a hundred years ago. Why has the novel not finished telling what it started telling two hundred years ago?

"Pride and Prejudice" is a story of three or four marriages. There is nothing great about this; we have had better novels giving more insights into marriages since Jane Austen wrote this novel. Moreover, there were women writers, some preceding her and others her contemporaries, who wrote on women's issues more eloquently and more competently. And many critics argue that George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte are better women writers, both in terms of style and literary merit, than Jane Austen.

And yet "Pride and Prejudice" is unique in its universal popularity, with more than a million copies being sold every year. A likely reason is that it was almost for the first time that a story of a woman was told by a woman with her own voice, with her inner womanly insight and in a style that could come only to a woman. The eighteenth and nineteenth century English prose had lofty, brilliant and literary style, the style that was fashioned by Gibbon and Dr. Johnson. And even women writers of that period could not escape being influenced by this style. Jane Austen may not have been a great writer of her times. But she developed a unique style of her own. Austen’s unique style evolved as she tried writing with insights and instincts of a woman. And Jane Austen was creating a character that was trying to make a room of her own in a society that was so dominated by men. It took out the best in Jane Austen --satire, wit, humor and brilliance—as she portrayed a funny society in which her protagonist was trying to survive with dignity. That her prose scintillates with intelligent conversation at the dining table and in the drawing room may be another reason why she became so interesting and so readable. It is this brilliance that makes "Pride and Prejudice" greatly readable today. And it also makes this novel a darling of the world of the movies and the TV. During the last seventy years since the beginning of the movie and the TV, on an average one TV show or a movie on this novel was created every ten years or so. The BBC TV serial that was made in 2005 took the media by storm, and it generated great curiosity in the minds of the viewers about the nineteenth century English literature.

And what does "Pride and Prejudice" describe? It portrays young women in search of husbands. You also meet mothers and aunts in search of husbands for their daughters and nieces. Mrs. Benet, the worried mother of five daughters, is rightly obsessed with the project of marrying her five daughters in good families. And the young ladies, who want to get married, preferably with gentlemen with higher income, expect different things from marriage. The elder daughter, Jane Benet wants a simple marriage that would enhance her economic security and social status through marriage. Her friend Charlotte compromises and marries Mr. Collins, the clergyman, whom Elizabeth Benet had found quite detestable. And Elizabeth Benet, who secretly loves Darcy actually refuses to marry him once she believes, somewhat erroneously though, that he is too proud and that he had worked to break Jane's marriage with Mr. Bingley. There are surely more and predictable complications in this comedy of marriages, with the pride and the prejudice ultimately making way for marriage. Elizabeth Benet, Jane Austin’s heroin and protagonist, is conscious of her being a woman and wants security and status through marriage; but she also wants dignity and a space of her own in this world that is dominated by men. The novel is exploration of Elizabeth Benet’s search for security, dignity and a degree of freedom. Elizabeth Benet, and her coming to terms with a world dominated by men, is appropriately sustained by her brilliant and scintillating dialogues and drawing table conversations. Jane Austin is at her best when Elizabeth Benet speaks and moves and thinks.

In 1929, Virginia Woolf wrote a beautiful essay “A Room of One’s Own”, in which she argued that women writers need to have economic freedom and a space and a room of their own. Without these, she argues, a woman cannot bring out her soul from within and pour it in her writing. In this essay she reverts to a number of women writers with their stories. She keeps on coming to Jane Austen.

Although Jane Austen was luckier than her other colleague women writers in that she received some encouragement from other members of her family, she still suffered from many disabilities as a woman writer. She had no room, no space of her own; she could use the study and the library only when men folk in her house did not use them. She was often required to hide her manuscript from other members of her family because ordinarily women were not expected to write. Writing was a luxury that was allowed her and perhaps she was required to often acknowledge her “luxury” by hiding manuscripts. She never married. Whether in her father’s house as a young lady or as an established writer later when she stayed with her brother, Jane Austen did not have a room (a physical separate room) of her own. She wrote often in a passage in her house and perhaps did not complain much.

While we celebrate two hundred years of the publication of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”, we should not allow ourselves to lose sight of the disabilities that restrained her creativity. It is ordinarily believed that her literary oeuvre remained slight, with a tally of about six novels only, mainly due to the Anderson’s disease that claimed her life at a young age of forty two. But I believe it was mainly the pride and the prejudice of the society she lived in that largely kept her away from producing more literary works.

Gandhi and Nehru: A Relationship that Defines India

2013-01-16T19:45:00.002+05:30

Salman Rushdie's Memoirs of Joseph Anton: Who Controls Story?

2012-10-08T12:06:00.000+05:30

I have just finished reading “Joseph Anton: A Memoir" written by Salman Rushdie and released last week. It is a remarkable autobiographical account of the days when Salman Rushdie was under death threat issued by Iranian Head Cleric Ayatollah Khomeini for his controversial novel “Satanic Verses”. Islamic fundamentalists considered this work of fiction as an insult to the prophet Mohammed and the Quran, and this resulted in world-wide protests and ultimately in death sentence being awarded by a theocratic order. This was a throwback to the medieval period when burning heretics at the stake was not considered abnormal. In our times we have hardly come across a work of pure fiction whose author was sentenced to death simply because that work is not acceptable to a group of people or a community. This is the perspective and the running theme of this beautiful book. It is a wonderful story of how a community of believers tries to control the story and the narrative of people and how the struggle for freedom of expression generates different perspectives in this complex world.

The Decade of Death

Ironically, serious trouble started only after a wave of religious protests from India, Rushdie’s own country, led to government of India banning this book. It was only after the Indian Government took this extreme step that the world Islamic community started realizing that there may be something in the book that offends Islam and Muslims.

The “Fatwa” (literally meaning an order) to kill, issued by the Islamist Fundamentalists of Iran and endorsed by the Iranian Government was not merely a symbolic disapproval of Rushdie’s work of art or an empty threat; following the Fatwa, the Islamist fundamentalist groups, spread in various parts of the world, made several attempts to track down Rushdie and kill him. In a period of ten years Rushdie moved about secretly, surreptitiously and was closely followed and protected by British police. Initially, to escape death it was made mandatory by the police to keep shifting his dwelling place after every few days. He was always in the company of his protectors who camped in the same house/flat that he occupied. Death literally hung over his head and even people who otherwise were friendly started avoiding him lest they were exposed to the bullets of the Islamist fundamentalists. Even airlines refused to carry him for fear of attracting the wrath of fundamentalists. During this period, his protectors wanted him to take up a name, an alias, so as to keep his movements secret. He took up the name, “Joseph Anton”, built up from the names of his favorite authors, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov.

During the ten long years of the “Fatwa”, Rushdie saw disaster on every front: fractured relationships, broken marriages and depression in personal life. He also found himself engaging with a strange world that was at worst hostile and at best indifferent to his cause. And yet he rebelled against all that was out to crush him. During the period he traveled secretly to America and other European countries, visiting literary events, universities and meeting political bosses and leaders who mattered and who could be roped in on his side in the battle for freedom for expression. He wrote two novels during this period and had them published. On the whole, with a few exceptions, the entire community of writers stood solidly behind him. But the world of writers and artists is perhaps as abstract and as fragile as the freedom of expression he was fighting for. They stood behind him, but he found that the world out there was practical, cruel and businesslike. The support of the community of writers may have given him strength to stand firmly in this battle, but it was not sufficient to end his loneliness and isolation.

Freedom of Expression, Electorates and Cheddar Cheese

We do some lip service to the cause of freedom of expression from time to time. But this is more like endorsing an ethical principle or taking up a theoretical position in academic life. With the death dancing over your head and the threat of death becoming grimmer with the passage of time, a theoretical meditation on the concept of freedom of expression ceases to be a literary problem. It becomes a problem of survival and a problem of life and death. It is a warlike situation. And Rushdie, who lived with this problem intensely for over a decade, discovered the other sides of this problem too. He thought that the Western society and the polity would firmly stand behind him in this struggle. He was, however, proved wrong. British and American politicians may have given him necessary protection and some assurance in person; but they perceived this as his own personal battle. In the Muslim protesters of their country they saw their potential voters and they did not want to offend a group of citizens just for defending an abstract and rather vague principle of freedom of expression. British Prime Ministers and other statesmen kept themselves away from him and did not allow themselves to be even photographed lest it be construed that they publicly backed him. And when he called on Bill Clinton, American President, in a bid to request him to support him and persuade the Iranian government to retract the Fatwa, Clinton had to publicly explain, rather defensively, why he met Rushdie.

Some countries were more bothered about their trade relations with Iran and perhaps wondered if it was really worth endangering trade relations with Iran for the so called freedom of expression. Some countries wondered if such a pro-Rushdie stance would adversely affect the sale of ‘cheddar cheese’ to Iran and thereby jeopardize their national economy. Further, to his disappointment, Rushdie also saw other religions and religious groups strongly condemning his book. He saw a strange solidarity in the community of religions when these groups perceived him to be not only an enemy of Islam but an enemy of all religions.

Although Rushdie survived the Fatwa and the death, some of his colleagues and those involved in the publication of the book paid the price with their lives. The Japanese translator of the “Satanic Verses” was stabbed to death. The Italian translator was stabbed and was seriously wounded. A friend who took initiative to have the paperback edition of the book published in Europe went in coma after he took in several bullets in his body, and remained in the hospital for more than six months.

Who Controls Story?

This book narrates a fantastic story of what hell and suffering Rushdie underwent and how he spent a long period condemned in isolation, humiliation, with death constantly hovering over his head. One wonders how strange the world of writing and writers is and how the convoluted and fierce battles for controlling the story and the narrative are fought among various institutions, political, religious, social and others and how fragile, abstract and relative is the freedom of expression in our society. Rushdie's book is an important part of the twentieth century history of struggle for Freedom of Expression. At the heart of Rushdie’s struggle is the crucial problem: who really controls the story and the narrative? Do we really have control over what we feel, think and write? Who exercises this control? Is it the State? Is it the Community of people who share some belief and feel that people’s stories and narratives threaten their community?

Struggle for Freedom of Expression

As the book progresses, there arise several questions and the reader starts meditating on these problems. Is the freedom of expression of writers and artists absolute with no limits to it? Is there a legitimate point up to which society may tolerate writers and their writing? Is there only one way that the artists and the writers relate themselves to the society, with one provoking the other and the other getting provoked in turn? Was the world around Rushdie, even his world that was supporting him, secretly getting exasperated by his arrogance, indifference and obsession with his own self? And lastly, was this really a struggle for freedom of expression of a writer or a personal battle of Salman Rushdie? The book raises these and other issues, some directly and still others not so directly. As we progress with the book, we start wondering if Rushdie was not fighting a personal battle, with the world around standing neutral?

What does one feel after one finishes reading these memoirs? Rushdie’s memoirs are brilliant and scintillating and there is lot of storytelling here. The narrative and the story is authentic and the memoirs are told in third person, presumably because the writer can in this flow ensure some kind of an objectivity. There is also a lot of reflection on the theme and Rushdie has shown again and again that he is not merely a writer of fiction but a thinking writer. Rushdie's memoirs form perhaps the most important document in the history of struggle for freedom of expression of writers in the twentieth century.

But Rushdie's memoirs are also not what many had expected they would be. I am not sure if he has made sufficient efforts to understand his adversaries, his tormentors and sometimes even his supporters. One suspects that Rushdie knows only one perspective and denies all others. Further, he has not been able to hide bitterness, animosity and sometimes loud and strong passions against his tormentors. This is understandable. However, what is not understandable is that he has not been able to show enough gratitude towards his protectors and all those who stood behind him.

Rushdie is in a hurry as if he is on a battlefield and really comes off in these memoirs more as a Roman warrior obsessed with only two states, victory and defeat. One may argue that this is what the situation was: a struggle for life and survival. But then literature is much more than this. Literature is not battle. It is a story, a narrative of the battle, and has to be told in a perspective, a story seen somewhat telescopically. True and great art is born of the magical touch of love, healing and understanding, which need to come with such a long telescopic vision. Rushdie may be a brilliant writer, a great craftsman of words, a great fighter; but I am afraid, his memoirs still fall a little short of what we might call Great Work of Art.

Remembering Eric Hobsbawm

2012-10-06T19:44:00.002+05:30

Eric Hobsbawm, the great Marxist historian of the twentieth century, passed away this week. I felt a great personal loss in his death, for he was my most favorite historian. And I feel very sad that he would no longer be there to provide wealth of meaningful details and great insights into historical and contemporary happenings and phenomena. While marshaling facts and arguments he used to be ruthlessly objective and yet there was a larger humane framework in which he conducted his profession of historiography. And this is perhaps a reason why, although he was a Marxist historian he conducted his discourse almost in the grand tradition of Liberalism.

Hobsbawm was a central European Jew and was born in 1917, the year of the Bolshevik Revolution. His father was British, his mother Austrian and he was born in Egypt: a pedigree that perhaps qualified him to become a true international historian with a global vision and a global reach. He lost both his parents in his childhood and was brought up by his uncle in Berlin, Vienna and London and ultimately he settled in UK. In those days, especially in the inter-war years, the Jews in Central Europe had mainly two options: they became communists or became Zionists. Hobsbawm joined communist movement during his student days and remained a devout communist to the end. And yet he was a communist and a Marxist thinker with a difference. He never compromised on basic human values of freedom and liberalism. Whether it was his observation that the Soviet communism was rooted in its ossified bureaucracy or whether it was his direct criticism of the communist party when Soviet Union occupied Hungary in 1956, he always displayed a rare sense of independence and respect for basic human values. Hobsbawm was a great scholar, a Cambridge Don and a member of Red Brigade. He was not merely a great scholar; he was a great lover of music and wrote extensively on music.

His greatest contribution was of course his four- volume World History, (from the French Revolution of 1789 to the Collapse of Soviet Communism in 1989) with titles, “The Age of Revolution”, “The Age of Capital”, “The Age of Imperialism” and “The Age of Extremes”. He not only brought great scholarship to his writing of history; he also had a great gift of telling the story, almost as if readers are a witness to what is happening.

In 1994, Hobsbawm had finished writing his last volume of world history, “The Age of Extremes”. Towards the end of the book he argued that, if the Soviet Communism has collapsed, that should be no reason for the West to celebrate. He further argued that the internal contradictions of capitalism had sufficiently advanced to a point where there seemed to be something seriously wrong with the Western Capitalism, which itself needed reforms. Subsequent events, especially the crisis of the capitalism through which we are passing, only show that Hobsbawm was essentially right. We are now debating how we may restructure the global financial system.

Hobsbawm also wrote prolifically on Nationalism, Globalization and Economic History. A remarkable book that he wrote (a collection of his essays) in 2011 was “How to Change the World: The Tales of Marx and Marxism”. He argues in the book that although world over Marxism has ceased to be a political ideology, Marx’s writing is still, in its sociological and economic insights, very relevant to our times where lot of correction is needed to the style and functioning of capitalism. He further says that Marx and Marxism need to be presented somewhat differently and more comprehensively, for essentially at the heart of Marxism is great concern for man. Although, I have never been a Marxist I always found Hobsbawm most stimulating and original.

Hobsbawm was respected both on the left and right and his passing away has truly created a great void in the otherwise weakening tradition of historiography.

The Difficulty of Being Good: Search for Ethics in Business through Study of Mahabharat

2012-09-17T18:28:00.001+05:30

In India, Gurucharandas enjoys a special reputation in the corporate world and the rising middle classes. After Narayan Murthy he is perceived as one important corporate leader who tends to think always in ethical terms. This is very rare in India where paradoxically we see two extremes: on the one hand, wealth creation and especially doing business were until very recently considered unethical activities and on the other, there is high tolerance for violation of ethical code even in day to day activities.

In nineteen nineties, Gurucharandas published, “India Unbound”, an important book that traces events leading to opening up of Indian Economy and the unfolding of the process of wealth creation that followed in its wake. It is an insightful study of how Indian economy responded to the economic reforms and how that led to unleashing of a powerful process of wealth creation. More importantly, it was a sociological description of a people who , after getting used to socialism for quite some time, were exposed to free market capitalism which combines two contradictory principles: one, enjoyment of ever increasing new wants and two, rigors and pain that accompany the process of wealth creation.

Economic liberalization of the early nineteen nineties did unleash powerful productive forces in action and it accelerated the process of wealth creation in this country. But productive forces and power also brought unpleasantness and pain. The whole process was accompanied by an indifferent style of governance, corruption, corporate greed and perhaps beginning of crony capitalism. If the government and its labyrinthine bureaucracy took upon itself the responsibility of promoting business, the proximity between business and politics at times crossed the reasonable limits and they tended to collude to present worst cases of corruption. People who live on the periphery of the affluence, and worst still those who live outside the realms of market and wealth, are victims of these new evils. Further, productive forces, even in their pristine form, are truly children of market and they inflict unmitigated cruelty on the weak and the most vulnerable. Surely, after putting in action the forces of wealth creation what was necessary was a moderating spirit of ethics and accountability. Capitalism, especially market driven capitalism, may be a powerful engine of growth and development but it requires a working framework in which society has to evolve a political, social and economic consensus that saves the society from the excesses of capitalism itself.

For last several years after finishing writing of “India Unbound”, Gurucharandas was working on the theme of ethics for a modern capitalist society. He was unhappy about the manner in which ethics is given a go-bye by the economic players and those in charge of governance. And this often left him wondering about the future of society that does not adequately address the issues of ethics. At the same time he was also, on a personal level, fascinated by our ancient scriptures and especially “The Mahabharata" and its ethics. These two cognate interests led him to take up the study of ethics, especially the study of what constitutes good in a fast transforming capitalistic society like India. Thus, Gurucharandas wants to know if "The Mahabharata" offered any principles of ethics and behavior with which he could get insight into the present day problems of corruption and corporate greed, and if any corrective prescription can be found in our own tradition. His book" The Difficulty of being Good" tries to answer these and other ethical issues of capitalism. This book explores the subject of what constitutes good in human life and how one may attain it. He discusses the question of good and bad in the context of Mahabharata, giving many examples and presenting many case-studies from the celebrated epic.

This book and the subject itself are both very ponderous issues and present great challenge to the author. Gurucharandas is sometimes clear and at times very vague in coming up with a concrete framework in which we can hope to resolve these ethical issues. There are two major issues that he presents with reference to a number of case studies :viz. the subtle concept of Dharma and the process through which the individual discharges his obligations in accordance with the perceived Dharma. He says that the concept of 'good' itself is very subtle and that it is very difficult to lay down a very concrete model or framework for ethical resolution of issues.

Dharma is nothing but the whole gamut of roles, responsibilities and duties that a human being is supposed to discharge as he holds a position. There are often contradictions in various roles and responsibilities. Man does not have only one role to perform. He is simultaneously performing a number of roles, some private and some public. He is simultaneously a member of a family, member of an organization, member of local community, a national citizen and a citizen of this world and lastly a human being. Each position has some duties, responsibilities and a reach of values that circumscribe his role. These roles are often overlapping and yet a man has to ponder and think intensely on his position several times before he makes a decision, for some of his decisions may be very complex. When the CEO of a company manages the company, he does so on behalf of a number of stakeholders and interest groups and still the company has certain responsibilities to the society and the world outside his company. He holds a position of a trustee and more importantly, he cannot use that position for advancing his own personal interests at the cost of the company. Such decisions and the process that leads to a decisions cannot be concretely laid down in a framework. And hence he Gurucharandas says that Dharma and the concept of Good are very subtle. Gurucharandas presents a number of instances and gives examples from the Mahabharata to illustrate his point. At times he goes back and forth on the merits of the Mahabharata in an attempt to provide a concrete ethical framework.

At other times, however, he somewhat brings himself to convince that Mahabharata does have an important message for our age and says that the Mahabharata presents its message in a negative way. He says that Mahabharata demonstrates bad effects of bad actions; by presenting a series of disasters, it teaches what one should refrain from doing.

This may all seem very interesting; however, there is nothing new that comes up at the end of the book. One expects that Gurucharandas would come up with a new formulation of the problem of ethics needed for this country or for the new capitalism in these extraordinary times. Gurucharandas has a philosophical bent of mind and this has further been shaped by his philosophical studies at Harvard where he was a student of John Rawls. And, therefore, readers would expect him to formulate first the problem of ethics in Indian society and to provide some answers and insights that would at least give some indicative answers drawn from the Mahabharata. However, he does not come up with anything, finally. That the Dharma or the Right Ethics is a very subtle thing is the only conclusion (and yet according to me a very important one) he draws from the rambling three hundred pages. Does a serious discourse on ethics in the post-liberalization era in this country has only this to offer?

But I would not blame Gurucharandas for this. Like all important issues in life, ethics in our public and corporate life also would require subtle discernment and insights. But more than this one wonders whether ancient traditions anywhere and in any part of the world can provide straitjacket answers to the present day complex problems and issues, especially ethical issues. Traditions are an important source to resolving such complex issues, for it is the departure from the proximate tradition or accepting new social structures and values and the tensions that result from the confrontation between the tradition and the modernity that many ethical issues stalk in our face. A good way to resolve such issues could be reformulating the problems and examining them in the dynamics of the evolving modernity. And in this exercise of reverting to traditions and sometimes even to ancient texts becomes inevitable. But the problem with the ancient texts such as Mahabharata is that they themselves, as a part of the tradition of the people of this country, have evolved over time. Each epoch has its own way of attributing meanings to the stories and the actions of the actors in the stories in accordance with the ethos of the times. Under these circumstances looking for ready-made solutions and algorithms in the Mahabharata that can resolve the ethical issues of modern hybrid capitalism as practiced in this country is a very difficult proposition.

But Mahabharata is not alone in demonstrating its inability of alleviating the modern paralysis of ethical decision making. No other ancient text anywhere in the world has that capacity of resolving moral and ethical issues that we face today. A lot has been written and is being written on Chinese Confucianism and it is being argued that Confucianism preaches moderation, prescribes standards of behavior for bureaucrats and endorses subtle art of governance. But obviously, Confucianism does not resolve modern day ethical dilemmas in China. People go back to history and visit classics in all earnestness to find if the ancient texts can be a guide to resolving the present day ethical issues and ethical dilemmas. This, however, generally does not help, though excursion through history and ancient texts do widen the scope of our mind and prepares it to accept responsibility. They broaden our canvas of thinking and in turn expand consciousness and help in understanding issues over a long period of human existence. These are of course rich rewards of visiting past. To expect anything more than this from our history or our ancient texts is to deny to the evolving life pattern the gifts of rich complexity and innovative ways of evolution.

Anyway, I remain thoroughly unimpressed by the book and I am disappointed that it takes one nowhere, and the issues of corporate greed and corruption in this country do not get adequately addressed to. Gurucharandas is an insightful and thinking author and with the success of "India Unbound" readers had great expectations from him. It appears that the author had set out an ambitious plan of writing on ethics of present times with reference to Mahabharata. However, he does not come even near to formulating the question of ethics.

Of course this is not to say that what he has written is of no use. He studies the Mahabharata carefully and closely. And there are some meaningful insights that he shares with his readers. He cites good scholars on Mahabharata and we must admit, mentions a few things that may be new and fresh. However, he has lost a good opportunity of formulating the question of ethics in our social, political and economic life today. Sometimes he is discussing the Mahabharata, and at other times the present day corporate world with its ethical issues. But the reader who follows him through finds himself more confused as he proceeds further.

Remembering Arthur Koestler

2012-03-26T22:53:00.000+05:30

One of my most favorite authors has been Arthur Koestler, who initiated me into the hyper world of books and ideas. Arthur Koestler caught my imagination very early in life and his influence lasted long. He was a great polymath and, from late nineteen forties to early nineteen eighties, he enjoyed great reputation as a unique intellectual who moved easily in such disparate disciplines as politics, science and literature. He was a great champion of freedom and fought authoritarianism of both the Right and the Left. In his young age he was a political activist, was sentenced to death by Franco but escaped miraculously. He wrote very good novels and at least one of his novels, “Darkness at Noon” is regarded as a classic and has since been translated into more than hundred languages. His legendry account of how he was disillusioned with Marxism has gone under the rubric “The God that failed” and has since become a political classic. He wrote on philosophy and methodology of science and rocked scientific establishment with his writings in early seventies. Arthur Koestler’s world was not simple and linear; it was exotic, colorful, and mesmeric and had large cosmic horizons.

Fighting Authoritarianism: Darkness at Noon

Arthur Koestler was a Hungarian Jew and was born in Budapest in 1905. He left education at an early age, when he was studying for engineering and joined Zionism. The Central European Jews in those days, in the words of Eric Hobsbawm, had only two options: either to become a Zionist or to become a Communist. Soon he took avidly to science journalism, became editor of a science journal and interviewed such great scientists as Louise De Broglie and Heisenberg. Later on he also had an opportunity of interviewing Albert Einstein. He did a short honey-moon with Marxism too, but was soon disillusioned with it and openly opposed it. He also joined fight against Franco’s fascist forces and was captured and sentenced to death by the fascist regime; however, while awaiting the sentence he miraculously received reprieve.

The “Arrow in the Blue” and “The Invisible Writing” constitute his autobiographical writings that are full of action, drama and his early engagement with political ideologies and his fight against the forces of fascism and communism. In late 1940s he was to write one of the greatest novels of all times, “Darkness at Noon.” This novel powerfully portrays the dark side of Soviet Marxism. One rarely comes across a novel that so vividly describes the communist world of investigations, enquiries and trials and shows how the traditional power structure and the ideology worked hand-in-hand to end freedom of human beings. It also shows, with deep psychological insight, how the communist dictators and bureaucracy retained their power by eliminating dissenters and those who challenged the system. The novel shows deftly how Soviet Communism carefully managed trials and how victims often confessed their guilt and cleared way to their own liquidation and led to perpetuation of power in the name of the ideology. Translated into more than a hundred languages, “Darkness at Noon” is regarded as the most influential and penetrating novel yet written on the secret and subterranean world of Soviet Marxism.

Astride Two Cultures: “Sleepwalkers” and “Act of Creation”

After the end of the Second World War, however, his writing took a different turn. He turned to philosophy of science and creativity. In nineteen fifties British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow held that the two cultures, science and humanities, are irreconcilably different from each other and that any attempt to explain them in a single framework may not work. This stirred a great debate on the nature of science and nature of humanities and led to examination of many important ideas.

Arthur Koestler too was toying with novel ideas. He was trying to build a synthesis, a larger system of ideas that would explain both science and humanities in one common and unified framework. Reading Arthur Koestler’s works is a wonderful and enjoyable exercise for the sheer audacity of the attempt at synthesis of so many disciplines. Koestler’s writing touches many disciplines simultaneously. It talks of scientific discoveries, evolution, psychology, creative writing, mysticism and spiritualism. In one single argument he invoked and sought to understand the basic patterns that lay behind such disparate theories and ideas as biological evolution, literary theories and other scientific theories and transcendentalism.

It is true that Koestlerian synthesis was not sustainable and did not work except for a while. It was too ambitious and too sweeping. The fact, however, remains that this novel synthesis brought great insights into creative processes in scientific discovery, literary creativity and all forms of art. In the matter of relationship between science and man, his trilogy--- “The Sleepwalkers”, “The Act of Creation” and “The Ghost in the Machine”--- by far remains unsurpassed both in scope and contents. “Sleepwalkers” was a patient and thorough enquiry into man’s changing vision of the cosmos from antiquity to the times of Galileo and Copernicus and it showed very insightfully how science has progressed through a process of trial and error and how men of science whom we often blindly worship as heroes also at times were not free of dogma. It is a philosophical discussion on increasing schism between science and religion on one plane and faith and reason on another. It presented a historical and sociological perspective on science and discovery. It demolishes the view that scientists are heroes and the world, a villain, a view that dominated the discourse in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. “Sleepwalkers” demonstrates that science is a process of trial and error, a slow and non-linear process of learning that moves to and fro and then consolidates itself and moves on again. He also mentions that science was not a crusade against religion and in practice religion did not work against science. Indeed in most of the cases the early scientists and thinkers who greatly revolutionized our ideas were themselves clergies and churchmen. It also traced increasing schism between faith and reason in the field of knowledge and pointed to increasing schizophrenia afflicting man’s world of progress. The progress of science, argues Koestler, slowly broke down the unity between science and religion, and faith and reason. Koestler’s argument that the traditional systems and institutions of knowledge were not entirely obscurantist and in many cases those traditions were fairly enlightened did not go down well with the scientific establishment.

His argument was that with more and more progress science has come to excessively rely on reductionism. And with increasing schism between faith and reason, reductionism itself is progressively becoming barren and unproductive, and in turn science is neglecting phenomena that it considers irrelevant. Although these opinions sounded strange to the older scientists, the young generation of scientists saw some point here. Koestler, through his Alpbach Symposium “Beyond Reductionism” also gave voice to the concerns expressed by the generation of young scientists and sought to break the barrier imposed by reductionism.

“The Act of Creation”, the second book in this trilogy, goes further and tries to explore basic patterns behind all forms of creativity. “The Act of Creation” was an enquiry into all the creative activities suggesting a common and similar pattern at work behind all creative works, be it a scientific discovery, humor, mysticism, self-transcendence or a work of literature. With numerous case studies and examples drawn from different disciplines, Koestler concludes that there is remarkable uniformity in the patterns behind all forms of creativity: scientific discovery, literature and humor. The last book in this trilogy, “The Ghost in the Machine” is some speculative writing based on the insights gained in earlier volumes in this trilogy and provides some clues as to how the mind and the body may be working together and how species may be slowly evolving. In some writings towards the end, Koestler indicated a possibility that something may have gone wrong during the process of evolution, resulting into some disparateness in the growth of Neo-Cortex and the Limbic brain in human beings. This he would say may be the beginning of the end of human race, a conclusion he drew, perhaps, without much conviction. We need not dwell much on this conclusion as any such hasty judgment on human race is not worth contesting seriously. However, in the process of arriving at this conclusion, Koestler discusses many brilliant and original ideas and speculates on them, an exercise that is interesting, insightful and rewarding.

The trilogy, “The Sleepwalkers”, “Act of Creation” and “Ghost in the Machine”, was an attempt at unifying faith and reason as also science and religion to understand fully the world of man. Increasing schism between faith and reason on one hand and religion and science on the other, Koestler would argue, is the source of all problems in the modern world. And hence he wanted to unify faith and reason in a framework to somehow reverse the process of separation between the two that had begun with the enlightenment. Koestlerian synthesis of faith and reason was also prompted by uneasiness in the scientific community in the sixties and early seventies that were largely directed against too much of reductionism in the methods of science that tended to neglect significant findings.

Koestler’s “The Case of the Midwife Toad” can be likened to a mystery book of science. But it is also an account of how the scientists and the world of science is still mired in the familiar and the furrowed world of jealousy, hatred, politics and blindness to new ideas. He tells the tragic story of a brilliant Austrian scientist Paul Kammerer, who committed suicide after allegations that he tampered with some samples in experiments that were trying to demonstrate how evolution would follow a Lamarckian path rather than a Darwinian one. He also wrote a controversial but important book “The Roots of Coincidence”, which examines discipline of parapsychology. He was of the view that the horizons of the scientific investigations should be broadened to include even such phenomena that are overtly non-scientific and non-rational.

Beyond Reductionism : Human! All too human!!

Although the novelist-scientist Snow perceived considerable distance between the science and the liberal arts, there still was and always is a case for looking at their unity for both are valid ways of looking at the world, perceiving the world and interpreting the world. Both are results of observation and contemplation of a curious mind that wants to explore what exists. It is true that Koestlerian synthesis was not sustainable and did not work except for a while. The fact, however, remains that this novel synthesis brought great insights into creative processes in scientific discovery, literary creativity and all forms of art. Koestlerian synthesis was bound to fail, sooner or later, for it was too ambitious---trying to unify faith and reason. It is not important that it failed. What is important is that in the process it gave deep insights into creative processes and human behavior. The two cultures still remain fairly separate and all attempts to reconcile them in a unified framework have failed. And yet if a fair amount of friendly and useful trespassing is seen here, it is solely due to realization that both the cultures are complementary and have their origin in the human mind that tries to comprehend the universe in different ways. Co-existence of two vastly different cultures may not be schizophrenia after all. Indeed, continuing with two different cultures in human mind is a unique feature of human mind and needs to be read as a sign of wisdom.

What an irony! A person who set out to lambast Skinner’s behaviorism ended up giving deep insights to the very science of behaviorism. These are also the unintended benefits of purely intellectual criticism----serendipity, if you choose to define it.

Koestler’s greatest contribution to the scientific world was his Alpbach Symposium which gave voice to a generation of young scientists and made the scientific world look beyond reductionism. He helped in bringing science and its processes close to people and showed that science is very much a human process, correcting its own wrongs and in the process creating further wrongs. Posterity would also remember him as the author of that brilliant novel, “Darkness at Noon” that laid threadbare the nature of communist regime.

Book Review : Henry Kissinger On China

2012-03-10T08:17:00.000+05:30

In 1971, Henry Kissinger, then National Security Advisor to the United States, travelled secretly to China and initiated a process of establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries. Officially, he was on his tour of Asian countries of Vietnam, India and Pakistan that was to terminate in Pakistan at Rawalpindi. After arriving at Rawalpindi, however, feigning ill-health, he disappeared for rest for a goodly twenty four hours. And his team likewise ‘retired’ to a hill station in the foothills of Himalayas. Actually they were already in Beijing, parleying with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, working with him on the terms of reference of their engagement and perhaps making preparations for the visit of the American President to China.

The Cold War Setting

This historic visit shocked the world and laid the foundation of Sino American relationship. Significantly, the visit came at a time when China had been caught in the entrapment of its own home-grown recipe of “Continuing Revolution”, a mantra devised by Mao who was at once a romantic poet, a traditionalist strategist and a Marxist revolutionary. If the cold war was all about the two colliding and conflicting ideologies between the United States and the Soviet Union, one wonders why in late sixties and seventies, the stormiest days of the cold war, the communist China and the capitalist United States were trying to seek each other. The cynical answer lies in the overall geo-political considerations and especially the growing feeling of insecurity in the minds of the Chinese Statesmen about the Russian designs in Asia. It was also no coincidence that this relationship came to be forged at a time when China was increasingly becoming weary of desolation and spiritual pain brought about by Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Mao and his team found this relationship a source of great security especially in circumstances where her neighbour and ideological ally Soviet Union was trying to encircle China and continue encroachment on her borders: directly and systematically on China’s northern border and indirectly through neighbouring countries of North Korea and Vietnam on the Southern border.

In his recent book, “On China” Henry Kissinger has chronicled the story of forty years of Sino American relationship and captured some dramatic moments of this history. This is not only a book of history and diplomacy but also an informal narrative of Kissinger’s personal encounters with the powerful top Chinese Statesmen. Few books, if any, would match the immediacy and authenticity with which Kissinger tells the story of these historic moments. The privilege that Henry Kissinger enjoyed is perhaps unique in the history of diplomacy. For over forty years Kissinger has been strutting on the scene that is embellished by a frightening array of great statesmen: eight American Presidents and four generations of top Chinese statesmen.

Sino--American Relationship and Rise of China

Ironically, Mao viewed this strategic relationship with the United States as an opportunity to end China’s isolation, buy peace and grow economically stronger and end her encirclement. Mao had already admitted to Edgar Snow, American journalist through whom he was initially trying to establish contact with the US statesmen, that his Cultural Revolution had run haywire and that he was looking for new strategies to come out of it and consolidate the gains of Communist Revolution. Although, it was Deng Xiaoping who in the post-Mao period initiated great economic reforms and showed great pragmatism in marrying Chinese Communism to market capitalism, it is questionable if China would have been able to achieve all she did without this beneficial relationship with the United States!

This growing relationship with the US proved immensely profitable to China. It ended China's twenty years' isolation, increasingly brought her in the community of nations, redirected the rabidly aroused energies of Cultural Revolution into constructive channels of economic growth and hurtled her on the global scene as the most powerful economy after the United States.

Relationship between China and United States was always uneasy and it got worse during the Korean War of 1950, during the subsequent war in Vietnam, and during the three occasions leading to Taiwan Strait Crisis when China tried using force against the Nationalist government in Formosa. Although Kissinger’s visit helped in establishing a special relationship between the two countries in 1970s during the cold war, this broad understanding was also uneasy and it got worse at some points of time, such as during the Taiwan Strait Crisis and the period following the Tiananmen Square Tragedy in which the Chinese Government crushed and suppressed the student revolt in 1989. And even today differences continue on two counts viz. highly undervalued Chinese currency that allows China to appropriate all the world economy in its favour and the unresolved issue of place of Taiwan.

Differences in Approaches and Perceptions

Kissinger offers a wealth of information, political, historical and cultural, relating to engagement of the West with China and narrates interesting encounters with his counterparts from China and from elsewhere as his narrative unfolds the story of over forty years. And through these anecdotes and stories the real faces of these statesmen that generally lie hidden behind their carefully guarded masks peep out, sometimes hideously and at other times humanely. However, Kissinger’s book has a running theme of continuing contrast between the West--especially America-- and China as regards their perceptions, their paramount concerns, their world -views and the systems of their deeply rooted beliefs and fears that shape their foreign policies and their strategies.

Throughout the book Kissinger unceasingly keeps reverting to the tension generated by different approaches employed by the two partners in seeing realities and comprehending issues. He goes back to the history of the engagement of the West with China during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and highlights the abyss that separated the two. Kissinger traces the history of the contrast between the two fundamental approaches right from the time of visit of Lord George Macartney, British ambassador, to the court of Chinese Emperor in 1793-94 during the Qing dynasty. The British ambassador presented many advanced machines, equipments and other gifts to the Emperor with an intention to highlight the advanced and rising industrial civilization of the West and drive home the point of western superiority. The Chinese merely looked to them as some different things available with the visitors and considered as natural to receive these gifts as coming from an inferior race and “barbarians”, unmindful of the collapsing eastern order and western ascendancy. This chasm between China and the world and especially between China and the US recurs in Kissinger’s book from the beginning to the end and he keeps arguing that statesmen from both the camps must save this relationship from these differences.

Kissinger comments with great perspicacity on major differences in approach and perception between the two nations and shows how it impacts relations between the two world powers and how great an ambiguity it creates in their relations. First, the US, and in general the West see diplomacy as transactional in nature and as distinct from war and use of force. They make fine distinction and allow diplomacy to run its full course. They view diplomacy as a series of moves or reactions or counter-moves to corner the opponents and score a sort of moral victory or a public showdown. Force is resorted to only when the diplomacy fails. The Chinese have a more traditional and holistic approach that is more strategic in nature and where the response may combine diplomacy and use of force to achieve the desired result or a configuration. Moreover, Chinese traditional approach to the foreign policy and international relations is a steady-state universe where all pieces and all neighbours and countries fall in their own places and remain in equilibrium.

Second, and more importantly, the Chinese view the internal affairs of a nation and its foreign policy as distinct from each other and would not bother about what happens inside a country or how the governments behave with their citizens. The foreign policy of the United States, on the other hand, is, in addition to geo-political considerations, determined by the fundamental values of Human Rights and Political Democracy. Americans come to this issue with a missionary and evangelical zeal and do not eschew use of force where they feel that human rights are at stake or where democracy and political rights of citizens are involved. To the Chinese, use of western values (or for that matter any values) in determining relationship with a country is anathema and they suspect that the West is merely trying to impose their own values on others. This controversial issue of “democratic values in foreign policy” acquires further urgency for the United States because the American public opinion is very strong about it and no government wants to antagonize the public opinion in democracy. Again it is interesting to see that these differences arise primarily because there is a fairly mature democracy in the United States, and statesmen are not free to make foreign alliances against public opinion.

Lastly, at least theoretically, the west and the United States would regard all nations as equal; though in reality when people sit across the table to negotiate, they sit consciously with power equations at the back of their mind. The Chinese, however, often treat themselves as the “Middle Kingdom”, the centre of all civilizations and regard others as their tributaries; and this sense is often consciously lent to discussions and deliberations outsiders have with them.

Kissinger also repeatedly refers to the Chinese national fear that often impacts its policy towards foreigners and international relations. In the collective psyche of the Chinese people the memories of the horrors of colonialism are still very fresh. They know that the collapse of central power led to invasion by the outside powers in her territory. And hence to them their own security is more important than respecting some lofty and subjective values.

While commenting on these differences, however, Kissinger is more balanced. He does not regard Chinese approach as any more flawed than the American. Very wisely and with understanding he states that Americans should show more understanding and patience with countries that have culture different from theirs. Although he sees problems with the American approach of mixing up human rights and democratic values every time every time America deals with the foreign countries, he sees the Chinese views also as an extreme view. The ideal and just approach according to him should be somewhere in between these two.

Tiananmen Square and Fang Lizhi Controversy

However, despite these differences of perception and approaches to resolving issues, the Sino American relationship survived many hurdles and challenges mainly because the statesmen on both the sides understood each other well and kept private communications open. Kissinger mentions many examples of this behaviour on part of statesmen on both the sides.

Tiananmen Square tragedy was such an event that strained the relationship between the two countries to the utmost. In 1989, while world communism was going through serious crisis, China also faced its share of rumblings. It started with the death of Hu Yaobang, the general Secretary of the Party till 1986, and a political liberal voice that believed in political reforms. His death was the occasion for politically charged mourning. It became an event around which rallied all the dissidents and critics of the communist party. Soon the students in Beijing and other cities voiced their frustration with corruption, inflation and lack of political freedom. What had started as a demonstration soon became a challenge to the government with the demonstrators and students occupying the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, just across the seat of the Chinese Government. Although the government was confused initially in the light of the international attention the event had received, it soon, after about six weeks’ hesitation, cracked on the students, and the Tiananmen Square was cleared by army.

The whole world strongly condemned the violent suppressing of the students’ agitation in Beijing. The public opinion throughout the world, and especially in the United States, was very strong and President George Bush was under great pressure to take action against China for violation of Human Rights. Bush did not want to take any action because he knew that China had always been a good friend and had cooperated with the United States on security issues on a number of occasions. Still Congress imposed some punitive measures on China. Chinese could not appreciate this as they thought that this was China’s internal affair and hardly a matter of international debate.

Thus again the Tiananmen Square brought in sharp focus the different approaches and different world views of these two big powers. This issue was exacerbated further by Fang Lizhi affair that strained the relations between the countries further. Fang Lizhi, a physicist and a former member of the Party took refuge in the American embassy in Beijing in the wake of reprisals that followed the clearing of the Tiananmen Square. Earlier, in the same year there had erupted a controversy over Fang Lizhi getting an invitation at the Dinner at American Embassy when George Bush, the American President was visiting China. It was really a diplomatic gaffe on part of the embassy then; however, in the wake of the Tiananmen reprisals the American embassy gave shelter to Fang Lizhi and his wife. The Sino American relations post-Tiananmen came to depend on final solution to Fang Lizhi affair. And ultimately at the highest level, and after much behind-the-scene-private-working, Deng, at the suggestion of Henry Kissinger, agreed to allow Fang Lizhi leave China on condition that he would not make much noise and embarrass China. But in exchange of this gesture that showed China in a more positive light post-Tiananmen, Deng also secured reversal of sanctions and other measures against her from the United States.

These examples show how both the countries were eager to continue relationships despite vast differences between their perceptions, approaches and values.

Future of Sino American Relations

Sino American relations developed during cold war and sustained despite fundamental differences, and this was mainly due to compulsions of the cold war. Now with cold war over and Soviet Union sufficiently weakened, one may ask what the future of the Sino-American relationship is. This question needs to be seen not only in the context of a weakened Soviet Union, but also in the context of a vastly strengthened China, whose formidable economy is becoming a subject matter of global discussion. It also needs to be seen from the perspective of a fast tiring out United States who finds its manoeuvring and its missionary policing of the world a lot irrelevant and self-defeating. What is the future of the Sino American relationship in this scenario? Or will they compete with each other as the US and the USSR competed militarily? Will they be able to remove mutual fears and apprehensions and co-operate in the new emerging world order?

Henry Kissinger devotes last pages of his book to a comprehensive discussion on these issues. He appears fairly ambivalent, if not pessimistic. He feels that although so far China and America have sailed safely together, their relationship in future may not always be that smooth. He feels that the cultural, historic and strategic gaps in the perception pose formidable challenges for even the best-intentioned and most far-sighted leadership on both the sides. And hence he feels that both the countries would have to work very hard together to steer clear of the disturbances.

Despite this masterful discussion where Kissinger presents various strands of this issue, one still wonders why his discussion again and again fails to rise above the considerations and details of strategies, advantages and realities of politics. This is the language of the professional diplomat, the view of a cynical and continuously doubting scholar who, although he has a grand view of the history yet misses the spirit that governs the peace and understanding among the comity of nations and the behaviour of statesmen who preside over the destinies of people. Statesmen do listen to professional diplomats and their concerns, and they should. However, history shows that at critical juncture and at defining moments, some statesmen rise much above their own self during their engagements. During such moments they listen carefully to the dialogue the history holds with the present, the grand dialogue that one period holds with another, and also the dialogue that is suffused with existential wisdom. These are the moments in which universal peace and harmony is born.

Kissinger has captured such moments in his book, especially, in the formative period of this relationship. We should wonder why he fails to invokes such moments while discussing the future of Sino American relationship.

Octavio Paz : Locking Horns with Writers

2012-02-25T15:12:00.001+05:30

“On Poets and Others” is a book of essays by Octavio Paz, the great Nobel Prize Winner poet, essayist, thinker and diplomat from Mexico. It contains essays on remarkable poets, thinkers and philosophers, novelists and literary personalities he met in his life. Although some of the subjects and persons he writes on appear rather dated, the themes and topics he discusses are still relevant today.

What would you expect when one of the greatest poets writes in polemical and stylish prose on such issues as dissent of the intellectuals or the decadence of an ideology or comments on the increasing psychic schism and divided conscience of modern man? He may not be always right, and sometimes you will find him not very agreeable; and yet he will engage you, allure you. The poets, intellectuals and other literary personalities, which are really his subjects of writing, come in the picture as if incidentally. He writes on them with love and penetration, but in the process he unfolds something much larger and greater. He creates a World of his own.

Amongst the poets there are Robert Frost, Walt Whitman and Charles Tomlinson. His essay on Robert frost captures some magical moments of interaction between the two when young Paz calls on old Robert Frost on his Vermont farm. Robert Frost speaks to him on how he sees the world around him and how he communicates with stones, farms, trees, hills, knolls and everything around him. They speak on relationship of poet with his tradition; they speak on how poet challenges tradition, creates the language for his poetry and how he creates a new world of his own. They agree readily that solemn poets, humourless professors and howling prophets are dangerous entities and be best avoided. People cannot face the reality of the self that descends on them in solitude, and hence they are in search of new schemes that give them speed and restlessness. The tragedy is that man is running away from himself, says Frost. Paz beautifully recaptures and plays the tunes of magical moments of their meeting on the Vermont farm.

Other essays cover such personalities and subjects as Dostoevsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Jean Paul Sartre, Jose Ortega Y Gasset and others. All these are brilliant pieces and narrate the writer's encounters with great minds. They constitute an insightful commentary on how writers and intellectuals engage with the world which they help shape. I shall briefly discuss only three essays from this collection: essays on Dostoevsky, Sartre and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

He argues that though Dostoevsky wrote in the nineteenth century, he is still a modern writer and his writings always appear contemporaneous and relevant to our times. Dostoevsky very competently explores the working of the mind of the modern man that is torn by various forces. It is the fragmented soul and the divided conscience that he explores in his writing and it is, argues Paz, very relevant to our times. In eighteen sixties and seventies, in his writings Dostoevsky portrayed consciousness of full many generations that were to rule Russia in future. Dostoevsky was describing something in his writing that actually came into being later in twentieth century. Stavrogin and Ivanov who ultimately commit suicide in “Demons” (or “Devils”) are the victims of nihilism and are possessed by a peculiar spirit that is indicative of the coming of the Russian Revolution, its ideology and absence of the process of dialogue. Ideologues do not enter into a dialogue. They rant and make speeches and indulge in soliloquies and impose on others what transpires from this spirit possession. It is depiction of this consciousness, argues Paz that is the sign of Dostoevsky’s authentic writing.

I think Octavio Paz’s analysis of the modern consciousness is very correct and appropriate. It needs to be added that in the twentieth and twenty first century this process of fragmentation of the self is further accelerated by uneven economic development, barriers of cultures and traditions and absence of dialogue and communication. Whichever way one looks, fragmentation of the self, lack of wholesomeness and resulting fractured and distorted vision of the world constitutes a large part of our existence with which we have to come to terms.

While we can agree with Paz in hailing Dostoevsky’s portrayal of the Self in the modern world as very authentic and realistic, we need to mention that Dostoevsky presents many problems to his readers. Amongst his novels, the “Crime and Punishment” is deep and philosophically engaging, and the “Brothers Karamazov” succeeds in depicting the existential dilemma of living authentically in the modern world. Both these novels and especially “Brothers Karamazov” repose faith in life and warn against abstraction of life. However, affirmation of life comes so late and through such tortuous path that winds its way through violence, poverty and depravity that one wonders whether Dostoevsky was really aiming for these at all. Moreover, Dostoevsky’s glorification of the strange mixture of Russian tradition and religion, not to say his maudlin and sentimental scepticism of the West leaves one wondering and somewhat confused. His other novels, especially “The Idiot”, present a very garbled vision of man. While, therefore, Paz’s fresh insight into Dostoevsky’s writing is welcome, to an ordinary reader Dostoevsky’ world still appears dark, sombre and ambiguous.

Was Dostoevsky a nihilist? Paz answers that he was not. There is no doubt that as a young person he was a revolutionary. However, as time passed he increasingly came to identify himself largely with the Russian tradition and old Christianity. Much of his writing was critical of not only nihilism but also of the western influences that were trying to undermine the local tradition. Dostoevsky, argues Paz, refuted both, nihilism and western ideas. Even in “Crime and Punishment”, Raskolnikov, another product of the then extant Russian nihilism, ultimately realizes the value of human life. This again confirms Dostoevsky’s position as a novelist of the modern rising consciousness in the traditional societies that were being assailed by western ideas and modernity.

Paz’s essay on Dostoevsky, though at times bordering on oversimplification and at other times deliberately avoiding complexities, is a great testimony to his love for Dostoevsky. But more than that, its vision, lyricism and flow demonstrate with lucidity the organic relationship between affairs of a nation and its literature.

Paz’s essay on Sartre too is very trenchant and insightful. Though unusually and highly critical of Sartre, the essay has great style and it shows power the pen can wield in destroying myths and reputations. The essay very directly indicts Sartre, and I have rarely come across writing that demolishes anything so brutally and with such force. He says that as a philosopher Sartre was certainly very formidable but that also underlined his limitations. Sartre may have been very scholarly, but much of his work was a continuation of others, such as Heidegger for example, without whom Sartre’s work could not have existed independently. As an artist, Paz says, Sartre had his limitations. He did not possess creative powers and capacity of a novelist to create the world and to populate it with characters. His writing was full of abstractions and lacked authenticity. It did not, somehow, connect with the real world. But he had great passion and emotion with which he debated and argued. There was so much of passion and emotion in his thought and writing that it removed his writing farther away from reality. His hobnobbing with Marxism turned out to be a serious matter as it lent respectability to Marxism and in a strange way prolonged its tenure longer than was natural to it. Although, later on he admitted his mistakes of judgment in this case, he had already gone so far as to assert that all the leftist autocrats were at heart great non-violent souls and merely carried a mask of violence for the sake of appearances.

We all have read writers who have denounced Sartre and showed him up as a hypocrite and a diabolical intellectual machine. But Paz appears to be doing more than this in far less words. Sartre has rightly been criticized from many groups and many sides. And yet I find this assessment of Sartre rather harsh and one sided. Mistakes of judgements by ordinary people are usually seen as blunders when they are committed by great men. This is what perhaps happened to Sartre. One feels that before judging Sartre so harshly, Paz should have recorded, for sake of fairness alone, Sartre’s contribution too. Sartre revolutionized the whole world of intellectuals and gave it power and prestige. His intellectual contribution during Resistance Movement during the Second World War was greatly hailed and became a world event. Sartre was honest, intellectual, philosophical and fiercely independent, not amenable to compromising with powers. He gave voice to intellectuals and demonstrated how intellectuals can speak up to the power. Had Paz mentioned some of his contributions perhaps the essay would not have looked as prejudiced as it looks!

Paz’s two essays on Alexander Solzhenitsyn too are very remarkable and insightful. Hailing Solzhenitsyn’s work “The Gulag Archipelago” as important he dwells at length on the various threads of Solzhenitsyn’s dissent and explores its anatomy. And in that he offers some very important insights into Russian history. He argues that Solzhenitsyn’s dissent is not an ordinary dissent of an intellectual reared in western tradition that centres on individualism and political freedom. Solzhenitsyn speaks from an ancient tradition, and that his ancientness is that of the Old Russian Christianity that has passed through the central experience of the twentieth century---the dehumanization of the totalitarian concentration camps----and has emerged intact and strengthened. While agreeing with Solzhenitsyn’s criticism of the Russian regime he also brings out Solzhenitsyn’s limitations especially his partially blind world view that is mired in some typical traits of Russian history. Paz, in this essay, has done some very skillful tight-rope-walking here; and reading this essay is a tribute to his graceful and lucid writing that tends to seek both, truth and justice.

I have already said in the beginning that a few subjects that Paz handles here appear dated somewhat in perspective! And yet I would say the collection of essays is worth reading simply because despite globalization, the world has really not changed as much as we think. The Russian state has still not been able to extricate itself from the historical clutches of its traditional bureaucracy; if anything Putin’s Russia appears as picturesque as portrayed by Paz. Hubris and arrogance of the western democracies that he discusses here have not abated a whit! And Paz’s observations that the systems of local and traditional beliefs, especially in the emerging Eastern and Southern economies would evoke a strange ensemble and would play increasingly important role in world economy and politics also appear correct!

Even if, therefore, the collection of essays was published in 1986, it still makes sense to read Octavio Paz; for the wisdom he brings with his essays is rare and unique.

Umberto Eco : Speaking Mahatma's Language

2012-02-25T15:05:00.000+05:30

Umberto Eco is one of the finest novelists of our time. He is also an important philosopher, a great scholar of semiotics and aesthetics of the medieval period. Some of his brilliant novels include “The Name of Rose”, “Baudolino”, “Foucault’s Pendulum” and “The Island of the Day Before”. Although an Italian, Umberto Eco represents represents rich European tradition and culture.

“Turning Back the Clock” is his latest collection of fine essays on war, peace and media populism in our times. These essays focus on the major world events that occurred between 2000 and 2005. Eco sees in the pattern of these events something that is fundamentally new and unprecedented. So much so that he wonders whether we are not going back in history and remarks, “Almost as if history, breathless after the leaps forward made in last two millennia, is drawing back into itself, returning to the comfortable splendours of tradition”. This theme returns and haunts his essays as he brilliantly takes up one topic after another.

Are we really going back in time?

That things would go somewhat back, he argues, was indicated by the events that followed the fall of the Berlin wall. The return of Afghanistan at the centre of the global prospects of peace after fifty years of cold war, modern versions of traditional crusades, the resurgence of anti-Darwinian polemics, reappearance of Christian fundamentalism, streaks of fascism here and there, Eco argues, may be signs of history being rewritten. It is not possible to comment on all the essays here. It is, however, possible to list briefly the concerns he addresses in his essays. Eco appears to worry on three counts.

First he draws attention to widening gulf between people’s aspirations and its understanding by politicians. He is rightly worried about the increasing disconnect between people and their rulers and politicians. Especially he is worried about the unthinking wars that were launched by major democracies and their political leaders. That today’s politicians and statesmen rarely care to listen to dialogue history holds with the present is one serious complaint he voices. This is further exacerbated by their excessive dependence on experts and technocrats.

He is further worried by the media populism that is generating lot of confusion in the minds of people by resorting to simplifying the terms of intelligent debates and converting important debates into Manichean “yes or no” polls.

And lastly he is worried by the increasing power of technology over science which he says may spell disaster for man. The universe of technology is encroaching on man’s sphere of autonomy, volition and reason. This is the fear he expresses in his important essay on science and technology.

Eco’s essays, brilliant and insightful, speak the language of truth and non-violence. They examine many aspects of our existence and plead for more reason and more wisdom. Though erudite, his essays speak universal language of peace and reason. I shall go further and say that many essays in this collection speak the Gandhian language of Truth, Non-violence and Universal Peace.

Magical world of technology : Are we jettisoning reason?

For constraint of space I shall mention only one essay, “Science, Technology and Magic” that demonstrates how close he is to Gandhi. Eco argues in this essay that in our daily life and especially in mass media, the terms science and technology are interchangeably and wrongly used with the result that science and technology are often presented as magic in human life. Science and its investigations are more philosophical in nature and they underline the relationships between cause and effect. Science tries to comprehend and understand the world. Technology, on the other hand, gives power to human beings. This is the power of getting anything done by just pressing a button. An ordinary man does not care to understand the principles of science on which technology is based. He is more interested in getting things done quickly, by pressing a button and summoning at his fingertips great power and extra-ordinary intelligence. Technology encourages taking short cuts to relationship between cause and effect and goes directly to harnessing power by pressing a button. We are so much used to fast and instant results given by technology that the whole thing resembles working of magic.

Eco is very insightful on the issue of technology. And he perhaps voices concerns that were shown by a galaxy of great thinkers and activists that would include Tolstoy, Thoreau, Goethe and Mahatma Gandhi. This attitude of the modern man of pressing a button for getting things done, and neglecting the processes of science for attaining all kinds of pleasures and privileges and successes is abominable. The philosophy of technology is to get maximum convenience and pleasure at no costs. It is this that lies at the core of all evil: trying to get everything in the world without paying a price for it. If this is what we do and if magic and its power is all the language we speak and understand, then somehow we are jettisoning reason from our social and human discourse---a serious matter with grave consequences for Man. Science is supposed to extirpate all magic and establish a Universe of Reason. But with complex technology and its instant, naked and brute power of pressing a button, the Universe of reason slowly gives way to the Universe of Magic; and then this Universe of magic and power returns with all its dark portents and ranting soliloquies of triumph over the nature.

Mahatma's language

It is this universe of magic that Eco fears the most. And it is this fear of wielding unthinking power without ever trying to evolve spiritually that made Mahatma Gandhi and other traditionalists look to science and technology with suspicion. Mahatma Gandhi hated lofty technology for the simple reason that in course of time its magical and easily exercisable power would somehow dehumanize man’s relationship with himself and with the nature. Over years Gandhi may have slowly and perhaps carefully allowed some bare minimum technologies in his moral and ethical universe; however, his philosophical opposition to all technologies sprang from his fear of power flowing through science and technology and blindness it causes in human beings. Had I not read this powerful essay I would have never known how close Eco and Mahatma are on the issue of technology and power that flows from it.

The longish essay titled “The Return of the Great Game”, describes how Afghanistan has remained a thorny issue for about two centuries and how despite the world undergoing vast changes, it returns and occupies the centre place in the architecture of war and peace of the world. And he does it through a number of anecdotes and stories of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson that have a reference to Afghan war and in which Dr. Watson had been wounded. This essay is remarkable, both for its contents and its style.

This volume has other essays on emerging fundamentalism, media populism, on war and on our dreams. They are written with great style and poise and they sparkle with wit and humour. They present to us a gleam of the changing world and try to give meaning to the events that are unfolding around us. And I think that all intelligent and thinking people should read them.

As to Eco’s fear, whether history will move backwards we cannot say anything. However, the concerns he underlines are important and statesmen and decision makers should stop for a moment to ponder over them. Every generation and its thinkers feel that they are living in unique times and amid great and mind blowing events that are set to bring great change. History does sometimes come back and sometimes plays out remaining parts; and, therefore, there is a need to learn lessons from history and gain some insights. Eco’s fear may be genuine but then history is perhaps the most wily and elusive discipline and proves mankind wrong every time something is predicted. At least I do not think that history is going back or we should be pessimistic about our future unless we ourselves will that way, lose hope hand over ourselves to the dark and retrograde powers that wait for an opportunity.

In the aftermath of the Berlin wall being pulled down Francis Fukuyama wrote his celebrated piece “The End of the History…..” and majestically declared that directional history has come to an end. Nobody, not even Fukuyama, really believed that history has thus ceased to flow in Hegelian or a Marxist sense. In the meanwhile capitalism has undergone substantial changes and finds itself in a crisis; but the world has not ceased reading and studying Marx and Hegel. Eric Hobsbawm informs us that in Marx’s birth centenary year, he was retained by a large American Airlines to write an article on “The Communist Manifesto” in the airline’s on-flight magazine. If capitalism has gone that far, surely we shouldn’t be afraid of history coming back and playing out remaining parts!

Although, therefore, Eco’s essays are very good I find his fears somewhat unfounded!

Hind Swaraj and Evolution of Mahatma Gandhi

2012-02-07T23:47:00.006+05:30

Recently, while Anna Hazare was fasting against corruption, there was an unsavory confrontation between his activist followers and the parliamentarians and it sufficiently muddied our public life. A friend of mine wrote to me a mail pointing out that there was nothing wrong perhaps in slamming the parliamentarians, for even Mahatma Gandhi had called the British Parliament “a whore” and “a sterile woman that produces nothing” in his classic work “Hind Swaraj”. The logic was that if the great Mahatma could describe the institution of parliament in such derogatory words, there was nothing wrong in hitting out at the parliament or the parliamentarians.

It is a fact that Mahatma Gandhi did describe British Parliament in these words. However, somehow, I did not feel that my friend was quoting Gandhi correctly and in context. Quoting a great man in support of our arguments of today is a problem, for often what he said on that occasion was appropriate to that particular stage of his development. Great men evolve continuously. Today they are not what they were yesterday and what comes from them cannot be quoted as gospel truth. Further, people learn mostly from their experience of life and therefore they are often at frontiers in creating and recreating new universe of experience and meaning for the benefit of the humanity. Mahatma Gandhi said that the truth was his pole star and that he went wherever his pole star led him. But following the pole star is not a simple thing. There are often embarrassing discontinuities, singular points, false leads and sure setbacks. Should we not then take more precaution in quoting great men?

Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj in 1908 while he was returning to South Africa. Gopal Krishna Gokhale whom Gandhi regarded as his Guru found the book utterly detestable and described it as crudely written. Anybody who reads the book even today would agree with Mr. Gokhale. “Hind Swaraj” is not a commentary on the western political system; it is not a constructive argument that advances an acceptable alternative to our existence. Its canvas is much larger. It is a thoroughgoing and acidic criticism of the Modern Civilization. It negates everything with great force and vigor. Gandhi denied everything that we adore today. He denounced with special force modern health care, hospital systems, railways, technology, science and practically all modern institutions that go with our life.

But what is important, and what is not acknowledged is that the Mahatma gradually veered round, though very slowly and imperceptibly; and he substantially changed his position in course of time. He himself acknowledged such shifts in his opinions and did mention that in view of the dynamics of life, no one should quote him out of context. He also further said that if he is to be quoted at all, his latest views on the subject should be referred to. That is also perhaps a reason why he shuddered at the thought of being canonized by his followers and the laity!

Gandhi changed his views, at least in practice substantially since the publication of “The Hind Swaraj”; though his moral vision was largely defined by “The Hind Swaraj”. By mid nineteen twenties he was making concessions to some “genuinely good and friendly technologies and machines” such as Sewing Machine for example. His opposition to technology sprang mainly from fear of human beings being enslaved by the machine. He opposed it also on the ground that machine may replace man and bring upon large scale unemployment.

His opposition to railways had vanished too early and we can say at least this safely, that no Indian statesman traveled so much, so frequently and so easily across the breadth and the length of this country by railway as Gandhi did. Following Gokhale’s advice Gandhi traveled ceaselessly across the country for over a year, mainly by railway, after he had come to India from South Africa.

Thus Gandhi went on changing his views, but what is important is that he took responsibility for changed views. A Gandhi who would not, in early nineteen twenties, easily agree to the inter-caste marriage of his son, changed so much, that by late nineteen thirties he would attend marriages only if they were inter-caste marriages. Gandhi, who dominated his wife in the style of a typical traditional Hindu male chauvinist, increasingly regarded her friend in later life. In an age when women generally did not come out of the house, Kasturba used to sit along with him on dais in public life. Importantly, it was under Mahatma that the Indian women came out in large numbers in social and political movements and fought along with the men folk.

Gandhi may have called, in his youthful, forceful and rather nihilistic tone, the British Parliament “a whore” and “a sterile woman that produces nothing…”, and yet in 1933 he led the Indian delegation to England for the ‘Round Table Conference” to parley with the British Government and to demand from them Parliamentary System and Dominion Status for India. And again in the forties we see his enthusiasm for parliamentary system and the representative democracy.

But perhaps an important phase in his life, according to me, unfolded during his meaningful dialogue and close relationship with the young Jawaharlal Nehru. Although philosophically they were worlds apart, they were and remained very close to each other; they argued long and ardently, each trying to convert the other to his point of view. Gandhi came to issues from tradition; Cambridge educated Nehru was thoroughly modern. Gandhi suspected science and technology; Nehru considered science and technology as key to human progress. Gandhi glorified villages, simple life and primitive economy; Nehru was practical when it came to technology and economy. But they had a strong common bond in that they both strongly believed in basic human values, democracy, dignity of human beings and non-violence. Though nothing happened on the surface, Gandhi perhaps yielded sufficiently. And about Jawaharlal, we can only say that he had lost to Gandhi completely since the time Gandhi came in his life. Evolution of the Mahatma over the years and silent submission of Jawaharlal Nehru to the Mahatma are perhaps of one piece and form the most beautiful and engrossing poetry that flows alongside the story of our struggle for freedom.

Today “Hind Swaraj” appears a far cry and may serve as a moral vision and a youthful dream of a yet evolving great statesman and it can be used for a limited purpose of explaining the origin of Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas. Every thinker has a moral vision that is at once inchoate and primitive and this moral vision lies deeply rooted in his psyche. “Hind Swaraj” should not, I believe, be quoted in the context of a movement that is conducted in a democratic framework for its tone is sufficiently nihilistic.

Lastly, “Hind Swaraj” was written largely under the influence of Tolstoy and in a Tolstoyan language, the deliberate high language of the great preacher of humanity. Later on Gandhi came on his own; and in nineteen twenties, thirties and in forties he evolved uniquely in his own way through his own experience. And he left Tolstoy much behind.

I regard Gandhi as a great nihilist in the tradition of a motley collection of mainly western spiritual nihilists such as for example Tolstoy. But Gandhi was very shrewd in dealing with his innate nihilism. He said that he rejected all technology and all machine including his body that is also a machine of some sort. But as all mystics of all spiritual faiths--- Eastern, Western and mystics of all hues-----allow some tenability to the Body, (for without it the existence and the whole range of spiritual experience including Moksha is impossible) he also allowed in his own way, various physical forms such as technology, social relations and political organization for a bare minimum. This was a practical arrangement that served his purpose and his mission of spiritualizing politics and social life.

Incidentally, I feel that Tolstoy and Gandhi, the two great nihilists, evolved in their respective lives in opposite directions. Tolstoy started as a great and accomplished artist and an aesthete, working creatively with different themes and different colors. Perhaps, he could not control his innate nihilism and hence ended with an extreme vision that denied everything; so much so, that ultimately he rejected even his own creative works. Gandhi, on the other hand, started in a singular Tolstoyan vision and evolved over time and ended with an inclusive vision.