Remembering Bal Bharati

To Parth Taneja

*

The idea that Bal Bharati, GR branch can be the best school in its area will immediately seem incredulously ridiculous to anyone who has actually studied in the blessed place. Of course, we all have more or less fond memories and of course after passing out we more or less remember it fondly as the good old place, but thinking hard and strong there are few who would actually agree that it was, or is, half as good as the papers would have us believe. Seriously, Bal Bharati best amongst all the other heavy weights in Central Delhi? Khullar Saab must have loosened CES’s purse strings a bit.

Jokes apart, does it really make any sense? Bal Bharati best? Okay, the survey says it scores highest in terms of perception, but even then, who would be stupid enough to perceive that place best amongst all others?

Don’t get me wrong here. This is not to indicate that I don’t or didn’t like being there, nor that after passing out I’ve acquired airs and disdain to acknowledge my schooling. None of that, no: instead, what irks me is this very thing about being best, this entire charade of being better than what you are, of trying to be better and better and better still. It has brought some changes, this aspirational anxiety, but given the inside reports I last had of it, Bal Bharati remains what it has always been and will always be: average.

Thankfully, I say. Seriously, that’s what it’s always been and that’s what it’s best as, an average school amongst so many more better equipped, more professional, hi-fi schools. Average. A charmingly average school.

It’s good to be average, isn’t it? Like anything, Bal Bharati has its faults, but the best thing about it is that it’s average. It’s not like any of your ambitious, verbose institutions aspiring to make the ideal man out of children. Of course, the school diary and PR material has some such bosh to that effect, but then I suppose that’s for the perception surveys. The inside story remains that Bal Bharati has, given the few fortunate exceptions, more or less incompetent, bungling teachers, a lackadaisical attitude towards sports and extra-curricular activities and fails to make anything more than semi-noble savages out of its students.

And yes, that’s the best thing about it. Most students tend to be cocky when they graduate and remember almost all their teachers as bumbling, bilious ignoramuses. Common human tendency which, I suppose, is common enough to apply to most students of most schools. Again, later on in life most people, even as they sentimentalise, tend to think a bit flippantly of the educational institutions they were part of, remembering the good with the irritating but still thinking of all of the latter in a sepia-tinted, oh-old-days way. I have absolutely no doubts about being privy to such sentiments, but when I say Bal Bharati is best being average I don’t just deprecate my alma mater in that half-joking, flippant manner. I mean more.

More in the sense that I feel being average is one of the best assets of any educational institution today. In Bal Bharati, I never felt myself under any extraordinary pressure to perform, never saw myself faced with any larger than life standards to come up to. There were always extra-curricular activities, there were always assemblies and house meetings and sports days, but there was never, as so many students – and more, their parents – complain, any overwhelming, continuous pressure to exert yourself more than what you might desire.

That is to say there was impetus and ample opportunities were always provided, but you were never forced into availing of those opportunities, never taken into the whole paraphernalia of competitions and events for the school’s greater glory. There is always rivalry between schools, but as students of Bal Bharati – and I suppose I’m not alone in assuming so – most of us never felt that rivalry. We couldn’t care less what students of other schools were like and what they would think of us precisely because that intensely cutting competitive spirit just wasn’t around to instil that peculiar sense of pride and belonging which institutions with their glorious traditions and grand narratives always inspire. It was, and perhaps still is, a school where you could be, spend your days peacefully with all the momentous upheavals of infancy, childhood and adolescence without coordinators and managers hammering you for some supposedly prestigious competition designed to make you better. If nothing else, Bal Bharati makes you thick skinned in some subtle ways and so the entire rhetoric of bettering yourself which all schools bombard their students with has little affect on Bal Bharatians.

Which is why when I hear news of Bal Bharati becoming “an international school” and what not, I thank my lucky stars of getting out in time. Being average, it was a healthy mix of ambition and incompetence, of imposition and free will. Certain minimums were always expected and efforts made to attain them, but beyond them only the chosen few fell victim of the headministerial staff’s ambitions. There was always guidance, but you still had enough leeway to explore yourself and find your own way, not be straightjacketed into models of the ideal would-be scientist, the ideal would-be engineer, the ideal would-be accountant, the ideal would-be sports star and so on. I find people of my batch and my class doing various interesting and remarkable things, people whom almost everybody hardly expected to be good at anything being more successful than anybody’s wildest dreams. There are always students of this sort and it is their hard work and genius of course, but what marks Bal Bharati distinct is that it never stigmatised such students for not living up to general, public school expectations. Yes, attempts would always be made to co-opt us into the all-rounded personality network, but something in the very fabric of that place prevented most of us from falling prey to that typically industrialist, market-oriented disease. We had good times and bad, but we never felt the pressure to become marketable in that sense.

Which is why the Bal Bharati I know and remember is best being average.

*

Author’s note:

Prompted by a conversation and this: http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/PUBLICATIONS/HT/HD/2011/12/19/ArticleHtmls/AND-THE-AWARD-GOES-TO-19122011011002.shtml?Mode=1

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 Corruption

I really don’t get the ongoing hullabaloo over corruption. Agreed, scams and scandals of the sort are pretty unpleasant and don’t exactly reflect well on our integrity and honesty as a people, but then that’s it: they’re a loss to the exchequer and a disgrace to the people, but that’s just it. Certainly not worth the fuss that’s been made of them.

Seriously! I mean, just look at it, look at the way everybody’s reacting to it – and this time it’s not just the media – the so-called media properly, news channels for the most – but the people, the common, middle class citizenry as a whole. Everybody’s shaking their head, muttering prophecies of common, universal doom on this decadent age. The country, the people, they’re all irredeemably down in the pot, so much so that to some not even dictatorship, by large an abiding middle class dream, will save us from the throes of narrow selfishness and despair. The dog days, people say, have finally dawned upon us…

Dear oh dear, the dog days. We’ve all been mickeyed, yes, and fraudulence in public life plutoed beyond compare, but still, it’s just that. Not end of the world, not even end of the world as we know it.

Yes, yes, I know I have that tendency, that habit of smoothening rough ends, mitigating general ills and creating continuums of occurrences, happenstances and coincidences. I know I take it overboard at times and doing so dismiss the gravity of the present for the weighty balance of the past. I know all that, but regardless, I’ll still say that all these present instances of scam and corruption are, well, just instances of so, nothing as out of the ordinary as we’ve been making them out as.

I know the sort of objections most would have to this. The first would be money, that though much has been swindled before, such huge sums were never involved. This is almost like saying our swindlers are better cheats and we perhaps much more gullible than our great grandfathers, an argument to which I can only say that, all due respect to those gone by, perhaps the reason why such huge sums weren’t involved earlier would be that they just weren’t in currency. Think about it, the value of money has steadily increased over the decades so that what was much then is so pitiably small now. Really, the sums themselves have little to do with it: Shree 420 rolled in lakhs, but had he been on Lavasa’s board today he would just as well have played in a few thousands of them.

Now, I can see how this denies conscience and takes quite the dint out of morality. If a cheat’s a cheat and all that’s stopping him/her is only pure luck, then not only would quite a few frauds not have been detected but also the power of precept to guide would be but nil. In that case, the moral and ethical worth of humanity all through would be just the same, the variations being only compounds of the material circumstances of particular ages. The idea of moral and ethical degradation then becomes more or less redundant.

More or less. Like most of my ilk, I choose to believe there’s more to matter than mere materiality. If not degradation, then evolution at the very least: change, changes effected by the dynamics of materiality against certain inherent, passed notions.

Which, in other words, is saying that while the world seems so very much in the gutter now, it’s just more probable that it has always been there and that it just seems filthier because we ourselves have made it so.

Nothing, I say, nothing out of the ordinary.

These things keep happening. The past almost always seems noble and ever so virtuous; quite frankly it’s uber convenient to have it so too – a convenient, if somewhat inaccurate, sepia tinted benchmark against the follies and shortcomings of the present are easy to evaluate. Yet, in doing so we mustn’t loose perspective, that what seems is exactly what it is, an imposition, projection, and beyond that rife with tensions not too dissimilar to our own. When, therefore, we shake our head in disappointment and mutter at the corruption in public morals in our own degenerate dog days, then we may be just as sure that our great grandfathers’ fathers would’ve been doing the same. Corruption, moral bankruptcy, unethical behaviour – every age and generation is witness to deviances from the norm.

But that, that alone, is not my contention here. It’s a bit obvious and to say just that is to be just as much. My point here is that there’s really no need to make such a fuss about the whole affair not just because it’s been done in the past and so there’s nothing new about it, but because – which is more important – to take the matter thus is to further a hollow and redundant belief system which denies the humanity of human beings.

Big words, yes; yet, not without merit I hope. When we talk of the corrupting influence of a particular work, act or event, when we condemn a fraudster, a corrupt public servant or an unscrupulous business tycoon, then do we not take righteousness beyond its rightful bounds? Indulging thus, do we not reaffirm binaries, entrench them all the more rigorously, forcefully in consciousnesses both public and private – this even as we farther claim the unsaid private right to keep them distinct and separate? Isn’t being zealously moral and preachy ultimately a disservice to the very aims of morality and, well, preaching?

When we focus our gaze on a particular figure for laxity or corruption and thus condemn him/her, there is hidden in that condemnation the unsaid, unacknowledged awareness of our own weakness, the awareness of our being human. We’re all fallible, all of us human; saying this is not as much as condoning corruption or laxity in public or private duty as a natural, inevitable fallout of human nature as advocating an approach to or an understanding of duty and discrepancy as potentialities within all of us. If a certain minister manipulated contracts and regulations to siphon crores of public money in his own pocket, then are all those who so vigorously condemn the act completely sure of their own incorruptibility, of their ability to stand indomitable in face of similar temptations?

It’s an old idea, but essentially pertinent to the way we understand society and relate to each other. Being aware of one’s weaknesses and ready to grant others the same doesn’t, again, necessarily mean condoning those weaknesses when they take a form injurious to other beings; nor, indeed, does it mean disregarding the demands of justice as and when they arise in such cases. What I would have it taken as, instead, would be as an empowering consciousness, as inculcating an awareness which takes humanity and human nature as such, as ever prone to transgressions, and does not make a cathartic fetish of those over the top or too injurious to the public good. These deserve to be punished, unreservedly they deserve to be punished; yet, in carrying this out, in pressing for justice and even retribution, before we ourselves go overboard with righteousness, we, and particularly those who aren’t directly victims of the act(s), should remember that all of us are prone to the same.

Of course this is a bit problematic. Saying this, one cannot escape the implication that justice, retribution, equality, all of these dissolve and become ambiguous, arbitrary. But again, more or less: these are constructs, but they have the weight of history and common practice and cannot be wished away. Indeed, it’d be in our best interests, our interests as so-called civilised, civilising society, to keep them in some form or manner. The best thing, of course, is to realise these as such, as constructs, and work towards making them relevant overall in a manner beneficial to all beings.

Which, said otherwise, is saying all of us, particularly our elected representatives, would be better occupied in orienting ourselves thus than appeasing the lust for blood too much by creating a ruckus about corruption and degeneracy as we are now.

Notes on a Presidential Visit

Don’t you think the excitement over Obama’s latest India visit was a bit overdone, that it was hyped and, to some extent, naïve?

Of course, the visit was important and means a lot for not just US and India but a number of other nations as well. Business deals were agreed on, political commitments spelled and mutual niceties exchanged. All that was very prim and propah, all as it should be.

Yet, Obama is, well, just that, a man after all. All the media coverage about the most powerful man in the world landing, the most powerful man in the world shaking a leg, his oh so powerful wife shaking her booty, the ever so powerful couple paying respect to old Gandhi at his memorial…power, power, power. Yes, we all get it, America’s powerful, the American president’s powerful and can bully one and all. Still, that’s that and there is a line.

Not that the Americans themselves crossed it much this time. They had to bring in all their armoury to defend their powerful man, though technically I don’t see why they couldn’t trust him to the security which our own State accords its holy cows. He’d come here after all and he hadn’t really landed in Dantewada; shoot-outs happen, but I’m sure the Indian State had taken all precautions to ensure all were out and out of bounds. Powerful as he is, he could’ve trusted our capability of keeping our big-shots from harm. As for his car being this and that proof, his guard being so and so geared, his…well, if a man’s clever and really sets his heart on murder, not even the Americans can stop him. Certainly not an armada stationed not far off the coast for purposes just in case. Yes, Obama’s an important man and crucial for a lot of things a lot of places, but I really don’t see why his blokes had to send so much ammunition, much less an entire fleet, to keep him one piece. Surely our own Sardarji’s gear would’ve done?

But then, the very fact of Obama being important, powerful. I don’t quite know if they also do it so much where he comes from, but all the shrill rhetoric about the powerful man doing this and that smacked full-on of a feudal servitude that continues to characterise urban Indian discourse. Obama, the mighty god from across the seas, descends upon our shores in his mighty flying machine and goes about our roads in another, equally might wonder on wheels. Everything about Obama is grand, spectacular, epic: he’s the American President, America’s the most powerful state. We bow to thee, great American Obama!

Great American Obama. No, it’s not meant personally and I do think he’s a decent enough man, but really, most powerful man? Most powerful nation? Seriously? Was it just our media which went bonkers as usual or do the Americans too seriously believe their President’s the most powerful in the world? If they do, have they really given him the constitutional authority to be so? Is there really some console hidden in that room from which their President can play Rudra a la the nukes, no questions asked? I’m not ready to believe the Americans trust their President so much as to give him the power to arbitrate war and peace all on his own. If they have, as all the oh-so-powerful rhetoric – unwittingly? – implies, then so much so for their love of freedom and democracy: what is their President then but a tyrant, a big, powerful bully whose writ is law.

Great and American undoubtedly, but not Great American. Yet, that precisely is what our engagement with him seemed to imply. Thank heavens for the frigidity of foreign offices in general, for the way everybody else gushed one would’ve thought the gods themselves had walked the earth. Obama’s wife dances with Mumbai kids: oh, she’s so pretty, so nice, so fashionable! Obama gives a speech in Parliament: oh, he’s so witty, so astute, such a statesman! Yes, all of that is undeniably true: the missus is nice and fashionable, the mister an astute statesman; but the way we did it implied such condescension, that it was such a favour which the Obamas bestowed upon us all by being nice and human.

Of course, as a nation we don’t expect the mighty to descend to such lows: we expect favours to be coated with red tape and rarefy power to Meruvian heights – something of the sort is always expected and people like me ought to be immune to it. Still, one can’t but be irritated at repeated displays of such awe and fawning in front of foreigners. Think about it, was giving that rock such a big thing? Obama donates a piece of marble from some under-construction memorial for Martin Luther King and the keepers of Rajghat erupt in joy and pride. A piece of marble? Yes, personal choice, perfectly valid; valid too the privilege of such choice to a head of state. But seriously, twas just a rock: along with being President, Obama is also just another man.

Regardless, what irks most of all is the development rhetoric. “India is not rising”, quips Obama, “India has risen”. I’m sorry, but I refuse to subscribe to this rising-risen rhetoric: it presupposes a universality, an underlying consensus on a host of notions on developed and developing, advanced and backward. Western economic models make much of the world down and out, but then these models are quite essentially the result of systems of labour which got consolidated by exploiting the rest of the world in the first place. Applying parameters premised on these models to judge a whole people is co-opting them further into those very systems. When Obama says India has arrived, he puts India on a pedestal created historically and sustained still on exploitation and discrimination. One might excuse him for doing so – I’m sure he thinks twas very nice of him – but the sight of people all over India erupting for joy is, to say the least, as distastefully childish as can be: agreed as urban Indian bourgeoisies we’re as much American as Indian, but still, we don’t really need an Obama to tell us whether we’ve ‘arrived’ or not, do we?

Apparently not. Countless activists can cry themselves hoarse about environmental damage, economic disparity, communal tension, sexual harassment, caste violence and so on. But India’s rising nonetheless. At what cost? The lives of millions of voiceless Indians. Being an industrial and military ‘superpower’ a la the American way seems the only goal to work to; why humanity cannot survive peacefully otherwise is a matter not worth consideration…

Barack Obama’s a sensible, intelligent man. His visiting India was a nice enough gesture. Yet, all said and done, it was just a gesture: it merited a nuanced response, not the hysteria which it provoked in so many quarters.

Lines Composed upon Wazirabad Bridge

(to Lakshita; or the idea of her)

*

Tranquillity or not, recollecting emotion is no mean task. You sit back, relax and spend many ponderous hours mulling over what you saw and felt at such and such place and so and so time. Every few minutes you think you’ve got it and you jump up in excitement and then just as soon you feel a sharp pang of disappointment when a mean little devil in your head rakes up doubt and whispers this wasn’t really it, you’ve missed something, that you’ve lost what it was for good…

It happens so many times too! Of course, for day to day commonplaces you don’t mind it happening, and you pass over such everyday trivia eagerly without a care. But for those things or events or just, well, moments, for these, for those for which you feel a special pang, not being able to recollect them perfectly well can be pretty irritating – irritating as it can be beautiful, both at the same time.

Really! I mean, you think and think and get all the more irritated at the way it just eludes you try as much as you can, but then there is a certain quaintly quixotic charm in this game of cat and mouse, in trying to fix reality knowing full well you never really can fix it after it’s over and done with. Is it man’s will, aiming a la Mirandola and ye olde Humanists to reach out for perfection in thought, in achieving a unity of thought and action, all a harmonious, shining whole? Or is it just plain, ruddy perversity, this hankering after a few seconds, wasting hours for a few moments when there’s much else to do: duties to fulfil, tasks to complete, life to be made…

See how it goes! From one to the other the chain goes on and on and so by leaps and bounds transports you leagues from what you started with. Such if life, and such is the human mind!

Wazirabad. It enters the city there; not literally, no, not in the geographical sense of entering the city limits and coming under the jurisdiction of some of its multiple bodies. No, not like that; yet, in that sense, in sense of jurisdiction, control, this is where it first falls under our control, us as a city. That’s where the first of the many bridges and barrages which we have over it here is and so, in that sense, that’s where it enters the city.

Nothing special about that. Of course not: it’s just yet another bridge and barrage over the mighty river. Ha! Not even a might river; a nallah, rather, as many of us are wont to derisively call it most of the time, implicating in such ridicule our governance, the famed bodies, in the twin conspiracy of corruption and pollution which has for long characterised any effort to restore it to any semblance of a living river. The Yamuna; not a river, a nallah: the Yamuna nallah.

Not a nallah then.

Mighty, mighty river! Crashing, pounding, taking all in its path – forward on to doom! The meek shall inherit the earth, and so the docile, staid, everyday nallah rises up in froth and fury to submerge man and his kind, to take down whatever comes in its path, threaten his arrogance with heavy blows, rot and decay! Chastise him with a heavy, heavy hand, a resounding slap against the vanity of his dreams…

It’s such a pity it didn’t flood, that it didn’t really break down all those banks. It would’ve been spectacular had it, had it flooded that Village. Ha! That would’ve been divine retribution for the Abhiyaan, something to finally award their long, fruitless vigil for nature and man. Not that death is pretty, nor that loss of property or of a lifetime’s hard work desirable. But rather it would’ve broken into our monuments than the lowly hovels, rather it would’ve reclaimed its own there and not thus. The poor always suffer; is the river a capitalist too?

Pah! A river’s a river and that’s it! Not, of course, like an urn’s an urn, or a daffodil’s a daffodil and that’s it, but still, a river’s no more than just that, a dead, lifeless river!

Yet, what a river and what a sight!

Perhaps it’s inexperience. I’m sure it is. A nallah otherwise, just now in spate – what of that?

Yet, why not? Why not indeed? A narrow, two laned bridge laden with the filth of man, his wheels. In it’s centre, the river’s centre, the centre where the channel runs deep and eternal and where now the watery expanse flows the most disturbed, waves upon stormy, turbulent waves of muddy water. Mud of the hills, mud of life, the seed of all our joys and sorrows, this water and mud…small whirlpools, just along the tired pillars aching to give up, make way, the steel of the walls long drawn up in abject obeisance to the river’s will. The will of man? A grain of sand tossed in a stormy sea…

It shakes. The heavy weight of tired souls; hearts laden with dust and grief, with daily cares and joys – the bitter-sweet offices of life and love. It shakes to the core. The mighty sinews of mortar and steel, what might before mud and water? Round and round the muddy water, through the grill a force unknown beckoning, pulling in to its dark, suffocating, deathless womb. It shakes. So shakes man, shaken to the core, his core: a nallah in spate.

Yet, what of it? A week, two at the most and the walls come down: the plains re-appear, the devotees with their plastics come back, the squatters, humbled yet again for no fault of their own, try yet again to piece together the shadow of a life. Spirit? A great city’s spirit, to continue as if nothing happened, as if twas naught but just another blip on the nation’s, the economy’s heart? Very few casualties, just a few displaced – the circle of life? Games people play…

Wazirabad. The nallah enters here. Soon there’ll be a bigger, grander bridge in its place, a bridge to make the city proud, a monument to its power and glory. The nallah flows on…

On bonfires and the Quran

Notes on secularism and will
 

*

I don’t quite see why burning the Quran should be a problem.

I mean, of course, I can see how in the sense people made it out as: it’s not a particularly sensitive thing to do and none too sensible as well, displaying as it does a lack of tact and understanding which may be expected of all clear thinking, inclusive people. I can also see how it might’ve been a particularly inflammatory act given the volatile condition of the Islamic community the world over and everybody else’s relation to it. I can see all of that, yes, and understand it perfectly well.

What I don’t see is why this should be a problem.

After all, the Quran’s just a book. Of great value to billions around the globe, to Musalmans as well as others interested. But all things said and done, to other people, to atheists like me, just another book: of great cultural import, yes, but quite really another book on the shelf.

Also, by that very logic, by being a document of such great significance, something not likely to be diminished in importance by having a few of its countless copies burned – or shredded, or destroyed in any other manner. Islam’s not going to suffer even if thousands of the Quran are burned; I’m sure they make them at a much greater rate than they’re able to destroy them and so there’s not really going to be a paucity of them anytime soon. In any case, I’m sure this wasn’t quite the objection which so many other people had to the idea.

No, if I’m not wrong, what many people’s and States’ problem was that such an act would prove inflammatory and invite backlash in very many sundry ways from the Islamic community. The rhetoric, of course, was a bit different and couched quite often in what our comrades on the other side call the secularist jargon of the liberal democratic setup, of such a move being unacceptable within the secular ethos of modern society, but the import seems to be much the same all over: burning the Quran is dangerous, the mullahs might just burn some more things over.

Which is what my problem with it is.

First of all, it’s just stereotyping the Musalmans way too much as an overtly religious and touchy people bound to flare up at the slightest slight. Agreed, stereotypes are more or less based on factuality, but then to assume that burning the Quran would rock the heart of very Musalman is to force the point beyond belief. I mean, surely the Musalmans have better things to do that forth and fume and work themselves up to fury over a bunch of folk burning the text they venerate. Wouldn’t a majority of them be more concerned about making a living and fulfilling their needs and being tolerably good men and women? How does it really matter if a few of Qurans are burned? Allah’s word is going to remain just the same, a few paperbacks less or more!

That, and that burning things like the Quran might actually help. After all, good man Jones did have a point: the world’s not half as nice as it might’ve been because the Musalmans have very nicely bombed and gunned it up. Sitting there in the backwaters of Florida, there’s little the good Pastor can do anything about it – as little, perhaps, as any of us, us being everyday people more into food and love and exs than theology and restoring Eden on earth. He must’ve felt frustrated – and he has reason enough to – and so planned to do the only thing which could’ve taken his frustration out: burn the book which the Musalmans like the most. Splendidly cathartic idea as I see it: take the Quran, think it up as all of Islam rolled within its pages and then burn it away to glory! Wouldn’t he have felt good after it? Purged, as the word goes.

Is it right then to raise such a hullaballoo over a lone old man and some other friends burning a book which they consider emblematic of all the trouble in the world – and that, specially, when just another symbol, a mosque, was been concretised next to the site of which they most probably consider the greatest blow to their own idea of themselves as a nation by the self same community?

I think not.

I think Jones and Co. have as much a right to burn the Quran – or any other book for that matter – as anybody who buys a book, doesn’t like it and then proceeds to burn it in his/her own backyard. It’s juvenile of course: burning books doesn’t solve anything –indeed, if all of us started burning books as response to the various crises which beset us there wouldn’t be much literature left in any case – and it only adds on to pollution and creates an unnecessary fire hazard. Yet, it is undeniably cathartic and can help people channel their frustration to harmless little bonfires.

It’s only in the public eye, then, that such an act acquires greater weight than it merits. There’s only as much importance to a symbol as one attaches to it and given the paranoia against Islam, it’s but natural so much should’ve been attached to one small flare-up on the margins. Yet, that still doesn’t take away from the inexorable fact that a symbol’s a symbol and attaching too much importance to it unnecessarily and thus blowing things out of proportion only makes that same thing, that symbol, bigger than itself, an entity on its own. If this little would-be bonfire cum blackmail threatened became an international crisis of sorts with heads of various states and religious bodies expressing regret, then it’s more a reflection of the culpability of the general public in allowing itself to be misguided by a zealous media than of the addition of any new dimension to the problem at hand or, for that matter, its solution.

Of course, all that is well known in any case: the so-called general public usually gets misguided by the media, while so-called commentators sweat to expose this same. That isn’t the concern here. What to me is important right now is that while rightly condemning Jones’ plans, nobody on the public scene bothered to qualify their concern by acknowledging the difference between the extremist and everyday Musalman and that while condemning the plans nobody seemed to take cognizance of Jones’ right to a bonfire and, more importantly, to either propose a pro-active, holistic approach towards the alleviation of those conditions which first suggested a bonfire to a Jones and a plane crash to an Osama or at least initiate a sincere, all-party revaluation of existing strategies for the same.

Like good man Jones, I too have no real idea on how to go about doing this and while a part of me does idly itch for that tempting matchbox and those two hardbounds taking up space on my shelf, I cannot but desist. Not just because they cost good money and I wouldn’t want my mother to know I’ve been up to mischief again, but also because the way forward lies inescapably in – in spite of as well as along with bonfires – accepting various things, symbols, abstractions, peoples as they are and not in forging unity through fire and steel. If we are to be truly secular – and this is what I understand secular as, as accepting religion(s) though not necessarily conforming to it(them) – then one of the steps forward we need to take is this, to simultaneously release both publicly and privately peoples out of stereotypes and work towards negating the violent and violence inducing conditions which create those negative, negating stereotypes in the first place.

Which, to put it differently, is to say that we need to be able to come up to a situation where we would first be able to accept a bonfire of this sort as an expression of dissent and disapproval and then handle it without burning up anything else in the process.