Did God really Die after all?

To whatever degree he may have desacralized the world, the man who has made his choice in favor of a profane life never succeeds in completely doing away with religious behavior.

 ~ Mircea Eliade

Even as I type, postmodernism crumbles under its own unhealthy weight.  

Last year, free speech proponent Jordan Peterson said in an interview that communist principles had been spread in the western world under the umbrella ideology of postmodernism back in the 70s. Through its Marxist approach, the movement held the notion that truth and knowledge were entirely subjective social constructs and began to change societal values and beliefs so as to fit this premise. How did all the obscure social tinkering surface? In a wave of Identity Politics, Peterson claims.

Whether Dr. Peterson's argument is valid or not, the interview does get you thinking; both about the current dominant ideology of postmodernism itself and its resultant identity politics; indeed the very concept of identity as it occurs today.

Postmodernism is not easy to define, and perhaps that's where most of the trouble starts. It is distrustful of the theory that it is in itself, and espouses subjectivity to a point that any one definition attributed to it could easily be substituted for another. The broad, and most agreed upon definition, however, is that it has its roots somewhere in the later stages of the 20th century, and is characterised by skepticism, subjectivism, a distrust of reason and a sensitivity to ideology in political and economic powers.

Leaving aside Peterson's take on the matter, postmodernism came about as a natural evolution of modernism, the latter of which was primarily driven by an existential disillusionment with Victorian ideals of morality and social conventions-- and which, if one considers Peterson's argument, created a detour from the erstwhile political trust in Monarchy as a form of government after the first world war and left a window of opportunity for Marxist thought to take root. In a way, the contemporary postmodernist ideology only took this approach further with its radical discarding of any social constructs, theories and objectivity to the point of the present day rejection of reason.

One social construct that postmodernism abhors comes in the form of religion. To be more specific, organised religion and objective morality, both over which a debate has been raging for years; science finds itself in a conundrum similar to that of the chicken-egg kind. We simply do not know whether organised religion led to objective morality or whether it were the other way round.

In light of the above, one would imagine that postmodernism would have, ironically, been a philosophy characterised by rational thought. This was what most of us would have expected. The reality was just the opposite.

In Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane, the author describes how modern society is based solely on the profane and leaves no room for religion or spirituality, or what we may more broadly call 'sacred'. One could say that Eliade was right in this regard, and that postmodernism discarded what was held sacred about life in both a religious and a widely spiritual sense.

Or did it?

We can now drag Peterson's identity politics into the argument. A prominent fallout of postmodernist ideology is the social justice movement, which is driven by a staunch ethical motivation of equality and compassion for identities that they believe are 'oppressed'. Which is all well and good until you hold those ethics far too sacred and rigid as social justice warriors do and silence any opposition to your perspective. The irony is that the sensitivity toward this SJW ethical framework is remarkably similar to that toward religious ideals of the past. Today's society simply substituted the experience we would call God with another unassuming and strange sacred image. It reaffirmed the existence of 'gap' in human psyche that the god model previously fit.

In the past, human nature was characterised by a need for the sacred. This entity would not necessarily be the conventional image of a male god-head or the rarer sacred feminine, but could be attributed to a higher, omnipresent power that was inherent in every object. From a spatial interpretation, the sacred space has now become decisively abstract. It is now mental rather than physical. However, it is missing the the essential element of evolution and change. Its rigidity mirrors that of the most despicable part of old religion: the precept of self preservation.
Today, in this age, we have come too far to turn back to a conventional god-- it's a little like not being able to unsee a random assemblage of dots that form an image. Even the new age movement has been limping to give way to the radical atheism's deification of scientific fact.

We might have put aside childish and wishful notions of a traditional god-like entity and discarded the idea of a 'divine purpose' in life, but that hasn't stopped us from filling in a psychological gap and meeting our need for Purpose elsewhere.

We have only substituted the fairy tales with sanctified Identity, a tendency to prioritise emotions over facts, and a code of Marxist ethics.

Why Hindu Philosophy Matters, And Not Just To Fundamentalists

Rarely does one find an article that has no polite beginning. And yet, I put this one forth to the public as an exasperated plea. Could we please just learn about Indian-- well, to put it more blatantly, Hindu—philosophy, taking a logical, secular approach?

For armchair philosophers, YouTube presents a goldmine, with channels like The School of Life, Wisecrack and John Green’s CrashCourse. For those(like me) without a bookworm’s patience or a scholar’s attention span, these provide the best platform to explore different ways of thinking and approaches to life, the universe and everything—and, if not fully satiate, suffice to temporarily quench the existential thirst for meaning that so many of us experience more often than we’d like to admit.

There’s one problem with these educative sources, though, and it’s this: they all focus on western philosophy.

The issue with the Indian schools of philosophy is that many of them are inherently spiritual (if the word religious doesn’t quite capture it), and as a result they’re a touchy subject. Hot coals, they’ve been juggled with awkwardly in the past and we’ve ended up with burned fingers. Like Wendy Donniger’s book The Hindus, other attempts to understand the maze that Hinduism is have ended up resisted, criticised, deemed offensive and finally pigeonholed as having been a product of a ‘western’ construct and ways of thinking. To the open-minded, the fence sitters and the curious, the best approach to this conundrum is not to denounce these allegations, but to explore where they come from and whether they carry any weight at all.

Perhaps the reason why Hinduism as a way of thought, and the question of what Hinduism really is, has become such a sensitive topic is that people simply do not know enough about it. Most of us grew up in one of these three scenarios: a) A liberal family that hardly gave a hoot to critiquing religion -- or critiquing anything at all; b) A very religious home environment that discouraged any critical inquiry into religion or tradition in general or c) An English-speaking home where you were encouraged to question everything under the sun – including the bits that intrigued you the most -- but didn’t have the resources to do so because, well, none of them were in English.

Hinduism, much like other ways of thought (since that’s what it is believed to have been), tends to be criticised, judged or endorsed based on second-hand knowledge and watered down, half-baked bits of information we read for ourselves. This is why we find no secular or objective videos on Indian philosophy on the internet: because people either shy away from it due to lack of understanding or pursue it passionately with their own religious biases and underpinnings.

This, in turn, is responsible for the discrepancy between Savarkar’s Hindutva philosophy, and what many people believe to be its non-violent sibling: Hinduism. There has been no formal comparative study undertaken on the two to find out what each implies in light of the other. The nation is content to carry on in its way without a sense of cultural self-awareness.

And as recent events would have us believe, this is a rather dangerous path.

I am not as alarmed by what the government thinks (since its ties to the RSS are no longer hidden) as much as I am about what -- and more importantly -- how the layman does. After all, we have seen time and time again that an ideology, if not critically examined before being accepted, can wreak havoc. We have the historic example of Marist thought being implemented and failing miserably, and we have the more recent instance of Islam as an ideology taking a radically violent turn. I do not wish to say we must do away with ideologies such as these, I merely ask that we take the opportunity to examine our ideas with an objective sharpness so as to make sure they are free from biases or emotional investment, especially if they are intended for imposition on others.

The recent trend that has been emerging, more prominently among my peer group, the youth, has been the overwhelming endorsement of the phrase ‘Ahimsa Paramo Dharma; Dharma himsa tathaiva cha’, or ‘Non-violence is the ultimate dharma. So too is violence in service of Dharma’. While possessing a relatively sound, albeit caste-based argument in and of itself, the aspect that’s worrisome is that there is no single, concrete meaning for the Sanskrit word dharma, which could denote anything from eternal cosmic law to duty to righteousness. If the issue I’m hinting at isn’t evident yet, let’s look at that quoted line a little closer.

‘Non-violence is the ultimate dharma. So too is violence in service of Dharma’.

In the first sentence, dharma is the object; it is passively being defined as non-violence, or ahimsa. This is quite made clear and rather uncomplicated, although it does not explain explicitly what the word non-violence implies. From a simplistic approach, non-violence might imply an action that is the opposite of violence, the absence of such. Therefore we might include all peaceful or passive actions, words and thoughts as part of this category of ‘non-violence’.

What about the second half, however? Here, Dharma is the subject of the sentence. It is no longer the cleanly defined term of the first half of the saying. It now falls into the fluid realm of subjectivity. Dharma could now become the personal kind -- a duty. Or it could take the meaning given to it by a particular group of individuals. This is where things begin to get hairy, because now that group has a loophole to condone violence, carried out in the name of their belief, sanctioned by sacred ideology, and directed toward a transgression or non-conformity to their ideal of Dharma.

Why do we need Hindu philosophy, and why have I digressed so far to arrive full circle at the same point?

Because when this saying, lifted from the Mahabharata, is taken within its context, its meaning becomes more utilitarian; political and legal rather than social. Since Hinduism was largely based on the caste system, it follows that this adage also has its roots in caste. In order for a king, a Kshatriya, to live up to his dharma, his divine duty, he would have to punish and even execute criminals in order to secure the safety of his subjects (which was his responsibility), and to ensure that justice be meted out to them. All other castes, being home-makers, had a divine duty to protect their families, and therefore could use violence in order to prevent any harm done to their loved ones. This is perfectly rational. A Brahmin or sanyasi could not do the same, as to attain nirvana he would have to practise a strict code of Ahimsa, or total non-violence. His physical form was of no value as he was supposed to be connected to a higher power through his soul.

In this context, it becomes clear that the phrase is quite dated for today’s world, but may yet be applied to one’s personal life if it provides a sense of religious comfort. However, it is rather dangerous when used to fuel nationalistic pride. Who decides what kind of Dharma we are talking about here? Would adopting certain western ideals imply a threat to that Dharma?  Would criticism of the nation or government jar this ideal of Dharma? Perhaps a foreign threat of invasion, then? Or, simply, a meal that involves consuming a certain bovine species? When context is not kept clearly in mind, the ensuing though and action that flows from this understanding is not always rational.

 

I will not go so far as to suggest that Indian Philosophy be incorporated into school syllabi; doing so would imply coercion and doubtlessly many a student will most likely hate the subject. Perhaps the best course of action is for each individual to educate themselves on the topic as much as possible and examine their notions on the subject critically, or, as Comedian Tim Minchin would say, take your ideas out and ‘hit them with a cricket bat’.  And if you truly believe your argument to be sound then, by all means, share it. You may not find anyone who readily agrees, but you will be contributing to a healthy debate in society which is very important for us as Indians. We are, after all, a nation who prides itself on its diversity.

Image sourced from: http://ayurvedicbliss.com/what-is-ayurveda-2/

The Paradox within Loss: Why everyone needs to read Kiran Desai's book

"Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss?"

Before it won the Man Booker Prize in 2006, The Inheritance of Loss received a lot of flak from critics. Many termed it 'bleak' and 'inane', going on to explain that while the writing in itself was beautiful, the plot was disappointingly lose, and the book's ending rather anticlimactic. 

The novel hasn't received the public recognition it deserves, however, despite it being intensely, heartbreakingly human.

Kiran Desai's novel brings forth many themes, but the one that is central to the narrative is that of Loss, Fulfillment and, most of all, the yearning between the two. 

It takes more than a single reading to grasp the deeper meaning of the novel because there is no distinguishable plot. We are told about the lives of characters against the backdrop of political unrest in India, and the immigration craze in the U.S. Rather, the central theme of Loss in itself forms the plot; a running thread much like a large, shy whale diving into, and resurfacing from, the network of stories that make up the book. It was during my second reading that I began to uncover its trajectory. 

The novel revolves around a host of characters residing in the picturesque, quiet hilly region of Kalimpong, West Bengal. But this is India in the 1980s, and everything sleepy and ethereal about the place is about to change with the growing Gorkha uprising, as Sai soon finds out. 

Sai is a dreamy, blossoming young lady of 16 living with her emotionally caged grandfather and their servile cook in a house that is falling apart. In the neighbourhood, we come across the others: sisters Noni and Lola, Uncle Potty and Father Booty, the Afghan Princesses, Mrs. Sen- lives that are splashed across this novel in short streaks of anecdotes. The one hallmark present in them all is the experience of Loss. For Lola, it is her husband, Joydeep. For Noni, her career, and the possibility of a richer experience in spinsterhood. The Afghan Princesses, their kingdom, and Uncle Potty his sobriety. 

A locality of shared experiences that sounds a lot like M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, with a large amount of dark humour and breathtaking descriptions of the misty landscape. And not unlike The Village, the landscape against which the story is set, with all its natural beauty and seclusion only adds to the ache that the book brings to the reader.

But it doesn't stop there. Desai expands our focus to a national scale, where the country is experiencing its own complexity of change and yearning; India is gradually losing its utopian concent of unity, but regional cultures are finding a growing sense of Identity. 
She then zooms out further through Biju, the cook's son, to give us a world that is working its way around the larger problems of dealing with the ghosts of colonisation, migrant assimilation and globalisation poverty. 
Here is where Kiran Desai superimposes the macro and the micro- experiences of individuals become the issues of nations, global problems find utterance in local wisdom. The theme also spills over the plane of time. Biju loses his identity in an alien country only to find out that it isn't an isolated experience; Gyan's thinly veiled xenophobia isn't much different from the young judge's landlady. The passage of time becomes irrelevant as we realise that not very much has changed since the time of the judge's youth and that of Sai's with respect to the way Indians see themselves on a global scale of cultural status. 
Loss becomes the heart of the experience here, at all levels; the gradual 'Indianisation' of the U.S., the deep-seated separatist tensions in India, the cook's loss of personal dignity, Sai's loss of her parents, Father Booty's loss of his property. 

It isn't strange that Kiran Desai builds on the theme in this manner; after all, it is the one human experience that links us all as a species, and Desai uses this fact as a plot device: though the book is about divisions- cultural, societal, personal- this thread of Loss is the unifying factor in all cases- it dissipates the momentum of the separatists and breaks down the emotional barriers the judge, Sai's grandfather, has built all his life. 

But the question it raises, and tries to answer, is the one spelled out by Sai's thoughts at the beginning of the book: 

"Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself."

The entirety of Desai's novel rests on these lines, though love be supplemented with any emotion. Yearning, the book establishes, is the reality. The points between which yearning exists- Loss and Fulfillment, are mere transitions; Fulfillment being the Inheritance, or natural product of Loss. Life is largely spent between these two points, Desai points out; it never rests for long on each. Yearning or Longing is the quantum discontinuity between the two uncertain, volatile points in space-time of Loss and Fulfilment.

Biju, after all, yearns for a better life in America, lives there a while and longs for India again. It is not, as we see, the question of the two countries or the change in status that they represent that affects him, but this constant longing. Sai, similarly, only misses Gyan when they are not together; she only longs for family when she has a tiff with him. The cook's fatherly concern she finds sticky compared to the freedom young love has won her. 

It is Loss that makes us human and vulnerable, the judge realises. Mutt's absence is a catharsis not only for the judge's pent up emotions, but for Sai's and the Cook's as well, with all three of them calling out to the dog along the hillside, Sai venting her lovesick unhappiness, the Cook his anxiety over Biju. Loss becomes a synergy of shared emotion between human beings, a moment of recognition.

It also facilitates growth. Desai shows this several times over the novel. Jemubhai Patel- the young judge- doesn't experience any emotional development because he has barred himself to the experience of losing any aspect of his life. He fears Loss, fears change. Sai's acceptance of how much time she has wasted- on Gyan and on Cho Oyu- compels her to take the decision of leaving. Biju's return brings home the realisation to both father and son that homecoming and togetherness trumps any materialistic ambitions, but only for a while, for Fulfillment will soon grow into a different, new yearning.

Loss, then, becomes the driving force of our lives, pushing us forward to other experiences; towards a richer existence. It reminds us of the unrelenting passage of time, of our mortality and our common brotherhood in this life. It makes our existence meaningful, our successes sweeter and our shortcomings worthy of greatness.

That is the Inheritance it offers.

(Miss)construing: When Feminism turns Trivial

Oh, Rebecca Solnit, what have you done?

A few days  ago, I'd been eavesdropping on a conversation in a cafe. Not a wholesome habit, I know, but the profound dialogue in question was taking place at the table behind me and didn't appear to be held in a tone that suggested the speaker intended any kind of discretion.

This animated discussion was taking place between two very metropolitan-looking, smartly dressed girls in their late teens or early adulthood, and while I didn't notice this last aspect until I got up to pay my bill, I knew the voices were female as I picked up my ears when I first heard the snippets of conversation emanating from behind me. 

"I don't know why he does it", one was saying, "I told him that I thought the film was brilliant, and he brought it down so badly. It's such a fun movie."

"I know, right?!" Her friend responded, automatically. 

"We fought about it. We're always fighting these days. I told him to stop mansplaining to me about my tastes."

One table forward, I cringed when I heard it. 

And suddenly, it seems to be everywhere. On social media, in literature, on websites and on my Facebook feed, complete with the annoying hashtag. 

#mansplaining.

Most modern-day feminists are proud of this, of course. I'm not quite sure how proud author Rebecca Solnit is any longer, since she first coined the term in 2014, in her recent (and latest) book Men Explain Things to Me. 

While I haven't read the book, and therefore cannot comment on how relevant and logical the origin of this phenomenon is, I can say for sure that the movement it created turned into a sickening social malady on par with stage five cancer. 

What is Mansplaining? some would ask. A good place to begin. Google, the quickest of tools for obtaining information, defines mansplaining as (of a man) explain (something) to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing.

At the 2017 Jaipur Literary festival, writer and journalist Bee Rowlatt described the experience of being mansplained to as being "talked over and crushed in conversation". 

I would simply prefer to define the term as 'a terrible way to disregard an opinion, shut down rational debate and term a male acquaintance as a bigot even though he may not actually be one.'

Because that's what this term 'mansplaining' actually is. It is a term that can be thrown without justification at any man, in the midst of civil debate, just to render anything he said prior to its usage null and void. The problem with this term is that it curtails free speech, and any kind of equality in civil debate. And mind you, this is what early feminists fought fervently for- freedom of expression and equality. Today's feminism- fourth wave feminism- turns free speech on its head, lashing out against all men, and even their own sex (basically anyone who has a different opinion), terming them misogynist and anti-feminist. They disregard their views entirely and pigeonhole them as 'bigoted'.

Feminists today consider it inappropriate for a man to express his opinion on a topic they claim 'to obviously know more about'. This would include women's issues and virtually everything else under the sun. A man is dead meat dare he venture to suggest to a woman anything about her diet, job, hobbies, or even just recent developements in scientific research. They cut up his opinion, chew on it and divine some sexist flavour at its heart. Then they call it mansplaining and terminate what would be a fair, if not interesting, exchange of information. They don't seem to understand that even if they are dealing with a bigot, shutting him up won't change the way he thinks. 

But I'm rambling, and we're forgetting the main chink in this term's armour. Mansplaining isn't a gender specific term, for the most part. 

Think about it for a minute.

There have been times I've had a female teacher override me within a conversation. Being a self-confessed nerd, I've 'mansplained' to my friends quite often, and still feel rotten about it. The auntie next door dresses me down about my neglect of Hindi and fluency in the English language (a valid point, but she doesn't let me get a word in on how it happened), and I've been 'mansplained' over and over again by feminist friends, and waited patiently until I could get a word in and tell them that I knew what they were talking about, but could we please look at it this way...

Sure, there are men who mansplain, and I've come across them, too. But I haven't noticed any differences in the way that they go about it when compared to the women who do it. At the end of the day, I'd just chalk it up to a large ego- a very human trait. 

It is silly, to be honest, to target solely this term, when it is an entire movement that's souring and beginning to collapse under its own weight. Feminism has made some stupid decisions of late, and had some insane ideas- but hell, mansplaining has been about the worst. Not to mention the trivialisation of rape, with many women claiming to feel 'raped' when a man looks at her funny or even farts too loud (not kidding about this one, google it). 

As a woman who is tired with the victim complex flaunted by feminists today, I wish we would infuse the movement with a little more sense. We aren't fragile, sensitive snowflakes, and shouldn't aspire- or encourage other women and girls- to be. There are more pressing issues regarding women to be dealt with, such as rape and reproductive rights. There are countries and regions where our sisters haven't felt the tread of feminism at all. We should be focused on larger concerns. 

As for mansplaining, we need to remember that nobody is going to hand us our rights in conversation, or anywhere else in life. If you feel 'talked over and crushed', tell the person, goddammit. Open that pretty mouth of yours and tell them, 'I'm sorry, but you haven't been listening to my opinion'. Walk away if they don't let you talk, because that isn't a conversation, that's a monologue and you don't need to be an audience. 

It's time we we honour fair debate and a sensible exchange of perspectives. Reinvent feminism for equality, not whiny superiority. Get rid of #mansplaining unless you want to #missconstrue everything.

In Praise of Coffee Tables: An Introduction

The birth of the English essay, they say, occurred rather inconspicuously in the coffee houses of eighteenth-century London. Frequented by a large number of writers, doctors, politicians and merchants, issues of the day and novel ideas were discussed, creating a cauldron for intellectual debate.

Fast forward two centuries, and we have T.S. Eliot publishing his essay On Tradition and Individual Talent in 1921 which caused a stir with its call for literary depersonalisation, essentially resulting in the symbolic Death of the Author.

In these times, we have witnessed the Death of the Fact, and there hadn't been any Eliot to introduce the concept to us; it was simply shoved down our throats by our constantly evolving species and patient but overbearing Grandmother Time.We're still reeling from this realisation- that hitherto 'infallible' digital media has developed a certain kind of dubiety; that our news may not really be factual; we aren't sure if our policy decisions are just based on appeals to emotion, or concrete data and fact-based logic.Our history textbooks are suddenly sketchy, the image of the party that we support just turned strangely ambiguous.

But I digress. The burning issue at hand is not the debate over whether or not we live in a post-truth world; whether we gradually trickled into this predicament or plunged headfirst into it, or which political wing is right. 

The question we should be asking is: Where do we go from here? We've always had our doomsayers and fatalists with their refrain of catastrophe and we've always had our hotheaded brave-hearts unthinkingly hailing movements, but we also have the ones who stay rational and detached and explore these changes to see where they may lead. One cannot halt the march of history, after all.  

On a personal note, I see one hell of an opportunity in this dissonance that we're going through. 

But first, why did I mention the Coffee Houses? 

Because those coffee houses serve as a concept for our age. As open spaces for debate, expression and an exchange of ideas- as well as an incubation chamber for new ones- they pushed into society new ways of thinking, a civil, respectful approach toward debate and probable disagreement, a healthy attitude to change and an openness to consider a different perspective.

This is crucial for us now more than ever. And this post-fact environment, I believe, will provide the right momentum for all of it. 

Firstly, since we are exposed to a host of opinions, it would push one to reconsider long-held, sacrosanct personal ideals and adopt a new, different perspective. The demolishing, or challenging, of a paradigm is the first step to learning, or cementing, an opinion respectively. 

Secondly, on an important philosophical front, the zeitgeist will push us to delve into what exactly the concept of a 'fact' really is, and whether such a concept truly exists. Is truth objective in every context? Can there really exist- with all human infallibility- a sole, accurate account of an incident or event in the past? Can fact exist without emotional appeal? We would have to consider all these dilemmas before we can realign ourselves with our current existence. 

A third aspect- and the one that seems most pressing- is the awareness of the ambiguity of historical fact. Historiography, the study of the history of History itself- of how events were recorded and by whom- will need to be emphasised upon just to reveal to everyone how the historical fact died a natural death centuries ago: history was always written by the victor and exaggerated or euphemised where found convenient. Our post-fact world didn't have much of a 'fact' to it in the fist place. 

An acceptance and a willingness to work toward the best possible future is the way we should be headed.

It also doesn't hurt to have a coffee every now and again along the way, either, while brewing ideas.