Whither Left

Whither Left

What I gained from the seminar is not easily quantifiable and I am not attempting to make an audit of it. What is given here is my reflection on a thread of discussion initiated by Zizek, the living Patriarch of Marxism presently.

Whither Left, a seminar conducted by Kochi Life (8-9, Jan, 2010)brought a new lease of energy to the think tanks of the Marxist elites. Zizek, probably the latest scholar of the leftist bandwagon put on a garb of an activist rather than a scholar in the discussions although scholarship was not in wanting in the deliberations. Zizek’s plea was to return ad fontes of the pure Marxist theories.

The practicality of the argument was in doubt ever since the attempt to establish communism by a revolution of the proletariat. The government that emerged did not quiet establish communism but only oligarchy of the party heavyweights. These are the old criticisms that Catholic Church levelled against Marxism in Rerum Novarum. Marxian theory was not any way the beginning of communist experiments. It is the early Christianity which tried that experiment and miserably failed over the span of perhaps one year and one chapter. Ref. Acts of the Apostles Chapter 4 and 5. The failure has happened to early Church and the later theoretical Marxists equally.

Why this failure of communism? A few thoughts are in place while thinking of this failure.

Primarily, that the left do not take into account the human being in action and considers only the human being in thought. The human being in action is a particular person with a name, an identity and a certain place in the web of social relationships. Marxism is almost afraid to consider the individual in the particular identity and gives him the garb of a proletariat or capitalist, devoid of any particularities. This abstract man of the class could be killed or saved because the action is occult, literary and abstract. From the abstract, the particular is non sequitur, in this case especially. The annihilation of one class is achieved only by a particular person of the communist ideology hating a person of the capitalist mental frame. This hatred even if it is christened in Marxist or any other ideological registries will have the same psychological contends of enmity. This hatred should remain as a permanent state of mind until a classless society is established. Fortunately, the human kind tends to slip away from a permanent state of mind such as hatred and regret hating others unless one is a mentally deranged. Hatred, murder, blood and gory excite even a deranged mind only temporarily. Expecting to keep such derangement as permanent state of mind is perhaps a little short of derangement itself.

Secondly, Marxism has an unspecified assumption that there is an extremely bad humankind, which is the capitalist and another benevolent proletariat who, for the time being engages in violence, at the end of the revolution and establishment of the classless society, can turn out to be altruistic to the once capitalist. A theory based on such an unscientific assumption is to be read as a fiction or as theory? This still baffles me. Utopia does better than this theory in all counts.

But the final object of Marxism has a lasting value, an ideal. Capitalism has no ideology and works by the natural inclinations of the human kind. It promotes the welfare of the self and not of the neighbour. It is based on the biological drive for self preservation. What Marxism proposes is an epikeic philosophy of the Bible although its means are objectionable. One has to overcome the self-preservation drive to take care of the neighbour. In spite of all the Christian orthodoxy the gospel still remains largely unpracticed. Even so is Marxism.

Now what is wrong with the Marxists In India?

The distance between the theory and praxis is at the centre of its failure. At this juncture of rethinking Marxism the analysis should focus on the praxis and not theory. Unfortunately, Zizek has gone the theoretical way. The return to the theory will again nullify the value of experience. The experience of applied communism was not available to Marx. Now, when it is available, that experience should dialogue with the theoretical Marxism, to make itself relevant. The experience of Marxism is different in India and Russia or elsewhere and therefore theorisation should be qualified by the area of its practice. The need for this qualified regional perspective of Marxism cannot be overemphasised. As an example the praxis of Marxism in India could be taken into consideration.

The radical ideology of Marxism, in India’s case, slipped into the framework of Democracy. Marxist parties have been ideology-lead political movements which provided alternatives for the capitalist parties in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura. But Marxism failed in identifying the right capitalist and directed the hatred to the middle and lower class peasants. In the experience of Kerala, having the labour force turned against its own class whose surplus profit is only the owner’s unaccounted labour, the petty farmers found it totally unprofitable to maintain their self-reliant agricultural processes. Thus when agriculture became unprofitable the petty farmers laid their land unutilised which the real capitalist grabbed later. By the time the party heavyweights who had argued for overthrowing the capitalist, mellowed down their theoretical orthodoxy and colluded with the neo capitalists forcing the petty farmers to run away from their land or to other ways of sustenance. Most of them having found a job outside Kerala and in many cases outside India, this class of the petty farmers manage to live a decent life. But the fall out of this unreflected Marxism is the conversion of the agricultural land into other purposes making the state largely depend on other states for food grains.

If communism is harping on rejuvenation at the global financial crisis on the basis of its near-victory during the depression in 1930ies, it is playing the wrong fiddle. Marxism is still not reflecting and theorising on the ground realities of its existence. This refusal to dialogue with the ground realities is making it more and more fossilised in the academic circles. If China has introduced theoretical Marxism in its curriculum, I am afraid communism is slowly migrating to universities absolutely insulated from praxis. Its total fall is not distant now.

Jijo K.P.

A curious crib

something interesting happened during this Christmas. I was invited to judge the Crib competition in a newly created parish, Panthackal, Mother Teresa Church. There were six of them registered for the competition. Two were grand creations, others were ordinary. There was one crib that I liked for the novelty it presented. The other judge seemed to be highly puritanistic and did not like this one I am talking about.

This one had interestingly two birth narratives. One in a manger and another in the middle of a concrete jungle. Jesus as an abandoned baby. The crib had been divided into two parts. One which did not have electricity and used only lamps for the light. I saw the boy lighting the torch at the entrance of this crib which had some likeness of Bethlehem. The other side was well lit with proper roads and well laid out lawns. The older Bethlehem had a little manger for Jesus with Mary, Joseph and the shepherds with the animals around. In the modern Bethlehem Jesus was an abandoned child in the middle of a lawn, no people not even animals around. In the background a posh hospital is made in a thermo coal replica. A star was found precariously suspended between the two birth narratives.

This crib had a lot of work done in the mind and others with the body. Somehow I left the crib with thoughts of Christmas that would have been, in streets of the cities, in the garbage pits and on the operation tables for abortion and many more nameless places where children are abandoned or killed before they are born.

Our Christmas has lost its content.......

The Biblical Binaries

mmmm Derrida is not my favourite philosopher. But for the joy of using his notorious binaries in reading the Bible I start using Derrida. I do not like Derrida not because of his obfuscation techniques in writing but because of his arrongance in the claim that deconstructing linguistic binaries is equal to deconstructing material boundaries. Inspite of all that Derrida said has anyone been able to look at the darkness and light as unitaries and not binaries? Has anyone been able to privilege night over day? sleep over work?

Another of his claims goes against common sense. Well he has no respect for common sense but only for the convoluted arguments that create ordinary understanding foolish. The master of deconstructing structures creates his own structres!!!! Well that claim was over speech and writing. Speech is privileged in theories because of presence!!!!!! what could be more wrong than this preliminary assumption of his? Speech is not privileged over writing but it is prior to writing historically. His claim is something like saying a typewriter is privileged over computer because the computer still uses the typewriter key pads. The type writer has no privilege than being prior to computer.

Well my intention is not to critique Derrida but to begin with that Biblical Analysis. The book of Genesis the first unwritten binary is about chaos/cosmos. When God began his creation ex nihilo or otherwise earth and heavens were in chaos. Creation was an act of cosmos..order. The second binary I already referred to the heavens and the earth. We find these binaries running into land and sea, light and darkness, day and night, living and non-living....The whole creation looks like a a process of creating boundaries of the binaries. Somehow recognizing binaries seem to be an important task in creation.

In many cases, the boundaries of the binaries are not clear. Perhaps night and day form one continuum that one cannot easily separate the boundaries. Sea and land... they have demarcations very clear. It is but important to recognize these oppositions, if not their boundaries to live life meaningfully. God emerges not like the fox to drink the blood of the warring binaries but as the master of these binaries. Creativity emerges in the interaction of these binaries. If everything were to be light would you see the beauty of the evening and the morning. If everyone is male species would you hear the laughter of a child? If all colours were to be white would you see the colours of the rainbow?

Beauty emerges in the interaction of the binaries..... God oversees the intermingling of the binaries.....

Happy New Year Why Not Get Vulnerable This Year?

It is a long time since the last blog. I am starting afresh in 2010. Last year did give a lot of joyful moments in life. I love sometime to stick to little little joys of every day life, not bothering about what happens to people around the world. In fact a lot of people do not care as to what happens around the world. This indifference is seen in the lack of exercising the voter's rights, not joining in the events of the neighborhood, not bothering about a friend who suffers and to the level of scuttling Copenhagen summits.

What is the New Year message? How about beecoming vulnerable. I know this is some freaky psychology. But there are things to learn from becoming vulnerable. I have personally tried to fortify myself from situations that will harm me. The easiest response to vulnerability is to run away. The next best is not to bother. The toughest is to go through the ordeal. I am not advocating that people should run into troubles or create troubles to get hurt. What I intend is that we should get involved in the joys and problems of others. A certain vulnerability is required to see injustice. A certain training should be given to ourselves to respond to situations of injustice, to act against violence.

Unless one becomes vulnerable to injustices, one grows with it and sometimes become part of the system like the creatures in the Pirates of the Caribbean. Injustice is highly subjective. Arguing about it with the philosophers will almost make you immobile to act in favour or against anyone. What I propose is that we develop a sense to fight against the act of injustice and not people. When injustice is associated to people counter violence and injustice will occur. What we need is a sense to feel the violence and injustice and not get used to them.

When people die as a result of violence most of us are numb not knowing how to react. There are always people who are close to the perpetrators of violence who refuse to speak even if they disagree with the violence. A support system among people should be created that fear is annihilated from persons who should refuse and give in to violence.

Perhaps violence happens in different ways next door. Only if we develop a sense to recognize them will we act about it. People of good will should gather to protect the victims of violence. The government agencies must be kept under the watch by the people of good will.

A non-violent way of responding to injustice was seen in the Pink Chuddy Movement. Ishant Shah was talking about such digital activism as a powerful popular movement. We found mobilisation large number of people on an issue through internet.

However, all popular movements are not targeted towards reduction of violence. One of such was found for 9/11 or 26/11. Some people decided to wear whites in comemoration of the tragedy. They became more a fashion parade and at best sympathy to the victims but not an act of defiance to violence.

People who enter into such resistance movements burn their fingers. The network is to protect such finger burning. I remember a much acclaimed poem called 'goggles' by Murukan Kattakkada. He laments that all of us have a cataract that we are not able to see well. We all need goggles. He says, once someone used goggles and he was stoned and crucified. Another man wore goggles and he was slapped and shot dead. Well we need not burn our fingers if we network.

So get vulnerable for the New Year. A Happy New Year to all

Ekalavya

This is a play which I wrote for Darpan Theatre Competition, 09 in Christ University Bangalore under the banner, 08PG Productions.

Ekalavya: The Lord of Archery

Script: Fr. Jijo

Characters

Ekalavyan

Asandigtha

Maid

Arjun

Khrishna

Drona

Modern Man

Scene I

Scene: Early in the morning: Hasthinapura: Backdrop Rising Sun behind the silhouette of Hasthinapura palace. As the scene begins faces are not clear. Smoke in the scene (fog) A spot light on Arjuna’s profile. As the scene progresses the light is brighter and the sun rises higher.

Drona: In the Kingdom of Surya Bhagavan are you the only one paying tribute to his rising majesty?

Arjun: My brothers have still not awaken from sleep, after last night’s tedious journey.

Drona: My Son, you give me so much joy. No one, but you alone have escaped from the beguiling

treachery of indolence. This is your way to power and fame, Arjun.

Arjun: I know, the way to power is hard. But I am willing to go all the way.

Drona: Power can bring armies under your feet and wars on your decisions.

Arjun: You always told me I am your best disciple. Do you really think I am.

Drona: Your lack of confidence will make you diffident in critical moments of life.

Arjun: Do you discard my apprehensions as mere diffidence?

Drona: Tell me what is in your mind.

Arjun: Well, I have seen Karna outsmarting my prowess many times over.

Drona: Karna is a the son of a nobody, I will demoralise him in public and his expertise will be no

hindrance for your glory.

Arjun: I am sure you will do that for me. But do you think that no one else will ever come to surpass

my fame?

Drona: What matters is fame or prowess?

Arjun: The flames of prowess will die when the soul bids farewell to the body but the embers of

fame will still smoulder in the ashes of history.

Drona: Reading into the grains of time and, predicting which will grow and which will not, is not my

art. But my promise will abide. This world will not see a better archer than you.

Arjun: In the witness of the rising sun can you pledge it to me?

Drona: By the powers, Bharatha varsha has entrusted to me I declare, that no one shall surpass

Arjun in archery in times present and future.

(thunderbolts, flickering lights)

Arjun: I am glad. I am so overwhelmed. (Arjun bows at the feet of Drona)Yet there is a sorrow in my

mind.

Drona: Tell my child.

Arjun: Yesterday during the hunting game I found a young man in the jungle doing amazing archery.

Drona: What?

Arjun: He kept the mouth of the hunting dog open with a dozen arrows.

Drona: Does the storm in the pond raise waves in the ocean?

Arjun: But I am afraid this storm might catch fire.

Drona: you should have brought him here to give a place in the cavalry.

Arjun: I was afraid. He must be stopped, by all means.

Drona: Fame comes like a wind, Arjun, never will you know its origin nor its destination. What you

can control is your actions. So I have given you expertise in archery. Why dream for more?

Arjun: Does the code of royal justice suggest, keeping the threatening enemy alive?

Drona: Arjun..... I see embers of ambition in your eyes. I am afraid that they will be quenched only in

blood baths. Fight with the equals, encourage the weak, But what I see is the avarice of

power in your eyes.

Arjun: The avarice of power is allowed to the royalty.

Drona: Power is to protect, not to destroy.

Arjun: But this one should be destroyed, the warrior of the jungles.

Drona: What have you planned?

Arjun: The day I met him was his marriage. I asked him to take the vow of the warrior until his

apprenticeship is over, lest he begets a nation of warriors from his progeny.

Drona: Arjun, you are already intoxicated with power. Your ambition makes you blind. You are

striking at the root of a family. You will run out of heirs even if you win all your wars.

Arjun: With all my charms do you think I will be left without a progeny even from my concubines?

Drona: The times to come will answer your question. I find forebodings of an imminent holocaust

hovering over Hasthina Pura.

Arjun: Let future decide its own course but now you must help me.

Drona: Tell me, How may I help you?

Arjun: I have named you as his guru and left your statue in his hut, so that he could learn from your

feet and be your disciple.

Drona: But I have not taught him.

Arjun: He shall learn archery from the feet of your image.

Drona: Do you think, my graven image can teach what I gathered over years of contemplation and

Hard work?

Arjun: For the kings, statues are symbols of power and presence. What they are able to do is not

their concern? Do you promise to come with me to his hut?

Drona: Yes, I will be interested in seeing what he can do.

Soothradhar enters

Mmmmmmmmmm that’s news. Prince Arjun is feeling threatened by the lowly Ekalavya. din’t you hear the villainy of the prince. I tell you, Arjun is not the one whom you know. He is a wolf in sheep’s garb. He is laid his axe at the very root of Ekalavya’s family. Beware of him.

Scene II

(As the scene opens. Ekalavya does a Pooja at the statue of Drona and starts his practice.

Asandigtha: Ekalavya, you spurn my very presence ever since that statue was welcomed here.

Where have you lost the wreathing passions for me? Come let us go to the inviting sweet springs of love.

Ekalavya: (pushing her away)Don’t you disturb me Asandigtha, while I am engaged in the art of

heaven. The prince has promised me a place in his army.

Asandigtha: But what did you learn more. You knew to aim to the tigers that pounce on you with out

blinking your eye. You kept that dog’s mouth open with your arrow showers. You have killed threatening tuskers from an arm’s length. What more do you have to learn? What does this statue teach you day after day?

Ekalavya: I do not know. But the prince told me I had to learn a lot more from this statue. Perhaps, I

still have not offered enough sacrifices to Guru that I have not learned anything.

Asandigtha: Leave your art of murder and death, Ekalavya. My fluttering heart longs for your

mesmerising presence. Come let us fly beyond the horizons like migrating pelicans, there

forever savouring the sweetness of the fruits no one has relished before, drink nectar from the flowers untouched by the bees of earth.

Ekalavya: The sweetness in your voice inebriates my being, darling. But I have my vows to keep

while I practice the art of Gods.

Asandigtha: Since when did an elder of Bhil find the presence of the wife a disturbance? (Angrily)

the prince and his statue has bewitched you from the traditions of Bhil families. Hasn’t your

elders prevented you from keeping a married wife, a virgin?

Ekalavya: But my sweet heart, when I become the Army General of prince Arjuna, You will bear me

children as great as the heads of the cavalry.

Asandigtha: Oh the games of the mighty. They have taken my husband away from me from the very

day of my marriage. My precious garden, this home of mine, the springs, the chirping birds,

the fragrant flowers...... They will be lost to me forever like the fleeting morning dew.

(decisively)

Ekalvaya...This is a scheme. We will die without a progeny. They are planning to displace us from this home. We shall never survive anywhere but here. I shall not let this pass.

The maid: Aren’t you aware of the limits of a woman’s words, let alone wife. You have trespassed

both.

Asandigtha: You are defiled with the dirt of the towns people. The Bhil family tradition respects its

women’s words. The men who forget the counsel of the women build roofs that will collapse

on themselves.

Ekalavya: Stop your women’s talk. I need to practice. (The women go in despair to the hut)

Soothradhar.

Mmmmm no sooner the marriage is over than the discord began. Is divorce possible? Asandigtha is no ordinary fool. Mind you.

Scene III (Same scene, dim the light)

(Ekalavya on practices. Asandigtha and maid dancing to (ghanashyama vrindavaniyil)

Khrishna: (enters stealthily and watches the arrows) Ekalavya, Where are your arrows aimed at?

Ekalavya: I need to send my arrows right through the targets and beyond.

Khrishna: But I can see your arrows crossing Bharata Varsha and beyond. I can see them going past

times and epochs.

Ekalavya: Are you mocking me? These arrows of mine have no power but to perish in the battle of

survival in the jungle.

Khrishna: The paradoxes of history will win a place that you have not fought for, Eklavya.

Oh. What is this vigraha doing here?

Ekalavya: Prince Arjun brought a statue here that I can practice my art even better. He named it as

my Guru, Drona.

Khrishna: laughs.......... Earthworms have started playing snakes....

Ekalvya: The prince is a great warrior, are you ridiculing him?

Khrishna: No offence to him at all. Arjun is a warrior but his arrows are fake imitations of yours. They

will reach targets that are visible for the eyes. But yours will fly past times that you cannot

see.

Ekalavya: No, his expertise and speed on the bow is amazing.

Khrishna: But his breed is coming to an end.

Ekalavya: I dread your ominous words. Any danger, befalling him? I hear his cousins are not

pleased with him at all?

Khrishna: The paths of the mighty are strewn with stones of danger. But this one is not a stone. This

is a mountain that they will not pass by.

(Dreamily)

I can see the impending clouds of destruction looming over Kurukhsetra. I can hear the cries from there. All the kings of the world will march with their armies. The blood bath, the fratricides, the dilemmas, the whole of Bharata will be shaken in the churning of this war. Every monarch and emperor, their cavalries and horsemen, their bards and ministrels, an ocean of humanity, everyone of them should perish in this war. Even I, every agent of monarchy and imperialism will be sacrificed in the sanctuary of kurukhshetra. I will show my cosmic figure to them. Indeed it has started coming. From the ocean of blood, shall emerge the governance of the people, with the hope of justice, equality, freedom. Where no one will be above another, where none shall rule over another.

Ekalavya, you will emerge as their hero. .........

Khrishna exits

Suthradhara enters-------------------------------------

Hi hi hi hi

Has the axis of the earth changed? Something interesting. The people of the palace are roaming around the lowly Ekalavya’s hut. I wonder why. Be watchful... Lord Khrishna’s visions seems to make the clarion call for a democracy. Hi hi hi the emergence of a democrat!!!!!!!

Scene IV

(Ekalavya on practice again: Enter Drona and Arjuna with the attendants)

Ekalavya: How blessed am I, and my household, prince, with your presence.

Arjun: This garden and its enchanting surroundings is a feast to the eyes, Ekalavya.

{Maid gives water to wash the feet of Drona and looks with curiosity at the similarity of the statue and Drona)

Asandigtha: Prince, Are you going for a war with the cavalry and insignia?

Arjun: These are the insignia of the majesty. Don’t they look great?

Asandigtha: To come to the lowly huts of the Bhils why do you need the paraphernalia of the

insignia? Are you feeling insecure?

Arjun: We recognise a contempt in your comments.

Asandigtha: Never. lack of common sense.

Arjun: Ours, or yours?

Asandigtha: ours: who do you refer to ours? I was talking to you alone?

Arjun: Ekalavya? Your better heart seems to be unaware of the royal protocols.

Ekalavya: I beg your pardon for insolence.

Maid: Hei, the statue looks similar to this sage. Who is this?

Arjun: Oh, the beauty of this orchard and the comely springs drove us out of our duties. Let us

present you Dronacharya the master of Archery. No one has heard of a better archer in

the 14 worlds that we know of.

Drona: Son, exaggeration affects judgement. But tell me why this statue of mine here?

Ekalavya: (Falls at his feet.) Your lordship, let me behold the face of the one I adored and worshiped

on statue of stones. Is this the one to teach me the mastery or archery?

Drona: Well, Are you a Kshatriya?

Ekalavya: No. I am a Bhil.

Drona: (Angrily) How dare you defile my image in the huts of a Bhil progeny?

Arjun: Relent, I offered the statue to him, so that he could learn archery better.

Drona: But you did not tell me that he was not a Khshatriya.

Arjun: I beg your pardon, master.

Drona: Bhils are flesh eaters. They kill animals. They eat their flesh. Their whole body is defiled. How

could the art of the gods descend to the hands of the defiled?

Asandigtha: Hei Brahmin, I have heard your story told by this maid of mine. She was taken by the

hunting princes from our families. Until their fancy ran out, she stayed in your mansions. She has learned the gossips of the palace. Aren’t you ashamed to call yourself a Brahmin? Your hands are filled with blood. The hands that should be holy enough to touch the Vedas, haven’t you defiled by taking arms that kill men. Aren’t they guilty of the holocausts that your dignified Kshatriya princes will undertake? And you call us defiled with blood. You are great, and you think killing men for glory is a better trade than killing animals for food? I lack common sense indeed to understand.

Drona: Isn’t there anyone to stop these feminine hallucinations?

Ekalavya: Asandigtha get back to your hut. You have added the sin of insult to insolence.

Drona: Show me what you can do with your archery.

(Ekalavya showing his expertise)

Drona: Your arrows, I am afraid travels beyond the targets. None can stop its power.

Ekalavya: This prowess and accuracy I learned from your feet, (showing the statue)

Drona: According to the commandments of the art of archery you should be paying your obeisance

and Dakshina to your master. Have you done that?

Ekalavya: I have not touched my bow and arrow without doing my obeisance at the feet of your

statue.

Arjuna: Obeisance is a matter of heart that lacks evidence of trust. You should give something dear

to you to please the master of your art.

Ekalavya: Ask my Lord. Ekalavya is willing to give his life for the art he has learned.

Asandigtha: Ekalavya, you are entering into oaths that affect your virgin wife. Is there no one to stop

pawning the life of women in Bharatha varsha?

Ekalavya: Asandigtha, Get back. There is nothing greater than offering one’s own life to his master.

But no master takes it away.

Asandigtha: I smell a rat here. Do not make promises that I will not stand to bear.

Arjun: Tie this woman up. She has made a virtue of insolence.

(Ekalavya aims his arrow on Asandigtha. Music-------------)

Asandigtha: Go ahead and shoot me. You have not yet claimed even the virginity of your married

wife. Even before that you stake a claim on her life to please the masters of villainy. What

right have you? Do you have a deeper commitment to this statue of destruction than to your

wife?

(The maid forces her to the hut.)

Arjun: Ekalavya, The woman needs to be bridled lest you forfeit your life.

For the insult to us and Dronacharya, you need to do the retribution?

Ekalavya: Order me whatever it is, I shall do it for my master.

Arjun: (Calling Drona aside talks to him) Ask for his right thumb as Dakhshina.

Drona: Arjun, you are out of your senses.

Arjun: But I will demand it.

Ekalavya: Declare whatever it is, even my life.

Arjun: Offer your right thumb as Dakshina. (music, flickering lights, thunder)

Ekalavya: Does my master approve this? Or is it an order from the prince?

Arjun: Ask his right thumb as Gurudakhshina.

Drona: Fight your enemy face to face lest you lose your crucial battles.

Arjun: I do not want to take his life but his fame.

Drona: Fame cannot be taken from others. If you deserve fame it will come to you.

Arjun: You have a promise to keep and keep you must. So now ask him for the thumb.

Drona: Have I become a slave of my dignity? God, has this Brahman done enough crimes to deserve

such humiliation?

Ekalavya: Master, do not think you have asked. I am obliged to give you, and I will offer you my

thumb.

Asandigtha: Stop this nonsense. A prince and a master. This is the thumb that smeared the mark of

my belonging to him for ever. Who are you to claim the thumb of my husband? How will you pull the bow without your right thumb? What will you do to

protect the family from the animals?

Maid: you are talking to the prince.

Asandigtha: The Prince? What prince are you? You are not the stuff of a prince. You were scared of a

little rat here, Ekalavyan. Who is he to you? Just a tribal living in the jungles. You, you are scared of him? His prowess in archery? Shame on you prince. Even if he were thousand times brighter than your magics with arms he would still have perished in this jungle, causing you no harm. Offering him offices in your palace you wanted to kill him? For what? To keep your fame? To keep your name? To live for ever? Shame on you vulture, you feed on corpse.

Maid: Relent Asandigtha. We are living in the fringes of his Kingdom

Asandigtha: What is a kingdom? The king-dominates.... its people, jungles and everything in it. To

protect? Never. They come here to hunt, to kill and waste life that they don’t even eat. I have not known any king who comes here to protect anything that we love. I know no kings but my family elders. I know no kingdom but my beloved jungle.

Maid: You talk disrespectfully in the presence of the prince. Let us not forget that we are sinners.

Asandigtha: Sinners? We kill and eat the animals around. Yes, we kill to eat. They kill men and beasts

alike, to enjoy. What the king and princes do are their majesties’ royal game. What we do is

sin.

Arjun: To make your offering fruitful you need to do it before the sun sets. Do not listen to the

womans blabberings, she is out of senses.

Asandigtha: Wait, give me some time. There is one I can trust. Krishna, the Lord of my universe. Let

him decide what to do with the family that will go hungry for the rest of their life. “She

prays....bhajans’....music) (Khrishna appears) Khrishna you know what dilemma is this.

Khrishna: (voice?) Eklavya, I give you two choices: If you want to be a hero of today do not offer

your thumb. If you want to win the hearts of people tomorrow, none of the droplets of your blood shall fall in vain. A nation will arise in your name that shall overthrow and rebuild the kingdoms that you have heard of. The choice is yours.

Ekalavya prepares to cut the finger (music, lightening in feverish pitch)but people from the audience come and stop. This is injustice. Should not be done. With commotion the play ends.

Night Visions

The Distance between offering Eucharist and Becoming Eucharist

(This is one of the stories, rather a diary note that I wrote a few years back. This treats subjects that I have not written in the blog any time before)
It was when I spent sometime with a friend in Allepy beach that the following meditation happened. His house name is interestingly “At the foot of the Cross, Kurisum moottil. While we were sharing our experiences of the priesthood he asked me to find the distance between offering the Eucharist and becoming the Eucharist. You are beginning to become a Eucharist he would comment. Then he left me there alone. I was carelessly watching the boats that were returning after the day’s fishing. Then I spotted the mast of a larger ship in the backdrop of the setting Sun. I was taken slowly to a story I read from Tolstoy or Wilbur Smith? I do not know. I do not know when I became a part of this story.

The boy was scaling up the mast of the tossing ship. The fallen national flag has to be hoisted again. The tempestuous sea below was determined to break up the ship. Yet there was just one fire inside - somehow reach the top of the mast. There were quite a few on the deck. Some discouraged, some prayed, some encouraged, and some prepared to throw the next casualty of the storm overboard. But he never heard any of the commotion. His hands and legs had been bruised by the whipping loose ends of the ropes. The sails that rebelled to hold the whirl wind which refused to propose its direction also slapped on his face and bare back. Reach he did braving the salty water that lashed on him even at forty feet above the deck. With a conqueror’s pride he looked down to the deck. His vision blurred. In the tempestuous sea below, the ship was being tossed like a ball. His foot holds slipped beneath the unsteady footing. He couldn’t come down. His father shouted above the roaring winds, my son look above your head. “Look at the sky that is calm now.” The boy looked above and steadied his steps to reach the excruciating climb down.

I felt a fear that was similar to the boy on the top of the mast. My foot holds were slipping too. A voice inside told me to look out to the sky, was it the same man who told his would be disciples to cast the net into the deep?
He took me to the bottom of the ship to the depth of the hull.
I recognized, I had hit the bottom. There were no more steps down ward.
He left me there. Alone.

I wasn’t used to such silence for a long time. I was amidst people who considered the highest pitched sound would be heeded best. There everything was calm. The silence was deafening. I screamed, fretted and fumed against this unjust man who dragged me like a fisher man his catch in the net. I felt the pangs of the fish that was clinging to the last drop of water in the gills to hold on to the dear life. I silenced the rebellion within even as I rebelled the silence around, reconciling to my fate that, I thought was a discarded blue print of some one better He had planned to create.

I was oscillating between spiritual consciousness and delirium. A spiritual schizophrenia. The nightmares that haunted me slowly gave way to clarity of vision. The man who left me alone came back once again. He said “where you are, is the result of a choice that you made.” He left me there asking a final question, “Are you not free?” The question took me back to a procession of events that went through my life and the significance of the choices I made. At the end of the thought I was back on the deck looking at the calm sea in the back drop of the bloodshot Sun, slowly rising in the eastern Horizon.

My friend tapped on my shoulders and asked me do you now understand the meaning of being “at the foot of the cross.” Some are by birth, others choose to be there. I am glad that I chose to be tied at the foot of the cross.

Dialoguing Between Disciplines

It was a sumptuous intellectual dinner on 19th June, evening in ICS (IISc), Bangalore. Anoop Dhar (CSCS) proposed some models by which different disciplines could engage in academics, the thrust being the integration of natural sciences with social science and humanities.
The idea was radically challenged by Rajan Gurukkal, the VC of Calicut University for want of an epistemological position and a definite stand point in the critical approach.
The pivotal points in question were
1. Why do you need an integrated approach
2. Is it possible to have such an approach
3. How can we do it
To my mind an integrated understanding of realities is a dream of everyone. How wonderful it will be to be a poet to look at the moon with its silver blanket on the sleeping beauty, while being a geography specialist to forecast the time of the tides and an astrophysicist to know the contours and compositions of the same moon.
But looking at the structure of higher education that I am familiar with, it is a process of specialisation. Specialisation is the process of knowing more and more about less and less things. So the way a biochemist looks at a beauty lotion, a beautician cannot. They have different understandings of the lotion. One knows only little, about the aroma and its physical effects while the other knows only a little of its chemical composition. But in the little that they know they are experts. This is what specialisation is about. Is anything wrong in this partial knowledge?
Well, the debate was all about falsifying the idea of specialisation although no one put in these unambiguous terms. But is it possible for the same person to be expert in the same way from all perspectives? The point I am making is, in academics we have a broad spectrum of subjects until the undergraduate level. At the level of post graduation and research you start specializing to go deeper into a subject matter. If eclectic approaches are continued in Masters Level you turn out to be jack of all trades and masters of none. Remember you wanted to do Masters and you turn out not as master but a novice in many things. What this master is then expected to contribute to the society or in the institution one is expected to work?
We need people who specialise and farther the limits of knowledge in the field that they are concentrating in. It is not necessary that everyone should be aware of everything in the world. That a natural scientist should know humanities is so childish an argument. That they be aware of other perspectives in the research is an additional achievement not a basic one.
Did I divert from Inter-disciplinarity debate? Oh I think so. So did I think of the debate in ICS (IISc). In the interdisciplinarity approach everyone in research is not engaged in approaching the subject matter from all perspectives. It is a collective approach in which different aspects are researched by people from humanities social sciences and natural sciences. But this essential debate of collective research was hijacked by the discussion on natural science and social science hierarchy and positioning in the priority list.
People who switch over from one discipline to another should not be proposed as paradigms for eclectic approaches to specialisation. My point is, does anyone still practice the old trade after he or she has switched over to the new terra of knowledge? I believe not. If s/he does not then it is not an eclectic approach but still a singular approach.
My argument comes from the practical point of view that we actually do not have people who practice natural sciences and social sciences with the same passion in spite of the rhetoric that it is possible. And making structures to enforce such medley approaches will dissipate the investigative rigour and incision.
My second argument comes from the futility of this extreme individualism. What prevents the one who is seeking an eclectic understanding of issues studying literature on the same topic from different disciplines? I find no problem in gathering information from different disciplines on the same topic. Why is then this insistence that even academic engagement on a topic should be eclectic? I fail to find the reason.
It is one thing to have researches done from different perspectives and discipline areas. They may contribute to the growth of these disciplines. Only a few can in fact deal with such trans-disciplinary mode of research. Let the specialisation go on, lest we wet-blanket further growth in the fields producing only sterile knowledge. Let those who are into trans-disciplinary researches do that. Why make norms of exceptions?