Indians and adventurism: social security?

Forgive me for starting with another allegory on cricket! No, I am not going to talk about why we lose, or if the present captain is worse than the previous one (well, I might get on that topic sometime later, when I am in a more sombre mood and the bitterness of the recent defeat has faded into the past), but I'll start with a report that the Australian coach Greg Chappell had a very stern dialogue with the team and told them in no uncertain words to come out of their comfort zones, get rid of the "attitude" and exhibit workman like discipline. Where the coach has got it all wrong is that the in the sports field it is the sense of adventure that drives the collective set set of individuals forward, that spirit of discovery and rediscovery of themselves is why people are addicted to sports, and Greg should remember this, not long ago he was a great player himself. What this Indian team lacks is the getting out of comfort zone in order to get into that adventurous mode. Responsibility can drive an individual to state of heightened upper echelons of mediocrity but only the zeal of charting newer paths drives him further, and the Indian, as a collective whole lacks that.

Take another example, can you ever imagine an Indian becoming the next J K Rowling? We are no less educated, at least the urban India, but how many mothers (that too single parent) can ever imagine of giving vent to her imagination through creative writing for children? How many individuals can take up any good idea to become venture capitalist, the big corporate houses like SUN Microsystems, Google, Microsoft, etc. all started out as garage ventures of students of varied calibre, but in India it will be extremely difficult for anyone to even attempt give shape to his ideas. So the natural question that needs to be asked is that there has to be a socio-economic factor that prevents the Indian mindset from coming out of his stupor. Given the massive success of Indians established in the developed nations, the factor should be macroscopic in nature. Of course you will find many writers trying to shout that Indians are coming out of the closet and stepping into the big world to rediscover their dream and realise it ...blah .....blah....., the number is minuscule given the volume of our population.

Trying to probe for the reason why the Indian mind set is so 'closed', I was desperate to find an answer, because I realized that I was also similarly cocooned, not coming out to realize at least some fraction of dreams that I had for this life time . I want to write, to excel in music, to travel around (that requires money!), and also do science! Now, why is it that I am simply sitting around doing nothing worthwhile (except trying to motivate myself at my job, a scientific research job, that I love to do anyway, but losing the interest at a very rapid rate!). The reason is simple, I am looking for financial stability for my family. I know my wife earns enough to support me and my son, but still it is not pardonable in our society that I take a year off writing a couple of novels which are desperate to come out of me, to translate a particular book by Bibhutibhushan Bandhopadhyay (and the idea is gnawing my being to the core), while my wife is keeping us well fed and clothed and sheltered. And ditto for any venture in music, I don't want to be a professional, but would love to sing my heart out and learn the "howabouts " (this word is coined by me!) of it from learned people, but.......Because it will take years for me to establish myself in any field, with very little financial emoluments in the field of writing for a struggling writer, I need the protection of a "permanent job" before I can venture out myself in any such endeavour. Also, continuing with science along side doing anything else is unthinkable in our set up!

Now, if I compare myself with, say J K Rowling, the question that hits me is: why is it that she was able to write to her hearts content (before becoming a millionaire, ouch!) and I am unable to? The answer is actually simple, she had the support of social security, which is non-existent for me. Social security, as the terminology specifies, is not just the meagre amount that is doled out to the individuals of the society to support themselves and the minor family members in the household, but also acceptance of such people in the society. I am lucky my wife is there to support my day dreams, had she not existed I wouldn't have dared to dream either, of writing a novel or translating one or singing myself silly to glory! Had there been social security, I would've trekked to the Himalayas lugging my laptop along, hooking on to the internet via the mobile and researched for my next novel, a fantasy set in a world different from the earth but entrenched in the political activism similar to that of the 2nd half of the twentieth century (of the earth), where individuals discover themselves through the eyes of two protagonists, one male and the other female, growing up in disparate sections of the society of 'haves' and 'have-nots', rather the 'ruling' and the 'ruled class', interchanging their respective classes in the journey of their lives......(the story goes on, I won't reveal any more here :-) !) .........

Well, I hope the day comes when despite of lack of social security, and with only the help of spousal security, the novel will come out. Till then I will only marvel at one Indian cricket captain, who in recent past was able to muster this feeling of adventurism in the Indian cricket team (and also to the general populace, including me!) where the individuals were able to shed their insecurity to strive to reach beyond their perceived limits. Perhaps the fact that he was pretty rich, and never felt the insecurity that the bearer of the middle class mentality do, helped him in his cause! But this is not to take any credit out of his natural capability and nature, every individual, no matter what his position in life is, always battles against his insecurity, and he who wins (even a few battles, if not all) is worthy of all the respect!!

Religion as control

Many of my allegories stem from cricket, or has some connections with the great game and its proponents. Sports links to life as much as anything else, also it doesn't exist in isolation, especially the sportsperson, that too in a sport that involves big money! But how does religion get attached to sports? I am sure you are aware of many such possible connections, but here is one of the less common one.

Now take this photo of a very special cricketer, Harbhajan Singh. Yours truly blogger holds him in great respect for his fighting attitude, carefree demeanour and athletic exuberance. In his fairly young life he has had quite a few come-backs, from various circumstances, involving minor controversies on and off the field, but with each come-back he has emerged a stronger personality. His is a recognised face all over the country, being a superstar cricketer, and it will need a very dumb nitwit to not to recognise the person in the picture.




Now here is a picture of his in which, well, indeed he has quite a different appearance, a rocking image of a flamboyant persona that he is. Indeed it took me sometime to recognise the valiant sardar in this rock star look. The swagger in his gait is evident from this freeze of a split second in a still frame. This event was a fashion show where a few Indian cricketers took on the to the ramp.






But this picture stumped me completely. Despite being an admirer of his cricketing abilities and fighting spirit and a swagger like approach to his game (and plausibly, life), I never envisaged this person as such a handsome guy, and here he is in a controversial advertisement for an alcoholic liquor company. The advertisement has been made controversial because the religious head of his congregation has publicly admonished him for letting himself be photographed with his hair let loose. Every organised religion has such edicts passed onto the followers, and the reason given is that lack of discipline results in faltering in one's path towards salvation, and hence the whole mass has to follow some generic rules to prove to the leaders that they are indeed well endowed for salvation!

I don't want to get into the details of the rules of the particular religious community to argue whether he was in his limits or not, nor shall I give arguments as to the leeway given to some other prominent members of the community who live on by breaking certain edicts and yet enjoy the privilege of not being censured in public. My argument is completely in the philosophical regime, regarding the issuance of such community wide edicts on every individual following a particular form of worship, irrespective of any particular religion.

Since mankind has not reached the level of consciousness where it can be guaranteed that the ordinary individual will not cause harm to his fellow human beings, every society needs to formulate and implement laws, rules, edicts to safeguard the spirit of humanity. Historically these laws were guided by the religious sentiments, whose main purpose was to control the negative tendencies of human nature by the fear of the unknown, using the concept of a universal creator, saviour and destroyer called God. The set up is very convenient as it gives the power into the hands of a small minority who control the masses by the manifestation of this fear of the unknown. These small minorities which constitute the leadership, in every religion, creed, or sect, then identify certain commonalities among its followers and create an aura of exclusiveness of their particular group, and create certain rules to preserve the exclusiveness of the group by passing community wide edicts to preserve the exclusiveness of their power over the community, in the guise of the protection of the exclusiveness of the group. The eagerness of the people to form exclusive groups is the manifestation of the fear of the unknown: as the group provides a security (by large numbers) and the exclusiveness gives the assurance of trust among the people.

But the basic nature of man is that it seeks freedom. Knowingly or unknowingly, each individual is fighting a battle for his freedom, and that involves fighting his insecurity, i.e. the fear of the unknown. The leaders who pass edicts and formulate rules need the security of the group behind him, and whenever they see any individual breaking away from their grasp they first try to bring him back into the fold by passing harsh strictures against the individual. In case the individual covers enough distance to go beyond the confines of their control, they attempt to vilify him and make him an outcast to ensure that others in the community do not follow his example, because anyone following the example of having an independent philosophy slackens the hold of these leaders on the community.

It might very well happen that certain individuals want to follow the traditional rules, because majority do not want to take up the responsibility of thinking and charting a path for themselves. But evolution demands that some individuals will break the mould and start charting his or her own path, maybe in some very small steps: but when this breaking away results in passing edicts from the religious leader, it smacks of fundamentalism which is caused by insecurity. As long as the person is not causing harm to anyone, he has the freedom to dress in whatsoever manner he may like, and passing strictures against him is violation of the basic tenet of civilization, of evolution.

Loss of power is something no one ever learns to cope with, and the fear of losing it makes the leaders lose the broader perspective and become very narrow minded. They do not learn from history, that closed minded control never works. Despite of all extreme control over the thinking process of the masses, a Galileo will always breakthrough the cage of unrealistic dogmas. For, the force of evolution, the urge of man to be free, is the basis of natural progression and hence unstoppable. Therefore this decree of stigmatizing Harbhajan Singh for having the gall to appear in his most handsome avatar is a churlish attempt to control his urge to express his own handsome self. It is a crime against humanity, and religions that profess such edicts have lost their philosophical moorings. It is time for humanity to redefine the regime of applicability of religion, and this is not confined to any particular religion. This sort of fundamentalism in religious setups is getting increasingly common the world over, and the time is nigh that clear debates are organised to redress the growing menace.

Nationalism as opium

Mad About Pyramids

The above link is an article in the 22 September issue of Science which reports a growing trend in the erstwhile developing nations but now seems to have engulfed all the societies in its grip. The gist of the report is that the archaeologists in Bosnia & Sarajevo are prevented from studying a hill over a small town called Visoko that resembles a pyramid (in shape). The archaeologists contend that the underlying rocks that form the structure of the hills are

stone slabs ... nothing more than fractured chunks of sediment called breccia, the remains of a 7-million-year-old lakebed that was thrust up by natural forces.

But the media, general public, and the politicians do not want to listen to the scientific explanation, and worse, they do not want to continue scientific study of the hills, instead they want to support the millionaire businessman who promises to find pyramids that will fill the poor Bosnians minds with a pride of the distant past, a prehistoric supercivilization, because the present has nothing much to offer. The archaeologists are teeming with anger as they say that the layer between the surface and underlying breccia has remains which are crucial to the study of the history of the last two millennia, but that layer is being destroyed by the overzealous diggers scouting for a pyramid. The archeologists' community is suffering from severe fund shortage, and the whole social and economic machinery is killing them in lieu of some false glory pertaining to the distant past.

The academic in me cringes whenever I come across such news, and these are getting more frequent nowadays. The rich guy will behave like an all encompassing god bringing a sense of romantic adventure by disclaiming all the orthodox notions of study, the general public will follow suit with salivating tongues, hoping for a redemption from their dreary existence by a deliverance that will not need any effort on their part, the politicians will feed on the ego of the rich guy, and the drunken fervour of the general mass to secure his own position by the support of money and popular choice. And the media will, of course, sell whatever that earns hard cash.

Building a culture of any worthy note requires generations of very hard sincere work, there is no shortcut to it. Cultures in the decline have the tendency of looking back to their glorious past to rejuvenate their fledgling morale. If the glorious past doesn't happen to have occurred in the near past then one doesn't have much choice but to look in the very distant past, and if someone conjures up something in the guise of lost glory then the public goes into frenzy. Nationalism can be used as a very effective opium to guide the people off from thinking coherently, logically, to lure them into a false sense of well being, and the politicians love it as it doesn't involve any effort on their part. The truth can go to hell!!

This particular news is from Bosnia, but this is a very common feature all over the world, in fact this trait confirms the universal nature of man. Everywhere, at all times, few scrupulous people lure the masses into the false belief of well being by using nationalism (and religion) as opium to stifle all scientific, progressive thoughts by not allowing the development of a free debating atmosphere where opposing perspectives are dealt with respect and candour.

Nationalism, at best, is the natural love for the innate particles, thoughts, emotions and philosophy that constitute the man, and at worst is the hatred for the innate particles, thoughts, emotions and philosophy that constitute the other man. Stifling the gain of knowledge by logical, rational study retards growth, which is the antithesis of life, because life implies growth, of knowledge, awareness, leading to the realization of self.