A Visit to Hans, being some notes on alterity and cinema

To Prashaste Sinha, 

“Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed.” 

* 

Cinema is such an integral part of much of urban human life that quite often we don’t concretely articulate what we might have to object to it. Like most experiences and commodities, engaging with alterities in this case too provides a range of valuable insights. 

First, the conditions of cinematic reception, the ways in which movie halls are constructed and prostituted – made available as part of the commodity market – easily become naturalised. Cinema, as the critic has noticed, is such an instantaneous form of artistic consumption that it engrosses and orients wholly towards its own internal dynamics much more than to the conditions of its immediate consumption. Given that, the module of consumption which offers greater tangible comfort in a basic sense of being finds easy acceptance and is readily integrated as natural and indispensible. 

Comfort, however, is not quite the objective universal. True, there is a sense in which comfort can be standardised and conceived in qualitative terms as a hierarchy of instant and utter sensual gratification, but the contextuality of the concept still coexists and so makes comfort also a matter of choice, perception and circumstance. Part of all of this, of course, is the economics of comfort, the cost of creating, sustaining and consolidating comfort – or comforts as the unacknowledged case usually is. 

The case of movie theatres seems somewhat similar. Comfort devolves on seating, on air conditioning, on screen, projection and sound quality respectively and on the availability of snacks. More than these tangibles, however, comfort is a corollary of the successful creation of an illusion of comfort, of the presentation of signs – from flooring and carpeting to sanitary fixtures – associated with comfort. Cinema is in any case a peculiar art form that has since its inception continuously reinvented itself to be ahistorically contemporaneous; not surprisingly, then, the visual paraphernalia of a sanitised modernity has more or less unquestioningly been an inherent part of its fashioning as the carrier and site of progressive prosperity. The movie theatre as much of Hindustan seems to know it today is precisely the consolidated product of these motifs and impetuses: we associate comfortable cinematic reception with the multiplex module not as much because that is comfortable in a comfort qua comfort sense – if such a sense does exist – but because it represents and fulfils aspirations of class and national mobility and the attendant desires for sanitised, instantly consumable entertainment. 

In such a scenario, the fact that entertainment, and the same form of entertainment, has different modules is an undesirable truth. A visit to Hans Cinema in the Azadpur area of the Capital reinforces as much. Hans is what in middle class colloquialisms is usually dismissed as a cheaparh hall, the bastion of Bhojpuri cinema frequented by destitutes and low income parts of the populace. The bourgeois visitor to Hans is at first more or less naturally struck with the exotic, and disturbing, otherness of the prospect. Class prejudices being too pervasive, the cheaparhness of Hans is, again, a factor of perceptual economics and all the attendant notions of comfort and respectability, cheapness itself being an essentially comparative qualification premised on fiscal dynamics. 

But even given the validity of these bias induced standards – for standards there must be, criticism being impossible without them – Hans is not cheaparh in many ways. The tickets are, to say the least, inexpensive, ranging from a maximum of thirty-five to a minimum of twenty. The movies are usually family dramas in the currently understood and appreciated stereotype of family dramas – romance, action, suspense, tragedy, union – and are mostly sourced from Bhojpuri and other allied, so-called regional industries. The hall itself is situated on the junction of the Grand Trunk Road with the city’s Inner Ring Road and stands opposite to Azadpur gaon and Azadpur industrial area and is flanked by high income Model Town residencies on one side and the service sector industries of Bara Bagh area on the other. It does not, from the outside, give an impression of neglect, but neither does it give the reassuring sense of unceasing maintenance of the quintessential multi-chain multiplex. 

The crowd too was of a socio-economic composition that can be thought of in similar terms. Most of the patrons seemed locals from the nearby gaon and slum cluster and seemed qualified, by their appearance, for censure from bourgeois eyes: one expected hooting, whistling, jeering and comment, just as one expected, mainly by the appearance of the theatre, semi-pornographic, crude cinema. Yet, such typical biases proved unfounded and the patrons seemed possessed of as much demeanour as those of any of your posh multiplexes. The movie, certainly simplistic in much of its technique, had as much skin and crassness as any of your regular, mainstream Hindustani cinema and the plot, nothing much to boast of, required as much willing suspension of disbelief as much of our conventional blockbusters. Most interestingly, the hall itself, the theatre from inside, was remarkably egalitarian in its structure, allowing, like the Elizabethan stage, all economic classes – vis-à-vis ticket purchasing capacity – the same, albeit gradated in terms of air conditioning and upholstery, access to the same entertainment. 

Of course, the very fact that demeanour and decency were considerations in this scenario, and at that considerations premised on distinct economics of being, indicates the continuance of biases even as they are challenged and interrogated on other planes. We tend, that is, to take such experiential economics as is out of the common currents of our analyses and engagement in ways indicative of our own biases and though that seems natural in many ways, it is nonetheless responsible for much avoidable injustice to peoples, places and perceptions. 

A visit to Hans demonstrated as much. The movie, nothing much to speak of in the untrained audience’s sense of judgement, was still entertaining in its own right; the hall, nothing much to speak of by bourgeois standards, was still comfortable in its own way. The own of here is significant: one judges by one’s own standards, but faced with alterity and difference one must consider one’s own loci and their fundamentals as much, if not more, than the other’s existential basis. We who are accustomed to the comfort economics of multiplex cinema must interrogate the basis of that comfort, the conditions on which it is provided and what that persuasively invisible process of availability entails: if other industries, as much regional – or national – as so-called Bollywood, can work and be consumed on more equitable basis, on basis reflective, even if unintentionally, of economics comparatively less discriminatory of class and the largely superficial paraphernalia of culture and taste, then there seems no convincing reason for the supposed mainstream to not operate similarly. 

That it does not indicates not as much the exigencies of recovery or the indispensability of comfort as the pervasive hold of extensive, unscrupulous profiteering on these forms of production, dissemination and consumption. In that sense, to be used to certain modules of consumption and to have sets ways of conceptualising socio-economic dynamics is perfectly alright, as, to a lesser degree, is holding on to them when faced with alterities. What we must endeavour when faced with such alterities, then, is to interrogate the basis of our own conditionings and rationalisations and see whether they themselves cannot be bettered in ways which would make them more equitable and oriented towards a communal sense of welfare and well-being, the community being, as the proverb goes, of all, for all and by all. Cinematic consumption has the potential to set such standards and Hans, even if unintentionally, leads the way.

On Dancing

I can’t dance. And I can never figure out what to do when people around me are.

It’s funny, isn’t it? Not, of course, that you might be thinking this idiot can’t dance but that it’s difficult to decide what to do when people all around you are grooving to glory and you’re transfixed like this gargoyle of an eyesore on the dance floor. The music’s nice, the beats are just fine and something within you is responding, but you just can’t make the moves. And so you’re left there standing, looking around sheepishly, wondering what the heck to do.

Yes, what do you do? What does one do in a situation of that sort? What, if one may, are the ethics of the matter?

Oh no, that’s not far-fetched now. There are ethics involved most of us aren’t struck by them because we don’t suffer from any such debilitation, but that doesn’t change it one bit, What, precisely, are the ethics of looking at people dancing?

Not an easy question, that. Think about it, what is dance but a letting loose, howsoever temporarily, of inhibitions, of those notions of propriety and so-called dignified conduct which guide us in most of our everyday interactions? Each spontaneous jig is a momentary blow to socialisation and though dance as an institution makes sure that such blows are well contained and institutionalised as acceptable articulations, one really can’t deny there’s something atavistic, something immensely primal about dancing. Again, excepting formal forms of dance which are premised on certain rules, much of dance, the dancing which most of the untrained polity indulges in, seems to be precisely about doing just what comes to your mind. There are, of course, modules, people imitate what they consider fashionable and quite a lot of formal dance, or dance in which you get training, is about creating the impression of spontaneity, but more or less dancing does seem a form of purgation.

Or so it would seem. Dance is a form of purgation, but how does one explain dance pour dance, dance just for the sake of dancing? Not just because you feel like dancing but because there’s music and you, as I’m told, just can’t help it. Is it a form of purgation? Do people who spontaneously break into jigs have more pressures, tangible or not, which they break through regularly via this unconscious prance mechanism? Further, not all dance can be explained as that, as purgation: what of the early morning variety, the type which some people are reputed to break into when they wake up because they feel so nice and fresh and can’t but prance about. In that case, is prancing also dancing – or, differently put, dancing all but modified forms of prancing?

Regardless of these considerations, our moot point still remains: how should one look at people dancing? It’s easier with formal, classical dance: it’s safely confined within its own space, audience interaction is seldom invited and, like drama, dancer(s) are all but part of their own realm of creativity of which the onlooker is only an incidental, if important, part. The problem arises with the so-called spontaneous variant, when people break into celebratory jigs as part of some event or party.

Again, it’s easier – for me, i.e. – in the case of men. I mean, of course its awkward witnessing all sorts of respectable looking patriarchs and upcoming studs pumping to some popular tune, but it’s still not half as embarrassing as in the case of women. With men you can still wear the silly, sheepish grin when they dance to de daaru, but what do you do when women, and that too women you know as family and friends, dance to chikkni chameli?

You continue with the dashed grin of course, but you furiously try locating some interesting spot to comment upon in an obscure corner of the venue. You’d think as an onlooker your dharma is to appreciate the beauty of the going-ons, to partake some of the sensuality which all of dance unleashes but then you don’t particularly wish to be doing that when the unleashing agents are your own sisters. I can’t see why all parties need to have a music system and some sort of dancing. I mean, agreed, it’s the most visual way of expressing one’s joy and of celebrating something, but why all the time? And even if you have to have it, why such songs as make you squirm with embarrassment? Things which deliberately declare you to be some sort of meatball which needs must be dished up and devoured as soon as possible because apparently that’s what men and women do it each other – why, I ask, why does it have to be that?

Is one supposed to have the critical eye when all that’s happening, see them but only see so much physical movement, so much expense of energy and nothing else? Or should one openly register all that’s happening, consider the bon-bon and the bootylicious as what they really are because dancing is in anyway accentuating and bringing into direct notice your having them? Should one do both of these, consider the human ensemble as just so many creatures and everything else as part of them and their gyrating motion deserving all attention and merit because that’s what an onlooker should be doing, appreciating all that effort i.e.? Yet, is doing that possible? – for what one claims then is a asexually sexual gaze, a perspective that takes in all the sensuality of a dance and is moved to appreciating it but only in a way which considers the body not as the body, as the site of desire, but as a manifestation of beauty. Is that possible, can one, for instance, see a naked body and be struck by its beauty but not have any desire for it? Is it, in effect, possible to separate desire from sight, to see and feel beauty but not experience desire?

Mosquitoes and Civilisation

The fact that there are mosquitoes in this room is a sign of a deep rooted civilisational malaise. It’s an absolute blot on humanity, a disgrace on our entire civilisational effort, a matter of deep shame for all of mankind that there are mosquitoes in this room.

Or perhaps it’s not a disgrace on our science, on our technological might which can atomise whole worlds, but a comment on existence itself. That there are mosquitoes in the same world as there are humans is a reminder not just of the ultimate animality of our species but also a strong comment on the undeniable animality of our civilisation.

Yes, the animality of our civilisation. After all, progressive civilisation as we’ve come to know it is based essentially and inextricably on unsustainable exploitation of resources and peoples. We are humans and have laptops and the internet not simply because one bloke long back had the ingenuity to tame lightning and direct it with wires but also because we have the mechanisms, tangible and intangible, to dig up mounds of soil to make miniscule little chips and blow up mountains and rocks to make slender, fine wires. All of that digging and blowing – and that is just a very, very general understatement of all that goes into laptops and the internet – is achieved at the expense of a variety of ideas and organisms, human and otherwise. To be civilised is to be fashionably brutish.

Of course, there is no one way of being civilised. Progressive, liberal, growth oriented civilisation is what we know the most and live through, but civilisation can be various states of being and relativity, various diverse modes and degrees of exploitation and engagement with ideas and objects and their respective interactions with each other. Yet, over the past hundred years or so our civilisations have been tending towards a singular, modular civilisation, towards a more or less composite, set way of engaging with alterities and otherness and of conceiving the self in relation to itself and to these alterities exterior to it.

The fact that despite jaalis there’re still mosquitoes in this room is indicative of the coming to age of this homogenising, super-civilisation. A civilisation which directs the gaze inwards, which gives agency but sequesters it to leave much of experience outside the pale of action: we are citizens of more or less democratic communities which engender notions of free will, free press and free speech, but democracy and freedom themselves are temporal subjectivities prone to subtle domestications.

It is these domestications which, ultimately, allow macchars a free reign in the troposphere. Contemporary politics gives us the freedom to romance, the access to schooling and the choice to gainful employment, but it increasingly presents all of these in such pleasant provisos as limit their exercise for progressively transparent, equitable modes of socio-economic engagement. Market logic dictates that focus should be the self and selfhood the primary, even exclusive, domain of action – what lies outside is the responsibility of the state, the communal, the increasingly atomised yet faceless collective.

The politics of mosquito repellent merchandise is an exemplary instance of such invisible yet potent diversification. The macchar-chaap coil and machine, the mosquito repellent cream, the fly zapper, all these are symbols of a larger, global impulse towards the barricading of interiors, of the polarisation of home and world in ways which put all possible premium on the former and relegate all possible responsibility towards the latter to the ethereal yet ever strengthening arm of the state. We can control only what goes on in our own little homes and so we have jaalis on our windows and subscribe eagerly to even stronger chemical combinations to kill those who invade our domestic castles. The state does its bit in conducting fumigation once in a while, disseminating information against mosquito breeding and conducting investigations on actions taken by citizens in their homes and so the responsibility of the opens is comfortably devolved onto agencies and factors outside individual control. Whether that responsibility is undertaken to the fullest and whether such a delegation of powers allows any significant scope to the public individual is, then, a matter of and for more or less self-limiting academic debate.

Be that as it may, one can’t deny that in its entirety individual control is a happy impossibility. Still, the very fact that individual agency needs, increasingly, to find legitimate outlet through institutionalised effort is reflective of the ways in which the private is obfuscating the public even as the public is restricting the private. As long as our civilisations move towards this ideal of civilisation, individual agency and endeavour will continue finding gainful realisation in the private and macchars, for all that our achievements and economies are worth, will continue finding safe haven in our homes.

Some notes on the railway station: Or reasons why Orientalism makes some sense

There’s some point to Orientalism, you know. Of course some of its tenets are completely preposterous and only so much bosh, but you can’t deny that in some ways it does make sense.

Rail travel makes that abundantly clear. All you have to do is take a train from any of the more frequented stations on our vast rail network in the subcontinent. You can always tell a station is near by the sheer chaos which rules the roads leading up to it. Teeming crowds coming and going, numerous roadside vendors, countless men peeing, all sorts of road transport, from rickshaws to state buses, everything that can be there in all its varied variety. Start walking in and it only gets worse. People and luggage of all sorts sprawled all around in all possible free space, all along platforms, stairs and corridors. Incessant announcements which you can hardly ever make out in the din and confusion. Hurry all around.

That’s what I could not but feel when I was last at Old Delhi Railway station. The train was two hours late. Of course, that wasn’t announced in advance, we got to know that over the period of those two hours as it got late first by ten minutes, then twenty, then an hour and then indefinitely, coming only around at the bewitching hour of twelve, some two hours behind time. There weren’t many benches and so, of course, we had to stand and when that got too much somehow manage on top of our luggage. We could’ve gone to the waiting room, yes, but even if those weren’t crowded the fear of missing the train – the display kept us hoping that it would be chugging just any minute now – kept us glued miserably to the spot.

So we waited. People rushing by, big, slimy rats running across the tracks and hopping along the platform, carts being pushed from one end to the other, babies crying boisterously, the din of expectation all around. We waited and we waited and we waited and so finally, two wretched hours of waiting, we finally had our train comfortably putting in along the platform.

That’s the Indian station and Indian railways for you. Chaos all around, almost nobody knowing anything and yet professing everything, all sorts of people confusedly jumbled together. There is some sense to Orientalism, is there not, when this romantically chaotic image of the busy thoroughfares of the exotic East is posited? If not too romantic, they most certainly are chaotic. So much so that I can sympathise with a Victorian merchant who travelled all across the subcontinent in the 1862 and, being amongst the first Occidentals to experience rail travel in India, wrote about it as part of his memoirs.

We started from the Howrah terminus of the East Indian Railway, then pen to Raneegunge, a distance of 120 miles; and it may be premised that the characteristic features, according to the example here furnished, of a ‘railway station’ in India, would afford Mr. Frith, who has immortalized the subject in England, a fresh and lively theme for the pencil. The native mind does not take matters easy while travelling, and the presence of a leisurely person on the platform is quite a phenomenon. The place is therefore a Babel of sound and confusion, in which the varied tones of manhood mingle with the shrill call of women and children, more or less lost to one another in the crowd. Dark eyes flash, dishevelled turbans stream and white togas flow, in the impatient rush for places, as if such hot haste afforded the only chance of securing them...the confusion is further enhanced by the presence of such articles as cooking-pans, clothes, and bedding, which the owner desires to carry around him...

So writes John Matheson, manufacturer and commercial bigwig of Glasgow, of his first impressions of a rail station in India. Allowing for perceptual biases, one can still not deny that there is no mean degree of truth in this description. No matter how much the poor Ministry tries to modernise them, Indian rail stations are like that.

Charmingly so though, hmmm? True there’s lots of noise and confusion and things tend to not go as they ought to, but it’s not as if it doesn’t work, right? Now, I’m not making an argument for corruption and attendant inefficiency here. What I am arguing for, instead, is that very sense of chaos and confusion which Orientalism tacitly implies as undesirable and a sign, even if somewhat quaint, of social primitivity. I don’t think it’s a sign of primitivity, but just because it has been presented as that I’m also not willing to dismiss the truth of the matter.

It’d be unnecessarily pricklish to do so, wouldn’t it be? When we object to Orientalist writing, Orientalist descriptions, to the very idea of Orient, we obviously seek to demolish the racial biases which underline these conceptions and unearth the ways in which economic needs and practices shape such discriminatory conceptions, but at some level do we not then also desire an equality which is clearly Western, Occidental in nature? If, as in this particular instance, we’d rather that our railway stations were well organised and everything in perfect order, then aren’t these notions of good organisation and perfect order clearly corollaries of what the Enlightenment and industrial capitalism have made them in Europe and the US of A? Whether there’s something undesirable about these notions is another debate but regardless of that, doesn’t Orientalism in some ways make happy sense?

After all, things do work that way. The (supposedly) Oriental way i.e. Chaos on streets, haphazard urban planning and shared, common public spaces are all markers of an Orientalism which is as much the so-called Orient’s as it was the Occident’s. Accounts of medieval European cities and medieval town planning indicate as much, hint just such an apparent confusion in all walks of public life. If the Orient is necessarily primitive because it’s chaotic, then for me that chaos is a cause for celebration instead of a roundabout condemnation, for when I do condemn it, I assert the diktats of an Occidental Rationalism as universal, supreme and undeniably the height of perfection. That is so because that chaos, that confusion is created so, is conceived in those terms because the lessons of an Enlightened Rationalism have been too deeply internalised for other basis of discrimination to be successfully sustained. Again, whether that is desirable or not is a different though not unrelated discourse; what interests me more here is the persistence of this supposed chaos, this apparent irrationality of public organisation and interaction which, despite centuries of mind games, we subcontinentals have still not let go. Ultimately, it is also in that sense that Orientalism, as a consolidation of all this chaotic irrationality, makes some sense.

On Chaddi Shopping

Buying chaddis is quite the tour de force in layers of gender and class hegemonies. When you buy a chaddi, you’re not just buying a piece of supportive garment: you’re buying into a host of intricate, well nigh seamless hegemonies.

This is painfully apparent from even a cursory consideration of the sort of advertising chaddi manufactures usually bombard their hapless consumers with. Going by the models on chaddi boxes and billboards, one would think only persons sculpted in certain very limited and limiting ways are entitled to underclothes. I don’t see many people objecting to this extremely insensitive piece of very-in-your-face public discourse: it’s almost as if you have to exercise and be ‘in shape’ in that particularly fetishised way globalising urban aesthetics demand to be entitled to something as simple and commonplace as a chaddi.

But then, what is simple and commonplace? The air we breathe is commonplace enough, but not so simple that just a slight shift in its parameters cannot easily wipe humanity out of the commonplace. Chaddis are commonplace, everybody seems to have them, but I suppose a percentage survey will reveal that much of humanity still lacks access to them, leave alone good and useful types of them. Of course, what is good and useful when it comes to chaddis is also open to contestation: ay, the very idea that chaddis are good and useful too is open to debate, but assuming that they are, the probable proposition that much of our kind is forced to survival sans them combined with the fact that those who are are exposed to such propaganda as inculcates a sense of doubt and insufficiency regarding their suitability to them is enough for one to question not just the praxis of chaddi advertising, as this article is doing, but the very idea of chaddi itself.

It will be clear to all discerning individuals – if, i.e., there are any individuals – that the mores of chaddi marketing are woven deep into the fabric of global and globalising geopolitical considerations. Chaddis are extended parts of the state apparatus that subsumes rebellious figures into tight-fitting, straitjacketed outlines. A visit to a hosiery shop will establish as much: the panoptical vision of the establishment achieves an inverted power dialectics in which the customer is being looked upon, assessed by an unending elasticity of ideologies. For in this case, the gaze, in looking, is not as much as looking on as looking in, looking on to look in in a way that negates its selfhood – that more or less solid sense of being with which we usually perceive the world – for a naturalised, standardised vision generated much too forcibly by a pre-designed, top-heavy volition of being. In that remarkable sense, it is not my eyes which look: I look, but through the eyes of the chaddi manufacturer in quite the same way s/he wants me to look.

Of course, one does accomplish the task, one does pick and choose, but that still doesn’t negate the functionality of these defining forces. For the choices one makes are as often dictated by availability as by feasibility and in making the feasible available only the sadly happy illusion of consumerism is strengthened. Shopping for chaddis is a simple task of knowing and judging, but what the basis of that knowledge and the parameters of that judgment are are considerations too often overlooked in the strapping desire to fit in.

On ‘Asking for It’

Or some speculations on attraction and assault, with other considerations

*

To Jasmeen Patheja

and

Ajooni Bhogal

*

“There is, of course, such a divorce between theory and activism that you can’t but be struck by it...”

“Eh? As in?”

“As in, well, as in there’s such a huge gap, such a difference between feminist theory and feminist activism. It’s sort of obvious in a way too, but then I suppose that doesn’t make it any less surprising.”

“But they’re both connected, aren’t they? What I mean to say is, activism does spring from theory and they are both part of the same nexus.”

“Yes, of course they are, but that connection is intangible and unapparent for the most. That doesn’t mean that it’s negligible, no; rather, what I wish to imply is that even though it’s stupid to think these nexuses redundant just because they aren’t too visible, it is also, by trying too much to show they’re not redundant, likely that one may and indeed does forget that there is, after all, a great divide separating the two and, perhaps, having in that divide certain factors which make that gap more or less unbridgeable.”

“Uhn?”

“Well yes, isn’t it apparent? Take my favourite case, the campus feminist. They’re such a queer mix of theory and practice. Much of their theory is basic and so, in consequence, is their practice: mostly pretty zealous, self-righteous and moral in having that rhetoric of good. They’ll argue men and women are equal and bring in all the jingo of various emancipations to their aid, dreaming these sweet dreams of equal opportunities and no discrimination and splendid bosh of that sort. They’ll display a total and complete confidence in the goodness and merit of their cause and arguments and take, more often than not, dissidence as not just a personal insult but also a slight to their efforts towards the larger, universal betterment of humanity. It’s really funny how some of these people carry on.”

“I don’t know about that, but I think much of this is necessary in many ways. What else would you do anyhow if you were a feminist and wanted to make things and relations equal?”

“Ji, you would do this and more, I’m not denying that. All I’m saying is that when you do all these things, when you advocate male-female equality in terms of emotional, mental and physical economics, you necessarily have to rely on a vocabulary which needs must be repetitive and in some ways stunted. The campus feminist as I’ve come across her is just an example of this.”

“Ha! Of stunted vocabulary?”

“Oh no, well, not really, not how you’ve made it sound old chap. See, don’t you, that when you’re an activist you necessarily have to go the rounds, meet new people continually and bring them around to the cause, make them see that the cause is as much theirs as the person who’s missionary-ing to them. Activists are marvellous people in that sense and one admires their pluck and determination. I for one would get bored, as I know I do. It’s a bit like teaching too, you know, in that sense – having to do about the same darned thing every year with a new batch of potential initiate, patiently starting from the scratch again and anon and bringing people to your point of goodness and right.”

“Hmmm...yeah, that’s true. That does seem true...”

“Well of course it is! Isn’t it obvious how as an activist one has to persevere and work in simplified idioms whereas a theoretician can take flights of fancy far beyond the levels of consciousness any activism has reached and, indeed, can hope to perhaps? Because there are so many people and so much to be done, because the way we’ve lived and even do is so fully contrary to what might be thought desirable in this case, there’s no hope of activism ever reaching those levels of consciousness which theory can.”

“But then activism is always aware of these consciousnesses as you put them, aware of them and active in realising them through the work it puts in with people as partners.”

“Of course, of course, but you can’t deny that at some levels, or beyond some levels, that awareness is of little use. One can be both, activist and theorist, and seek to fuse the two, but that fusion, given the enormity of this task of do-goodery, is but just possible. Take this thing for instance. You can talk nice and well about these ideas of self and lack and what to do about them and how to go beyond them – which, by the way, is what I liked the most about that woman, it confirms what I’ve held most important for quite some time now – but you can do as much only with a learned audience, with people who would have some idea of what you’re talking about. You can’t go to lay people and expect them to get what you’re saying if you talk of all of this, can you now? And the aims which you’d have in the academia, the more directly intellectual challenges of figuring out how to make two plus two three and a half and keep on going beyond and abstracting everything to comparative purity, you couldn’t have such hi-fi aims when trying to improve the lot of common people. It’d be all bosh and baloney to them, all of this would be, and so even if you were both, theorist and activist, as I believe many of us are, – or at least style ourselves as – you would necessary have to keep the two separated when being the activist and think of commoner goals, simpler goals, things you could explain to people as having a visibly direct bearing on their being.”

“Hehe! Well, I’ve always said it’s better to keep things simple and present them, artistically of course, but in a fashion that would still make all the nuances comprehensible without bringing in any unnecessary complication.”

“Oh come now, not that bit about complications! You can’t avoid so-called complicated language at times, it’s just necessary and there’s no other way about it if you do want all the nuances to get across. But then that’s the point I’m making about activism, that as an activist you don’t, can’t, get all possible nuances of this thing we call feminism across to your bakre. You needs must talk about money-matter economics, about rights and so on. You know, the whole droll language of legality and rationality, that’s what you have to deal with and in when you’re being an activist. I can’t see any other way to it.”

“But what’s bad about that?”

“Oh, nothing bad, nothing bad per se, but just that while other concerns do often are beyond the realm of legality and human law, activism necessarily has to be framed within those contexts, it has to be couched in the rational logic of law and rights to vindicate its claims. You force people to be nice by bringing regulations against being unpleasant and hope by and by they’ll come across to not needing those regulations and will be nice of their own accord.”

“Legality, yes, it does force you to be what you mightn’t want to be. It is a dilemma in that sense, being good when you’d rather not be so.”

“Precisely. Activism will believe itself to be in the right, good as the word goes, and in its claims to press for that brand of goodness in all. I’ll venture another example, though, perhaps, the time and my own associations aren’t really too permissive of such, well, confessions as it were. But then it’s just you and me and between us we may look over the matter carefully without much prejudice.”

“Ahha! A controversy! Oh-ho-ho, let’s have it, what’s this new conspiracy?”

“Hehe! Well, no conspiracy, no, and I don’t believe myself important enough for my thinking so cause for a controversy. In any case, you know how our feminist-activist friends will tell us no woman ever asks for it, asks to be harassed i.e., and how instead of putting all the blame on women we should analyse the power structures and value systems which put blame in that place and skewer responsibility from men with that charming excuse that they couldn’t help it, the female was asking for it. I have pursued this point often enough myself...”

“That women ask for it?”

“Good heavens, no, of course not! No, that, you know, it’s not excusable in men and that women have the right to be what they will – dress as they will and so on, stuff of that sort. I’ve advocated this point well enough and I would if anybody were to ask my opinion on this matter of women asking for it. But, hmmm, well, for some time now, I’ve been slowly thinking whether or not there’s some fallacy in this argument, whether or not women do ask for it...”

“Shahhh! They don’t, don’t be ridiculous!”

“Oh come now, you wouldn’t relent a point without fully examining it, would you? Think about it, what is the basis of attraction in us humans? What has been the basis of your being attracted to the women you have been?”

“Well, many things, and at one time – I did tell you once, didn’t I? – I was thinking of becoming a...”

“Yes, yes, no, leave your particular example, we’d never get anywhere if we took your example! No, well, I don’t mean to be uncharitable, but see, what I wish to imply is that thing about love at first sight for instance – what is the basis for love at first sight?”

“You fall in love with the person as soon as you see them?”

“Yes, and what could you possibly be attracted to in a person to be fully bowled over by when you haven’t talked to them, don’t know what sort of a person they are?”

“What they look like, of course.”

“Of course indeed! Indeed, yes, what they look like. That’s more or less a purely physical attraction then, isn’t it? You see a woman – oh no, not you per se, you generically – on the road and like her and think her beautiful. Do you like her intellect or what she looks like? Of course what she looks like, you haven’t had a chance to even figure whether she has any intellect or not. That’s the basis for everyday attraction then, isn’t it? It’s been and is the basis for high romance and immortality, but it’s the basis for everyday attraction and friction betwixt the sexes too. What we feel beautiful is what we like, hmmm?”

“Fair enough.”

“Yes, and given that, wouldn’t you say clothing had a part in shaping our perceptions of beauty?”

“Not necessarily, not beyond a limit.”

“Of course, I agree with you perfectly. Of course not beyond a limit, but what is that limit?”

“Well, it would be different, wouldn’t it, different for different people, quite subjective a matter really...”

“Yes and no I would say, yes and no. Yes, because of course it’s incontestably subjective and no because even as it is subjective, there is, as there is to all subjectivity, commonality to it too. You and I here are too eccentric, but I think we may safely assume notions of beauty have some degree of commonality about them within certain cultural contexts. Fair and Lovely wouldn’t work if this wasn’t so.”

“Hehe, yes, true.”

“Obviously, for that being so, and ours being a globalising, post-enlightenment, consumeristic world, we can’t but have cross-cultural contexts and, in that sense, some universal notions of beauty.”

“Well, well, as you say, but that has nothing to do with women asking for it!”

“Calm down, calm down, nobody’s saying that – not yet at least. Why don’t you consider this, that notions of beauty being both subjective and objective, being both personal and communal, notions of decency and body shame too will be like that. Beauty, and more so attraction, is closely linked with body shame, with what is too indecent to be shown, with what can be risked to be shown now and then and with what’s perfectly decent to show. These notions are linked with perceptions of beauty and even as they are common within contexts, they have changed across contexts, especially across contexts of space and time. You will grant that perceptions of body shame must’ve been different amongst, say, so-called tribals – the jhingalala blokes of that Achebe’s Nigeria for instance?”

“Abbe!”

“Ohho, I don’t mean them any harm by that! Think of the point, that notions of body shame, and beauty by extension, must’ve been different in a context wherein both the sexes had little conception of clothing as we do now?”

“Hmmm, yes, that seems plausible.”

“And if plausible that is then so is the idea that with our current, commonly understood if not universally accepted notions of body shame, beauty, or attraction, will have to do with how much a female makes apparent of her body?”

“Well...”

“Note, I say makes apparent, not exposes. The two are linked and though the latter has more bearing on this matter than the former, it’s important to think in terms of makes apparent and not exposes right now. You can make apparent you have a figure you find beautiful, that you have, as they’re called, assets which are desirable, and you can then also, and I wince myself at the sheer vulgarity of this word as I put it here, expose. Wouldn’t these form a basis for attraction...”

“Yes, but don’t forget things happen regardless of whether you make apparent or expose. A burqa can be a tent and people have been done in in even them!”

“Yes, yes, I’m not denying that. Not more a moment am I denying that the impulse is the harasser’s. What I am proposing is that even as the impulse is the harasser’s, it’s not his wholly so.”

“Oh, don’t be disgusting!”

“Really now, my not saying it wouldn’t negate its possibility! I’m advocating the old pass-the-buck tactic in a different lingo, no I’m not. I’m more concerned, as somebody with pretensions to this so-called cause, with the validity of our assumptions. When we say women never ask for it, are we fully justified?”

“I think we are.”

“Oh goodness, do try being a bit less obtuse! You don’t have to stick to it just because it’s a nice point and keeps one comfortable! You’re bound, I say, to see what it’d mean from all possible angles and not just rest secure in your confounded complacency of being right! There can’t be just one simple right, you know! Think of yourself, you’re a man: if you weren’t really, desperately horny and sex-charged and had a selection of females of the type you like physically, whom would you be attracted to more, one in a bikini or in a salwar-kameez and dupattaoed to boot?”

“Well...”

“Oh shuck modesty, you’d of course see more and wish to see more of the bikini female for the first few moments, no matter how ugly you would later think her if the other woman’s face and features were more to your liking. Everybody would, I say, everybody would – notions of body shame and the basis of attraction being what they are, everybody would! Now, don’t you think I mean their thinking so, our thinking so, would justify an assault. It might provide the basis for such intentions, but we have the law and rationality to inhibit that sort of behaviour – or at least make it reprehensible and dangerous. I just say that meboy, just that and nothing else, that the basis of sexual attraction being what they are, when women do dress in certain, contextually determined ways which renders them attractive and beautiful just on the evidence of their bodies, they do ask for it in a way – ask not to be assaulted, perhaps, at least consciously, not even for attention, but they do provide the basis for attraction and the intentionality which springs from attraction. To be in possession of beauty, and not just feminine and sexual beauty, is a very strong drive in most of us and even though violating in order to possess is undesirable to an overwhelming degree, the intention is understandable in a way. One doesn’t condone the act, one wouldn’t, but one cannot but see where and how the idea comes from and that it does make some sense.”

“Well! Well, at least just on that plain, as an idea...”

“Of course, totally, totally, just that, just as an idea. It would dissolve our social order to admit it otherwise, to believe women do ask for it. They do and they don’t, but happily, even as there is the do, the don’t is always much the stronger dynamic.”

On Rakhi

The simplest of decisions can be so difficult to execute.

Take rakhi for instance. I’ve been saying it for quite some time now, but this year I firmly decided to stop observing rakhi. A simple decision, one would think, involving no one but me and the sisters concerned. Just a matter of personal choice, of talking it out and being done with it.

If only.

A paternal outburst was expected, but that ‘twould come a full blown storm was the least of my expectations. Bitter accusations and criminations apart though, the incident proved interesting by throwing in sharp relief some of the many values and behavioural patterns which we tend to take for granted and which provide a comforting cushion to everyday existence – that, and the validity of our, or at least mine, questioning of them.

But first things first. Why did I want to stop observing rakhi? Well, simply because I think it’s an antiquated ritual which has lost its symbolic value in the present scenario. Of course, when I say the present scenario I mean my own milieu, the narrow circle I move in and not the world at large. Also, when I talk of the symbolic value of rakhi, I take the meaning understood and inculcated in most of us urban bourgeoisies – that rakhi, as a pan-cultural symbol common not just to the Hindu religion, is an observation and assertion of a brother’s duties to his sisters, to love and protect her from all harm.

Which is what’s problematic. Protect her from all harm? Of course, it’s not written anywhere, but that’s what’s implied, and being so includes almost everything possible, from bees to boyfriends, rats to rapists. I always say I’m a sorry excuse of a mard and that I manage to keep myself alive is enough without being specifically tasked with the protection of any female as a particular duty. If it’s bad, it’s bad for me as well as for the sisters and so it’s unfair to expect me to be a saviour of any sort for anybody. Got enough to fend for myself without bothering being ever-so-old-fashionedly chivalrous.

Sounds valid? That’s what I thought. It’s nice to put an end to these patriarchal, paternalistic rituals, isn’t it? As feminists of some sort of the other that’s what we ought to do too, I suppose. Put an end to patriarchal, paternalistic, phallocentric modes of being.

For what? Ay, for what? For what and what for?

In this specific case, given my narrow, urban, predominantly kayasth bourgeoisie circle, none of that bit about rakhi meaning protection is valid. Nobody expects brothers to protect sisters from harm in that bhaiya mere mode of the 70s; in particular, nobody expects me to bother much. It’s just a ritual shorn completely of its meaning, a collective habit which is just observed. Of course, it’s all very nice and proper to argue that even if the ritual’s meaning is not evoked its symbolism still stands and that to be enmeshed within that too is a sign of ideological indoctrination so that it’s still our responsibility to resist and change, but then, well, even that’s a bit facile, hmm?

How? Well, first and foremost, not only can the ritual not be taken in a particular way, but its symbolism too can change. There isn’t anything particular which can fix a meaning to something in any inherent manner, is there? If rakhi can mean paternalistic protection, it can also be just another bahana for meeting.

Which is what it’s taken as for the most. True, brotherly obligations are still part of the world we live in, but then those values are not in the least thrust upon us as writ in stone to-dos. As family one has certain obligations – and indeed, obligations which, given proper indoctrination, needn’t appear so – towards caring for and feeling, to varying, subjectively determined degrees, responsible for the welfare and well-being of family members and the brother-sister dynamic, if not exaggerated back into the 70s of Hindi cinema, is a legitimate part of them. That scratching the surface does indeed propel quite a few of us back there is also true, yes, but so is the fact that in quite a few cases it doesn’t. Besides, while it’s alright to argue in isolation that families are patriarchal and their idiom and basis phallocentric, one can’t but concede that with a little give and take, with a little adjustment – indoctrination and assimilation if you will – there’s nothing too bad about them. What, indeed, would we do without them? Do we have any alternatives to families? Not families as we know them, families as they have been, but families, groups of humans clustered together with a certain commonality of birth and relation – can we exist without being together?

We can. Not in the same way of course, but then not with the same, or even similar, basis. Humanity can be organised in a zillion other ways I suppose, but then all of those would be conscious efforts, would be structures systematically thought out and rationalised. We can have, with a supreme, well nigh impossible effort, a society structured on the basis of equality and justice – and equality and justice as some of us who bother about them today understand them – but then, well, is that even desirable?

Seriously, is a just and equal society even desirable? I’m all for comparatively just and comparatively equitable, but wholly so? A society where legality and the rhetoric of rationality would keep in check all truant desires, negate the possibility of violence and discrimination by intricate mechanisms of checks and balances and create, enforce, a sense of equality is just way too Orwellian for my comfort. Personal relations and subjectivity would, in such a world, be subsumed under the larger need for objectively defined equality. Men and women would be equal, yes, but what then all those gamut of passions and desires which make inter-sexual dynamics what they are today would no longer be valid. Just as it wouldn’t do to expect your female partner to cook your food (if you were a male i.e.), it would also not do to abuse someone just because they cheated on you. Truths tend to be ossified, but in a social setup guided wholly by rationally determined codes and legality that sort of ossification, backed by appropriate indoctrination, would be complete.

Which, even if it were not for an overwhelming taint of absolutism, would be stifling boring.

Wouldn’t it? I mean, who would want to live a life wholly determined by received notions of rationally acceptable behaviour? To be correct all the time, to always give a damn and never, ever be wrong, who would possibly want that? Of course we need safeguards to make sure we don’t all run amok, but isn’t doing that every now and then part of being human as we know it? Who would want to completely change that, to deny themselves the privilege, even if rare, of not caring – or pretending not to and doing all possible bosh in the guise? To not do as one is expected to but deliberately go against, to feel that sheer, perverse joy of going against and do so knowing, after all, that even though it’s not justified completely it is, given certain received circumcisions, understandable, even pardonable. All said and done, there might be an essence to things – that there needn’t be one, that for all our rationality we needn’t be so all the time, that we may let go and accept, critique that acceptance, nuance it, but let go, let be.

To think of rakhi just as a patriarchal custom and so condemn it is, then, to be naive in a way that that curious creature, the campus feminist, is. Yes, it is patriarchal and heavily consumeristic as a festival, but even as it is, to argue against it just on those grounds, grounds based on the logic of rationality and semantics, is to further deprive our lives of those moments of sparkling irrationality, unthinking-ness if I may, which the larger social framework of post-enlightenment global capital has already made suspect. In many ways one is and must be thankful for that, for the life we live is quite literally a creation of these ideas and ideals; but even so one cannot but be wary of the banishment of irrationality, of craziness and insanity, from life. The world, perhaps, is not half as crazy as it used to be a hundred or so years ago and one must be glad that it’s not, but if it were to wholly be not so – and regardless of the way, good or bad (again, these as understood by most today) – it would be not half as nice a place to live as it is now. Rakhi, as a ritual without meaning, a symbol sans its symbolism, is just one instance of the insanity we are intent on proving obsolete: it might be nice to prove it so and push it out of consciousness, but then whether it’ll be worth the effort is, and will be, open to continual contention.

Which is why, I suppose, it’s so difficult to execute the simplest of decisions.

*

Of course that bloke off Har-ki-paudi was right – in just this one instance, that this would materialise. This, then, to him.

Some Notes on Linguistics and Literary Pedagogy

Why is Linguistics such a big deal for so many of us? What is it that makes it such a struggle for so many of us, a subject we all love to hate? It’s not as if it’s difficult in itself; or, at least, that which we in this university are taught at this level – simple and to the point, it’s easy to master if the effort’s put into it.

If the effort’s put into it. If. That’s operative: if. Come to think of it, almost everything and anything can be mastered if the effort’s put into it. What prevents, happily perhaps, all of us from turning into uomo universale is precisely that, if. Indeed, for whether effort is put into something or not depends on what that effort should be and who has to put it. Linguistics per se is not difficult, but given the evidence it seems to be for many literature students in this university. Of course, it’s primarily because a lot of people don’t feel like doing it, but the why of that don’t can’t just be good old laziness – for if it were, that would extend in a semblance of measure to other subjects, and that it does not. There has to be another reason.

Or reasons? One wonders. Can it have anything to do with the ways in which literature is taught, literary criticism conceived and literature and literary criticism received, i.e. the roles they are seen to occupy in the larger, so-called social context? One wonders...

What does it mean to be a student of literature today – and particularly this university, Delhi University? First of all, and without a doubt, it means to be somewhere near the rarefied heights of a given hierarchy of disciplines, to share with the other chosen few the status and privileges natural to the topmost in the pecking order. Yet, assuming the rationale of this order, literature is perhaps the only within this cosmos to be at the top and yet strangely sans the basis to be so, this self same basis being little more than the historical incidence of it being the coloniser’s favourite subject. Other luminaries – Economics, Political Science, Commerce, History – have all reasons which more or less make sense within the overarching logic of social relevance, factuality and marketability that informs this rationale while Literature, or English as the misnomer goes here, has little to put it where it seems to be.

Yet, it firmly remains there, gaining, as admission trends both in this university and others show, only more and more popularity with a cross-section of the so-called youth, so much so that whole new institutes are opened and seats increased to somehow absorb the rapidly growing percentage of aspirants. For a discipline which has little actual reasons to be a discipline, this is surprising to say the least.

But why do I say it has little actual reason to be so? Here’s why.

First, going back to that rationale, social relevance. How is Literature, English Literature as its structured and taught at all levels in this university, relevant to – again, so-called – society? The easiest, and the one common to all literary disciplines, is that it makes one a better human being, that by providing insights into human nature and behaviour in a variety of situations and circumstances, literature gives one the opportunity to develop sensibilities keener and more humane than the rest of ordinary humanity. This, in spite of being clichéd and exaggerated, is somewhat true; yet, even as it is, it is only for itself, only as much as it amounts to reading and not, not in any way, the discipline: after all, one may read and improve the mind, but one may do so without being a student of literature. Being within the profession gives one more time than others to do so – it is, no matter how much we hate it when others supposedly simplify it so, mostly about reading the novel – and in that facile, incidental sense one may argue for the ethico-moral superiority of literature in inculcating a humanness and liberality which other disciplines per se do not, but it will remain just that: facile and incidental, without any sound reason which would make this moralising and bettering process exclusively the domain of literature as a discipline.

Moving on, and still within the ambit of social relevance, the more theoretical – and by reigning idiom more professional – of us insist than instead of being about being better humans in some grand, bardic way, literature today is more about being incisive and inclusive critics and commentators. This, again, is true, but, yet again, incidental, if not a bit facile. By the virtue of increasingly being a discipline that self-consciously and actively orients itself to inclusive criticism and commentary, the literary academia does contribute towards making it a better world for all, but in spite of this and its contributions, it is but one of the many disciplines today engaged in and oriented to this same goal of equity and inclusivity and so, no matter what many amateurs feel, has no exclusive rights on the bettering mission.

Social relevance, then, goes out of the box, for in whatever indirect way it is so, it still does not compare to other disciplines that are so. To teach and study literature as a discipline solely on the basis that it makes the world a better place is, effectively, to assert values without having the prerequisite value-system in place for doing so.

Which is what brings us to point two, factuality. I take factuality as implying a certain adherence to the verities of daily existence, a certain connection to the needs and demands of life as it’s lived by people in all walks of life. First, literature has nothing to do with any bodily function, nor with any of those activities with which we fulfil these needs and functions. Second, even if we were to argue that it does, that it does in that cathartic and company in woe and joy sense that’s usually associated with it, that too applies to literature per se, to reading as an activity that has nothing to do with a critical understanding of the text being read, an understanding which, again, is not necessarily concomitant upon literary training as a discipline. Further, the very matter of English, the misnomer of a subject that concerns us here, is that which affects but peripherally, only in the inner realm of emotion and subjectivity, all that goes outside the classroom. A Masters in Commerce will make one a better manager, financier and businessperson; a Masters in English provide, amongst other such like matter, greater knowledge about the sundry ways the heart is lost and betrayed.

Still, it rises. English remains one of the most sought after courses in the University of Delhi, carrying the charm and status more of the language than the literature in it. Many take it because of that, as a stepping stone to other status symbols, the civil services for example; many others take it to learn how to write, become writers; yet others take it to learn how to speak. A large number opt for it as a secondary option; I myself took it because I could not be an environmental engineer and preferred next to that a discipline in which I would at least get to read without any sense of wasting time in doing so. Very, very few who take up English at the undergraduate level really understand the course is about criticism and not creative writing, research and not reading. People take it and come to rue it, but year after year the demand only goes up. If nothing else, literature, as a discipline, sells.

Which, ultimately, is my larger point here: in spite of everything, in spite of no sound reason for it selling, literature does sell, is marketable and commercially viable as a discipline. Founded on a plenitude of myths and fuelled by a healthy dosage of delusions, English literature as a discipline easily manages to be one of the most elite courses that any non-professional university can offer. This, putting aside for now the dialectic of professional and non-professional, is what makes literature unique and its position well nigh unassailable: in being popularly sought after for the wrong reasons and incorrectly attributed with general powers, literature is one of the few remaining academic centres of irrationality.

To me, that is the most charming thing about the discipline. It makes no sense its being so, yet it thrives and supports all sorts, the only place where contraries of all kinds – ambition and sloth, brilliance and dullness, creativity and criticism, and so on – can find refuge simultaneously and contemporaneously. Of course, the discipline has its own professional codes of conduct and behaviour, codes created more as justification to oneself and others for its relevance and seriousness within the overall global competitive atmosphere of teaching and training than in response to any inherent need itself, but neither do these take away from its appeal and nor do they affect the general conception of it as a quaintly rarefied domain of high inner knowledge, grand, reformative passions and creativity. Which, simply put, is that literature, in spite of the way it is being structured as a professional discipline, is still the only subject in which one can be whatever one wants to be, be as eclectic and eccentric as one can and still manage to score and get along. In spite of internal competition and the overall global thrust to make it keener, more professional in the way aim-driven, professional subjects like medicine, law and engineering are, literature remains the only discipline where ambition and competition can be bypassed.

Is it this, then, that makes Linguistics difficult for so many students of literature? Not singly the fact that literature as a discipline allows for some mediocrity, nor that the way it’s taught, combined with the inclinations of most who take it, inculcates a certain disrespect for objective, empirical, inviolate truths but both of these together, both as one making Linguistics the holy cow it is. Indeed, for Linguistics is self-confessedly infinitely more the science than the art and no matter how hard critics try to make literary training and criticism resemble that, the irrational, eccentric and interrogative core of the discipline makes any association with a discipline that is based on givens slightly – and I quote a favourite here – problematic, problematic in the sense of being both a cause for concern, an insight into the redundancy of institutionalised literary studies as a discipline as well as a matter for celebration, a reflection of the power which allows the discipline to be, with certain inevitable, if somewhat unfortunate, modifications in pedagogy, the only one that can still afford to exist without a reason, to just be and exult in the simple joy of being so without necessarily needing to bother with justifications. It’s not an ideal situation, least of all one which resolves most concerns satisfactorily; yet, it continues and thrives and informs much of the charm and beauty which, for many adherents, makes literature more engaging than anything else imaginable.

On Caste

I don’t think caste is such a bad thing. Of course, it’s problematic to say so, not the least because the very idiom in which we talk of caste and caste based discrimination is replete with connotations of derogation and extremism, but still, fact remains that caste based discrimination, both as a concept and as a social reality, is nuanced way beyond the narrow confines of the general understanding of the matter.

How? Well, first of all, discrimination in itself: what is so bad, so hugely taboo about discrimination? Like all others, the word means many things, some of them all at once at the same time. To argue that discriminate connotes discretion is, of course, not to argue in favour of caste based discrimination as we generally understand it to be, but it is still to add a spectrum of possibilities to the word, the process – and these not necessarily adverse to any particular person or persons’ welfare and well being. After all, discrimination, with all its paraphernalia of functionality and utility, with the implied sense of order and structure, is the foundational premise of nature and of humanity; not just this, discrimination is also the premise of equality, not just the cause which makes it desirable but also the basis on which it is conceived and organised – for, again, what is equality without an order, a structure, and how may these be had sans discrimination?

To argue that discrimination per se is bad, to talk thus in black and white, is then to be naively in the mould of the post-enlightenment, rationalised and so-called progressive realm of social aspiration, a discourse which has provided millions much food for thought and which continues, hypothetically at least, as the end of much of human activity today. Within this discourse equality and equity stand strong as the operative concepts which, though consistently interpreted differently, have yet inspired much idealism and fervour over the last two hundred or so years and still continue to be the stuff dreams of countless well-meaning, make-it-a-better-world people’s dreams are made of. Discrimination, being one of those things one likes to associate with feudalism and all that was, is and could be bad with humanity, naturally finds no place in the overall schemata of these dreams.

Yet, dreams too require a certain amount of discrimination; or, to put it otherwise, the stuff such equity-equality utopian dreams are made of too involves discrimination at some level. That level, indeed, may be such that causes the least possible discomfort or inconvenience to the least number of people, but the fact would remain that at the semantic level, it would be discrimination still.

Which, in short, is my point about caste based discrimination: when I say it’s not too bad, instead of referring to the active prejudice and handicap which it imposes and in a way necessitates, I think of its import, of what it means and has meant as a concept and as a way of life to all of us who are Hindu or of Hindu origin. I think of caste as a cultural artefact that has been the marker of so many of our Hindustani people’s identity.

This is where it gets tricky and, of course, subjective. I can say caste is not so bad because my baggage is not a bit as heavy as of those who’ve been at the receiving end. Of course, that it’s not and that I can think of caste without my blood boiling at the oppression enforced upon zillions has got something to do with both my placement in the hierarchy and my own inclinations, but that still doesn’t take away from the fact that my subjective opinion on and experience of the matter, presented so and not in any way claimed otherwise, is of note. Not, indeed, as of those who wish to end oppression and who in acting tangibly and working for the so-called greater good needs must couch their subjectivity on the matter in the objective idiom of the post-enlightenment and blah-blah society, as of one who, given a certain origin and placement, can afford to be against such discrimination as curtails the making available of equal opportunities to all and still not dismiss caste and caste based discrimination, having in doing so a certain nostalgia for those nuances of caste which make up one’s identity as both an individual and a community.

Yes, a certain nostalgia for caste.

Why not? The experiences of those who’ve suffered apparently and tangibly, though infinitely more worthy of comment when empowering the marginalised and considering programmes for social justice, cannot totally make redundant the experiences of those who have not to the same degree and manner. Which is why if I feel caste in the Hindu and Hindu origin context has a certain cultural capital and that the memories we have of ourselves as castes are endangered by discourses which completely seek to do away with it, then I have as much of a right to feel so as someone who, like me, is against caste based discrimination and who, unlike me, feels caste as a basis for social organisation, as a concept, as a memory, should be erased from our cultural consciousness for good. Indeed, I will perhaps be more justified in saying that. For starters, the ills of the past cannot be wished away and then, even if we were to somehow forget them, we cannot forget that evil for one is not evil for all. Not evil for all, yes, but also not evil in the way that makes evil subjective in a typical oppressor-oppressed relationship.

Which, ultimately, is my point on caste and caste based discrimination. It’s an evil and by far not a necessary evil; yet it is part of those forces which make so many of us what we are and being so, it constitutes an undeniably important part of our identities. Besides this, and which is a bit more important to me here, it provides the basis for so many of our cultural artefacts, particularly intangible artefacts which, as stories, anecdotes and proverbs, are threatened by the zealous condemnation of all those in favour of a caste free cultural consciousness. To condemn and work against active discrimination is all very right and proper; to negate the centrality of the cultural background of such discrimination too is important. But to totally deny and to wish to fully erase the memory of all is, in the final analysis, not just redundant – after all, if we don’t remember what our equality has been achieved against, then the achievement won’t seem worth half the effort – but also dangerously unfair to the rights of those who think otherwise.\

Which is why I say caste is not such a bad thing at all.