The majoritarian Indian has replaced the argumentative Indian

Change can be looked at in two ways. One can look at it functionally like a piece of plumbing or change can be seen as a mentality, a framework of thought, combining theory and myth, creating certain rituals of action. Like any citizen, I want less violence and poverty, a childhood that does not succumb to Darwinian entry exams. I want better roads. But it is the second kind of change which I find intriguing. I am not too worried about the idea of India but I do want an India of ideas, where Indians think differently. I do not want a change marked by standard human indicators of economic development. I want a society where India thinks differently where that touch of difference adds to the creativity of democracy.

It is one of the ironies of the time that the argumentative Indian has been replaced by the majoritarian Indian. The argumentative Indian was the hero of Indian folklore and democracy. The majoritarian Indian was created out of elections in a society which equated elections to democracy, reducing a way of life to an idiot mechanism. The irony was that India proud of its myth of being a great democracy had to face the fact that democracy can threaten democracy. We had to understand that democracy in its populist variants can account for Brexit and the rise of Trump. Change in a democracy can be full of ironies and ambiguities.

For me change in India has to be anchored around three words, three worlds: Fraternity, diversity, plurality. I want an India where change is not a fetishism of progress as it eliminates alternatives. I want an India that understands that its strength, its creativity, and its sense of playfulness lies in the fact that India is a cosmos of defeated knowledges, a place where the last Victorian and the last tribal can rub shoulders with the last Marxist as each plan a revival of their worlds.

The change I am talking about must not erase people or the storyteller. When a storyteller dies, cost benefit analysis is born. Think of the recent death of a waterfall in Odisha. The tribals in Odisha complained that a myth, a religion, a cosmos had been destroyed. The economist dismissed it as so many cusecs of water. I want an India where the tribal wisdom finds a place in the economic calculus of our time.

Change must be such that it does not eliminate a people or their ideas. Change must not reduce living traditions to museums. I think this is why the Indian national movement wished to fight a guerrilla war against the museum, because memory was not a living tradition but smelt of death and formaldehyde, as AK Coomaraswamy observed. India has to be plural, allow for diversity, sustain 150,000 varieties of rice, a thousand languages and be simultaneously oral, textual and digital.

The change I hope to see is that a majoritarian intolerant India becomes plural, playful and loses the rigidity of official ideas like patriotism, development and nation-state. A syncretic India where religions talk to each other. For example, think of a Kashmir where Sufism provides voice against fundamentalism; or a Manipur which is not rigid about dissent, where as Irom Sharmila put it love and democracy sustain each other. My favourite example is the Indian National Movement, which was hospitable to the British, which sought to liberate India by rescuing it from the British and their repressive modernity. Nationalism was a theory of change where its advocates realised that nationalism was a rainbow of cultures while the nation-state was an oppressive entity which emasculated the imagination, where the official and the bureaucratic destroyed the diversity of culture.

India must have a unity which allows for the collage, the quilt patch, the oxymoron, where change adds to the infinity of diversity. Not a development that creates more refugees than the wars we have fought. Or an innovation which makes crafts obsolescent. Or an industry that creates a junkyard of wasted people. I want an India which is a commons between the tribal, peasant, craft and industrial, where time is multiple not linear. An idea where change increases the intensity and playfulness of conversation. An India where the dialogue of medical systems and a dialogue of religions embraces a dialogue of civilisations. An India that is simultaneously Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Christian in its diversity, where crafts survive and where languages multiply. A democracy of livelihoods and lifestyles that anchors sustainability, plurality and justice.

Change must be a process, not a product, an India where change produces a different attitude to change itself, where Hind Swaraj and Communist Manifesto converse with each other, where the defeated West finds a home, where translation and hospitality of cultures defines a society, where plurality marks the cosmos, the syllabus, the Constitution and the commons. The change we need is a change in the idea of change itself.

Shiv Visvanathan is professor, Jindal Global Law School and director, Centre for the Study of Knowledge Systems, OP Jindal Global University

Source: Hindustan Times, 23-11-2016

Sep 17 2014 : Mirror (Pune)

The sociology of stupid

GOURI DANGE





By keeping out those whose religious or behavioural practices differ from ours, we are ghettoising ourselves and breaking into smaller and smaller splintersWRITES ABOUT THE LOVE-HATE EQUATION THAT WE ALL HAVE WITH OUR CITY
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One builder (or several), without spelling it out openly, but through an in visible network, sells flats only to people with Brahmin surnames. An other one says he only sells to “96k“ people (Those who don't know what that stands for, go do some reading up on Maratha history). A bunch of buildings in Mumbai has steadfastly refused to sell or resell flats to anyone but Jains. The one family there that eats eggs, goes through an elaborate secret dance to “smuggle in“ the eggs, cook them with all windows closed and get rid of the eggshells in a convoluted fashion -wrapping them in newspaper and taking them out hidden in a laptop bag, if you please.Yet another building, though it cannot enforce the no-pets policy, systematically harasses the one pet owner and hopes that they will one fine day move away. This pet owner is now looking for a building that has a petfriendly policy, or better still, keeps out all pet haters and sells only to pet lovers! One retired air force man proudly tells me about his rather lovely apartment that I admire: “And the best part is that the builder simply declared `all sold out', even when he was not all sold out, to any `Gonsalves, Ali, Singh' type surname customers who enquired about the flats.“ And this is declared with a happy, proud smile. Err...excuse me Sirji, but surely after living and serving Jai Hind, you would not be so damned parochial? And so blatantly so? I think this, but do not say it out loud.
All hot and bothered about all of this, a couple of friends of mine and I said, let's do a sting -let's pose as JainsBrahmins96Ks Whatever-is-required to these different builders and flat sellers, and then record what they say, and then...well and then what? Perhaps this is breaking news only to the likes of us “secular types“ (said with that special sneer), and no one finds it remarkable or objectionable anymore, to build and sell and live along caste and community lines?
Oh wait, of course there is also the automatic class line divide anyway...certain areas and certain constructions will attract “certain“ type of people only. Avoid those, mass along financially similar lines.
Where will all this end? In ghettos that may at first appear like little havens for any particular community or group that has formed them, but will then splinter further on more intolerant and more sociologically stupid lines. Perhaps people with straight hair will find the sight of curly hair abhorrent and entire building societies will then consist of only curly haired people, shunned by and shunning the straight haired ones? Anything is possible. Let's teach our kids that plurality is passé and intolerant is in.
So now that everyone is trying to hang on to only the familiar and the “approved“, here's my very own list of prejudices, firmly in place -call it casteclasscommunitywhatever: I will not live with people who ban pets.And I will not live with people who abuse their pets. I will not live with people who think it is a waste of money to pay society dues. I will not live with people whose kids are free to pee in the lift for a lark and blame it on someone's dog. I will not live with people who use loudspeakers in the society in the name of devoutness starting with Ganpati, going through Navratri and Diwali, and ending only on an ugly crescendo on New Year's Day. I will not live with people who don't believe in separating their garbage. I will not live with people who don't greet each other when they pass on the stairs and who don't have the brains and decency to hold the lift open for someone. I will not live with people who scream beef pork, eee, nooo, etc. Basically I will not live with people who climb mentally into people's private affairs and decide to regulate their lives. Perhaps that relegates me into living in glorious lone splendour, or then other `my types' will band together and form our own ghetto? We will name it the Anti-Ghetto.
Forget about tolerance and civic living. Define your lifestyle, make it non-negotiable, find others who agree and keep out the rest.That's how India is choosing to live. In this way, we will break down into smaller and smaller and even smaller splinters -that will hurt us all, only like a splinter in your skin can.

Individuals Who Make Up Society

Acharya
•Mahaprajna

    Man and society are two realities. Individualistic philosophers believe that man can live without society, implying that before he became part of a society, he was an individual in his own right; that for the security of his property, rights and life or for the attainment of some other goal, man created society.
    Socialist philosophers believe that man and society cannot be separate; both have equal importance in human development. The Jain concept of anekanta, plurality, defines man and society in relation to each other. In a man both individualistic and social traits are found; his capabilities define his individuality. Their expressions are part of his social skills. That is why individuals and society are different from one another. Man’s individuality can never be non-existent.
    Despite remaining an integral part of society, man still retains his individuality and so is different from society. Man develops his desires, aspirations and activities through interdependence and exchange. Here, man is not different from society but where man develops his desires, aspirations and activities and establishes inter-dependence in society, he is also different. Man is limited by his feelings. One who experiences love, happiness, fear and grief, is a complete man. These feelings are not a common experience; they cannot be exchanged or substituted. Exchange is the bridge between man and society. The fundamental base of an individual is his emotions and that of society is exchange.
    According to some sociologists, society is a matrix of life-sustaining relationships. Emotions are neither established nor are they lifesustaining. They are intrinsic to man. From the perspective of emotions, man is a reality and from the perspective of life-sustenance, society is reality. There is no conflict here. Man lives comfortably only with the assumption that society is real and keeping this in mind, safeguards social norms and values.
Two fundamental principles govern social organisation: Desires and wealth. To fulfil desires, social relationships develop. Wealth is a tool to fulfil desires. Through dharma, social organisation is worked. Kautilya gave importance to wealth, that it was the root cause for kama or attachment and dharma. Therefore, wealth is important. In contemporary social organisation also wealth is important. In such a society, a man has no individual, independent value. Without controlling individual freedom, a social organisation cannot survive. A man does not give as much importance to the feelings of others as he does to his own.
Therefore, two situations arise in individualistic social organisation: The need of the self and need for others. In such a situation crime, immorality, exploitation and corruption have grown. Burdened by these, society tries to overcome differences – between self and the other – through socialism. But even after independence of individualistic social organisation, this problem could not be overcome. That is why man is a puppet in society.
    Individualistic social organisation creates imbalance in society. Some people become very rich and some remain poor. The rich are engrossed in consumerism. They are constantly worried about their own comfort and prosperity and not about others. Their sense-needs increase; they have little time for anything other than consumption. The poor have to struggle to get the level of comfort they desire. They do not get the opportunity to reflect. Hence there is imbalance.
    Mahavira did not organise society; nor did he give vision for a social organisation. He explained dharma as being neither individualistic nor social. It is related to the atma or soul. The measure of dharma is transcendental consciousness, beyond feeling and action. As told to Lalit Garg. 

Source:  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2014/05/08&PageLabel=16&EntityId=Ar01603&ViewMode=HTML