Sunday, 4 October 2009
Karma, Dharma & Ashit Sharma- a magical tale of ancient Ind
“What is dharma?” the Norwegian Ambassador spoke excellent English.
From the way he pronounced the word Dharma, it appeared likely that the old man was also a scholar of ancient Sanskrit.
“Sir,” said Ashit Sharma, “I am not interested in philosophy or religion or Yoga or anything like that. As I explained to your Visa officer, I am only interested in getting into the Limca Book of Records. I want to be the first Indian to bicycle backwards around the globe. It is my dream. Please grant me visa.”
“The dictionary says that dharma means religion, or duty, or sacred law- but that is not the root of dharma. Rather, dharma is the field of action in which karma- individual destiny- is worked out.”
“Sir, please believe me, I have no interest in religion or spirituality. Just, I want visa for pure purpose of backwards bicycling only.”
“I am sorry, young man, but the fact is there is a terrible plague of Yoga teachers in Norway nowadays. There are simply too many of them for a small country like ours to absorb. Thus, despite our excellent welfare system, their fate is pitiable indeed. Some have become so demoralized, during the long winter months, that they have taken to Tai Chi. Heed my words, young man, and do not persist in your application for a visa. Such is not the path of dharma. Indeed, we may safely aver, such is the path to bad karma!”
“Sir, I am explaining many times to your Consular officials that I am not at all any type of Yoga teacher. My only passion is for backward bicycling. Due to jealous intrigue in high places, my backwards bicycling tour of Bihar was sabotaged by buffaloes. Nevertheless, I have gained the backing of the shipping tycoon, Ravi Tikkoo, for my round the globe venture. I can backwardly bicycle on the deck of his oil-tankers across all the great oceans of the globe. All that remains is for you to give me a visa so I can get on and off his tankers and backwardly bicycle between ports and docking berths in your fair country.”
“Young man, you make a good argument. Adding a single grain of sand may cause the sand-pile to collapse. Who is to say that an increase in the Yoga teacher population of Norway, even by a single individual, might not lead to a population crash? In the wild, Yoga teachers have no natural predators. Yet, from time to time, their population crashes for no apparent reason. If such were not the case, the whole Solar System would be knee-deep in Yoga teachers by now. The question then arises – why should it be so? What is the secret mechanism at work here? To answer these questions we must return to my starting point- what is dharma?”
“Sir, if it will expedite my visa, I can answer your question. However, due to backwards bicycling is purely secular, scientific, and of socialistic orientation, I will have no truck with the obfuscating language and mystical mumbo-jumbo used by priests, Godmen, Yogi-bhogi gobshites and others of that ilk.
“Instead, I will begin my analysis by pointing out that in order for the two of us to have a conversation, we both must have some method of ordering our own feelings and impressions over the vertical axis of time and secondly a way of distinguishing the thoughts and emotions that arise and are interchanged between people situated around us along the horizontal axis of space. One way to order one’s mental life over time is by appealing to a notion of causation- this is karma- the notion that our successive mental states are intentional in essence and linked over time by a chain of cause and effect. ‘As you sow so shall you reap.’ This notion of karma, however, bears no resemblance at all to our actual mental life. Such intentions as we have are hidden from us, and all action- what is called action in the social realm- is sub-consciously motivated, strategic in nature, and amounts to nothing more than systematic fraud or deception.
“No doubt, in a particular community dedicated to a limited purpose- like the Buddhist Monastery where a certain number of prayer wheels have to be turned, or the Brahmin agraharam where a certain number of rituals have to be performed- it is useful to have a false consciousness- a ‘motivation’ for the ‘method actor’- so that the ensemble runs through its paces like clockwork. But, this so called karma is merely the internalization of the promptings of some charlatan of a Master of Ceremonies. What has it to do with the random harvests of our inner life?
“In what sense, indeed, can we be said to reap as we sow? When all is but windfall fruit why speak of sowing and reaping? How dreary was the miser whose one imaginative extravagance was to invent a Hell & Heaven- or an endless cycle of re-births- and that too just as a way to get his books to balance?
“Of course, you may argue, the concept of karma has a sort of instrumental value. It encourages foresight, rationality, the acquisition of empirical knowledge so as to be better able to judge of the consequences of one’s actions, the investigation of the vasanas- that is the stores of psychomental residue in the unconscious- so as to gain an understanding of one’s unconscious promptings, and so on and so forth. However, the fact remains that karma- as a law of inner life- is nothing more than a fairy story. It has no truth except in a vague poetic sense.
“What of dharma? It is indisputable that other people exist in space. Before all forethought, before all sense of self, it is the emotions and thoughts of others that affect us and, hopefully, the reverse too is the case. Unquestionably, it is by this- our, so to speak, Epimethean, interconnection- that we humans continue to enjoy a sort of species life. Indeed, it is a matter of common observance that simple people feel the emotions of others more strongly than their own. Within one’s own mind, no thought, no emotion pertaining entirely to oneself, ever arises except within a matrix of ambiguities. In every defeat, every humiliation, there is also a sort of liberation. However, it is when an emotion or idea is broadcast, it is when it becomes an event in our species-life, that it gains a definite valency, a fixed meaning. Truly is it said ‘Our face is like water- till we lose it. Our thought is like smoke- till another’s face burns red by it’. Dharma refers to the space we populate with respect to the others around us. It is a mental space, true, but it is something shared with others which comes back to us through language as something fixed and objective- a seeming fact about the world. Good dharma is where joys are amplified and shared, bad dharma is the privatization of sorrow as arising from scarcity, rivalry, the unjust humiliation of the scapegoat so as to bind more closely together those arbitrarily spared.
“Having said this much, it seems to me, I have said enough to now venture an answer to your question. What is the relation between Karma and Dharma? Dharma, indeed, is that by which Fire is stolen from Heaven. But it is Karma, the false consciousness of Karma, by which that theft becomes theft and the Heavens are ever afterwards darkened.”
“Well, I must admit, there is some force to your argument.”The Norwegian Ambassador sounded surprised. “If Yoga teachers started teaching Yoga teachers to teach Yoga teachers to teach Yoga teachers…perhaps, we could Nationalize the industry…and..and get one of your world famous Indian bureaucrats to run it!... that would kill it off, no question! Look, there is not a moment to be lost…You must come with me to Norway right away…the danger is pressing.. you know, I was a young lieutenant in the Army when the Nazis attacked…we must take immediate steps… I will order my Head of Chancery to get us on the first plane out of here. I’m afraid you won’t be able to return home to pack your things…the Security risk, you understand. No, you must remain incommunicado with me till our flight is called… Ach! the peril is grave but we Norwegians are brave…"Ja, vi elsker dette landet.. Stand up! Sing with me!
‘Ja, vi elsker dette landet, som det stiger frem! ‘
All this happened in New Delhi in 1977. I was just a 14 year old school boy at that time. However, as an ardent member of the Backward Bicycling Brotherhood, the name and fame of Shree Ashit Sharma could scarcely have been unknown to me. Yet, to be honest, so it was. At any rate, I have no memory of him, nor indeed of my own passion for Backward Bicycling. Fortunately, my literary agent- who was my Chemistry lab partner at St. Columba’s School, New Delhi,- remembered my hero-worship for Shree Ashit Sharma and exerted himself to get me the commission to write this book.
Like other Indglish authors of a certain age, I had long contemplated writing a sort of modern day version of the Bhagvad Gita. However, it never occurred to me that amongst the distant fiords of Norway an actual, true life, Bhagvad Gita was unfolding. What follows, in the course of this book, is an account of the dialogue concerning Karma and Dharma between Ashit Sharma and the old Norse warrior as they, in tandem, bicycled backwards across a Norway blighted and disfigured by a terrible plague of Yoga teachers. Since in the Bhagvad Gita, Lord Krishna plays the part of the charioteer- the question naturally arises as to whether it was Ashit or the old Ambassador who should be considered as fulfilling that role. I suppose, since the person who sits in front, on a tandem bike, steers the machine, it follows that he is the charioteer. However, the situation in backwards bicycling is more complicated. Indeed, when done properly (in other words with a view to maximizing the entertainment of the spectator) the question of agency in tandem backward bicycling affords many puzzles and aporias to perplex the philosophical mind.
There is a further reason for my mentioning the Bhagvad Gita. The fact is I consider myself- as indeed do most other Indglish authors of no particular intellectual attainment or worth of character- to be like the minstrel Sanjaya- divinely blessed with vision to enlighten the blind King Dhritirashtra- or, in this case, Prof. Michael Witzel, Reigning Monarch of Indology- as to what is actually happening on the perennial battlefield of Kurukshetra-where absolutely nothing of any ethical import occurs but maybe some bandits kill each other- not that it makes any difference because bandits- I mean politicians, pundits, Kings, N.G.O shitheads etc.- we shall always have with us and anyway all those fuckers are like cousins or brothers anyway and so their dragging us into their feuds is just a ploy to make out that they stand for shit or it all means something other than we dun bin getting fucked over and had better emigrate or if we can’t be bothered to do that, at least not pay our electricity bills never mind Income Tax.
Now, I’m not suggesting that Prof. Michael Witzel is really blind but, being a philologist, he can’t see the wood from the trees as far as literature is considered. Religion, of course, is beyond him coz the fucker’s neither fatally stupid nor even fitfully conscious of his own futility and so he has no business in that particular playpen.
However, I must tell you, my decision to appoint myself Sanjaya to Witzel’s Dhritirashtra was not occasioned by purely abstract considerations but arose from our close personal relationship fostered by E-mail. I had originally got in touch with him when he was appointed head of the Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies. It so happened I had recently purchased a second hand computer from a Bengali gentleman. A friend of mine, an expert on computers, told me that my computer had been built in the Stone Age. Thus, it occurred to me, some of the weird documents still stored upon its hard drive- I was actually looking for porn- might well be Electronic Vedas dating back to the Neolithic era. Being a great patron of Indological research, I began incessantly emailing Witzel, over the next few years, offering to sell him these Electronic Vedas for his Journal. Just last week, I received his reply-
Dear Frind,
I is yore ole frind, Micheal Witzel, Professssor of Indopology at Horward Coll. U.S.
Just now I is attending big big conference in Lagos, Nigeria, but shit happen I is completely robbed and unable to pay big big hotel bill.
I have $528,4975,87735 in my Swiss Bank Account which I am wanting to pay to you. Plez send send $1500 by Fed Ex and also supply your Bank details with all relevant security codes so I can transfer de money..
I immediately wrote back to Prof. Micheal Witzel offering to sell him my Electronic Vedas for the sum of $538,4975,87735 and suggested he could perhaps finance the balance by setting up an African branch of (my own alma mater in matters Religious) the Transcendentally Holy University of God’s Grace Enlightenment and Ecstasy (a.k.a THUGGEE). After all, there must be plenty of White Indologists and other Aryan Invasion Theory nutters who would pay through the nose to avoid a late night visit from Emeritus Professors from an so august an Institution.
Micheal Witzel- or Mojisola as he has asked me to call him- has been in touch, indeed, I was surprised to get a call from him quite late last night- and, I think, this is an idea we may be able to take forward together.
Incidentally, I may mention someone seems to have hacked my e-mail account and a lot of my contacts have received emails purporting to be from me asking them to send money because I am unable to pay my hotel bill in Nigeria. This is strange because normally I only ask for money to get out of Jail in India. Not that anyone sends money but still it raises their spirits. However, it also encourages belief in karma, so, perhaps, by Kant’s Categorical Imperative, it is not a practice you should yourself take up.
But all this is digression. We must get back to the story.
At first, Ashit Sharma sternly refused to go to Norway to tackle the Yoga teacher epidemic. The Norwegian Ambassador- whose name was Vidkun Hjortson- either that, or something else equally unlikely- sought to win him over with all manners of arguments and inducements. But, true Brahmin that he was, Ashit Sharma was not at all won over even after His Excellency, the Ambassador, reversed the order in which he proffered herring and schnapps. Indeed, if anything, Ashit’s determination not to go just increased. Unfortunately, no one noticed. Not only was the poor fellow ejected from India- even his bicycle was left behind. Thus it was only after Ashit and Hjortson had undergone various bizarre misadventures in an Oslo rendered uninhabitable by the ubiquity of Yoga teachers that, in seemingly fortuitous fashion, Ashit came into possession of a tandem bicycle upon which he and Hjortson (by then on the run from neo-Nazis) began beatifically bicycling backwards to Bethlehem so a New World Order might be born. Or not. In fact, definitely not.
However before I can tell you about all that, I want you first to look at this.
(Don’t worry, it is some literary stuff so you can skip chunks.)
Arjuna’s Vishada-Yoga
Why is Arjuna despondent? Well, he is about to fight the battle of Kurukshetra in which he will have to attempt to kill not just the Head of his Family- his Great Uncle, Bhishma- but also his Guru, Drona, not to mention a whole bunch of cousins, relatives by marriage, guys he went to School with and like kids he hung out with and so on.
Why does Arjuna have to fight? Well, let’s say to keep things simple, it’s coz his elder brother, Yuddhishtra, sez so. Now, Yuddhishtra is a nice guy- opposed to violence, attached to Justice as Mercy- yet, he over-rules even the pleas not to go to war of his super-macho brother Bhima, and their common wife, Draupati, both normally virulent for vengeance.
But, there’s something Yuddhishtra doesn’t know. It’s that he has another brother- an elder brother- that brother is Karna and Karna is absolutely unshakeable in his adherence to the other side. In other words, if anybody steps forward at this point- be it, Kunti, his mother, or Lord Krishna, his maternal cousin, or Bhishma, his paternal Great Uncle, or Vidura, his paternal Uncle, or Drona, his Guru, or the blind King Dhritirasthra- also an uncle and the father of his enemies- or uhm… actually any passing Astrologer or Sage- Yuddhishtra will realize that he is about to commit a sin equal to parricide in raising his arm against his own elder brother.
Arjuna, of course, could say- hey, I’m just following orders!- and get on with the fight. But there’s a problem. Arjuna is a sensitive sort of guy, not simply a testosterone pumped warrior, and what’s more he’s been granted a special sort of insight called caksuci vidya by one of his mates amongst the Gandharva order of demi-gods.
This raises an interesting question. Does Arjuna suspect that his rivalry with Karna might, in the end, be sibling rivalry; that the passions that connect them run deeper than hate and have their source in something stronger that thymos? Arjuna and Karna have dueled before. Moreover, Kunti, their common mother, has been moving behind the scenes to secure Karna’s promise to spare her other sons. Under these circumstances, is it conceivable that, dueling with Karna, dining with Kunti, Arjuna has not picked up, at the unconscious level, any hint, any clue, of the true relationship that exists between him and his rival? Or is it merely the case, as conventional wisdom has it, that Arjuna’s Vishada- his depression, his despondency, his Hamlet like indecision- is occasioned by mere faint-heartedness and spiritual lassitude requiring moral and religious exhortation from the Lord Himself? Surely, at least to properly realize the dramatic potential of the situation, we should permit ourselves the speculation that Arjuna’s Vishada- his unsettlement of Spirit and dissonance of cognition- arises from an unconscious misgiving, a niggling doubt, a faint whisper from the inner man, that what he is embarked upon is rank rebellion, sure to wreck the Polity, and- since the eldest brother takes the place of the father- the moral equivalent of parricide?
What, we might ask ourselves, would have happened if Arjuna, with no Krishna for charioteer, had given way to his vishada, let his depression take the reins? Notice that the scholiasts use the term Vishada- Yoga as the title for this, the first, chapter of the Bhagvad Gita. Clearly, in some sense, Depression, too, is a path to Union, a path to Truth. Imagine unconquerable Arjuna turning back from the battlefield, slinking away to some forest or desert like a wounded cur. Imagine him living on in abjectness- supporting and compounding his dishonor with the drunkard’s flask or addict’s pipe- ruing but to repeat and repeating but to rue visits memorious to the scene of his undoing while savouring a sort of horripilating delight in the discovery of yet baser motives for his desertion and, under the fair mammalian form of the ethical scruples he had credited himself with, nothing but the slimy writhing of the reptile in the id.
What then? Arjuna sees himself as he is, as he has become, the lowest of sentient beings. Meanwhile, the World wags on without him well enough. Certainly- knowing himself now to have been more devilish than Duryodhana, more snake-like than Sakuni- he realizes it was actually a good thing he ran away. Even his brothers fared better, being killed cleanly in battle rather than having fallen victim to his own jealous intrigues- for what unconscious motive could Arjuna have had for his desertion except to bring about the deaths of his brothers, leaving him free to have Draupati- no! to have Mother Kunti!- all to himself?
Better, then, that Duryodhana rule. And, bliss indeed- knowing now the alternative- to live even so little in to his Millennial reign.
Thus, on the path of vishada, Arjuna has achieved wisdom. He loves the World as it is without any love for the World and, thus, now in every conceivable World, is equally content to either perish or persist. His Yoga is complete.
Ashit Sharma’s Vishada Yoga
At his birth, great astrologer predicted- baby will become Chakravatin (Universal Emperor) through power of Backward Bicycle only. Unfortunately, Bicycle was Election Symbol of opposition party and, moreover, rising power of Backward Castes spelt doom for Brahmin influence in the State Legislature.
In consequence of this inauspicious omen, Ashit and his mother were ejected from the mansion of his grand-father (an old fashioned Congress M.P in New Delhi) in disgrace and were forced to reside for fourteen years in remote jungle where his father was posted as Forest Officer. Since fourteen years more than sufficed for every last tree to be cut down, Ashit was sent to good Convent Schools and later enrolled in Engineering College. At this time he was not riding bicycle backwards.
After passing various exams, his svayamvar was held with due pomp and ostentation. Various great political warriors competed to win his hand for their daughter. Finally, one of them made an offer that hit the mark and Ashit was taken up in his chariot to go meet his new owner. “I have mentally espoused another!” said Ashit, “Kindly let me go. Let your daughter slake her lust upon some other luckless fellow.” His abductor was pitiless. “Arre, mentally espouse as many women as you like- have four wives like the Muslims- but know also this- my daughter will be the fifth.”
Ashit was seated upon the horse for his baraat- marriage procession. Hoping to escape, or at least delay the inevitable, he tried to make the horse trot backwards. It was unable. Ashit’s cousin was bicycling alongside him. They exchanged glances. It was a work of a moment for the two of them to somersault off their respective modes of conveyance, exchange clothes in mid-air, and ride off in different directions- Ashit bicycling backwards while his cousin forwardly horsed.
However, mystics say, actually, above story is not true. Cousin was in love with the bride. Backwards he bicycled bitterly for unable to bear the sight of the glittering marriage mandap blighting all his hopes.
Shantideva says ‘if you want to save yourself and another in a hurry- swop selves.’ This technique is called paratman parivartana. So actually that’s what happened- not the Kung Fu somersaulting into the air, exchanging clothes and so on. Anyway, Ashit’s backward bicycling bid was blocked by buffaloes. Bystanders asked the question- ‘due to why you are backwardly bicycling rather than proceeding to the marriage mandap where you will receive rich food? Something fishy in this. Bastard, the Engineer Babu has changed places with some uneducated cousin of his! Having swallowed the dowry money, that family of scoundrels is trying to cheat us! Shall we slaughter them all?”
At this time, Ashit rose to the occasion and explained to those ignorant peasants the true importance of backward bicycling for India and Third World. Hearing his words, the blessed Martyrs in Heaven showered down rose-petals consecrating him to his heroic task. The local branch of the Brahmin Sabha advertised Ashitji as athlete extraordinaire. Prodded by his cook, who happened to hail from that village, a Kashimiri Brahmin shipping tycoon gave offer of free ocean transport. Thus was launched Ashit’s backward bicycling bid for WORLD Recognition.
Of course, all that took time. Thus, what actually happened was this- the peasants poured scorn on Ashit’s (except it wasn’t Ashit, at all, but his cousin, Parikshit’s) backward bicycling claims- laid hands on him and delivered him to the marriage mandap in time for the girl to get the right groom. So all’s well that end’s well, except, to hush up the scandal, Ashit felt obliged to actually go through with the backward bicycling thing especially coz his prospective father-in-law had unexpectedly won his grandfather’s seat and his own folks were well miffed. On the other hand, of course, he’d gotten out of marrying the girl who-oddly enough didn’t actually look anything like what Parishit said- quite the reverse actually which is why this chapter is titled Ashit’s Vishada
Except things don’t work out like that. Why? It seems, the Kurukshetra War has to happen. God has his hit-list and it’s just more economical if cousins bump each other off while God swans around driving a chariot while- like the stereotypical Cockney cabbie of yesteryear- carrying on a cock-eyed discourse about Religion and Politics.
True, Krishna or Kunti- or even Dhrtarashtra, the blind father of the bad guys who is being kept in the picture by Sanjaya- could stop the war before it begins by revealing Karna’s true birth. However, Karna has refused to permit this. He prefers to remain ‘lower caste’. His wish is for the aristocrats to attain Heaven, dying the way they lived, sword in hand. Thus, the battle of Kurukshetra goes ahead as the apotheosis, but also the holocaust, of the aristocracy. It is a vishodHana, a ritual cleansing, a purgative blood-letting, a veritable Götterdämmerung of the Lords of the Earth. Here falls Bhishma- who captured Princesses by the strength of his arm, to give brides to his nephews, completely forgetting that every woman- even a Princess!- has the right to chose her own husband-and here falls Drona, the Brahmin Guru, who orders the ‘out-caste’ Ekalavya to sacrifice his thumbs so that Prince Arjuna will be the greatest archer in the world- completely forgetting that it is allegiance to Truth, not the accident of Birth, that makes one worthy of instruction. By this act, Drona falls- he is acharabrashta, a Brahminbandhu merely- but his pique against his friend King Drupada, his desire to rival him in possession of lands, had set him on the path to destruction already. Here falls Duryodhana, the ultimate Dynast, and here, by his mother’s curse, is sown the seed for the destruction of the Vrishnis- Lord Krishna’s people- and though, by Karna’s boon, the fallen Kings attain Heaven- the Celestial Realm is by their very influx rendered unworthy ever after of being the object of spiritual striving and thus everywhere we look the cry goes up for Moksha, Liberation, release from the cycle of birth and death, the Natural and the Supernatural.
What is this story whose plot twist is that plots don’t matter, what is this branching which leads us always back to the root? What is our vishada- facing the Gita- seeking to interpret the Gita- which, guided by Krishna or unguided by Krishna, leads us always back to Krishna knowing there was never anything but Krishna and, in that darkness, dreams too were sleep?
Kurukshetra happened.
Kurukshetra’s always happen and always before it and beyond it, lies this vishada and this Gita, this sorrow and this song.
Yathe icchasi tathaa kuru
As you wish, so do.
Thus did Dharma- what binds people together in ties of mutuality- appear in propria persona to deny the jurisdiction of the councils of Family, Tribe, College or Kingdom- any collective, any existentially constructed mimesis of some Justice’s Platonic form- thus firmly re-establishing Religion, Morality’s Fortress, with ramparts pre-ruined, foundations self-sapped, so God invade India- the gods chaff to His flail.
Evolutionary Biology has sought to explain Depression, including post natal depression, as a sort of testing for support. If I shut down for a while, will the people I’ve committed to think it worthwhile to support me? If not, I’ve been mistaken in them. I should move on. Another way of saying the same thing is to speak of a testing- not for support- but for redundancy. If things pretty much work out as they should without me, I’m redundant- I should move on.
Sounds simple enough don’t it? But, there’s a problem. Socio-biology explains that there is an advantage in cultivating a culture of lying, sending out false signals, disguising-even from yourself- your need for those you truly need and pretending to need- to be absolutely unable to do without- those of no use whatsoever. Indeed, so little do what wills its survival and what blindly works that will coincide that we are all but chthonic Chimaeras with the eyes of Apollo- to whom it were mortal to glimpse the true form under which we propagate- and the broader streams of Life too seem but cascading symbioses of deceit- all deceit so finely interwoven as to form a seamless web- and the Depressive position, in especial, but a deceit spun upon deceit- the shed skin, the Lebenswelt we quit and do not quit, of the snake in the spine. And this is adaptive because the other side of the equation is that ecological niches will be always occupied just as Kurukshetras will occur and Pandava or Kaurava, Eutheria or Metatheria, events will unroll pretty much as they would have if we’d never been born.
Lord Krishna gives us a surprising formula for overcoming the despondency that arises from a sudden waking to this web of lies. The episode occurs before the great duel between Karna and Arjuna. King Yuddhishtr, bested in battle by Karna and fearing for his brother Bhima, turns, on his stretcher, in great humiliation and bitterness of mind, to berate Arjuna with ill deserved taunts of cowardice and inactivity. He says Arjuna should hand over his divine weapon, the Gandiva bow, to someone more worthy to wield it. Arjuna gives way to fierce resentment. He is preparing to draw his sword on his elder brother for, as he tells Krishna, he has vowed to kill the man who would have him yield his bow to another. It seems the divine weapons that the different heroes have acquired over the course of the epic are all, in some sense, part of their essence. They will kill rather than part with, or, indeed, be forced to share, these instruments of universal death. The Gandharva, Chitrangada, we may recall from the Book of Origins felt similarly about his own name. He slew Crown Prince Chitrangada after three years locked with him in mortal combat- thus permitting the crown to pass to Vichitraveera- the guy with the strange sperm- thus beginning the Kuru dynasty’s problems with finding legitimate heirs. In semiotics the distinction is made between paradigmatic and syntagmatic analysis. It appears, in the Mahabharata, that the divine weapons which come in to the possession of heroes are paradigmatic- they serve to identify each warrior with a specific deity or super-natural being- though often ironically by cross-gifting. The Kurukshetra battle then becomes the earthly mirror of a contentious polytheistic Universe. However, at another level, these weapons are bound together syntagmatically- since they can’t be used against each other without cancelling the Universe- narrative, plot, wiles and tricks- the different fortes of the three characters named Krishna- everything that is interpolated, History that is, occurs to permit the fulfillment of the glorious futility of each. Thus they serve to qualify each other’s meaning and render their wielders meaningless. No wonder then that Arjuna feels an irresistible urge to draw his sword on his brother. The Gandiva bow is to him what he is to Yuddhishtra- a divine weapon- but both are cross-gifted; Gandiva coming to Arjuna from Agni not Indra and Arjuna’s fealty to Yuddhishtra springing from Karna’s refusal of the title of Kaunteya- Kunti’s first born.
At this point, stating the obvious, we might think, Krishna explains that Arjuna does not know the Scriptures, his intuitions about morality are faulty. However, there is a way he can both fulfill his vow of killing his insulter without incurring the terrible crime of fratricide. He can insult his insulter. An insult-a public humiliation, as the Rabbis deduce from the story of Tamar-is very death to an honorable man. That is why some Rabbis count refusal to cause the public shaming of another as one of the reasons a Jew should be prepared to lay down her own life. Krishna, clearly, is on the side of such Rabbis in what follows. Urged by Krishna, who has his own reasons for counseling this piece of adharma, Arjuna now reproaches Yuddhishtra in round terms, condemning him for his addiction to gambling, his weakness in war, his prevarication in peace, the all-round disaster that he has been to his family. Hearing this, Yuddhishtra prepares to cede sovereignty to his second brother, Bhima, and retire to the forest. He fully accepts the force of Arjuna’s impeachment. However, Arjuna- unable to bear up to what he has just done- is ready to draw his sword upon himself in a paroxysm of self-loathing. Krishna points out a way in which he can slay himself and yet not be guilty of the wretched crime of suicide. Strangely, it consists of praising himself- making a full statement of his achievements and potential- an act of hubris, we might think, likening oneself to the immortal gods- but, not so, according to Krishna, “Declare now, in words, thy own merit. Thou shalt then, O Partha, have slain thy own self!"
Since, Lord Krishna, in the Geeta, has spent a lot of time declaring his own merit- he has even shown Arjuna his Visvarupa, his cosmic form interwoven of all there is and isn’t and can’t be and can’t not be- in other words pretty much the horrible form none of us dare face in the mirror- thus, Lord Krishna has slain himself already. Gandhari’s curse is redundant.
This being so- all Revelation being the Suicide of God; Scripture His overdose of sleeping pills- Arjuna, now praising himself in terms as lofty as Homer’s Ajax, is only laying the ground for his reconciliation with Yudhishtra; his humble apology and heartfelt obeisance, the renewal of his vow of absolute fealty, his setting forth to vanquish the common enemy in obedience to his Duty and his King. In other words, everything that’s just happened hasn’t happened and if Lord Krishna really has slain himself it too matters nothing. The sword He drew upon Dharma and Karma returns unstained to its scabbard. Or, to be less brutal about it, let us say, mindful of their inherent flaws, their enslavement to blind chance, deceitful forms, He binds himself to establishing their universal sovereignty but on terms more benign, less capricious.
As is illustrated by this
PARABLE OF CELESTIAL WISDOM
At one time Wisdom sought to extend itself without limit. The Gods- afraid there would be no room left for Creation if Wisdom ceaselessly burgeoned- merged together, took the form of Doubt and appeared before Wisdom.
“Surely it is unwisdom to seek that which you can not in some part signify- so state what it is you seek when you thus limitlessly extend yourself.”
“I seek One wiser than I.” Wisdom replied and consequently was reborn on Earth as a woman. Her very wise husband, the King, his very wise spiritual preceptor, the RajGuru, and the equally wise chief minister, the chief minister, all travelling together in a chariot had very wisely been killed leaving her with an idiot son.
‘By the accumulated good karma of my previous births,” the dowager Queen said to her son, “the wisest Guru and the most able Statesman are even now hastening to your presence. In fact here they are. Now, in front of the whole court, do you examine them asking- ‘What is Religion? What is Policy?” and then, after appearing to give ear with a lively show of intelligent interest, appoint them the twin supports of your reign.”
The idiot immediately addressed the two strangers saying, “What is Religion? And ..urm.. what is …urm… did I say Religion? Well, that’s what I want to know- what it is? Not what the word it is. I mean what … urm … what I said is. Or was. I mean what I said was it. Or whatever.”
The first man immediately gave a long and very subtle speech, each highly illuminating line of which read something like this ‘Religion is not, as is commonly supposed, such and such practice or belief rather it is actually the complete opposite as is proven by such and such scriptural quotation and such and such episode in religious history.’
The second man, given his turn to speak, quickly began listing, in order of priority, the different needful steps the administration must hasten to take along with sage advice as to how to achieve each objective with the greatest economy and expedition.
“Stop!” said the King, “I have heard enough. You and you alone are fitted to be my Spiritual preceptor. That other asshole, who mentioned Religion at least twice in every sentence, can be my Politics go to guy- the whassisname? Chief Minister.”
Hearing the words of her idiot son, the Queen Mother dropped dead, the purpose of her incarnation fulfilled- for she had at last met one wiser than herself- that’s right, a Republican.
The bleak future for Political Islam- (excerpt)
...
'The poet Iqbal, who was influenced by Nietzche, knighted by the British colonial authorities and who evinced some admiration for the Bolshevik revolution, might seem an unlikely source of inspiration for the Supreme Guide of the Iranian revolution. Yet, such is unquestionably the case. Ayatollah Khameni, in praising Iqbal, has laid stress on the potential for a Universalist, rather than narrowly nationalist, political Islam to act as a challenge, or countervailing power, to Colonial and neo Colonial influence and aggression. This sort of universalist Islam need not be of a fundamentalist, or Salafi type. Iqbal stressed the creative power God grants to Man as his Viceregent on earth. In other words the possibility is admitted of there being a universal Muslim law- not simply a slavish adherence to Sharia- adapted to meet the needs of the evolving Muslim community across the globe which will enable the Muslims to rise up and challenge the hegemony of the West.
However History shows that such a challenge is premature- if not, as with Iqbal, actually in the interest of the Imperialists- and that it ends up enfeebling those who make it by involving their cogitations in intractable aporias.
Nevertheless, the Ayatollah has good reason to praise Iqbal. He is acknowledged as the poet-prophet of Pakistan- the creation of which, from the detritus of the British Raj, was the first tangible victory of political Islam. In contrast to al Afghani- whose polemical style singled out individual Muslim rulers felt to be not radical enough- Iqbal’s philosophy has no conspiratorial or practical application. In other words, it represents no source of danger to that class of clergymen who have done very well out of the Iranian revolution. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy, that both instances of the triumph of political Islam- however financially rewarding for their sponsors- have not weakened the West or reduced its power and influence in the region. On the contrary, if we consider the position in the Seventies- when Iran seemed poised to take over the role the British Navy had relinquished in the Sixties, and when Pakistan, drawing upon its alliance with China, seemed ready to cut the apron strings of its American patrons- we may well puzzle as to why both countries, despite substantial military spending and quite sophisticated ideological propaganda initiatives, seem more at the mercy of the West now than ever before.
Indeed, the American invasion of Iraq and more recent incursions into Pakistani territory seem an extraordinary reversal, an unparalleled humiliation, for political Islam. This is in stark contrast to the success of Alija Izetbegovich, the late Bosnian leader, in gaining help from both Iran and America, both political Islam and the liberal West, to, in effect, reverse the provisions of the Treaty of Vienna- in 1878- which transferred that territory from the Caliphate to Austro-Hungarian control.
In this context, some observers- bringing to bear an enviable erudition- are inclined to speak of political Islam as having reached a peak in the late Seventies and early Eighties and as now being in irretrievable decline. This raises a question- have socio-economic conditions so greatly changed that political Islam no longer has anything to offer? Or is it rather the case that disenchantment with the Post Colonial Nation State has continued apace leaving nothing but political Islam to fill the vacuum?
The great attraction of Islamist ideology- for those who observe the erosion, or increasing irrelevance, of traditional affiliations and identities based on clan, tribe- even language and ethnicity- is that Islam offers a sense of universal fraternity that is not complicit- in fact that has a long tradition of rebelling against- that type of colonial or neo-colonial globalization which creates Social atomization and anomie. Furthermore, in the context of mass migrations and urbanization, it may be that Nation States are less and less relevant to defining identity, or framing a shared socio-political agenda, especially where realpolitik dictates an attitude of clientism on the part of Post Colonial Nation States towards the Global Superpower.
In the past, Muslim countries were often quite keen to co-opt Political Islam to feed their own amour propre by getting up Islamic conferences at which to parade their impotence by repeating the same old meaningless platitudes and histrionic condemnations of Israel. Financial Institutions, too, jumped on the bandwagon with ‘Islamic banking’ and halal financial products. However, the utter futility and moral bankruptcy of such exercises over the last forty years does nothing but feed the sense of humiliation and resentment from which the demand for a political Islam rises up in the first place.
Islam is unique in that, unlike any other World Religion, State, Church and Commons have a common origin, a common trajectory and a common membership. The situation was very different for European Christianity. The Church had a separate origin, a separate law, a different language, and a wholly different aim from the State. In England, the Common law was further differentiated from the King’s Justice by having its own Courts, its own traditions, and developing its own militant ethos by putting forward the demand that no law be promulgated without the consent of parliament. The supremacy of the Commons, and the mercantile spirit of the middle class, was not fully established till the end of the Eighteenth Century.
In contrast, the Prophet Muhammad, p.b.u.h, a successful and widely travelled merchant, held up the legal contract and the practice of keeping meticulous accounts as being at the heart of religious life and socio-political organization. Thus, Islam has an ethos wholly favorable to the development of a Market economy and, soon after its inception, the Caliphate shared many features in common with European capitalism in its Imperialist phase.
However, at root there was this great difference that whereas in Western Europe incessant conflict between Church, State and Commons ultimately led to a more or less complete separation of powers and the development of very robust institutions of Civil Society which guarded the individual from arbitrary power- of whatever sort- in Islam this process was suspended or reversed by internecine squabbles, doctrinal disputes, barbarian invasions or the usurpation of ‘Slave’ dynasties.
In medieval Europe we observe the spectacle of great Emperors forced to kneel in expiation to the Pope. In Abbasid Baghdad, on the other hand, we see the Caliph acknowledging the venerated Imam, even appointing him his successor, but then quietly bumping him off. The fundamental concept that the Church is separate from the State- and that it alone has the power ‘to loose and bind’- did not take hold in Islamic countries. The result was that a purely spiritual, Religious, movement could suddenly turn into a bid for the throne, while secular power was regarded as a license to pronounce on matters of dogma. The history of Islam shows repeated instances of mutual contestation but no very robust tradition of separation of Church and State. The problem of the Muslim Commons- who found that Religion helped promote trade and industry and the development of Civil Law- but who could not stand together with the Ulema, who were drawn from their own class, against the despotic power of Sultans employing vast levies of war-like tribesmen- was exacerbated by the natural tendency of the Divines to turn inward, to immerse themselves in mysticism, to try to shut out the surrounding anarchy by discerning hidden realities which reflected the symmetrical glories of God. Against this background, especially in times of war or civil strife, both scholarship and enterprise tended to languish.
With respect to Islamic jurisprudence, the claim is sometimes made that reformist efforts to codify the Sharia law- whether in Ottoman Turkey or in India under the British- had the effect of foreclosing the creativity of the Islamic jurists and subjecting the legal branch to the executive. However, the parallel with Western practice is inexact on a number of points, most notably with respect to the fact that the gate to the Islamic equivalent of King’s Equity was never closed. In other words Justice was procurable either by executive firman or by legal fatwa. In both cases, the choice of the authority appealed to might materially affect the outcome. In any case, the fact that Iran has chosen to implement Islamic law in a Codified form rather than in a manner similar to Common Law suggests that the may be less to this point than has been made out.
Indeed, the modern demand for a political Islam capable of reinvigorating Islamic civilizations and restoring its position vis a vis the West derives more from an envious observation of the power and organizational strength of Western capitalism rather than from a process internal to or deriving from traditional Islamic jurisprudence and hermeneutics let alone increased trading or other links with Islamic countries. This makes for an uneasy relationship between the Islamic visionary and the Clergy. They are at cross purposes. Political Islam wants to affirm the perfection of the Revealed Laws at the same time as ignoring all that sort of thing completely in favor of vague dreams of glory. If some practical person- like those employed by the Turkish Religious Authority- says, ‘okay, you want to raise the position of women and comply the European Court of Human Rights, fine! We’ll remove any hadith which appears to go against women’s rights. The Ulema will know what to preach and we can all go forward happily’- the visionary is greatly incensed. ‘No! That’s not what I meant at all! Revelation is perfect and can’t be tampered with! You see, oh you are too stupid to see!- just take it from me that if the Imperialists and their Zionist henchman can only be humbled- which is very easy to do because they are all cowards and in any case riddled with A.I.D.S and other diseases- not of course the A.I.D.S isn’t a C.I.A conspiracy- anyway, where was I?, oh yes! You see once we defeat the Imperialists then Islam will flourish and we will regain Grenada and women will occupy a noble position and there won’t be any flies- damn them!- I mean the flies not the women- bless them for they are the mothers of the community and- kill the bastards!- I mean the flies, not the women- and anyway I must break off and go update my blog- Devil take these infernal pests!- I mean the flies not the women, never the women. No, not the women God forbid.’
Thanks to the paranoia and muddled thinking at its centre, political Islam can offer the same feeling of global fraternal comradeship offered by Communism- and the same facility in side-stepping the foolish squabbles of Nation States over irredentist claims or the treatment of minorities- not to mention any other matter of practical importance- but without having to take on board the invidious notion of the inevitability of class warfare. However, there is a fly in the ointment. It is the notion of Jihad which is all very and good if the enemy is far away. Or it was until Zawahiri and al Qaeda decided to actually go and hit that far away enemy. But why did Al Qaeda do so? The answer is that they had become nothing but hit men- assassinating great mujahids like Ahmed Shah Masood- and extortionists preying upon their own. To regain their self-respect they had engage in the far away Jihad. Not that it really enabled them to evade the Jihad close at home- viz. killing their former comrades. For this is the trouble with notions like Jihad and class warfare. Paranoia sets in. Suddenly everyone looks like a class traitor or a tool of the C.I.A or Mossad or what have you. As happened in Algeria, in the 90’s, you get a reductio ad absurdum where the true doctrine becomes ‘anyone not a jihadi is a kaffir who must be killed’- which is nothing but a licensing of infinite violence of all against all.
In Pakistan, both the Army and the political establishment have exercised caution in their handling of Jihadis. However, appeasement has only increased the Jihadis’ hubris. In some ways, this is quite understandable. Why go across the border, to be shot by the Hindus, when we can seize power for ourselves right here! After all, if we really have a chance against the Indian army, then, surely, we can defeat the Pakistani army which is much smaller! Moreover, here we are fighting on our own soil and have the home court advantage. The military analysts praised the fighting abilities of our boys who carried out the Mumbai attack. But the Indian Muslims wouldn’t give those martyrs enough ground even to be buried in! Why fight India when we can rule in Pakistan? Instead of us sacrificing our lives as the Army’s proxy, why not let them go and get themselves shot for a change!
This, in a nut-shell, is the problem with Jihadi ideology. Why be canon fodder when you can remain safely behind the lines getting a foretaste of the pleasures of Paradise? Instead of Jihad being a force multiplier for the Nation State, giving it a measure of ‘strategic depth’- why not invert the relationship? Let the soldiers defend the jihadis and the diplomats raise loans for their comfort. The ability shown by the supposedly decadent Western powers to nip terrorist plots in the bud- not to mention the horrors of ‘rendition’- have created a problem for those regimes which fostered terrorism as a for-export-only industry. Barriers to entry abroad means that the product flows back to glut the domestic market. Unless the government recognizes that this is a ‘sick industry’ requiring subsidies- thus killing it off with kindness- what is to prevent Terrorism from forming a symbiotic relationship with organized crime and the various other recognized forms of political activity and social entrepreneurship? In practice, of course, both roads must be taken. The good Taliban must be subsidized by day so as to transform into the bad Taliban who will come to blow us up by night. After all, that’s what we do with all public servants. The traffic cop draws his pay so as be in fine fettle when it comes to extorting money from us at the check-point. Criminals, too, are securely housed in prison so as to be able mastermind their extortion or other rackets while being protected at the tax payer’s expense. Jihadism, it seems, is not a cheap way of getting canon fodder. On the contrary it is a white elephant, which far from making its home amongst those you so kindly gift it to, returns home to rule the roost.
It may be argued that the above gives a distorted, or perverse, image of Jihad. The truth is that Jihad is an inward and spiritual struggle. However, political Islam finds it difficult to embrace this notion. Why? Well, the immediate answer that springs to mind is that if inward Jihad has any meaning at all- if it aint just pi-jaw and hot air- then its cultivation would be evidenced by the gaining of supernatural powers- the ability to heal, clairvoyance and so on. Indeed, there are numberless persons appearing to possess such qualities in every corner of the Islamic world. The problem is that they will heal anybody regardless of religion. How then are they different from the Hindu Godman or the Christian saint? Moreover, where the memory of such Saintly figures is venerated, a suspicion arises that Muslims are being led across the threshold of idolatry. Another reason for Political Islam to keep its distance from the Saints has to do with the manner in which, in the past, tyrants and feudal potentates have claimed descent from Holy Men to grab power and oppress the masses. Indeed, the tyrannical and intolerant Safavid dynasty- which established Shi’ia doctrine as the official religion of Iran- claimed descent from a Holy Man. The Ottoman Turks- as upholders of Sunni orthodoxy- waged war against the Safavids. Recurring hostilities between Turkey and Iran over 150 years became a factor in the devastation and neglect of the province of Iraq and the Arabian peninsula. To invest in the region would be to dangle a tempting prize in the face of one’s inveterate enemy. The development of Wahhabism- whose intellectual ancestry can be traced back to Ibn Taymiyya, who witnessed with his own eyes the terrible harm that had come to the Arabs from the Mongols- is understandable when we consider the declining position of the Arabs under Turkish, Iranian, Albanian and other overlords. Wahhabi intolerance and iconoclasm too becomes more understandable when one considers the inhuman cruelty and other excesses of the Safavids.
However, by choosing to concentrate on the Balkans, where the majority of the population was Christian, the Turks unwittingly reduced the capacity of the Islamic world to regenerate in the wake of European advances. Furthermore, the Muslim Aristocrats of this region put up some of the fiercest resistance to Turkish attempts at reform thus making inevitable a popular uprising against Turkish rule which the European powers would turn to their own advantage.
Whether or not sectarian divisions alone were to blame, the fact remains that the Ottomans and the Iranians could not unite with other Turkomen and Caucasian Muslims to counter Russian Imperialism in the north, or to come up- in partnership with Indian, Omani, or Swahili potentates- with a concerted strategy to counter European power in the Indian ocean. The result was that more and more trade routes passed out of Muslim hands. Great Islamic metropolitan centers fell on hard times. Islam acquired the name of a fatalistic religion variegated by a cloying sensuality. When the Wahhabis captured Mecca, the Ottoman asked the Egyptian Khedive to defeat them. The English, who understood the revolutionary potential of Wahhabi Islam for their Indian subjects, were only too happy to further the Khedive’s mission. However, the Khedive’s forays into the Arabian peninsula, and later Syria, did not sow the seeds of amity between the different branches of the Arab race. On the contrary, it left bitter memories of rapacity and extortion.
Political Islam can not but be aware of the manner in which sectarian and dynastic rivalries have imposed a heavy toll upon the ability of Muslim peoples to resist European Imperialism. Furthermore, the tendency of certain modernizing Muslim rulers in the nineteenth century to rely on foreign experts to rebuild their military and economic capacity on Western lines also backfired. In the case of the Egyptian Khedives, indebtedness to Western usurers enabled a sort of lightly disguised Anglo-French Imperialism to take root in Egypt. Even more grievously, the Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire- some of Jewish origin- preferred to stress ethnicity over religion- thus sowing the seeds for the Arab revolt- which in turn brought the Arabs nothing by a demeaning client status to the failing power of the British Crown.
Political Islam in India- which reached its zenith at the time of the Khilafat agitation- was soon humiliated and made to look ridiculous because, it turned out, the Turks didn’t want the restoration of the Caliphate. Henceforth they were determined to be Europeans and wanted nothing more to do with their dusky brothers in the faith. The Indian poet, Akbar Illahabadi painted a picture of the Indian Muslim intellectual- ‘payt masroof hai klerki main/ dil hai Iran aur Turki mein’- ‘ ‘Tis the belly makes necessary our clerk’s white collar / but our hearts never forsake Janissary and Ayatollah!’. But then, first Turkey, then Iran- even Afghanistan, under King Amanullah, who, seeing as he murdered his father to get the throne, was clearly very advanced in his views- turned their backs on political Islam preferring to be seen as modernizing leaders of European style Nation States busy negotiating treaties with the Great Powers. The dream of al-Afghani lay in tatters.
It is against this background that we need to understand that Iqbal- far from sponsoring political Islam as a Universal ideology, or a form of anti-Imperialism- was simply currying favor with the Imperialists by assisting their policy of ‘divide and rule’ while providing an intellectual camouflage for the creation of a modernizing Western style successor Nation State but one in which people like himself would prosper at the expense of Hindus and Sikhs. In other words, to use his own terminology, this was ‘land-hunger’ as opposed to Jihad, special pleading for a particular confessional group rather than anything to do with universal values.
This is not to say that, as E.M. Forster noted, Indian Muslims did not spend a lot of time dreaming of the vanished glories of Grenada and mourning the loss of various Balkan countries whose names one might not know but whose women were no doubt well favored. The political genius, and sheer staying power of Izetbegovich in organizing both Jihadi as well as Western support for Bosnian Muslims enabled that dream, at least in part, to turn into reality. However, it is far from clear that the rising generation- not just in Bosnia, but also Albania, Kosovo, or amongst the Muslim minority in Bulgaria- feel that the cry of Jihad still has some universal meaning. It is true that Western Intelligence Agencies have cracked down on some Jihadi networks associated with the Bosnian conflict and there is talk of a potential threat from the region. However, in light of the burgeoning power and ability of the Western Security Services to fight terrorism, as well as the increasing pre-occupation young people have with their own financial future- political Islam may not have actually been very much further advanced. Indeed, Izetbegovich’s legacy may come to be seen in his own country, as it is in the West, as not that of an Islamist but a secular humanist- a dissident imprisoned by the Communists- a brave champion of pluralistic democracy and so on and so forth.
An alternative to Jihad as having a military or a spiritual dimension may be to consider it as being primarily an organizational and propagandistic activity concerned with building what, Harvard Professor, Robert Putnam calls ‘Social Capital’- in other words social networks that increase the interconnectedness of people. The problem here is that, people have been sitting on committees and getting up resolutions and organizing conferences for decades and decades with no tangible result! Indeed, this sort of Jihad is now nothing but a careerism- a sham bureaucratic, sham academic or even sham political careerism as your taste takes you. This sort of political Islam is a costly advertisement for a product that does not exist; that can not exist because all the working capital has been used up on making the advertisement. No great harm in it, we may argue, if the West is footing the bill under the rubric of ‘multi-culturalism’ or some other such anodyne and hypocritical foolishness. Still, it is a misallocation of intellectual resources. Especially if, now, we are being asked to foot the bill ourselves. If your son- or better your daughter- your son being reserved for Medicine or Engineering- gets a scholarship to study Islam at Harvard- well and good. But what if he asks you to shell out your hard earned money so as to sit through that drivel? Is it a good way to spend your nest egg?
As for other forms of social networking- the fact is, everybody is sick and tired of the Tablighi busybody who comes round to enquire into your moral health- or pass comments on the morality of your neighbors. In the old days, especially in the Kingdom or some of the Emirates, people would put up with this because they feared the fellow had connections with the moral police. Nowadays, people have lost that fear. If you report me for possessing alcohol, I will report you for supporting al Qaeda! The bluff has been called.
If Jihad can’t be military, can’t be spiritual, can’t be organizational- then must political Islam dispense with Jihad? Is there no alternative? Or, to put it another way, what is the right outgroup- the kaffir- for political Islam to direct its venom at? The West? No, they will come and kick down your door and drag you off to Guantanomo or Abu Ghraib. Or sorry, that was under the previous administration. Now, they’ll simply send a drone to blow you up in your bed. What about some minority within our own borders? Why not pick on them? But, truthfully, can their position get any worse? In any case, thanks to past pogroms, there simply aren’t enough of them to go round. Women. Ah! Now you’re talking.
However there is a fundamental problem, for Political Islam, in adopting a misogynistic policy. The fact is, Islam was at one time in a superior position to Christianity, with respect to women’s rights, in that marriage was seen as a contractual relationship, women’s property was (at least theoretically) safeguarded and divorce- though not encouraged- was permissible. Furthermore, espousal of political Islam has often gone hand in hand with the education and empowerment of the women of the family, thus creating a constituency for itself within the educated Female elite both in Muslim countries as well as amongst the diaspora. In most Muslim societies, at least in urban centers or within the centers of power and knowledge, it is far too late to turn back the clock. Only a prolonged period of war-lordism and Talibanisation can change attitudes to women in this respect and force them out of Public life. No doubt, a cynic might say that Pakistan has already made a commendable start down that road and thus political Islam has a rosy future; however, this may be just a false dawn. What if the Taliban go on strike for better pay and conditions rather than the extra houris in Heaven we would readily grant? What if the Americans declare a victory and just pull out leaving us all to stew in our own juices? What if Israel- but no, Israel we will always have with us- and if it didn’t exist we would have to invent it- how else secure the future of political Islam?
Unless. Unless? We know what you’re going to say. You’re going to talk about a new political Islam based on movements from below- a subaltern Islam- Women, Trade Unionists, horny handed peasants, illiterate Political Scientists, starving fashion models, that smelly kid you sat next to once on the School bus, all these voices from below slowly harmonizing together to take on the burden of re-envisioning political Islam and- fex Urbis lex Orbis- from the dregs of the City will come the Light of this World.
No that wasn’t what I was going to say at all! How dare you? You’ve got it completely wrong. Well apart from that bit about the smelly kid I once sat next to on the School bus. You see, he grew up to become Imran Khan.
(S. Choudhry)
'The poet Iqbal, who was influenced by Nietzche, knighted by the British colonial authorities and who evinced some admiration for the Bolshevik revolution, might seem an unlikely source of inspiration for the Supreme Guide of the Iranian revolution. Yet, such is unquestionably the case. Ayatollah Khameni, in praising Iqbal, has laid stress on the potential for a Universalist, rather than narrowly nationalist, political Islam to act as a challenge, or countervailing power, to Colonial and neo Colonial influence and aggression. This sort of universalist Islam need not be of a fundamentalist, or Salafi type. Iqbal stressed the creative power God grants to Man as his Viceregent on earth. In other words the possibility is admitted of there being a universal Muslim law- not simply a slavish adherence to Sharia- adapted to meet the needs of the evolving Muslim community across the globe which will enable the Muslims to rise up and challenge the hegemony of the West.
However History shows that such a challenge is premature- if not, as with Iqbal, actually in the interest of the Imperialists- and that it ends up enfeebling those who make it by involving their cogitations in intractable aporias.
Nevertheless, the Ayatollah has good reason to praise Iqbal. He is acknowledged as the poet-prophet of Pakistan- the creation of which, from the detritus of the British Raj, was the first tangible victory of political Islam. In contrast to al Afghani- whose polemical style singled out individual Muslim rulers felt to be not radical enough- Iqbal’s philosophy has no conspiratorial or practical application. In other words, it represents no source of danger to that class of clergymen who have done very well out of the Iranian revolution. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy, that both instances of the triumph of political Islam- however financially rewarding for their sponsors- have not weakened the West or reduced its power and influence in the region. On the contrary, if we consider the position in the Seventies- when Iran seemed poised to take over the role the British Navy had relinquished in the Sixties, and when Pakistan, drawing upon its alliance with China, seemed ready to cut the apron strings of its American patrons- we may well puzzle as to why both countries, despite substantial military spending and quite sophisticated ideological propaganda initiatives, seem more at the mercy of the West now than ever before.
Indeed, the American invasion of Iraq and more recent incursions into Pakistani territory seem an extraordinary reversal, an unparalleled humiliation, for political Islam. This is in stark contrast to the success of Alija Izetbegovich, the late Bosnian leader, in gaining help from both Iran and America, both political Islam and the liberal West, to, in effect, reverse the provisions of the Treaty of Vienna- in 1878- which transferred that territory from the Caliphate to Austro-Hungarian control.
In this context, some observers- bringing to bear an enviable erudition- are inclined to speak of political Islam as having reached a peak in the late Seventies and early Eighties and as now being in irretrievable decline. This raises a question- have socio-economic conditions so greatly changed that political Islam no longer has anything to offer? Or is it rather the case that disenchantment with the Post Colonial Nation State has continued apace leaving nothing but political Islam to fill the vacuum?
The great attraction of Islamist ideology- for those who observe the erosion, or increasing irrelevance, of traditional affiliations and identities based on clan, tribe- even language and ethnicity- is that Islam offers a sense of universal fraternity that is not complicit- in fact that has a long tradition of rebelling against- that type of colonial or neo-colonial globalization which creates Social atomization and anomie. Furthermore, in the context of mass migrations and urbanization, it may be that Nation States are less and less relevant to defining identity, or framing a shared socio-political agenda, especially where realpolitik dictates an attitude of clientism on the part of Post Colonial Nation States towards the Global Superpower.
In the past, Muslim countries were often quite keen to co-opt Political Islam to feed their own amour propre by getting up Islamic conferences at which to parade their impotence by repeating the same old meaningless platitudes and histrionic condemnations of Israel. Financial Institutions, too, jumped on the bandwagon with ‘Islamic banking’ and halal financial products. However, the utter futility and moral bankruptcy of such exercises over the last forty years does nothing but feed the sense of humiliation and resentment from which the demand for a political Islam rises up in the first place.
Islam is unique in that, unlike any other World Religion, State, Church and Commons have a common origin, a common trajectory and a common membership. The situation was very different for European Christianity. The Church had a separate origin, a separate law, a different language, and a wholly different aim from the State. In England, the Common law was further differentiated from the King’s Justice by having its own Courts, its own traditions, and developing its own militant ethos by putting forward the demand that no law be promulgated without the consent of parliament. The supremacy of the Commons, and the mercantile spirit of the middle class, was not fully established till the end of the Eighteenth Century.
In contrast, the Prophet Muhammad, p.b.u.h, a successful and widely travelled merchant, held up the legal contract and the practice of keeping meticulous accounts as being at the heart of religious life and socio-political organization. Thus, Islam has an ethos wholly favorable to the development of a Market economy and, soon after its inception, the Caliphate shared many features in common with European capitalism in its Imperialist phase.
However, at root there was this great difference that whereas in Western Europe incessant conflict between Church, State and Commons ultimately led to a more or less complete separation of powers and the development of very robust institutions of Civil Society which guarded the individual from arbitrary power- of whatever sort- in Islam this process was suspended or reversed by internecine squabbles, doctrinal disputes, barbarian invasions or the usurpation of ‘Slave’ dynasties.
In medieval Europe we observe the spectacle of great Emperors forced to kneel in expiation to the Pope. In Abbasid Baghdad, on the other hand, we see the Caliph acknowledging the venerated Imam, even appointing him his successor, but then quietly bumping him off. The fundamental concept that the Church is separate from the State- and that it alone has the power ‘to loose and bind’- did not take hold in Islamic countries. The result was that a purely spiritual, Religious, movement could suddenly turn into a bid for the throne, while secular power was regarded as a license to pronounce on matters of dogma. The history of Islam shows repeated instances of mutual contestation but no very robust tradition of separation of Church and State. The problem of the Muslim Commons- who found that Religion helped promote trade and industry and the development of Civil Law- but who could not stand together with the Ulema, who were drawn from their own class, against the despotic power of Sultans employing vast levies of war-like tribesmen- was exacerbated by the natural tendency of the Divines to turn inward, to immerse themselves in mysticism, to try to shut out the surrounding anarchy by discerning hidden realities which reflected the symmetrical glories of God. Against this background, especially in times of war or civil strife, both scholarship and enterprise tended to languish.
With respect to Islamic jurisprudence, the claim is sometimes made that reformist efforts to codify the Sharia law- whether in Ottoman Turkey or in India under the British- had the effect of foreclosing the creativity of the Islamic jurists and subjecting the legal branch to the executive. However, the parallel with Western practice is inexact on a number of points, most notably with respect to the fact that the gate to the Islamic equivalent of King’s Equity was never closed. In other words Justice was procurable either by executive firman or by legal fatwa. In both cases, the choice of the authority appealed to might materially affect the outcome. In any case, the fact that Iran has chosen to implement Islamic law in a Codified form rather than in a manner similar to Common Law suggests that the may be less to this point than has been made out.
Indeed, the modern demand for a political Islam capable of reinvigorating Islamic civilizations and restoring its position vis a vis the West derives more from an envious observation of the power and organizational strength of Western capitalism rather than from a process internal to or deriving from traditional Islamic jurisprudence and hermeneutics let alone increased trading or other links with Islamic countries. This makes for an uneasy relationship between the Islamic visionary and the Clergy. They are at cross purposes. Political Islam wants to affirm the perfection of the Revealed Laws at the same time as ignoring all that sort of thing completely in favor of vague dreams of glory. If some practical person- like those employed by the Turkish Religious Authority- says, ‘okay, you want to raise the position of women and comply the European Court of Human Rights, fine! We’ll remove any hadith which appears to go against women’s rights. The Ulema will know what to preach and we can all go forward happily’- the visionary is greatly incensed. ‘No! That’s not what I meant at all! Revelation is perfect and can’t be tampered with! You see, oh you are too stupid to see!- just take it from me that if the Imperialists and their Zionist henchman can only be humbled- which is very easy to do because they are all cowards and in any case riddled with A.I.D.S and other diseases- not of course the A.I.D.S isn’t a C.I.A conspiracy- anyway, where was I?, oh yes! You see once we defeat the Imperialists then Islam will flourish and we will regain Grenada and women will occupy a noble position and there won’t be any flies- damn them!- I mean the flies not the women- bless them for they are the mothers of the community and- kill the bastards!- I mean the flies, not the women- and anyway I must break off and go update my blog- Devil take these infernal pests!- I mean the flies not the women, never the women. No, not the women God forbid.’
Thanks to the paranoia and muddled thinking at its centre, political Islam can offer the same feeling of global fraternal comradeship offered by Communism- and the same facility in side-stepping the foolish squabbles of Nation States over irredentist claims or the treatment of minorities- not to mention any other matter of practical importance- but without having to take on board the invidious notion of the inevitability of class warfare. However, there is a fly in the ointment. It is the notion of Jihad which is all very and good if the enemy is far away. Or it was until Zawahiri and al Qaeda decided to actually go and hit that far away enemy. But why did Al Qaeda do so? The answer is that they had become nothing but hit men- assassinating great mujahids like Ahmed Shah Masood- and extortionists preying upon their own. To regain their self-respect they had engage in the far away Jihad. Not that it really enabled them to evade the Jihad close at home- viz. killing their former comrades. For this is the trouble with notions like Jihad and class warfare. Paranoia sets in. Suddenly everyone looks like a class traitor or a tool of the C.I.A or Mossad or what have you. As happened in Algeria, in the 90’s, you get a reductio ad absurdum where the true doctrine becomes ‘anyone not a jihadi is a kaffir who must be killed’- which is nothing but a licensing of infinite violence of all against all.
In Pakistan, both the Army and the political establishment have exercised caution in their handling of Jihadis. However, appeasement has only increased the Jihadis’ hubris. In some ways, this is quite understandable. Why go across the border, to be shot by the Hindus, when we can seize power for ourselves right here! After all, if we really have a chance against the Indian army, then, surely, we can defeat the Pakistani army which is much smaller! Moreover, here we are fighting on our own soil and have the home court advantage. The military analysts praised the fighting abilities of our boys who carried out the Mumbai attack. But the Indian Muslims wouldn’t give those martyrs enough ground even to be buried in! Why fight India when we can rule in Pakistan? Instead of us sacrificing our lives as the Army’s proxy, why not let them go and get themselves shot for a change!
This, in a nut-shell, is the problem with Jihadi ideology. Why be canon fodder when you can remain safely behind the lines getting a foretaste of the pleasures of Paradise? Instead of Jihad being a force multiplier for the Nation State, giving it a measure of ‘strategic depth’- why not invert the relationship? Let the soldiers defend the jihadis and the diplomats raise loans for their comfort. The ability shown by the supposedly decadent Western powers to nip terrorist plots in the bud- not to mention the horrors of ‘rendition’- have created a problem for those regimes which fostered terrorism as a for-export-only industry. Barriers to entry abroad means that the product flows back to glut the domestic market. Unless the government recognizes that this is a ‘sick industry’ requiring subsidies- thus killing it off with kindness- what is to prevent Terrorism from forming a symbiotic relationship with organized crime and the various other recognized forms of political activity and social entrepreneurship? In practice, of course, both roads must be taken. The good Taliban must be subsidized by day so as to transform into the bad Taliban who will come to blow us up by night. After all, that’s what we do with all public servants. The traffic cop draws his pay so as be in fine fettle when it comes to extorting money from us at the check-point. Criminals, too, are securely housed in prison so as to be able mastermind their extortion or other rackets while being protected at the tax payer’s expense. Jihadism, it seems, is not a cheap way of getting canon fodder. On the contrary it is a white elephant, which far from making its home amongst those you so kindly gift it to, returns home to rule the roost.
It may be argued that the above gives a distorted, or perverse, image of Jihad. The truth is that Jihad is an inward and spiritual struggle. However, political Islam finds it difficult to embrace this notion. Why? Well, the immediate answer that springs to mind is that if inward Jihad has any meaning at all- if it aint just pi-jaw and hot air- then its cultivation would be evidenced by the gaining of supernatural powers- the ability to heal, clairvoyance and so on. Indeed, there are numberless persons appearing to possess such qualities in every corner of the Islamic world. The problem is that they will heal anybody regardless of religion. How then are they different from the Hindu Godman or the Christian saint? Moreover, where the memory of such Saintly figures is venerated, a suspicion arises that Muslims are being led across the threshold of idolatry. Another reason for Political Islam to keep its distance from the Saints has to do with the manner in which, in the past, tyrants and feudal potentates have claimed descent from Holy Men to grab power and oppress the masses. Indeed, the tyrannical and intolerant Safavid dynasty- which established Shi’ia doctrine as the official religion of Iran- claimed descent from a Holy Man. The Ottoman Turks- as upholders of Sunni orthodoxy- waged war against the Safavids. Recurring hostilities between Turkey and Iran over 150 years became a factor in the devastation and neglect of the province of Iraq and the Arabian peninsula. To invest in the region would be to dangle a tempting prize in the face of one’s inveterate enemy. The development of Wahhabism- whose intellectual ancestry can be traced back to Ibn Taymiyya, who witnessed with his own eyes the terrible harm that had come to the Arabs from the Mongols- is understandable when we consider the declining position of the Arabs under Turkish, Iranian, Albanian and other overlords. Wahhabi intolerance and iconoclasm too becomes more understandable when one considers the inhuman cruelty and other excesses of the Safavids.
However, by choosing to concentrate on the Balkans, where the majority of the population was Christian, the Turks unwittingly reduced the capacity of the Islamic world to regenerate in the wake of European advances. Furthermore, the Muslim Aristocrats of this region put up some of the fiercest resistance to Turkish attempts at reform thus making inevitable a popular uprising against Turkish rule which the European powers would turn to their own advantage.
Whether or not sectarian divisions alone were to blame, the fact remains that the Ottomans and the Iranians could not unite with other Turkomen and Caucasian Muslims to counter Russian Imperialism in the north, or to come up- in partnership with Indian, Omani, or Swahili potentates- with a concerted strategy to counter European power in the Indian ocean. The result was that more and more trade routes passed out of Muslim hands. Great Islamic metropolitan centers fell on hard times. Islam acquired the name of a fatalistic religion variegated by a cloying sensuality. When the Wahhabis captured Mecca, the Ottoman asked the Egyptian Khedive to defeat them. The English, who understood the revolutionary potential of Wahhabi Islam for their Indian subjects, were only too happy to further the Khedive’s mission. However, the Khedive’s forays into the Arabian peninsula, and later Syria, did not sow the seeds of amity between the different branches of the Arab race. On the contrary, it left bitter memories of rapacity and extortion.
Political Islam can not but be aware of the manner in which sectarian and dynastic rivalries have imposed a heavy toll upon the ability of Muslim peoples to resist European Imperialism. Furthermore, the tendency of certain modernizing Muslim rulers in the nineteenth century to rely on foreign experts to rebuild their military and economic capacity on Western lines also backfired. In the case of the Egyptian Khedives, indebtedness to Western usurers enabled a sort of lightly disguised Anglo-French Imperialism to take root in Egypt. Even more grievously, the Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire- some of Jewish origin- preferred to stress ethnicity over religion- thus sowing the seeds for the Arab revolt- which in turn brought the Arabs nothing by a demeaning client status to the failing power of the British Crown.
Political Islam in India- which reached its zenith at the time of the Khilafat agitation- was soon humiliated and made to look ridiculous because, it turned out, the Turks didn’t want the restoration of the Caliphate. Henceforth they were determined to be Europeans and wanted nothing more to do with their dusky brothers in the faith. The Indian poet, Akbar Illahabadi painted a picture of the Indian Muslim intellectual- ‘payt masroof hai klerki main/ dil hai Iran aur Turki mein’- ‘ ‘Tis the belly makes necessary our clerk’s white collar / but our hearts never forsake Janissary and Ayatollah!’. But then, first Turkey, then Iran- even Afghanistan, under King Amanullah, who, seeing as he murdered his father to get the throne, was clearly very advanced in his views- turned their backs on political Islam preferring to be seen as modernizing leaders of European style Nation States busy negotiating treaties with the Great Powers. The dream of al-Afghani lay in tatters.
It is against this background that we need to understand that Iqbal- far from sponsoring political Islam as a Universal ideology, or a form of anti-Imperialism- was simply currying favor with the Imperialists by assisting their policy of ‘divide and rule’ while providing an intellectual camouflage for the creation of a modernizing Western style successor Nation State but one in which people like himself would prosper at the expense of Hindus and Sikhs. In other words, to use his own terminology, this was ‘land-hunger’ as opposed to Jihad, special pleading for a particular confessional group rather than anything to do with universal values.
This is not to say that, as E.M. Forster noted, Indian Muslims did not spend a lot of time dreaming of the vanished glories of Grenada and mourning the loss of various Balkan countries whose names one might not know but whose women were no doubt well favored. The political genius, and sheer staying power of Izetbegovich in organizing both Jihadi as well as Western support for Bosnian Muslims enabled that dream, at least in part, to turn into reality. However, it is far from clear that the rising generation- not just in Bosnia, but also Albania, Kosovo, or amongst the Muslim minority in Bulgaria- feel that the cry of Jihad still has some universal meaning. It is true that Western Intelligence Agencies have cracked down on some Jihadi networks associated with the Bosnian conflict and there is talk of a potential threat from the region. However, in light of the burgeoning power and ability of the Western Security Services to fight terrorism, as well as the increasing pre-occupation young people have with their own financial future- political Islam may not have actually been very much further advanced. Indeed, Izetbegovich’s legacy may come to be seen in his own country, as it is in the West, as not that of an Islamist but a secular humanist- a dissident imprisoned by the Communists- a brave champion of pluralistic democracy and so on and so forth.
An alternative to Jihad as having a military or a spiritual dimension may be to consider it as being primarily an organizational and propagandistic activity concerned with building what, Harvard Professor, Robert Putnam calls ‘Social Capital’- in other words social networks that increase the interconnectedness of people. The problem here is that, people have been sitting on committees and getting up resolutions and organizing conferences for decades and decades with no tangible result! Indeed, this sort of Jihad is now nothing but a careerism- a sham bureaucratic, sham academic or even sham political careerism as your taste takes you. This sort of political Islam is a costly advertisement for a product that does not exist; that can not exist because all the working capital has been used up on making the advertisement. No great harm in it, we may argue, if the West is footing the bill under the rubric of ‘multi-culturalism’ or some other such anodyne and hypocritical foolishness. Still, it is a misallocation of intellectual resources. Especially if, now, we are being asked to foot the bill ourselves. If your son- or better your daughter- your son being reserved for Medicine or Engineering- gets a scholarship to study Islam at Harvard- well and good. But what if he asks you to shell out your hard earned money so as to sit through that drivel? Is it a good way to spend your nest egg?
As for other forms of social networking- the fact is, everybody is sick and tired of the Tablighi busybody who comes round to enquire into your moral health- or pass comments on the morality of your neighbors. In the old days, especially in the Kingdom or some of the Emirates, people would put up with this because they feared the fellow had connections with the moral police. Nowadays, people have lost that fear. If you report me for possessing alcohol, I will report you for supporting al Qaeda! The bluff has been called.
If Jihad can’t be military, can’t be spiritual, can’t be organizational- then must political Islam dispense with Jihad? Is there no alternative? Or, to put it another way, what is the right outgroup- the kaffir- for political Islam to direct its venom at? The West? No, they will come and kick down your door and drag you off to Guantanomo or Abu Ghraib. Or sorry, that was under the previous administration. Now, they’ll simply send a drone to blow you up in your bed. What about some minority within our own borders? Why not pick on them? But, truthfully, can their position get any worse? In any case, thanks to past pogroms, there simply aren’t enough of them to go round. Women. Ah! Now you’re talking.
However there is a fundamental problem, for Political Islam, in adopting a misogynistic policy. The fact is, Islam was at one time in a superior position to Christianity, with respect to women’s rights, in that marriage was seen as a contractual relationship, women’s property was (at least theoretically) safeguarded and divorce- though not encouraged- was permissible. Furthermore, espousal of political Islam has often gone hand in hand with the education and empowerment of the women of the family, thus creating a constituency for itself within the educated Female elite both in Muslim countries as well as amongst the diaspora. In most Muslim societies, at least in urban centers or within the centers of power and knowledge, it is far too late to turn back the clock. Only a prolonged period of war-lordism and Talibanisation can change attitudes to women in this respect and force them out of Public life. No doubt, a cynic might say that Pakistan has already made a commendable start down that road and thus political Islam has a rosy future; however, this may be just a false dawn. What if the Taliban go on strike for better pay and conditions rather than the extra houris in Heaven we would readily grant? What if the Americans declare a victory and just pull out leaving us all to stew in our own juices? What if Israel- but no, Israel we will always have with us- and if it didn’t exist we would have to invent it- how else secure the future of political Islam?
Unless. Unless? We know what you’re going to say. You’re going to talk about a new political Islam based on movements from below- a subaltern Islam- Women, Trade Unionists, horny handed peasants, illiterate Political Scientists, starving fashion models, that smelly kid you sat next to once on the School bus, all these voices from below slowly harmonizing together to take on the burden of re-envisioning political Islam and- fex Urbis lex Orbis- from the dregs of the City will come the Light of this World.
No that wasn’t what I was going to say at all! How dare you? You’ve got it completely wrong. Well apart from that bit about the smelly kid I once sat next to on the School bus. You see, he grew up to become Imran Khan.
(S. Choudhry)
'Her high heel shoes'- Short story
Almost twenty years ago, I moved into the ground floor flat near Earls Court station where I still live. The upstairs apartment remained empty for the first few months of my occupancy and I congratulated myself on having secured so peaceful a residence at a moderate price.
Then, everything changed. A young family moved in. I could hear the child running around on the bare wooden boards overhead and the slower clump clump of the grownups taking possession.
Some days later, my door bell rang and when I opened the door I saw a nice looking lady- to my surprise of Indian origin- along with her little daughter. These were my new neighbors and they had locked themselves out. Could they wait in my apartment till the husband returned?
I offered tea and biscuits, and we got chatting. It turned out that they were Gujerati speaking Ismailis- followers of the Aga Khan- who were born in Tanzania. More recently, after marriage, the young couple had spent the last five years running a business in Madagascar owned by a relative.
Now, again with help from their relatives, they had relocated to London and had the management of a shop close by.
Soon enough the husband turned up. He too was as voluble and forthcoming as his wife. Both were perhaps a trifle more talkative than is usual in London. I, for my part, found them charming. The little daughter, however, was a model of English reticence. I tried to interest her in a children’s book- Kipling’s Jungle book- but she seemed wary of me. However she agreed to take it with her and later on I was astonished by the fluency with which she read from it.
Around about this time, a great Ismaili conference was held in the Earls Court Centre. I realized that the young couple, in taking a flat so close to the Conference centre, had intended to use it as a base to offer hospitality to distant relatives and to network with business contacts who had flown in from the four corners of the globe to attend the event.
In a neighborly gesture, more characteristic of small town Africa than cold hearted London, the young couple made a practice of inviting me to keep their guests company. For my part, I played the role of the old bachelor Uncle who takes delight in showing off the accomplishments of the little niece- getting her to read aloud samples of improving poetry and so on.
However, one thing worried me. Saira- that was the wife’s name- had a full time job in a Travel Agency in Oxford Street. She had to rush home to cook for guests and keep everything spick and span. The husband- Karim- helped with the household chores but he spent a great part of each evening picking up people from the airport or dropping them off at the homes of relatives. Thus the burden of all this hospitality fell upon Saira alone.
One day, Karim dropped in to see me. He had big news. The shop under his management had done well. The family had now been offered something bigger and better. They would be moving soon. In conversation, it turned out that Karim and Saira had their hearts set on immigration to Canada where they had family. Indeed, the young couple had charted out their future with commendable foresight. I expressed regret at losing such wonderful neighbors. Karim’s face fell. He suddenly addressed me in Hindi- he was a big Bollywood fan- ‘Saira considers you her elder brother. You must say something. She will listen to you. Me, what can I do? I am only the husband after all.” His face was a mask of tragedy.
“What must I say?”
“The high heel shoes! Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it. Everybody always comments. I mean to say, it is all right when a lady goes to office to wear fashionable shoes. But there is a limit. What for she is wearing high heel shoes at home? It is a childishness. You know how people talk.”
“My dear, Karim, your thinking is appropriate for Africa. This is London. Here style is king. Ladies are wearing high heel shoe at all time. As for U.S and Canada- they are even more advanced. Arre, I am telling you, nowadays- Bombay, Ahmedabad, Surat- India is also changing. Women have to obey fashion rules. Believe me you are worrying for nothing.”
Karim looked at me bitterly. “Bhai Sahib, you don’t know. At the end of day, when she takes of shoes, the pain is so much she cries. She tries to hide it from me but I know. Can you imagine the hurt it is causing me? Yet however much I remonstrate she will not listen to me. You only can do something. After all, here in London, which other brother does she have?”
Next evening, after the guests had gone, I said to Saira- ‘Sit down. We need to talk.’
She came and sat down but there was resentment in her eyes. Resentment or perhaps pain from those damn high heel shoes. As a bachelor, I don’t notice much about women. But, that evening, I had noticed that far from making her more graceful and stylish, her high heel shoes made her clumsy and awkward. Karim was right. In fact, he was more than right. He thought she should only wear these shoes to the office. Actually, at least in London, there was no need for her to wear them at all. She could wear comfort shoes. After all, the Feminist movement had some achievements to its credit. As things stood, Saira was martyring herself for no reason except a childish whim- or perhaps a small town African ideal of European sophistication.
In my bumbling, bachelor Uncle, manner I began lecturing her. She got the gist immediately. Her face fell. For a moment, exhaustion overcame her. Then, she looked at me bitterly.
“If I take off these shoes, you will be happy?”
“Yes!”
“No, some more time, I must wear them.”
“Why?”
“You know what everyone says about me? They say she is a nice lady but crazy on high heel shoes. Coming from Africa she did not even know how to wear them properly. That is why she ruined her feet. That is what they will say at the time of my daughter’s wedding. Not that I will be wearing high heel shoes then- but, you see, the damage will have been done. I will be remembered as a warning to young girls.”
“I don’t understand. “
“Brother, I was born with this deformity of the feet. Now people are visiting this house- people whose opinion will matter when it comes time to arrange my daughter’s marriage- which is better? That they remember me as having lamed myself by a foolish passion for stylish shoes or that they say ‘there is a deformity in that family. It may come out in the grand-children. Better chose another girl.”
All that happened almost twenty years ago. Now their daughter is married I can tell you the story. Also there is a personal secret I want to unburden myself off. You see, twenty years ago, I was an atheist. Though I never touched Saira’s feet, I wanted to. That set me on the path back to the devotional piety of my ancestors. However, my writing in English- it seems to me- is like Saira’s high heel shoes. What I can’t understand is- for the benefit of whose marriage am I suffering this hurt?
Then, everything changed. A young family moved in. I could hear the child running around on the bare wooden boards overhead and the slower clump clump of the grownups taking possession.
Some days later, my door bell rang and when I opened the door I saw a nice looking lady- to my surprise of Indian origin- along with her little daughter. These were my new neighbors and they had locked themselves out. Could they wait in my apartment till the husband returned?
I offered tea and biscuits, and we got chatting. It turned out that they were Gujerati speaking Ismailis- followers of the Aga Khan- who were born in Tanzania. More recently, after marriage, the young couple had spent the last five years running a business in Madagascar owned by a relative.
Now, again with help from their relatives, they had relocated to London and had the management of a shop close by.
Soon enough the husband turned up. He too was as voluble and forthcoming as his wife. Both were perhaps a trifle more talkative than is usual in London. I, for my part, found them charming. The little daughter, however, was a model of English reticence. I tried to interest her in a children’s book- Kipling’s Jungle book- but she seemed wary of me. However she agreed to take it with her and later on I was astonished by the fluency with which she read from it.
Around about this time, a great Ismaili conference was held in the Earls Court Centre. I realized that the young couple, in taking a flat so close to the Conference centre, had intended to use it as a base to offer hospitality to distant relatives and to network with business contacts who had flown in from the four corners of the globe to attend the event.
In a neighborly gesture, more characteristic of small town Africa than cold hearted London, the young couple made a practice of inviting me to keep their guests company. For my part, I played the role of the old bachelor Uncle who takes delight in showing off the accomplishments of the little niece- getting her to read aloud samples of improving poetry and so on.
However, one thing worried me. Saira- that was the wife’s name- had a full time job in a Travel Agency in Oxford Street. She had to rush home to cook for guests and keep everything spick and span. The husband- Karim- helped with the household chores but he spent a great part of each evening picking up people from the airport or dropping them off at the homes of relatives. Thus the burden of all this hospitality fell upon Saira alone.
One day, Karim dropped in to see me. He had big news. The shop under his management had done well. The family had now been offered something bigger and better. They would be moving soon. In conversation, it turned out that Karim and Saira had their hearts set on immigration to Canada where they had family. Indeed, the young couple had charted out their future with commendable foresight. I expressed regret at losing such wonderful neighbors. Karim’s face fell. He suddenly addressed me in Hindi- he was a big Bollywood fan- ‘Saira considers you her elder brother. You must say something. She will listen to you. Me, what can I do? I am only the husband after all.” His face was a mask of tragedy.
“What must I say?”
“The high heel shoes! Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it. Everybody always comments. I mean to say, it is all right when a lady goes to office to wear fashionable shoes. But there is a limit. What for she is wearing high heel shoes at home? It is a childishness. You know how people talk.”
“My dear, Karim, your thinking is appropriate for Africa. This is London. Here style is king. Ladies are wearing high heel shoe at all time. As for U.S and Canada- they are even more advanced. Arre, I am telling you, nowadays- Bombay, Ahmedabad, Surat- India is also changing. Women have to obey fashion rules. Believe me you are worrying for nothing.”
Karim looked at me bitterly. “Bhai Sahib, you don’t know. At the end of day, when she takes of shoes, the pain is so much she cries. She tries to hide it from me but I know. Can you imagine the hurt it is causing me? Yet however much I remonstrate she will not listen to me. You only can do something. After all, here in London, which other brother does she have?”
Next evening, after the guests had gone, I said to Saira- ‘Sit down. We need to talk.’
She came and sat down but there was resentment in her eyes. Resentment or perhaps pain from those damn high heel shoes. As a bachelor, I don’t notice much about women. But, that evening, I had noticed that far from making her more graceful and stylish, her high heel shoes made her clumsy and awkward. Karim was right. In fact, he was more than right. He thought she should only wear these shoes to the office. Actually, at least in London, there was no need for her to wear them at all. She could wear comfort shoes. After all, the Feminist movement had some achievements to its credit. As things stood, Saira was martyring herself for no reason except a childish whim- or perhaps a small town African ideal of European sophistication.
In my bumbling, bachelor Uncle, manner I began lecturing her. She got the gist immediately. Her face fell. For a moment, exhaustion overcame her. Then, she looked at me bitterly.
“If I take off these shoes, you will be happy?”
“Yes!”
“No, some more time, I must wear them.”
“Why?”
“You know what everyone says about me? They say she is a nice lady but crazy on high heel shoes. Coming from Africa she did not even know how to wear them properly. That is why she ruined her feet. That is what they will say at the time of my daughter’s wedding. Not that I will be wearing high heel shoes then- but, you see, the damage will have been done. I will be remembered as a warning to young girls.”
“I don’t understand. “
“Brother, I was born with this deformity of the feet. Now people are visiting this house- people whose opinion will matter when it comes time to arrange my daughter’s marriage- which is better? That they remember me as having lamed myself by a foolish passion for stylish shoes or that they say ‘there is a deformity in that family. It may come out in the grand-children. Better chose another girl.”
All that happened almost twenty years ago. Now their daughter is married I can tell you the story. Also there is a personal secret I want to unburden myself off. You see, twenty years ago, I was an atheist. Though I never touched Saira’s feet, I wanted to. That set me on the path back to the devotional piety of my ancestors. However, my writing in English- it seems to me- is like Saira’s high heel shoes. What I can’t understand is- for the benefit of whose marriage am I suffering this hurt?
The Caste system- economics or religion
The Indian caste system- economics or religion?
As a responsible Hindu I feel im my religious duty to add to the nonsense written about the caste system by making a couple of points, not I believe, highlighted elsewhere-
1) India was a mixed regime economy with a metropolitan cash nexus parallel to a system of non-monetized specialisation & division of labour where agicultural land and surpluses were periodically redistributed according to some ill-defined communal collective bargaining which more often than not meant whole sub-castes (endogamous occupational groups called jatis) voting with their feet. During exogenous monetary shocks/ natural disasters the unmonetized jati system of specialisation and exchange was the default value. It kept things ticking over and allowed the clearing of new land and rural settlement with low capital investment but the full complement of services. Theoretically, endogamy was supposed to facillitate the diffusion of new techniques of production and thus raise productivity. Religion tends to say what IS is right. God wants it that way. Vedic Hindu religion was particularly suitable for this because it emphasised the equality of all paths to the deity- i.e. the notion that utterly opposite codes of behaviour (customary morality) were equally valid. This lead to the notion that every occupational jati was engaged in an imitatio dei- i.e. the potter feels God is a potter & hence derives a psychic satisfaction from making pots, the thief reckons God is the ultimate thief etc. Hence each jati reckons it alone is supreme because it is wholly engaged in God's quintessential activity. Thus each jati develops its own spirituality and (the inevitable corrollary) coercive system.
2) The metropolitan cash nexus, when supported by State power used for extraction of surpluses, does not in its expansion dissolve the default system, but leeches resources off it causing it to crash. This is because the initial rise in productivity incident on monetisation is ultimately swamped by ecological degradation, fiscal incentive incompatability, and Social Capital failure arising from collapse of public good provision. The metropolitan cash nexus esperiences a tulip bust and learns fear of a more fundamental collapse affecting every aspect of Socialisation. Fear of the crash means the metropolitan cash nexus ultimately resurrects jati as varna (legitimating ideology for social stratification).
3) Only if the State becomes effective in provision of public goods at the village level can the crashing default system be expunged from the directory. However, if the State is dependent on its survival on the crisis of the default system- i.e. it is a protest against what it perpetuates- this aint gonna happen.
4) Though jati type caste appears to be, under ideal conditions, a co-operative solution that would dominate competitive solutions- giving rise to dreams of 'Ramrajya'. Gandhian village swaraj, Buddhist Socialism, Vandana Siva styleEco-Feminism etc- this is just a pipe dream. It is not productivity that rises but the amount of time people spend in 'consciousness raising' and other such magical practices. Sure, this may attract outside funding- but it aint sustainable as a universal panacea unless they like hit upon a better class of recreational drug or find a way to intensify orgasm or something.
5) Caste in present day India is about people from larger jatis taking power by claiming to speak for smaller jatis that have, arbitrarily, been adjudged to be of equally low status. It represents a redistribution of wealth from the poorest to the richest in these arbitrarily defined 'castes'. This is not done in a Pareto efficient way. Rather there is a huge and growing deadweight cost to the whole economy. The rich can escape this, because, in India, increased life chances equals increased elasticity of supply and demand (i.e. the rich can always get what they want by circumventing the system. Not just a Black Economy, India has always had (infinitely many!) Anti-States, Anti-Commons, Anti-Relgions (as well as Anti-Anti-States etc) simoultaneous memberships of which is the path to thrive.
5) Some social customs can (only if everyone is very good in the first place) internalise externalities, improve Schelling focal point choices, turn prisoner dillemmas into positive sum games etc, etc. But why bring caste into it? The English word caste dervies from the Portugese and Spanish notion that degree of miscegenation determines 'nature' and hence ought to determine social status. Does anyone believe that sort of racial nonsense anymore?
6) One good point about jati-dharma (caste based religion) is that it recognises that from the moral point of view there is a huge range of choices which are equally acceptable. However,some modern Hindus believe that their own vegetarian jati-dharma is the universal morality and seek to convert everybody to an irrational and socially very costly (and potentially environmentally disasterous) code of conduct. But the same point applies to Islam, missionary Christianity, Eco-feminism, Marxism, Hitler worship etc.
Caste is crap. However economic analysis of its causes and consequences should continue so as to prevent history books from spouting silly conspiracy theories- the Brahmins did it! No, it was the British. Actually, you're both wrong- it was the lizard people from Planet X.
nuff said
As a responsible Hindu I feel im my religious duty to add to the nonsense written about the caste system by making a couple of points, not I believe, highlighted elsewhere-
1) India was a mixed regime economy with a metropolitan cash nexus parallel to a system of non-monetized specialisation & division of labour where agicultural land and surpluses were periodically redistributed according to some ill-defined communal collective bargaining which more often than not meant whole sub-castes (endogamous occupational groups called jatis) voting with their feet. During exogenous monetary shocks/ natural disasters the unmonetized jati system of specialisation and exchange was the default value. It kept things ticking over and allowed the clearing of new land and rural settlement with low capital investment but the full complement of services. Theoretically, endogamy was supposed to facillitate the diffusion of new techniques of production and thus raise productivity. Religion tends to say what IS is right. God wants it that way. Vedic Hindu religion was particularly suitable for this because it emphasised the equality of all paths to the deity- i.e. the notion that utterly opposite codes of behaviour (customary morality) were equally valid. This lead to the notion that every occupational jati was engaged in an imitatio dei- i.e. the potter feels God is a potter & hence derives a psychic satisfaction from making pots, the thief reckons God is the ultimate thief etc. Hence each jati reckons it alone is supreme because it is wholly engaged in God's quintessential activity. Thus each jati develops its own spirituality and (the inevitable corrollary) coercive system.
2) The metropolitan cash nexus, when supported by State power used for extraction of surpluses, does not in its expansion dissolve the default system, but leeches resources off it causing it to crash. This is because the initial rise in productivity incident on monetisation is ultimately swamped by ecological degradation, fiscal incentive incompatability, and Social Capital failure arising from collapse of public good provision. The metropolitan cash nexus esperiences a tulip bust and learns fear of a more fundamental collapse affecting every aspect of Socialisation. Fear of the crash means the metropolitan cash nexus ultimately resurrects jati as varna (legitimating ideology for social stratification).
3) Only if the State becomes effective in provision of public goods at the village level can the crashing default system be expunged from the directory. However, if the State is dependent on its survival on the crisis of the default system- i.e. it is a protest against what it perpetuates- this aint gonna happen.
4) Though jati type caste appears to be, under ideal conditions, a co-operative solution that would dominate competitive solutions- giving rise to dreams of 'Ramrajya'. Gandhian village swaraj, Buddhist Socialism, Vandana Siva styleEco-Feminism etc- this is just a pipe dream. It is not productivity that rises but the amount of time people spend in 'consciousness raising' and other such magical practices. Sure, this may attract outside funding- but it aint sustainable as a universal panacea unless they like hit upon a better class of recreational drug or find a way to intensify orgasm or something.
5) Caste in present day India is about people from larger jatis taking power by claiming to speak for smaller jatis that have, arbitrarily, been adjudged to be of equally low status. It represents a redistribution of wealth from the poorest to the richest in these arbitrarily defined 'castes'. This is not done in a Pareto efficient way. Rather there is a huge and growing deadweight cost to the whole economy. The rich can escape this, because, in India, increased life chances equals increased elasticity of supply and demand (i.e. the rich can always get what they want by circumventing the system. Not just a Black Economy, India has always had (infinitely many!) Anti-States, Anti-Commons, Anti-Relgions (as well as Anti-Anti-States etc) simoultaneous memberships of which is the path to thrive.
5) Some social customs can (only if everyone is very good in the first place) internalise externalities, improve Schelling focal point choices, turn prisoner dillemmas into positive sum games etc, etc. But why bring caste into it? The English word caste dervies from the Portugese and Spanish notion that degree of miscegenation determines 'nature' and hence ought to determine social status. Does anyone believe that sort of racial nonsense anymore?
6) One good point about jati-dharma (caste based religion) is that it recognises that from the moral point of view there is a huge range of choices which are equally acceptable. However,some modern Hindus believe that their own vegetarian jati-dharma is the universal morality and seek to convert everybody to an irrational and socially very costly (and potentially environmentally disasterous) code of conduct. But the same point applies to Islam, missionary Christianity, Eco-feminism, Marxism, Hitler worship etc.
Caste is crap. However economic analysis of its causes and consequences should continue so as to prevent history books from spouting silly conspiracy theories- the Brahmins did it! No, it was the British. Actually, you're both wrong- it was the lizard people from Planet X.
nuff said
Indglish & English literature
Indglish literature
Indian fiction in English
To understand Indglish writing, we first need to look at why English literature, from its inception as national project, should so concern itself with exotic locales
England is believed to be the first 'modern' country in the sense of permitting the hegemony of a literate middle class whose vehicle to class power- following the Black Death and the ensuing crisis of Serfdom- was the championing of a deontic legalistic civil society that could protect a mode of production based on the hiring of factors of production and their combination according to rational calculation and scientific choice of technique. In order to legitimate their hegemony, the English middle class was determined to display infinite plasticity & porosity as characteristic of their vernacular- making a spatial rather than temporal claim of universality on its behalf- by seeking to adorn it with all the ornaments of prestigious ancient and modern languages anywhere. Thus, the English language reacts to meeting with any foreign culture or language -which has any sort claim to privilige- by not an agon but mimesis- i.e. an attempt to show that the exotic bloom can be made natal to the genius of their own country or Empire. Indeed, on encountering India & Persia, English very rapidly developed a lush 'oriental' literature- think Tom Moore, Southey etc- which 'Native' Anglophone Indians would later appear to be imitating- but this with the naive charm of the 'Native'- for authenticity read backwardness- permitting the metropolitan audience to once again indulge in a discredited, obsolete, genre on the grounds that since the 'Native' is speaking (and since 'Natives' are never listened to, they only ever speak 'for the first time') it aint the old infantile mush being recycled but something at once exotic and 'universal'. By this analysis the ultimate Indglish author is Indrani Aikath Gyaltsen who simply plagiarised some second rate rural chick lit English author from the 50's and presented it as a picture of a life in an Indian village! American critics- not all in obeisance to 'aesthetic affirmative action'- were quick to coo over Indrani's 'Crane's Morning' but Indrani, forgetting that old adage- kiya sharam to foota karam- for shame if you blush, the miracle turns to mush- dear dotty Indrani has gone and went and committed suicide rather than proudly claiming her place at the apex of the Indglish pantheon, but then- what to do?- she actually lived in India- never a good idea for an Indglish author- where plagiarism is attributed to a poverty of ideas- rather than post modern hi jinks- and thus still considered shameful.
Anyway getting back to the story of why English literature is so interested in exotic locales- an analysis we must complete in order to arrive at a proper taxonomy of Indglish literature- the second major motivating force has to do with the search for Utopia- i.e. the location of a society which has, in some respect, superior mores from some point of view. Here the locus classicus would be 'The Empire of the Nairs- an Eutopian romance' by James Lawrence which focused on the freedom and high position of women within the aristocratic Nair community of Malabar. Shelley was greatly influenced by this book.
As far as Indglish novels go- I think responsible writers do wish to present some of the virtues of Indian family and social life- not to mention religion and spirituality- in a form which could be helpful or inspiring to other people and communities. However, this effort has been entirely in vain because of the low character and tamsic mindset of publishers, reviewers and academics. Furthermore, since democratic India offers so many diverse avenues for individual and social metanoia- i.e. self- expression and social action- worthwhile people simply aren't going to waste time trying to turn back the tide in this respect. This is a pity because Indian literature is didactic and excels in the depiction of ideal characters. However, Indglish authors are entirely ignorant of the correct mimamsa of Shruti, Smriti & Kavya. Actually, vernacular language authors, too, are pretty crap in this respect- but that is forgivable because like maybe they're proto-Marxists or marsupial Feminists or something. Anyway, this type of Indglish fiction may exist but it aint going to get published or if it is published it aint going to get reviewed or if it is reviewed its gonna get panned or if it isnt panned it will probably turn out not be Indglish at all but like fucking French or something.
The third reason for English to cover exotic locales has to do with making money, gaining power- and accumulating, organising, and deploying information towards that end. Because of the scandal of English's lack of, or strategic turning its back on, a home grown Mimamsa- which turned its practice of poetry into a reverse poiesis- a reverse kenosis- thus endowing its foundational character as a hypertrophying cancer of expression rather than an evolving organ of ever more subtle intuition- oracular only in prescribing the ubuquity of the faking of a sensibility rather than truly metanoiac in harmonising with dike's dhvani- the inter-sujective's historic system of echoes and reverberations- and thus destructive of public paideia for being constructed as a nexus of pleonexia; creative only of a Theophrastian chrematistics not an Aristotelian economy of tradition- but, what am I complaining about anyway?- afterall, this is the really exciting 'merging of horizons' that Indglish offers us 'breath blinded mirrors' of Rishis and Pirs. It is here that the question 'can the subaltern speak?' is answered by everybody 'shitting higher than their arsehole' as Wittgenstien so charmingly put it. This is where we can all make a contribution- this is the reason vernacular poets and novelists ultimately come to covet the English language; for here- indeed- is renewed the ancient Jatra of the gadarene swine- & not exotic at all, Indglish literature turns out to be the very veil of the Weltgeist whose Apocalypse is the Overload of the Information Age.
Anyway that's why my novels are crap. What's your excuse?
Indian fiction in English
To understand Indglish writing, we first need to look at why English literature, from its inception as national project, should so concern itself with exotic locales
England is believed to be the first 'modern' country in the sense of permitting the hegemony of a literate middle class whose vehicle to class power- following the Black Death and the ensuing crisis of Serfdom- was the championing of a deontic legalistic civil society that could protect a mode of production based on the hiring of factors of production and their combination according to rational calculation and scientific choice of technique. In order to legitimate their hegemony, the English middle class was determined to display infinite plasticity & porosity as characteristic of their vernacular- making a spatial rather than temporal claim of universality on its behalf- by seeking to adorn it with all the ornaments of prestigious ancient and modern languages anywhere. Thus, the English language reacts to meeting with any foreign culture or language -which has any sort claim to privilige- by not an agon but mimesis- i.e. an attempt to show that the exotic bloom can be made natal to the genius of their own country or Empire. Indeed, on encountering India & Persia, English very rapidly developed a lush 'oriental' literature- think Tom Moore, Southey etc- which 'Native' Anglophone Indians would later appear to be imitating- but this with the naive charm of the 'Native'- for authenticity read backwardness- permitting the metropolitan audience to once again indulge in a discredited, obsolete, genre on the grounds that since the 'Native' is speaking (and since 'Natives' are never listened to, they only ever speak 'for the first time') it aint the old infantile mush being recycled but something at once exotic and 'universal'. By this analysis the ultimate Indglish author is Indrani Aikath Gyaltsen who simply plagiarised some second rate rural chick lit English author from the 50's and presented it as a picture of a life in an Indian village! American critics- not all in obeisance to 'aesthetic affirmative action'- were quick to coo over Indrani's 'Crane's Morning' but Indrani, forgetting that old adage- kiya sharam to foota karam- for shame if you blush, the miracle turns to mush- dear dotty Indrani has gone and went and committed suicide rather than proudly claiming her place at the apex of the Indglish pantheon, but then- what to do?- she actually lived in India- never a good idea for an Indglish author- where plagiarism is attributed to a poverty of ideas- rather than post modern hi jinks- and thus still considered shameful.
Anyway getting back to the story of why English literature is so interested in exotic locales- an analysis we must complete in order to arrive at a proper taxonomy of Indglish literature- the second major motivating force has to do with the search for Utopia- i.e. the location of a society which has, in some respect, superior mores from some point of view. Here the locus classicus would be 'The Empire of the Nairs- an Eutopian romance' by James Lawrence which focused on the freedom and high position of women within the aristocratic Nair community of Malabar. Shelley was greatly influenced by this book.
As far as Indglish novels go- I think responsible writers do wish to present some of the virtues of Indian family and social life- not to mention religion and spirituality- in a form which could be helpful or inspiring to other people and communities. However, this effort has been entirely in vain because of the low character and tamsic mindset of publishers, reviewers and academics. Furthermore, since democratic India offers so many diverse avenues for individual and social metanoia- i.e. self- expression and social action- worthwhile people simply aren't going to waste time trying to turn back the tide in this respect. This is a pity because Indian literature is didactic and excels in the depiction of ideal characters. However, Indglish authors are entirely ignorant of the correct mimamsa of Shruti, Smriti & Kavya. Actually, vernacular language authors, too, are pretty crap in this respect- but that is forgivable because like maybe they're proto-Marxists or marsupial Feminists or something. Anyway, this type of Indglish fiction may exist but it aint going to get published or if it is published it aint going to get reviewed or if it is reviewed its gonna get panned or if it isnt panned it will probably turn out not be Indglish at all but like fucking French or something.
The third reason for English to cover exotic locales has to do with making money, gaining power- and accumulating, organising, and deploying information towards that end. Because of the scandal of English's lack of, or strategic turning its back on, a home grown Mimamsa- which turned its practice of poetry into a reverse poiesis- a reverse kenosis- thus endowing its foundational character as a hypertrophying cancer of expression rather than an evolving organ of ever more subtle intuition- oracular only in prescribing the ubuquity of the faking of a sensibility rather than truly metanoiac in harmonising with dike's dhvani- the inter-sujective's historic system of echoes and reverberations- and thus destructive of public paideia for being constructed as a nexus of pleonexia; creative only of a Theophrastian chrematistics not an Aristotelian economy of tradition- but, what am I complaining about anyway?- afterall, this is the really exciting 'merging of horizons' that Indglish offers us 'breath blinded mirrors' of Rishis and Pirs. It is here that the question 'can the subaltern speak?' is answered by everybody 'shitting higher than their arsehole' as Wittgenstien so charmingly put it. This is where we can all make a contribution- this is the reason vernacular poets and novelists ultimately come to covet the English language; for here- indeed- is renewed the ancient Jatra of the gadarene swine- & not exotic at all, Indglish literature turns out to be the very veil of the Weltgeist whose Apocalypse is the Overload of the Information Age.
Anyway that's why my novels are crap. What's your excuse?
riddle of the Uttrarakanda
The riddle of the Uttarakanda explained- Lord Ram’s anukrosha
There was a tendency in the Nineties for number of Western writers and academics (e.g. Fred Halliday, Karen Armstrong, etc) to ascribe to ’Hindu fundamentalists’ a desire to ’turn Lord Rama into a vengeful Father God’ - i.e. Yahweh- and thus impose an Abrahamic Monotheism on a previously heteronomously (ie. superstitiously) polytheistic populace. According to this view, the demand that India should be called ’Bharat’is also a sinister part of the conspiracy because the Bharat after whom our country is named is not (as you and I innocently assumed) the son of Sakuntala but ’the step-brother of Lord Rama’ (this last piece of idiocy from our own beloved Gayatri Spivak Chakroboty who claims to know Sanskrit and be of Brahmin caste! If you don’t believe me, check her ’Critique of Post Colonial Reason)
Strangely, few seem to pick up on the relationship between Ram and Abram- though it might lend a sort of sinister conviction to their claim.
The uttara kanda portion of the Ramayana is not really a puzzle. What is puzzling is how a previous generation of great Indians totally got it wrong. Thus Rajaji says that the Uttara Kanda is not canonical but perhaps an interpolation reflecting the tragic lives of our womenfolk- i.e. Rajaji is accepting the Colonialist view that Hinduism is basically about making women miserable, just as Gandhiji accepted Katherine Mayo’s view that India’s main problem- and the reason it could not legitimately take up arms to liberate itself- was MASTURBATION. Only the peasants toiling in the fields- Mayo tells us- have not ruined themselves utterly through self-abuse- but only because the ryots under the benevolent British Raj are too emaciated and undernourished to muster up an ejaculation.
What is the key utterance of the uttara kanda? It is this. The barber says ’I am not Rama’. But if the barber is not Rama then Ramrajya is just Rama’s Raj not democracy. So long as there are two moralities- one for the Ruler another for the Subjects- there is no democracy. True Ram’s throne was nothing but the love of the people. Tulsi tells us-
Danda jatinha kara bheda jahan nartaka nrtya samaaja
Jeetahu manahi sunia asa Raamacandra ken raaja!
(Much prattles the Machiavellian parrot of Stick & Carrot, Divide and Rule
But Love’s plural dance of Ego-conquest was Ramrajya’s only tool!)
How then could Lord Rama change the husband’s suspicious nature with respect to his wife?- i.e how stop the fool from destroying his own happiness? How change Society’s attitude to the return of the wandered wife? (What if it was not your sister-in-law but your sister who had been abducted or gone astray?) Since Lord Rama was the one most beloved, he had to inflict this pain on himself so that through anukrosha all beings could advance. This is the King as pharmakos- the scapegoat- who takes on all the evils of the realm so as to free his subjects from them. However the Greek and Hebrew pharmakos just ended with the slaughter of some dumb animal. The true pharmakos is to take on suffering not for death- death is easy, ask any suicide bomber- but for the sake of knowledge, for true knowledge- as Aeschylus saw- comes only through suffering.
But what is this saving knowledge? The answer addresses the most basic anxiety humans have- what Freud called the ’fort da’ problem- object permanence & abandonment issues- the baby’s anxiety that the mother ceases to exist when not visible. Baby’s anger at the mother when she returns- baby’s refusal to play and turning angrily away for not having forgiven the mother for ceasing to exist.
Now Indian poets had long ago made the equation between the viyogini (woman separated from lover) and the yogini (woman in mystic trance) both do not eat, are turned away from the input of the senses, have single pointed concentration etc.
Thus emotional dualism is the same as intellectual monism. Puranic and Upanishadic Religion cash out as each other.
Why is this important? It means there is a bridge between absence and presence, existence and non-existence. Thus Ramrajya does not depend on whether Rama lives or dies, is exiled or enthroned. real or imaginary.
Uttara Kanda is political. Why? Because it prescribes absoulute reciprocity and symmetry between all agents. There are no priviliged frames of reference or points of view. To quote Brahma Sutra aphorism 3.3.37- vyatihaaraha, visinsanthi hiitaravat- ’Scripture prescribes reciprocity between worshipper and worshipped’
From the point of view of both information theory and our own mimamsa- memory, love, and ’identity’ are disequilibrium phenomena- but this negentropy is life and so says Valmiki, though presently breath-blinded, the mirror of salvation.
To end let me quote Aziz Mian Qawwall’s ’Ram tera gorakh dandha’- ’Aaa Ram! Aaram.’
Saturday, 3 October 2009
National Bourgeoisies and Bildungburgertums
In traditional Marxist thinking, the National Bourgeoisie are the native merchants who supply local markets rather than the evil compradors who are involved in International Trade through a tie-up with big Multi-Nationals. The Marxists favoured an alliance with the National Bourgeoisie because they believed that they would be hostile to the (Western) Metropolitan Capitalist powers and harbour a desire to industrialize rapidly so as to cease their Nation's humiliating dependence on foreign imports.
The Bildungsburgertum- the 'educated middle class'- were sprung from the same origins as the National Bourgeoisie. Their big shtick was import substituition with reference to ideas, intellectual capital, rather than manufactured goods. Their usefulness, to the National Bourgeoisie was in building bridges to the masses- whom they proclaimed the living incarnation of not incorrigible ignorance (as appeared to be the case) but the apotheosis of truly transcendental knowledge- and their seducing the yokels with a romantic, emotionally highly coloured, chauvinistic, irredentist, nationalism whose great utility was that it valorised and increased opportunities for the peasants' favourite past-times- viz. gang-rape and arson (Murder being viewed more as an obligation than a recreation in traditional societies).
Taken together, the National Bourgeoisie and the Bildungsburgertum, have a unique capacity, even under conditions of stasis, even without exogenous shocks- to really fuck up their own countries big time- economically and politically- as well as contributing to regional instability and a sort of permanent constituency for World War.
Why? Because the 'World Historic Mission' of both classes is based on mindless mendacity, a heartless lie.
Home produced sugar really isn't morally better than imported sugar- it's just sugar. Who produces the sugar should be decided by the principle of comparative advantage. That way, if the terms of trade are right (a condition the free working of the market might occasionally ensure) everybody has more sugar than they did before. This is called the gains from trade.
The National Bourgeoisie are in favour of home produced sugar because they want a closed market they can exploit. Now, it's no good saying, "Ah! Well if we have a National Planning Directorate to impose discipline then surely an import substitution strategy can be allocatively efficient in some long run (i.e. mythical) sense." Why? Because the rejoinder is- if you really have people who can enforce discipline and make plans fuck you need the Bourgeiosie for? Kick em to the curb.
The answer, I suppose would be- 'we need the Bourgeoisie for capital and management expertise and I dunno liberal democracy blah blah.'
Experience shows that isn't the case. The National Bourgeoisies take capital from goverments, mis-manage the industries they set up (taking advantage of their monopoly status in local markets) ignore any rules they don't like- and still end up worse off- in terms of rates of return- than they would have been under competitive discipline.
Import substitution under these conditions- i.e.with capital rationing, barriers to entry, etc- isn't incentive compatible. The leftists may speak of Agency Capture as the root of the problem but the truth is that any Bureaucratic regime is going to give rise to a class of fixers, a culture of fraud, from which, it is true, Ambanis might Phoenix like arise- but not as upholders of the haut bourgeois cultural values for which (truth be told) the Leftists alone have nostalgia.
When it comes to ideas, however, the dangers of import substitution are much graver, thus rendering- counter-intuitively- the National Bildungburgertums even more dangerous than their Bourgeois cousins. How so? Why?
Well, put it this way;- why use a foreign operating system which wasn't designed with your needs in mind- which has a lot of bloatware leading to slow startup- and which only works well half of the time when, instead,if you are any sort of patriot, you can purchase, for just a few dollars more, a 100 % domestically produced operating system- designed by organically farmed lesbian goats- which is guaranteed to totally shred your computer from a distance of 15 yards- especially seeing as you would have already had the good sense to swap your motherboard for a brick of weed and if that isn't a good enough reason for not bringing in your project on time, what is?
Put another way, the substitution of home-grown nonsense for foreign nonsense is dangerous. Why? Well by crediting the guy who first came up with an idea- even if he was a 'dead white male'- you gain the enormous advantage of being able to track back and see what mistakes he made. Why he was wrong. To reverse engineer intellectual capital may seem a way to fix bugs- it isn't. It's disabling History's firewall is all it is.
Though some people- like Kirshner in Argentina a few years ago- are mewing for a return of the National Bourgeoisie to save us from the horrors of neo-liberalism- what does that actually mean? No doubt, the Argentinian Moon is better than the American Moon but business is still just business, work is still just work, sugar is still just sugar and ultimately History still just History.
It has nothing to do with your adolescent sexual frustrations or childhood inferiority complexes- in other words precisely the stuff that fuels the Bildungsburgertum. In the same way that Art is what happens when the Artist, briefly, escapes his pathology, forgets his 'project'- why he has to be an Artist- who exactly is on his shit-list; so too is Development something which happens when you're not talking about it but cultivating your own garden. Indeed, and with equal truth, the same might be said for International Peace, International Prosperity and International something else which begins with P like I dunno mebbe under-Pants-reinforcing (an important problem according to the B.B.C's Jeremy Paxman).
In thinking about a big country like India we have to add a further twist- there is a State, an anti-State, an anti-anti-State and so on. Even community, every class interest, every mode of production- no matter how narrowly defined has a double, a shadow, a 'black' component. Indeed, the degree to which we belong to 'Civil Society' often depends on the degree to which we have a countervailing connection with its opposite. In these circumstances only the ignorant are savants, only the philistines are poets, and only the expats the true inheritors of the grand traditions of the Indian Bildungburgertum.
Order your copy now of my epic novel- 'War & Piss'- a study of the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on my chronic bed wetting in early Nineteenth Century Russia.
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