Coming to terms with Gandhi's double legacy

-Countering the doublespeak of some contemporary Gandhians-

"Every parent leaves a double legacy", said Rabbi Susan Laemmle movingly in her nonagerian mother's presence, during her farewell speech at the University of Southern California's 'What matters to me and why' series. A lot of what we are thankful for is owed to our parents, but some of our regrets also seem traceable to their decisions, which in hindsight seem well-meaning but ill-advised. In the perpetually ongoing collective reappraisal of India's shared legacy, the Father of the Indian Nation, in the worldview of a restless generation without patience for long-winded hagiography, appears not as much a liberating figure to be emulated, but as a limiting figure to be transcended. The legacy of Gandhi, all too often, is caricatured in the popular discourse, either as an infallible commandment for all ages, by Gandhian revivalists; or as something to be casually condemned and discarded, by those with a more revolutionary temperament. In truth, the legacy comes with moral capital, the demand of its trusteeship and the need not just for earnestness but also of imagination to weigh its counsel against contemporary exigencies. 

Gandhi can be thought as a teacher of the ages who believed that example is better than precept and 'left as an exercise to the reader' from successive generations the full consequences of his moral demands. If we go by the criteria of good teaching offered by American novelist Gail Godwin who said, " Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theater", then Gandhi was someone who spent almost a full half of his life in preparation by self-examination and spent the rest playing with earnestness and lifelikeness the role thrust upon him by history. Whether he played the role to perfection and whether he has paid his dues in advance for the adulation that is still offered to him, is a question that inspires apologetics and iconoclasm in equal measure. The contents of the following compilation of FAQs have been reproduced from no-holds-barred debates from Facebook and elsewhere, and are an attempt to retrieve Gandhi's legacy from its self-proclaimed Gandhian usurpers and come to terms with both its rewards and challenges.

Q: Has Satyagraha ever worked in history? Wasn't even Indian Independence an outcome of extraneous historical forces like the World Wars?

A:

There are obvious pitfalls in attempting to establish the desirability or otherwise of Satyagraha as factual claims of some sort, because such attempts run the risk of either:

(i) founding themselves on the ‘moral authority’ of the originator, ‘civilizational roots’ of a society in which cases it reduces to an Argument from Authority, or,

(ii) citing historical instances as suggestive of inevitabilities and as guidelines for conduct in themselves, in which case it becomes a Naturalistic Fallacy.

If the Fallacy of the Single Cause applies when somebody solely credits Gandhi for the independence of India, it also applies in a way when armed insurrections elsewhere in the world are also treated as indispensable to later political dispensations in those places. The necessity of the principle of retributive justice (incidentally, also at the roots of the Judaeo-Christian ‘No atonement without blood’ idea) also seems not entirely defensible on purely historical grounds, especially when contemporary counter-examples can be found, like the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions of South Africa. 

Pre-occupations with ‘Satyagraha’ should not be allowed to limit the imagination regarding other modes of non-violent protest. We must obviously avoid the ‘Satyagraha or guerrilla-warfare’ false dichotomy. Having said that, if a historical association of a method with Satyagraha is not automatically sanctifying, such a historical association is not automatically damning as well! Guilt by Association is as much a fallacy as an Argument from Authority.

Q: If history is not a reliable guide for evaluating Satyagraha, what is?

A:

A society’s liberty to make non-violence a primal non-negotiable is neither necessitated nor precluded by an arguments of expediency or history. There is no reading of biography or history that can make the adoption of violence or non-violence objectively binding. A statement on the superiority of one over the other is not a factual claim, but quintessentially a value proposition. In Kantian terms, the recommended means of evaluation of such a statement is the categorical imperative. It is possible to construct an argument for non-violence based on the categorical imperative rather than any hypothetical imperative harking to its expediency or effectiveness (and it goes without saying that such arguments may even be constructible for stances that run counter to non-violence, as we had acknowledged the absence of objective binding here ).

The argument goes as follows. Kant stated the categorical imperative as ‘Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.’ An alternative statement he provided is ‘Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.’ An evaluation of Satyagraha by these standards seems favourable in the main, though not conclusive. It seems desirable for the right to peaceful protest to be a universal rule rather than the right to bear firearms to be made universal and hence non-violence seems to score by the universalization requirement. As for treating humanity always as an end, Satyagraha makes the ‘reform of the oppressor’ as an end and even the apparent subsuming of the Satyagrahi’s self within a cause is entirely voluntary and hence not a violation of the categorical imperative.  

Q: Doesn't the very method of Satyagraha reek of a certain masochism and self-flagellation?

A: 

One may quite justifiably view the apparent masochism of a Satyagrahi with aesthetic distaste or even moral indignation. However, what we see as masochism occurs because people at a certain juncture of desperation will not balk at or stop short of seemingly self-destructive acts, even if there is no messianic demagogue orchestrating the self-flagellation as it were. The Satyagraha movement in India, egregious though the submissions to beatings in Dharasana may seem to you and others, nevertheless equipped a desperate people with an effective visual vocabulary, even though it may to contemporary eyes may seem an overly visceral vocabulary erring on the side of masochism. But in its absence there is no telling if people would have adopted an even more self-destructive vocabulary like Thich Quang Duc!

If readers will pardon the seemingly cynically calculative use of the expression, there is a tradeoff between shock-value and personal injury in methods of non-violent agitation meant to awaken consciences. While Satyagraha does not solve this tradeoff optimally by our standards it is conceivable why at a certain time and place this solution was found plausible. While Dharasana maybe an exaggerated application of the idea, the idea of ‘submission as protest’ i.e. willingly and visibly undergoing what the oppressors think as ‘inviting trouble’ is discernible even in modern protests. SlutWalks (Besharmi morchas) seemingly submit to the slurs spouted by the verbal oppressors and achieve a tradeoff between shock-value and personal injury (in terms of jeering and leering) in a manner that is more acceptable to contemporary sensibilities.

Q: Isn't the outcome of Satyagraha unjust if it spares wrong-doers their well-deserved punishment? Doesn't every lasting revolution involve a purge of some sort?

A: 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa are a success story which I repeatedly cite because they are neither blank-cheque acquittals nor staged pardons where the parties will never again meet each other. For their remarkable resolution of the tradeoff between reparation and national integration, these Commissions are deserving of admiration, since we know how wrong a pre-occupation with ‘commensurate’ reparation can go in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

Nobody can deny the importance of Devil’s Advocates in a debate like this one. However it must be said that critics of Gandhi are not exactly a minority being shouted-out in today’s India. While this in no detracts from several valid criticisms, the preponderance of inveterate Gandhi-bashers in both the Indian Right and Left is hard to miss. A contemporary national trait which deserves being subjected to a Devil’s Advocate’s prosecution is the romanticization of radical overhaul with an increasing appetite for punishment which can be bloody if necessary. The perils of war-cry vocabulary are too insidious to not deserve tempering and hence the relevance of this position in the debate.

Action propelled simply by public outrage, and tacitly encouraging a worldview that public outrage itself is reason enough to demand certain legislation or punishment, and that enough outrage removes the onus of providing a convincing case, is obviously counterproductive. Turning to Egypt for a second, the trial of Mubarak is to be welcomed as long as it complies with the requirements of Egyptian law, but the atmospherics accompanying the trial are also worrying, given the rising din of war-cry vocabulary.  The possibility of an execution of the bed-ridden accused that does little to assuage world concerns that the Bastille-storming of Tahrir maybe followed by a quite real Reign of Terror, is a vitiation which young Egypt could do without, especially at a time when it needs world goodwill more than any other.

As can be seen, to what extent society must indulge and play to public outrage in exercising the law of the land itself is subject to judgments of prudence and expediency. If a Doctrine of Necessity of sorts can be cited in favour of exemplary punishment, a similar doctrine can in some occasions be cited in favour of commutation and clemency too according to very utilitarian considerations. In resolving the justice-compassion tradeoff, one can easily notice that neither the ‘retributionists’ nor the ‘reconcilers’ have a monopoly on pragmatism or idealism respectively. Arguments for clemency may well be guided by expediency too.

Q: Hasn't Gandhian naivete and atavism already been called out for what it is by the critiques of say, Dr. Ambedkar and Periyar? In an environment saturated with Gandhian hagiography and deification, isn't it these views that must receive more emphasis?

A: 

It is true that a debate on Gandhi's legacy and its contemporary relevance is a useful one to have. It is also true that such a debate will be more edifying if critics do not insist on stopping at nothing short of a complete disowning, disavowal and demeaning of Gandhi. Critiques of Gandhian methods such as the timely and still relevant ones by Dr. Ambedkar essentially emphasized caution against fetishizing disobedience and creating personality cults. One wishes that latter-day 'Gandhians' and 'Ambedkarites' had these arguments with the civility and mutual respect with which Gandhi and Dr. Ambedkar themselves corresponded, and sedulously avoid both sanctimony and acrimony.

One reading which maybe useful in this context is George Orwell's essay on Gandhi, which avoids the near-irresistible urges of commentators for either hagiography or bashing. In typical Orwellian fashion (and in what will be music to the ears of critics), he begins "Saints should always be judged guilty till they are proved innocent." 

The reservations expressed by critics mainly have to do with the risk of uncritically appraising Gandhian methods but all-too-often, knee-jerk iconoclasm is mistaken to be a substitute for unbiased appraisal of the likes of Gandhi. Even for Gandhi's most controversial 'experiment with truth' featuring female inmates from his ashram, an expression like 'sleeping with grand-daughters' seems ill-advised if used without clarification, because even though these 'experiments' were admittedly coercive and potentially traumatic to participants, they did NOT involve incest of the sort the said phrase seems to convey.

We can again turn to Orwell for his take on Gandhi's propensity to undertake such punishing (to himself and others) experiments. Orwell's word for the same is simply 'inhuman' as against the normal human condition which he describes as follows: "The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals." 

Therein may lie Gandhi's otherwordliness which may cause some unease, but does it detract from the relevance of his demonstrable contributions to human rights activism?

Q: Isn't Gandhi's almost pathological emphasis on self-denial with egregious experiments of celibacy obviously atavistic and counter-productive?

A: 

It is obvious that his pre-occupations with abstinence and fasts are major reasons why there are misgivings about the contemporary reception of Gandhian methods and why Gandhi is thought of as otherworldly or ‘out-of-touch’. But perhaps here too, Gandhi knew what he was doing.

Gandhi saw himself as an educator and a reformer and two of his goals where:(i) Encourage more participation of women in the political sphere (which is a very exploitation-prone environment now as it was then)(ii) Exhort the privileged classes to exercise greater social responsibility (which demanded methods to curb human tendencies for over-indulgence)

Gandhi, being the master communicator that he was, understood that in order to remove any intent of exploitation from the men in politics, a dramatic illustration of the seemingly unattainable ideal of total abstinence would make more of an impression than simple exhortations of right professional conduct. Likewise, the image of asceticism that fasting conveys seems harder to ignore than merely an editorial against ‘conspicuous consumption’. Whether intended or not, there was a method in this seeming hyperbolic madness, as these seemingly exaggerated symbols for communication exploit the Peak Shift Principle (explained by Dr. V S Ramachandran here ) and make allowance for the all-too-human tendencies to drift back into old behaviors without such dramatic motivation which may at first sight seem unrealistic (explained by Dr. Viktor Frankl here ).

The ‘purificatory’ value of fasting seems unconvincing in anything other than a metaphysical setting, but who can deny that repeated endurance tests can be very formative and that practice in exercising such resolve renders one likelier to honour commitments?

Q: Gandhi may have been well-meaning, but isn't the impact of Satyagraha overly glorified and exaggerated? How can we convince agitators in Kashmir or Palestine to give Satyagraha a chance?

A: 

The truism that 'Satyagraha sometimes works and often doesn't' has been belaboured often as an argument against Satyagraha. To say that Satyagraha sometimes works and sometimes doesn't is about as informative as saying that guerilla warfare sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. However, there is less harm in terms of bloodshed when Satyagraha is tried and failed than after a failed insurrection. The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet maybe excoriated by young Tibetans for failing to secure full-enough autonomy for his compatriots, but history may still exculpate him as he is almost single-handedly responsible for forestalling the bloodshed of a guerrilla war. 

As for the people of Kashmir and Palestine, intifadas and jihads have had their chance for several decades and a trial with Satyagraha doesn't seem out of place since its most popular alternatives have been exhausted, the people concerned are left with so little to lose and there seems least harm in trying this than any other option! 

Q: Would Satyagraha have worked against the Nazis?

A: 

Thinkers like Amartya Sen recognize that Gandhi’s choice of method depended in large part on his recognition that the ‘British would eventually be amenable to the force of argument’. When the scope and applicability of Satyagraha is thus clearly spelt out at the very outset and when no claim of miraculously reforming every genocidal maniac is made in the first place, one wonders why there is always a reflexive ‘It-would-not-have-worked-with-the-Nazis’ reaction in any conversation on Satyagraha.

An often ignored historical point is that the full horrors of the concentration camps were not known to or realized by the wider world until after the liberation of these camps by allied forces and the reports of journalists like the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby. Would history have taken a different turn if the world had been forced to notice of these horrors sooner by the actions of a Jewish Thich Quang Duc?

It is difficult to say in hindsight, but quoting this talk by Julia Bacha : “Violent resistance and non-violent resistance share one very important thing in common; they are both a form of theater seeking an audience for their cause. If violent actors are the only ones getting front-page covers and attracting international attention to the Palestinian cause, it becomes very hard for non-violent leaders to make the case to their communities that civil disobedience is a viable option in addressing their plight.” 

Would the history of twentieth-century Europe been different if the journalism of the time, besides war-reporting had devoted more resources to investigative undercover reporting from the concentration camps?

It is in the context of the above questions that Gandhi’s stance on this issue, which George Orwell in his essay quoted above, acknowledges as honest even if causing a reaction of disbelief in us, must be evaluated. Quoting from Orwell’s essay:

According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi’s view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler’s violence.” After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered even so warm an admirer as Mr. Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives to be lost in some other way. When, in 1942, he urged non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several million deaths.

Q: Can we disagree with Anna Hazare and the methods of 'India Against Corruption' and still be genuine Satyagrahis?

A:  

If one wishes to stay true to the meaning of Satyagraha as 'holding fast to Truth', one must begin with an acknowledgment of both our individual and collective limitations of apprehending truth in the first place. So many fundamental human weaknesses which obscure the true picture, namely 'hero worship' and 'herd instinct', are exacerbated in such heady times thanks to the frisson of overnight mobilization, and anybody seeking to 'hold fast to truth' must be wary of them. 

This is not about Anna, but about every one of his self-proclaimed supporters, many of whom may well be clinging obstinately to a chimera in the name of holding fast to an incompletely conceived 'truth', as it appears to their enraged and hence not fully reasonable selves. 

It is said often that a patriot must be willing to defend the nation against the government but is often missed that a patriot must also be willing to defend the nation against the mob. A Satyagrahi must hold fast to what is closest to truth according to their honest assessment, notwithstanding the pushing and shoving of an impatient mob. The honorific label of 'Satyagrahi' could well apply to an arch-Constitutionalist taking a principled stand of following due process no matter what. (Alas, there is no such towering figure now that we can look up to, but the point in bringing this up is to make the point that there can be very legitimate 'Satyagrahis' with a stance opposed to Anna's). India Against Corruption (IAC) has no monopoly on Satyagraha and no privileged position on 'truth'.

Any citizen in a democracy, before the ceding the right to pronounce upon truth to a sloganeering mob, must be willing to lend an ear to dissenting voices by well-meaning citizens holding fast to their convictions in their own way.

Q: How is Satyagraha relevant to me when I am neither a refugee nor an agitator nor someone who is directly oppressed in any way?

A: 

It is true that the chief case in favour of Satyagraha is that it empowers the weak to look the dominant force in the eye, and demand and get justice. Satyagraha education seems to have another benefit; it also sensitizes those among the strong to recognize injustices perpetrated by the establishment they are affiliated to, and abstain from such injustices even at the cost of some self-interest. A classic example is the support extended to the Civil Rights Movement in America by many conscientious individuals from across the racial divide, whom Dr. King magnanimously acknowledges and applauds in his I Have a Dream speech. The ‘conscientious objector’ is a sort of minority that can especially benefit from Satyagraha training. A contemporary case in point is the conscientious objection of personnel in the Israeli Defence Forces to the occupation of territories of the Palestinian people.

Redemption, re-imagined

The true cultivation of minds in a University happens not in fenced-off fields, but is sown where those coming from distant walks of life find their paths cross, and is enlivened by the bracing winds of cross-fertilization. "A cultivation of minds to what end?", one might ask. The Foundation Stone of the University of Southern California laid in 1879, proclaims that this cultivation is pursuit "dedicated to the search for and dissemination of Truth;to Freedom of Thought and discussion; to intelligent, unbiased analysis of the forces that have shaped the past and will mold the future, to the development of Manhood and Womanhood for Christian service and loyal citizenship".  'Christian' here is treated as synonymous with noble and the culturally contingent choice of the word is unsurprising, considering that the word 'Arya' is a synonym for 'noble' too in many Indian languages, while elsewhere in the world the same word carries alienating racial connotations. What does it mean to be 'Christian'  or for that matter to be noble, what does the Cross stand for and what do the symbols that move millions move them towards, are questions which perpetually seek revisiting and whose answers need to be perennially re-imagined. An apt and recent instance of the commitment of the University to promote 'intelligent, unbiased analysis of the forces' that move us as individuals and societies, is the ongoing art exhibition entitled "The Serpent and the Cross" conducted by the Office of Religious Life.


The call for student submissions for this event was addressed to "All USC students of any or no religious backgrounds", who were invited to, "submit original artistic expressions for consideration for inclusion in a public exhibit to be held in the Fishbowl Chapel of the University Religious Center from April 11-23 (the two weeks before Catholic and Protestant Easter)."  The announcement continued "The artworks can be in any medium and should be between 4 inches square and 3 feet square in size, and able to be displayed on a wall.  Each should be accompanied by a separate written description no more than 150 words in length, including the artist’s name and very brief bio. They should take the form of crosses that illustrate some way in which people today “crucify” themselves or others, individually or as a society.  Examples:  a cross made of pills (illustrating how people try to “save” themselves with drugs, but end up “crucifying” themselves instead), a cross made of bullet casings (illustrating how people buy guns to protect themselves, but sometimes end up causing more violence.)"


The exhibit which began yesterday, features besides the examples listed above, other striking images of contemporary crucifixions, crafted using the unlikeliest odds and ends, like a cross made from a pair of earphones outstretched in a silent lament about how technology that supposedly connects people actually ending up isolating them and a stark armature of crossed barbed wire making a forbidding image of border fences that supposedly guard nations but divide humanity.

(Please click on the images, if you would like a larger view)


A particularly telling exhibit was one in which Rev. James T Burklo, USC's Associate Dean of Religious Life, confronts with the dreaded "Kill or cure?" question the one resort of society that is zealously guarded from the trespass of doubt: Religion. This exhibit,entitled 'Crucified by Scripture" , is a cautionary collage of scriptural injunctions that have been the cause of much oppression, warning society how the most trusted Word can become the most feared war-cry or echo in the most cruel whip-lash.

My own offering for the exhibition was entitled "The Ersatz Credit Card Cross" and accompanied by the following statement: " The 'Ersatz Credit Card Cross' is built from the likenesses of real credit cards, from the reams of promotional junk-mail that we receive. These are cards that promise to deliver us from want by leading us into temptation. They promise that paradise is available for purchase on borrowed earnings. The wages of buying into their delusion of an ersatz paradise, is having to carry the cross of debilitating debt. The credit-card-fueled debt crisis is a monument to human folly, which has been recognized but indulged in for ages , heedless of sage counsel against it.  From one far end of the faith divide,we can hear the critical voice of Epicurus cautioning society against the consumerism of his time, saying that all that money can buy is of little worth compared to what really matters: friendship, freedom and the examined life. At the other end of the faith divide, the New Testament's Parable of the Talents speaks of how a servant who did not gainfully spend the gold entrusted to him, earned the wrath of his master. Worse than that servant, we in today's world end up earning the scorn of society unless we spend gold we don't yet have! "Ours is a story of a people persuaded to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about!", says the economist Tim Jackson. This cross symbolizing the tyranny of consumerism, is placed against a backdrop of the dead-tree business-reply-envelopes which accompany this wholly avoidable paper-intensive marketing spree. Together, they tell a story of how we are living beyond our means, as individuals, as societies and as a species."

While the Romans employed the Cross to devastating effect as an instrument of repression, the early Christians re-imagined and recast it as a symbol of redemption. The contemporary crises we confront as individuals and societies demand a re-imagination of redemption, that is meaningful only if begun with a re-imagination of suffering. By re-imagining our suffering we might find meaning in it, which in itself is a redemption from despair, according to the counsel of Dr. Viktor Frankl who says "In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice." In the words of Albert Einstein, "Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.", and we can take it to mean that a redemption from our present suffering will continue to evade our imagination if it is limited by age-old convention and prejudice, and has the chance of occurring to us only if we dare to re-imagine the commonplace, what we were once numbed to. To imagine anew, needs a change from begrudging numbness to a sprightly innocence, like a childhood that is not reminiscent but relived. Peeping from behind the lines of artistry and the layers of allusions in the exhibits is a welcome childlikeness, where no pebble is just a pebble, no twig is just a twig and no cross is just a cross. "Lawyers I suppose were children once.", says the epigraph of 'To Kill a Mockingbird". So were pastors. So were grad students.

We need hands that give, more than lips that pray!


"The hands that help are better by far than lips that pray." - Robert G Ingersoll (Declaration of the Free, 1889)


This post is dedicated as a contribution to Twestival India 2011 and is being submitted to seek aid for the Equal Community Foundation. To spread the word and participate, please visit the Give India page.

With so much suffering so close to home...

Heavenward should our piteous gaze stray?

Work beckons beyond the idol or dome... 

We need hands that give, more than lips that pray!

If both hands are joined in supplication...

The role of helping hands how can they play?

Not relying on divine intervention,

We need hands that give, more than lips that pray!

Right here and now our help is sought;

One human to another, all the way!

Wholly human, a miracle it's not!

We need hands that give, more than lips that pray!

To lend a hand or not, is in our hands!

What joy will a with-held penny pay?

It earns more if in the poor box it lands!

We need hands that give, more than lips that pray!

A penny that saves is a penny saved...

From expense, which from our welfare can stray!

Giving's a joy greater than thrills we craved,

We need hands that give, more than lips that pray!

Outside shrines too, you can find a poor box;

Charity is not fully under faith's sway!

On the doors of each heart, empathy knocks!

We need hands that give, more than lips that pray! 

To do our bit in helping those in need...

Into living hells we need not foray!

A mouse-click can be a life-saving deed...

We need hands that give, more than lips that pray!

When we can give in comfort, from our seats...

Is there an excuse for any delay?

Our own people's cry our help now entreats,

We need hands that give, more than lips that pray!

-Arvind Iyer (March 22, 2011)

Wanting to see the world...

Wanting to see the world...
Before renouncing it...
My mind eagerly whirled...
Never letting me sit!


“Just show it what it wants!”,
One more voice in me said,
“Allow yourself some jaunts,
In a lulling soft tread!”


The lulled mind by me lured...
Was now much less restless.
This calm though, was secured,
By a pace more breathless!


If pace slowed the mind moaned,
Denied its feast of sights;
In mind's tow my limbs groaned,
Drained by these fancy flights!


“Just one more mile”, I thought,
“And that should be enough!”
The old urge though I fought,
Keeping my word was tough!


“To see more of the same,”
I ask my tired mind,
“Will you our whole life claim?
For ends you'll never find?”


The spent mind was silent,
And I could now sit still;
Though just for a moment,
I could muster my will.


In that moment I found...
That all I need is here!
But then somewhere around...
A stirring I could hear.


I told myself, “Stay still!”
But what did I just hear?
Now the mind will ask till
Its source is somehow clear.


Do I have everything...
That the stirred mind now seeks?
Or do I err sitting,
Unmoved when the World speaks?


Wanting to see this world...
Before renouncing it...
My mind eagerly whirled...
Never letting me sit!


So saying I look around...
And set out yet again...
Unseen sights still abound;
For things aren't where they'd lain!

-Arvind Iyer (1st July 2010)

Glue and glee

This is about a tourism promotion stall with a difference; one where I found brushes besides brochures, experienced creation of an artefact rather than mere conversation with an agent and instead of poring over coffee-table books, put together a table of my own!

What can beat the joy of doing it yourself?
So what if it's just a desk the size of an elf?

Unchanged in shape from Korea's ancient halls...
It's now a plaything's size in airport stalls.

The humble desk of which I will now speak...
Is fashioned neither of sandal nor teak.

Leftover chips from some far-Eastern woods...
By visitors' hands become goodwill's goods!

Legs, boards and drawers, each as a puzzle-piece...
Are in curious hands made whole with ease!

Watching this while in a bored wait we stand...
Why not we ourselves at this try our hand?

So thinking, my grown-up shyness I shun...
With some glue and more glee the desk I fashion!

The desk which to start with, plain pine has been,
Now awaits to get an ebony sheen...

To paint it black at first seems quite artless,
But some care it takes to get a coat spotless...

Up, down and from the sides if you peep...
A streak of pine from ebony might creep!

Returning to the jar a content brush...
I resume my journey with less haste and rush...

The toy desk was in its own right a stage...
For the play of childhood untouched by age!

While participating in the kyunsang desk-making activity 

at the Korean Traditional Cultural Experience Center, 

Incheon International Airport, Seoul, South Korea
7th January 2010

An old year wraps up, unwrapping a new one; but only in Man's humble measure. Time unfolds relentlessly, indifferent to any measure. This moment is indistinguishable from all other moments but for the note Man chooses to take of it. It is a moment timely as any other to take note of the realities that accompany human vision and those that outlast it, and reflect on how ephemerality itself constitutes Eternity.

Beneath the Moon; Beside the Moon

The scene past the train's window speeds and streams...
My view spans delight's and boredom's extremes.

The full moon keeps pace with each single train...
Motionless, on each frame does it remain!

The world beneath the moon seems quite still too...
I wonder how dusk's plainness my sights drew!

Now, from the void a hill its presence claims...
With the moon it will share but a few frames...

Now, in the distance a forest fire burns!
The staid twilight scene at once florid turns!

The fire, still burning, is first out of sight...
The unfleeting hill flits into the night...

The night outlasts this play of light and shade...
And the traveling moon, unmoved has stayed!

The dark on which just drowsy sights dwell...
Somehow on the mind's eye casts its own spell!

Arvind Iyer

En route from Nashik in the Nanded-Mumbai Tapovan Express
Maharashtra, India
1800 - 2200 hrs 31st December 2009

In Medias Res

-The Other Middle Way-

The renowned contemporary Californian poet Robert Hass performed a reading of his recent works at the Doheny Library in the University of Southern California on March 30 this year. At the start of this event was a distribution ceremony of awards of academic excellence to graduating students in the university's Creative Writing program, fittingly felicitated in the presence of one of the most eminent practitioners of their art. Something I remember with some amusement about this ceremony, is the announcer's repeated description of the students as 'graduating poets' and the impressive-sounding statistics of the 'number of poets graduated by the University in recent years' reeled off exultantly. I remember asking myself, "When did Milton 'graduate'?". Notwithstanding the undeniable accomplishments of the awardees in the ceremony, a 'graduate of a Creative Writing program' and a 'poet' are not the same thing. By the same token, in a less formal context, a 'blog-owner' and 'blogger' are not the same thing. The blogosphere teems with too many blog-owners and too few bloggers. An online report of a survey on blog useage by Caslon Analytics, makes the following sardonic observation, "The 'average blog', thus has the lifespan of a fruitfly", and goes on to add, even more scathingly, "One cruel reader of this page commented that the average blog also has the intelligence of a fly".

Why do so many blog-owners end up trailing off mid-sentence what they begin with such a flourish? And why are so many of the bloggers reduced to compulsive transcribers of small-talk which neither edifies nor entertains, but only exhibits their fright of awkward silences? Is it a poverty of ideas, want of time, cynicism about reception or the result of an unreasonable quest for unattainable perfection? In short, what causes, and what can cure, the dreaded "writer's block", which seems to be unsparing in its affliction of anyone who writes, be they casual dabblers, avid hobbyists or gifted authors? Elizabeth Gilbert, another contemporary American poet, during a 2009 TED talk screened at a USC event, asks in exasperation, "Why is there only a 'writer's block'? Has anyone ever heard of a 'chemical engineer's block'?" An attempt at answer, could begin by saying that a chemical engineer most often knows what is expected in terms of clear specifications, can draw on his training to decide how to meet these specifications, and must meet them within a stipulated duration. But devoid of the problem statements, provisional plans and estimated timeframes which a chemical engineer almost always has, a writer most often does not have the answers to the questions, "What to write? How to start? When to finish?"

As for the first question of "What to write?", it seems to imply an assumption that there should be something to write about, and must be demanded by an occasion. That may be quite a limiting assumption, for in the words of W M Thackeray, "There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write". Even the faintest attempts know what these myriad unknown thoughts of ours are, is worthwhile according to the ancients who held that the most worthwhile pursuit of all is to 'Know Thyself', a motto often quoted in Latin as 'Nosce te ipsum'. Beginnings to answers to all these questions of troubled writers today, can perhaps be found in the aphoristic wisdom of antiquity. Consider the third question of "When to finish?", which writers of all hues never seem to be able to answer; either erring on the side of the excess of hypergraphia producing an abundance of inanity; or by taking parsimony to the point of disease, a disease which they resignedly call "writer's block". The ancients, anticipating this question, caution us, "Nothing in Excess", an aphorism quoted as widely as "Know Thyself", rendered in Latin as "Ne quid nimis". This is the famed Middle Way, an enduring theme in Oriental philosophy as well, and its import ought not to be lost on writers, who instead of aspiring to be prolific or perfect, would do better to seek sufficiency without superfluity. As for the second question, "How to start?", there is an answer in the form of another Latin phrase, less oft-quoted than the previous two, but having its origins in the world of writers: in medias res, meaning 'in the midst of affairs'. To begin at the beginning may not be the best way to begin, the ancients caution, for the beginning itself may beg earlier questions and endless clarifications, losing the narrator both his enthusiasm and his audience. Instead, they suggest, begin at a turning point, a crucial incident which can both trigger a flashback and set the stage for a climax; something that will draw in the audience, suspend their disbelief and engross them in suspense. If you must start bang in the middle of the story, so be it, they say, and this counsel can, in a way, be thought of as the other, less known, Middle Way.

It definitely worked for the bard of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad begins in medias res, in a battle-camp scene where a tumultuous war of words rages between warriors who almost come to blows; with a wrathful, scornful Achilles a hair's breadth away from stabbing Agamemnon, then commanding the Greeks during the ninth interminable year of the siege of Troy. The bard chooses to begin neither in Sparta splendidly with the birth of Helen of the face that launched a thousand ships, nor in idyllic Ida where the Judgment of Paris eventually sealed the fate of Troy. The Odyssey also begins in medias res, amidst the debauched revelry of egregious suitors ravaging a palace and intent on seizing its queen; as a helpless Telemakos and a Penelope at her wit's end guard their honour in Ithaca in the twentieth of the unendurable years spent waiting for Odysseus, for whose return they are hoping against hope. Again, the bard chooses not to begin at the obvious starting point which would have been the denouement of the Iliad and the sacking of Troy. The Homeric epics begin as long as nine years and twenty years from the real beginnings of their stories as it were, and far from drawing any complaints from readers, draws them into a double mystery presented by the questions, "How did we get here?" and "Where do we go from here?"

Nature imitates Art, and so does History, in that they all unfold in medias res. Alexander the Great began his conquest of the world in medias res, since he had to begin with, and contend with, plans for a Persian invasion already laid by his father, Philip of Macedon before his assassination. The history of the conquests of the world's best-known conqueror, is not one of a dramatic beginning, but rather, of a taking off from where an earlier false start had left off. Rarely, if ever, have any of the 'boy kings' of history had the luxury of being prepared to shoulder the demands of war and peace. Medieval India has the example of Akbar, crowned as a teenager, in medias res in a beleaguered empire in an anarchic subcontinent of warring chieftains; and recent Indian history has the example of Rajiv Gandhi, elected as the youngest Prime Minister, in medias res in a republic under threat, in a subcontinent ravaged by sectarian violence. Most recently, President Barack Obama has been elected Commander-in-Chief in medias res, at the helm during two ongoing wars.

It is not just generals and statesmen, but also those who fight the wars against disease and ignorance, who are denied the luxury of forewarning and preparation, and are left to their own devices in medias res. Researchers seeking the AIDS cure, are always half-way behind the breakneck speed mutations of the retrovirus, leaving the baffled investigators never abreast but clueless in medias res. All higher education begins in medias res. Thanks to recent advances that may revolutionize whole professions overnight, what today are preliminaries in a higher education program typically are several steps beyond the 'beginning' which yesterday's curricula of undergraduate courses prepare a student for. With most higher education programs being interdisciplinary, a student more often than not, is not familiar with the fundamentals of all the disciplines from which his or her interdisciplinary specialization feeds off, and must cope in medias res with the challenge of attaining intermediate competence in fields they maybe beginners in. Almost the entire project life cycle in the Information Technology industry lies in medias res, since all upgrades of business processes are desired to be 'online' without halting any regular operations, 'while the engine is running' as it were, and it is very seldom that software systems are built from scratch instead of being upgraded patch-wise coping with 'legacy code'. In media res is an underlying ubiquitous theme in the narrative of not just organizations, nations and other human endeavor, but also of the origin of our species and race. The story of biological Evolution itself occurs in medias res in a more overarching unfolding narrative of Geological Time, with such disruptive events as colliding asteroids and staggered Ice Ages altering the course of Evolution in unpredictable ways. Adapting post hoc is not an option since Evolution offers no second chances, and if any species has survived, it is because it adapted in medias res.

We can consider the in medias res worldview as the antithesis of what can be called the ab initio world-view. The ab initio worldview is one that assumes that knowledge of beginnings and fundamentals is sufficient to arrive at whatever else we need to know, and that application succeeds theory. In the ab initio worldview, the logic is deductive, the philosophy is idealist, the approach is reductionist and the stand is determinist. By contrast, in the in medias res world, the logic is inductive, the philosophy is empiricist, the approach is holistic and the stand is existentialist. The ab initio and in medias res positions are constantly in dialectic in any evolving body of human knowledge, and a concrete example is the debate about the primacy of Genes or the Environment in determining the human personality. Even the most dogmatic reductionist admits that the maxim "DNA makes RNA, RNA makes proteins and proteins make us' is an oversimplification, for though it is true that the 'master plan' of an organism is contained in the Genes, not everything in the development of the organism in its Environment goes 'according to plan' and the laws of Nature operate in medias res in a context established by Nurture. Laws, in any science, Natural or Social have an unspoken 'ceteris paribus', 'all other things remaining equal' preceding them. The Laws can seldom, if ever, be applied to the real world ab initio, but only by first accounting for and correcting for, in medias res, all those things which do not remain equal.

Like the Sciences which can really be practiced only in medias res, the Arts are no different. Returning to where we started , this is why poets do not commence or graduate ab initio per se, but engage in medias res in a process of creation, whose beginnings and outcomes should not preoccupy them. Confucius said, "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand", meaning that however much theory is appropriated ab initio, understanding is achieved only when practice is engaged in, in medias res. Confucius, hailed by posterity as one of the wisest men of all time, considered his own lifetime an unfulfilled one, with his mission of building a new society founded on the edifice of his ethics, unfinished and uncertain. So many great works conceived of by the human mind have not only begun but also remained indefinitely in medias res. For Mahatma Gandhi, the political freedom of India was little more than a ground-laying for the larger mission which Pandit Nehru described as 'wiping every tear from every eye', a mission which to this day, remains in medias res. Returning to the epics of antiquity, Virgil, author of the timeless Aeneid which is hailed as the national epic of the Romans, in his deathbed thought of his work not as a masterpiece but as a draft in medias res awaiting urgent revision or deserving to be burnt if unrevised. Posterity benefitted from the good fortune that his last words were never heeded. Like so many other tormented practitioners of his art over the ages, Virgil seems to have been perplexed by the belief that a work of art is owned, dispensed and disposed by its creator. Were they but willing to accept that their creations are larger than their selves, and every creation is somehow already in progress for them to join for a time, at fortuitous moments not always of their choosing; how less tormented they would be and how much fulfilment they would be able to give their art? It is with this glad and liberating acceptance that Homer begins his invocation which in way counsels every writer of posterity to seek his Muse: "So now, daughter of Zeus, tell us that story, starting anywhere you wish!". So invokes Homer his Muse. So begins the Odyssey...