Why Gandhi failed to kill off khadi

Because the Second World War reduced the supply of mill cloth for civilians and because wages had risen, demand for khadi (home spun) was booming.
This posed a grave threat to Gandhi's core program.

He discussed methods of combating the menace of a healthy khadi industry with a fuckwit 'Social Reformer' of the period named S. Jaju.

Gandhi- My only condition will be that they (the weavers) should sell all the khadi they produce in the villages near about the centre of production, the tehsil, the district or at the most the province. They should  not,  like  the  people  of  Chicacole ( the city of Srikakulam),  produce  everything  for Bombay and use nothing at home.
J. Chicacole is an exception, and is the only production centre in the country for fine khadi.
G. Yes, even in that case I would ask the producers and sellers to wear what they produce or sell. They may send their articles outside but   they  mus t   also wear  them.  In   case they go   on  producing  fine
khadi   for Bombay but use only mill-cloth  themselves,  their  centre must cease to be run by the A. I. S. A. I would even insist that it be closed altogether.
J. Deducting something from the income of the craftsmen or women towards supply of khadi to them, we do make them wear some khadi. But this seems to be a sort of imposition. They do not take to it voluntarily.
G. I may put up with such a situation for a short period. I do not expect  people  to  take  to  khadi  immediately  and  to  accept non-violence.  We  must  educate  them  in  true  economics  and  in
non-violence. If we succeed in developing a true economic outlook in them,  they  would  ultimately  understand  non-violence  as  well.  An economics  which  runs  counter  to  morality  cannot  be  called  true economics. Our workers can develop an outlook of true economics in the villages only if they work under the inspiration of non-violence and morality.

Gandhiji worked tirelessly to destroy khadi- that is home-spun cloth. Yet, in the case of the fine muslin of Srikaulam, he failed. Why? Was it because he wasn't sleeping with a sufficient number of naked girls?
No.
The weavers of that place were highly skilled. They sold their produce at high prices in Bombay and used the money to buy cheaper mill cloth for themselves.
Gandhi was deeply distressed by those muslin weavers of Srikakulam; 'I know that Chicacole khadi is very popular and that it fetches a good  sale in  far  off  provinces;  but this  pains  me  very much.'

The All India Spinners Association employed 3000 workers. The expenditure was about 4 crore rupees as against revenue from sales of about 1 crore rupees. Yet, because of war time constraints on Mill production of textiles, khadi was profitable and this posed a problem.  How create Employment in such a way that it destroyed the Industry it concerned itself with?


J. Spinning, I hope, will become universal. Weaving of course will  be  a skilled craft carried on by a few as it is even today. The fact is that so long as there are mills, khadi production cannot  be  carried  on on a large  scale.  We  began  cloth self-sufficiency work in Surgaon. Ours was a five-year programme. Vallabhswami’s experience is that people do take to khadi but not intelligently. Once we withdraw from the centre, khadi also disappears. Unless the people grasp the place of khadi in
the entire economy of the village they will not stick to it. The benefits derived from self-sufficient khadi are so little that it offers hardly any attraction.
G. That also worries me. Vallabhswami’s words resound in my ears. Party feeling developed in his village. Fasting had to be resorted to. I feel that behind it all there was a mistake in approach somewhere. We offered inducements to the people, gave them facilities, but these do not serve our purpose. We have to discover to what length khadi, by its own inherent strength, can carry India forward. So far in our quest we have found that khadi is saleable in the cities but not in the villages. We have not yet succeeded in making it acceptable to the villagers. If we have been defeated we must confess our defeat. We should learn from our past experience and adopt  new  methods  of work if needed. That is why I say that we should stop producing khadi for the cities. Today about a crore of rupees worth of khadi is sold in the cities. We should hereafter make it clear to the cities that we cannot any more supply them ready-made khadi but will teach them how to produce it, leaving them the option of either producing it themselves or getting it from the producer. I am not enamoured of the sales of one crore of rupees worth of khadi in the cities. We should put into khadi work not money but brain and heart. In other words we shall now have ruthlessly to investigate the value of khadi in terms of its real potentialities. In case we find it does not carry us as far as we claimed, let us give it up or lower our claim or let us take up some other basic occupation such as agriculture. From the very beginning it has been my firm conviction that agriculture provides the only unfailing and perennial support to the people of this country. We should take it up and see how far we can go with it as basis. I would not at all mind if some of our young men serve the country by training themselves as experts in agriculture in place of khadi. I have come to realize that we have yet to overcome a lot of difficulties. The time has now come for us to pay attention to agriculture. Till now I believed that improvement in agriculture was impossible unless we had the administration of the State in our own hands. My views on this are now undergoing modification. I feel that we can bring about improvements even under the present conditions, so that the cultivator may be able to make some income for himself from the land even after paying his taxes. Jawaharlal says that any extra income to the peasant through the improvement of agriculture will be swallowed up under one  pretext  or  the  other  by  the  alien Government. But I feel that even if it were so, it should not hinder us from acquiring and spreading as much knowledge about agriculture as  possible.  It  may  be  that  the  Government  will  take  away  any additional  income  that  may  come  to  the  villagers  through improvements in agriculture. If they do, we can protest and teach the people to resist and make it clear to the Government that it cannot loot us in this manner. This is only by way of an illustration. I therefore hold that we must hereafter find workers who will interest themselves in agriculture.


Thus we see that the real reason Gandhi failed to kill off khadi was because he was prepared to give up completely and concentrate on killing off subsistence agriculture.
So, what is the moral of this story?
Non-violence can only succeed if you have sufficient moral fortitude to fully renounce it and shrilly denounce it if objective circumstances exist such that it might flourish in any case.

Extractive introjection & Arundhati Roy

What happens when I appropriate the affect proper to another to draw attention to myself? The psychoanalyst, Christopher Bollas, has coined the term 'extractive introjection' to describe this form of psychic confiscation and colonial control on the part of a parent or care giver.  In public discourse, something similar occurs when a person works himself or herself up into a state of rage or sorrow over the plight of some other group of people. Initially the move might appear to signal a superior sensitivity or higher sense of morality. However, the effect is the same as that of a parent who will not let the child experience anything for itself, communicate anything for itself, have feelings or emotions proper to its own circumstances, because the parent has asserted a monopoly over the child's experiences, feelings and communications.
Now it may be that there are certain rare medical conditions where the child's ability to experience things, feel things or communicate things is so damaged that, if the parent does not assert its right to be treated as if it did have experiences and feelings, third parties might fall into the ghastly sin of treating the child as less than human. Similarly, in Public discourse, it may be that there are classes of people who are 'invisible', whose voices can't be heard, and whose experiences and feelings are so devastating and overwhelming that a third party needs to act as their spokesman. Let us take the plight of Indian or Filipino domestic servants in posh areas of London. Some were mistreated by their employers. Their families back home were threatened. They were helpless victims of violence and exploitation. They could not speak out for themselves in public fora because their residence in the U.K was entirely dependent on their employers' whim and complaisance. Help came in the form of a local Church group which, working in concert with some concerned Filipino and South Asian women (not 'activists' necessarily), did something to remedy the situation. A Conservative M.P (supposedly the tool of the Capitalist class) backed this initiative and raised the matter in Parliament. The situation on the ground changed for domestic workers of this description. No one gained fame or garnered book sales or TV talk show appearances or boosted their political career as a result of doing the right thing by people who, in that instance, were not able to represent themselves. That changed. I understand that the support organization for these domestic servants- who are employed by overseas diplomats or high net worth individuals- is now led and managed by people drawn from amongst their own number, though, no doubt, other good people would be involved as is natural in any worthwhile project.
The agency and sense of self-worth of people in this line of work has been enhanced. There has been no 'extractive introjection'.

A quite different case- one in which an actor raised a hue and cry about an injustice suffered by people of a different gender and ethnicity- is that of Joanna Lumley's intervention on behalf of Gurkha soldiers unfairly denied a right to settlement in the U.K. This intervention was successful because Ms. Lumley was speaking up for, amongst others, Victoria Cross winners whose Himalayan dignity could admit no demand, like unto the one made of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, that grizzled warriors exhibit their wounds to win the country's favor. The savage smile of Ms. Lumley prosecuted her campaign with such blood thirsty civility and all terrorizing good taste that the Government quailed and none could, in foro conscientiae, upbraid them for a cowardice of which no man in England was not equally guilty. This too is the opposite of 'extractive introjection' being a tactic wholly savage and the polar opposite of everything essentially Civilized, Churchy, or in keeping with what is termed the Public Justification Principle by Collegial neurotics.

Worse than extractive introjection is 'Munchausen's syndrome' where a parent or care-giver actually inflicts hurt on the child so as to gain medical attention. As in the former case, the parent gets to look like a saint or martyr battling the world on behalf of their small defenceless child. The doctors are all callous bastards in the pay of Big Pharma. That is proved coz they keep saying there's nothing wrong with my kid. Well, I showed them! Obviously, since Big Pharma is actually controlled by like Globalized Finanzkapital which in turn is controlled by the lizard people from Planet X who have mind control powers, what happened is the doctors accused me of harming my own kid! How fucked is that?

Things like Subaltern Studies & Post Colonial literary theory & Arundhati Roy style 'activism' & Chomskian gob-shiterry is 'extractive introjection'. But it is the Munchausen syndrome of the politico-administrative class, which captures the interessement mechanism intended to tackle the underlying problem, which such 'extractive introjection' actually serves.

There is no question that Capitalism, or bureaucratic Socialism, or- indeed- any political ordering of Society, poses a threat to vulnerable groups of people. The literature of an earlier period went to the heart of the matter by focusing on what I might call the concurrency problem of the human heart. The Canadian economist, Stephen Leacock, summarised the Social melodrama of the initial stage of Industrial Capitalism in his essay titled 'Dead! and never called me mother!'- the reference being to the novel 'East Lynne' which came out in 1861. More generally, in popular literature of this school, which extends up to J.B. Priestley's 'An Inspector calls'-  the Capitalist understands too late that his salvation lies in ameliorating the condition of the workers. If the workers strike back at the Capitalists it generally turns out they kill their own brother or the 'good guy' or something like that. People have good hearts, it's just good intentions aren't coordinated properly; in any negotiation or interaction there is a concurrency problem. It appears there is need for a Messianic figure to, in the final words of the Old Testament, 'turn the hearts of the fathers towards their children and the hearts of children towards their fathers' so as to avert Apocalypse.
I recall reading a play in Hindi class back in '75 about a young zamindar who orders his Estate Manager to invite all his tenants to a feast for his sister's wedding. The Manager naturally provides low quality food and sets a high 'nazrana' tariff on invitees, thinking it a good opportunity to boost revenues and recoup the money spent on the sister's dowry. But there is a new spirit stirring amongst the peasants. They boycott the wedding even though the Zamindar has managed to rectify the situation and provided good food for them and cancelled the 'nazrana' tariff.
The Estate Manager feels he has been vindicated. Yield the peasants an inch and they take an ell.
But the Zamindar sees he has not gone far enough.  No doubt, once Vinobha Bhave came on the scene, he would have given up his land in Bhoodhan- at least, that was the correct answer to the exam question on the play.
Though the Social concurrency problem of the heart is significant, incentive compatible mechanism design alone tackles the underlying issue.
Arundhati Roy knows that literature of the 'Dead! and never called me Mother!' sort, appeals to all classes of people in India and can easily be turned into movies- but, if she wrote that sort of thing, she'd  look bad in elite circles. So that's the charitable explanation for her hysterical 'extractive introjection.'

But why be charitable to that wealthy fuckwit?

Arundhati Roy- as Casteist agent of Robber baron Capitalism

This is a link to Arundhati Roy's latest rant- it's a little more paranoid than normal and, unintentionally, an advert for a new Scheme of Narendra Modi's which my broker really ought to have called me about.


This bit is hilarious-


Armed with their billions, these NGOs (she means those funded by Rockefeller, Ford, Gates and so on) have waded into the world, turning potential revolutionaries into salaried activists, funding artists, intellectuals and filmmakers, gently luring them away from radical confrontation, ushering them in the direction of multi-culturalism, gender, community development—the discourse couched in the language of identity politics and human rights 


What fucking revolutionaries are these you are talking about Ms. Roy? Cowardly little cockroaches are a threat to nobody. 'Radical confrontation' is a confrontation which Radicals lose, unless they win, in which case they sell out cheaper than the last bunch of crooks. The Naxalites fuck over the tribals more thoroughly than Sab pe Zulum and hand over mineral resources at a lower tariff.
The reason rich people set up Charitable Foundations has to do with buying prestige- essentially a rent but one associated with status rivalry within their own milieu. However, that prestige also operates a barrier to entry. Essentially, after a certain point, even a successful thief has an interest in stuff like Civil Society, Property Rights, Judicial oversight and so on.
But they don't need to seduce 'potential revolutionaries'. People who can be seduced aren't 'potential revolutionaries' but 'potential canon fodder' or 'potential traitors'.  As for genuine Revolutionaries, history shows it is cheaper to let them be killed by their comrades especially because their bill for services rendered will only fall due after they get rid of the more expensive bunch of crooks you're currently having to deal with.
It is mid-level hacks, who didn't make it in the rat-race, who aren't mission-critical, working for organizations funded by the bien pensant rich, who coo and gush over 'activists, artists, intellectuals and film-makers'. But both types of parasite are wholly irrelevant, from the Socio-Economic point of view, and are merely engaged in a conspiracy to make each other feel important.


Everybody knows this already.
I suppose, if I were downtrodden and could get a bunch of guys to go kill for me till I get to be declared the Revolutionary Commissar of whatever- cool, I'd just do it. The reason I haven't is because I can't get a bunch of guys to go kill or rape or just plain steal for me- not me, obviously, I mean the Sacred Revolution which will purify our land which has been raped and sodomized and subjected to cunnilingus and like Narendra Modi was watching and taping the whole thing on his i-phone and then someone cut open its belly and dragged a foetus out of it and sang Vande Mataram or dunno like Valmiki Ramayana or something equally Fascist while sodomizing the said foetus, which was just quietly reading Noam Chomsky and underlining portions in the text and writing 'How True!' in the margin even though it was being brutally raped and sodomized and its belly was being cut open so a yet smaller foetus could be dragged out of it, and the person doing the raping and sodomizing and illegal abortion (due to the fetus was female) was receiving the Police Medal for Gallantry while simultaneous accepting the Magsaysay Award and like the Western Media was standing right there, I was next to them, and I said 'Dear Western Media see that sodomized foetus reading Noam Chomsky over there? Its belly is being split open. Will you not please please publish an article about this heinous misdeed?' That's what I said to them, and guess what? They turned around and said to me 'Sorry Ms. Roy. We have orders from Head Office. No negative reporting on India due to Indians are using money nowadays. Since people who use money get caught in 'cash nexus' they are agents of Capitalism. Hence we can't say anything negative about them- even though they are clearly Indians and not White at all. Have a nice day.'


Roy isn't an economist and so can't be blamed of falling far short of the high standard for reckless disregard for the truth set by Subramaniyam Swamy or Amartya Sen. Furthermore, reading her makes me bullish on Tatas and Essar and Vedanta and the Ambanis though in the case of at least two of them I have good reason to be very bearish indeed.
Has Roy been paid to thus boost Indian Corporates? Well, indirectly, I suppose she has. But only indirectly.
Stuff about the fundamental right to property, subsidiarity, transparency, good governance through proper mechanism design- the boring stuff- unfortunately is happening in India and it is unstoppable because every robber has a tipping point after which he turns into a Law & Order men. Well, that isn't true, but in aggregate its is. Nations have a tipping point. Nothing to do with 'Radical confrontation'. How is it radical to go to the Law Court to assert your statutory rights? Advocates have an adversarial relationship but no one is 'confrontational' to the Judge except in movies.


It is true that a bunch of second rate and politically irrelevant hacks, dilletantes, and poseurs make a noise about whatever shite Roy makes a noise about but- so what? Under her problematization, what, or where, is the countervailing power which makes her interessement worthwhile?


Me? You? We're supposed to take on the Ambanis? Fuck we're supposed to do? If Roy is right we should be cashing out gilts and betting the farm their scrip will rise.


This is Roy's compassionate charity upon Dalits-
Young Dalit scholars who accept grants from the Ford Foundation cannot be too harshly judged. Who else is offering them an opportunity to climb out of the cesspit of the Indian caste system? 
Ms. Roy- who currently is judging Young Dalit scholars harshly if they take a grant from the Ford Foundation? If it is a non-Dalit person of Indian origin, then I must tell you the judgement impugns not the scholar in question but the person making it. I don't believe any Dalit is saying that people from their own community should forego advantages availed off by others. After all, the Dalit scholar may study Engineering or Medicine or something useful rather than Post Colonial or Subaltern shite.


Bottom line- this lady is 'one of us'. Sadly I'm no longer 'one of us'. Casteist shitheads like Roy turn my stomach. For this ghastly sin, I bet the karma God will curse me with a penurious retirement.

Ghalib ghazal 214

وحشت کہاں کہ بے خودی انشا کرے کوئی

ہستی کو لفظِ معنیِ عنقا کرے کوئی 

حسنِ فروغِ شمعِ سخن دور ہے اسد

پہلے دلِ گداختہ پیدا کرے کوئی

vaḥshat kahāñ kih be-ḳhvudī inshā kare koʾī
hastī ko lafz̤-e maʿnī-e ʿanqā kare koʾī
ḥusn-e furoġh-e shamʿ-e suḳhan dūr hai asad
pahle dil-e gudāḳhtah paidā kare koʾī




                              Now lost to Self Loss are the Sahara's rolled gold scrolls of Rhyme

How, as Phoenix, entail Existence to the Parrot beak of Time?

Asad, Conceptive beauty imparts a Candescence far indeed!

Must, as wicks, bardic hearts first burn all they bleed?

Where now is that Dark, Backward and Abysm of Clime

Whose Phoenix is the sugar-fond Parrot of Time

For Love spoke The Word, Ataraxia attacks

Smoke, thou memory bird of melted wax

Love is the crutch of Tamburlane

{1313,1}

واجب کا ہو نہ ممکن مصدر صفت ثنا کا
قدرت سے اس کی لب پر نام آوے ہے خدا کا

1) the necessary wouldn't [be able to] be contingent, like praise of the origin/source,
2) through that one's nature/Power, on the lip the name of the Lord comes

If prayer & fasting is to our back a rod

Must Nature in ecstasy cry out 'God!'?

Upon Men, Mercy, Mir, Mystic, explains

 Love, tho' a crutch- is Tamburlaine's

The rejected couplets from Ghalib's fourth

{4,8x}*

hai kahāñ tamannā kā dūsrā qadam yā rab
ham ne dasht-e imkāñ ko ek naqsh-e pā pāyā

1) where is the second step of longing, oh Lord?

2) we found the desert of possibility [to be] a single/certain/unique/excellent footprint

be-dimāġh-e ḳhajlat hūñ rashk-e imtiḥāñ tā ke

ek be-kasī tujh ko ʿālam-āshnā pāyā

1) I am irritable/impatient/disaffected from/with shame; {whither / to what end} an envy/jealousy of/for testing?
2) a single/sole friendlessness/helplessness/forlornness-- I found you world-{familiar/acquainted}!

{4,10x}

ḳhāk-bāzī-e ummīd kār-xānah-e t̤iflī
yās ko do-ʿālam se lab bah ḳhandah vā pāyā

1) the 'dust-game' of hope-- a workshop/business of childishness/childhood
2) [it/I] found despair [to be] open/cheerful, with a smiling/laughing lip, {like / by means of} the two worlds

{4,11x}

kyūñ nah vaḥshat-e ġhālib bāj-ḳhvāh-e taskīñ ho
kushtah-e taġhāful ko ḳhaṣm-e ḳhūñ-bahā pāyā

1) why wouldn't {prevailing / Ghalib's} wildness/madness be a {tax/toll}-receiver of peace/tranquility?
2) [it/someone] found the one slain by negligence/heedlessness [to be] an enemy of the 'blood-price'

Where, Lord, alights the foot of Ardency's stride?

The Sahara of Becoming is but a sole-print wide

 Maddened is my Innocence at the malice of its Test

Privily deflowered as boutonnière to thy chest!

Still, Sand castles anneal Hope & Calf Love, Veal, the Calf

Till, Despair teeth bare the Two Worlds' butcher laugh.

Love-mad I evince, by Indifference murdered to be heard

 Peace hath a Prince! Tender weregeld She the Word

Kaushik's Basu's 'Crossings at Benares Junction'

Funniest line ever in an Indglish play-
Mr. Gosh- 'National bard of India is not Rabindranath Tagore. Peacock is the correct answer."

Prof Kaushik Basu, the contriver of the 'Traveler's dilemma' as a critique of 'backwards induction' in Game theory has also written a hilarious little  play  - Crossings at Benares Junction' which combines old fashioned romanticism with game theoretic insights into intentionality and ethics.

Basu’s protagonist is a 39 year old bachelor, Siddharta, a professor of philosophy, who has just won an  International prize  and, as such, for complex socio-biological reasons, has suddenly become the ultimate matrimonial trophy for brainy women on the prowl for- I will not say Bengali beefcake, as that would be culturally insensitive- but a slippery, cerebral, hilsa like husband from the right side of the Hoogly.

In the first scene, the improbably named Melba Iyengar- an ambitious philosophy lecturer/documentary film-maker, who combines the emotional crassness of her generation (she is in her late 20’s) with the cultural illiteracy and naked careerism of the bien pensant N.G.O do-goodniks- makes indelicate advances to our blushing Bengali boy.
(En passant- I may note the curious attribution of sexual aggression to Iyengar females in Indglish fiction- vide Shoba De, Mukul Kesavan but not, I hasten to add, my own 'Samlee's daughter')

Miss Iyengar presses her suit on Siddhart using two powerful arguments.  Firstly, the fact that if he proposes she is sure to say yes- thus greatly increasing the expected value of proposing.  Secondly, three other people are competing for her hand. By delaying proposing, Siddharta keeps three others waiting in limbo. 


Hence, altruism would dictate proposing sooner rather than later so that three other men can get on with their lives.

Siddharta has till now played a stoic’s part- as indicated by his choice of Hindi song to play on the stereo.

Mai.N Zi.Ndagii Kaa Saath Nibhaataa Chalaa Gayaa
Har Fikr Ko Dhu.Ne.N Me.N U.Daataa Chalaa Gayaa

Barabaadiyo.N Kaa Soz Manaanaa Fizuul Thaa \- 2
Barabaadiyo.N Kaa Jashn Manaataa Chalaa Gayaa
Mai.N Zi.Ndagii...

Jo Mil Gayaa Usii Ko Muqaddar Samajh Liyaa \- 2
Jo Kho Gayaa Mai.N Usako Bhulaataa Chalaa Gayaa
Mai.N Zi.Ndagii...

Gam Aur Khushii Me.N Fark Na Mahasuus Ho Jahaa.N \- 2
Mai.N Dil Ko Us Muqaam Pe Laataa Chalaa Gayaa
Mai.N Zi.Ndagii...

I went on my way keeping faith with Life

Blowing away anxieties like smoke from a cigarette

Grief over disasters is a futile thing

I celebrated my calamities along life’s way

Whatever I received, I considered my fated portion

Whatever I lost, I resolved to forget and move on

I move my heart towards that (mystic) station where sorrow and joy are indistinguishable

He parries Melba’s crass attempt at seduction by claiming, firstly, that he is not at all sure that she will not reject him if he proposes and, secondly, that her mention of three other suitors is 'double counting' since only one of them could have her. This is a disingenuous argument, since Melba's point was about a duty to minimize the total waiting time of the other suitors- that being the only opportunity cost that arises where a woman is determined to marry a particular man and the fellow is dragging his heels.
 Siddharta, clearly, is either really stupid or clever enough to appear so when his happiness is at stake- in other words, the man is a born philosopher.

Fortunately, the arrival of other guests prevents Melba from raping the hero, thus ‘ruining’ him and leaving him no option but marriage to his assailant- so backward is Bharat, such things happening all the time, I yam telling you- simply to save his family’s izzat.

In the next Act, we meet Siddharta’s lost love- June. Or so we conclude from Siddharta’s choice of song. 

June points out, she was almost ten years older than him and did the right thing in marrying a pompous ass of an academic closer to herself in age. She counsels Siddharta to marry, to trust in God, and keep promises. 

‘Nibhana’- to abide by a commitment- is a key value expressed in the two songs- from the Dev Anand vehicle ‘Hum Donon’- Siddharta has played so far. Since the lyricist was Sahir Ludhianvi we see that both faithfulness in love and integrity in political engagement are meant. In this case, resistance to Right Wing Hindutva hooliganism is the righteous path.

Siddharta had promised God that he would give thanks in a temple if he gets the prize, but he is agnostic not only about God but also about the value of Prizes and- more to the point- the incentive compatibility of Marriage as an institution. Yet he is lonely. He has to ‘go out into the dark night’ not from fear of God but because fear is the biggest sin.

Here the text is a little unclear- is there a temple in ‘Plaza gardens’ or is there to be a political demonstration there, or is it a place to meet girls?- so we can’t be sure exactly what June is counseling Siddharta to do.

Siddharta announces that he is not a coward. He will walk out into the dark night. He is prepared to take the risk.

Siddharta’s dilemma is the classic Romantic dilemma- most fully realized in Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa- whereby ‘a boy loves with his full heart, a man loves with a full stomach’ (Kipling). However, the boy with the full heart can’t feed the beloved. She marries the fat older guy. But what happens when, a few years down the line, the boy wins a big prize and becomes an attractive prospect? How can he get a bride after his own heart rather than the full wallet that nestles against it? 

The problematic that where meaning is gamed, where emotions are strategic, where the subject matter of both epistemology and Aristotelian ethics- in other words both Knowledge and ‘Character’- are in flux for defined, as it were, by backward induction from the reference point of a mercenary, memoryless, game- then it is not only the fraudulent ‘businessman’ but also the scholar, the lover, the spouse, everybody in every relationship, who keeps going only by introducing more and more chaos into the system- but that system itself a Ponzi scheme that feeds off its own ever widening circle of ruination to make itself the only game in town…


The one rather artificial assumption in the above is that modern life is a memoryless- i.e  hysteresis free- game. Siddharta is worried by what happens if things suddenly stop- how can the world suddenly start up again.

Siddharth: I have not thought it through well enough to know the answer myself. But see, if everything stops, the earth, you, the protons and atoms inside you and inside me…   everything. It does seem obvious, right? That things cannot re-start again?

One way to reason is that whatever happens at any time is caused by the state of the world just before that. Now, if the world is motionless for some time, no matter how brief, there is a time when the world is motionless and just before that the world was motionless. Hence, motionlessness causes motionlessness. Hence, once there is no motion, there cannot be any motion.

This has lots of interesting implications. It means that we can never invent a TV set that can switch itself on. If it does, it is because we have programmed that in and there are small actions occurring inside it all the time. (Pause) What I wonder is, are we reaching this conclusion purely by deduction, or is this just a fact of life — that motion cannot come out of motionlessness.

Kavita: The fact that you reach this conclusion without ever having experienced the stoppage of everything suggests, doesn’t it, that you come to this conclusion by deduction.

Siddharth stares at her in disbelief.

Siddharth: Are you a philosopher? I am sorry to inflict this trivia on you…

Kavita: No, but I was taught philosophy. In fact, by you — at NDU.

Siddharth: Really?

More generally, from chemical clocks & Conway's game of life and so on, we are thoroughly familiar with the notion that 'everything can stop'- or more precisely 'nothing happening' occurs for any given number of time periods before novelty starts to appear or things to start up again. In other words, for any given specifiable world state there is a cellular automata model such that everything stops at time t and everything starts up again at time t+i.

Thus, Siddharta's puzzling over this is either the author justifying an implausible assumption- viz. the trope of a memoryless game- or else it is a pointer to the protagonist's emotional state. Well, d'uh, it is both- so that's okay.

Basu’s delightful, Shavian, jeu d’esprit has a happy ending and will be appreciated by all who read it. Except, of course, it would be even more fun to watch in an auditorium. And if anyone asks-
'Enjoying?'
'Simply!"
- will be my reply.