आईना आईने के सामने है
देखिए कौन किसको देखता है।
2.9.18

अभी बचपन है, खुद पर मर मिटेंगे,
हटा लो सामने से आईने को ।।
3.9.18

अक्स टूटा है आईने के साथ
साथ ही कितने भरम टूटे हैं।
3.9.18

LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -24
Display of histrionics

II
Can we count the hours and days spent on the histrionics surrounding the Manuvad and Manusmriti by those who despise history, but revive myths and characters from epics and Puranas? Don’t they enact shadow war to avenge injustice of yore to divest themselves of pressing modern responsibilities? Can we identify the forces behind the curtain prompting them as and when they forget the crammed dialogue? If not, then we ignore what is obvious and fool ourselves.

The bane of social discrimination is endemic to Indian society from top to bottom. It has frustrated all agitations and movements launched against it, from Rigvedic period to the present- those of the Asuras(Bhargavas in RV), Upnishadic teachers, proponents Yoga, Sankya and Vaisheshik schools, Buddha, Mahavir, Shavites, Tantriks, Siddhas, down to medieval saint movement under the leadership of numerous thinkers from Ramanand, Kabir, Nanakdev to Namdev and later Brahmasamaj, Arya Samaj.

Can we ignore the inner turmoil of Indian society? Have we any parallel in world history of the urge for freedom, equality and justice for all? Had not all these movements been spearheaded by those who did not belong to the socially discriminated and economically deprived section, including the progressive Brahmanas?

There is something in Indian society exclusively of which it felt so proud. Sarve bhavantu sukhinah sarve santu niramaya, sarve bhadrani pashyntu ma kashcid dukkhabhag bhavet (May everyone be happy, may everyone be free from disease. May everyone reach the summum bonum of life, may none suffer pain) is not a vain cry, but a widely felt urge of Indian society at a time when there were societies that held that the niggers have no soul so they don’t feel any pain when tortured and lynched.

For the first time missionaries inspired some socially oppressed leaders to revolt (Jyotiba Phule and a few others) but they were not moved by humanitarian concerns. They simultaneously and even much after, met out worse treatment to the slaves, liberated slaves and bonded laborers without any remorse and biting of conscience ( To Kill a Mockingbird). They made disruptive use of their sufferings for augmenting proselytism.

Whatever their motive but the outcome was salutary and the role of such leaders in modern awakening can not be underplayed. But it shall be thanklessness not to show gratitude to those luminaries counted above whose labour was not entirely lost. They created a moral justification for social justice that even the most cynical of the castes blamed for discrimination could not raise even a whisper when exceptional favour was granted and discrimination was judged as punishable offence by constituent assembly and the law-makers later on.

Not a single study by sociologists, anthropologists or historians has been made to explain the origin, support base, dynamics of this institution, that it survives all the assaults without making much fuss on visible plane. This was a real challenge for the intellectuals coming from oppressed section and making headlines by tales of their plight which is broadly known and variously felt by all. Placing the blame on Brahmanas alone is too facile and misleading . Can the backwards embrace the socially oppressed or the various substrata among the Dalits free themselves from intra-Dalit discrimination?

It is a vicious circle in which transfer game may relieve you of your responsibility, and prompt you to present a melodramatic solution of a deep malaise, only to further aggravate the problem.
{ I have treated the evolutionary and cosmological philosophies as revolt against social discrimination despite the fact that they have not been treated earlier as such because these philosophies have no place for segregationist and discriminatory social system.}

LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -24
History versus Histrionics

Those who consciously avoid history opt, unknowingly, for histrionics. Some of my friends complain, why I am so obsessed with history. I tell them I am talking of the present and trying to understand its complexities. I am trying to salvage those suffering from histrionics. Those who feel disturbed by existing problems but instead of solving it play their blame game, shifting the onus on events and characters they themselves hold mythical, unhistorical, suffer from spells of histrionics. It is they who charge distorted stories with disruptive power to create ugly scenes in order to further aggravate the problems. They in fact play in the hands of those who know the art of using their ignorance and abhorrence for the past to their advantage.

The man with some knowledge and sense of history is likely to see the same problems differently. Recounting the progress made from the yore days of social injustice he can suggest how to proceed to fully resolve the problem.

Ironically, those refraining from the past spend more time in imaginary past and live in imaginary present, than those who know history. Knowing history amounts to knowing the new and the immanent, knowing the surviving redundant past, and at the same time the forgotten past that can play remedial role.

Those who plead that by ignoring past they save time so as to know the present more deeply and widely, in fact know it more superficially and more narrowly.

कहां चिरागे फलक और कहां गली का चिराग.
नाम की चूक से दोनों को साथ होना था।।

LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -23
PROMISES FULFILLED

“Do you feel really sad about the book you were talking? what is the name? Oh! yes, Themes of History.”

“In fact I feel thankfully rewarded. You know, in 1969 I had written a poem. It was not a poem to my liking. It was published in the one and only collection of my poems, occupying the first place. It was overbold for a poem and a bit prosaic as well. It was an article of my faith, resolve, a declaration of my program, full of vows and promises.”

“You had cited a few lines once. I remember.”

“I don’t remember any of my poem except that and I never forgot or deviated from the promises made. I demolished the entire edifice of Indo-European, the wicked part of our history invented to support it on that unfounded thesis. I demolished the racial concept of history and the belief that all the languages and dialects of India descended from Sanskrit as early as 1973 in my book ‘Fundamental Unity of Aryan and Dravidian Languages’ in Hindi (Aarya Dravida Bhaashaon kii Moolabhoot Ekta, Lipi, New Delhi) and expected an enthusiastic recognition of my original but sustainable thesis based on crucial and clinching evidence on each point. Oh, no! There was either a dead silence or a misplaced appreciation because of the superficial level of understanding of our scholars who sing their elegies on absence of serious work in any other field in Hindi.”

“You forgot to mention Ram Vilas ji, who had published his work 12 years earlier and was rewarded by his appointment as director of K.M. Munshi Institute, Agra. You just followed him and were indebted to him. That could have be the reason of subdued recognition of your book.”

“I do not want to open that debate. I did not go through his book Language and Society (Bhaashaa aur Sammaja, 1961) as the book was not available in the libraries accessible to me, and the title, known to me, did not promise a discussion of comparative linguistics and other related problems as he was known as a communist and at best, I thought, it could deal with sociolinguistics, otherwise I could have benefitted from it in some respects. Bur our approach was different, content was different, conclusions similar on some points. If you think the chair to be a form of recognition, it was partly the Suman effect in political circles, not a recognition by linguists. I was talking of the promise made in my poem. I want to revive your memory and underline not the beauty of poem or diction but of the firmness of the RESOLVE.”

“I must admit, I missed the point.”

“I relate it point by point:
1. I had envisioned our present colonial frame of mind as mesmeric appearance which I claimed to dispel through another wondrous world erected by own sheer toil sans resources. (I edemolish the magical makebelief and erect a new one with the soil in my nails).
2. I have stopped indulging in verbal jugglery derisively and am going to use my words with cutting edge that no one can neglect. (I have stopped spitting words like lepers, I am going to unleash some formidable words that would bite you and keep you barking all your life.)
3. You appear to be dead, but have actually fainted and closed your eyes . I shall invite you not to rise but save your from the poisonous air with supply of oxygen. (I shall not call, Lazarus come to life, I shall command Lazarus open your I eyes. I can change gunpowder smell in to oxygen).
4. I recall I had failed my duty on many other occasions but now I am going to participate in a new war (I remember, I slipped away from many fronts, but today I undertake to fight and win a war.)”

“Now I realize how bitterly you feel the pain of being ignored.”

“You are irremediable idiot. How can you realize anything. I was telling despite the neglect shown by Hindi speaking intellectuals, I worked indefatigably on other aspects. But I changed the earlier scheme. I published Harappa Sabhyata aur Vaidik (1987).”

“Yes, you worked hard on it, but it failed to attract due attention.” he said ruefully.

“Who told you? I received such a violent recognition that is unparalleled in history. It threw all the historians with elevated positions and muscle-twisting might naked and shaking and they could not recover from the shock ever after. This was a recognition by men who counted and men who can not be counted as they conspired in ignominy. The book had reprints and revisions against their using all resources available to divert the attention of those who happened to come in their contact. They threatened and punished the students who raised doubts on their version of history citing evidence from that book. Find out one book against which such formidable forces had to loose their fire-power.”

“Why then you kept working on its English version?”

“Just to ensure that the thesis changed the international perception and it changed right at the stage it was with the publisher who in his glee showed to some foreign scholars the copy and when they sang the same song with permissible variation, he published that as well. And lo! there was a near consensus on a singular aspect that there was nothing like Aryan invasion of India in any form, which these textbook crazy scholars unheard to the point of going funny.”

“They were guided and supported by a powerful American scholar, you told once.”

“He had tremendous resources but little knowledge exceeding awareness, and he fared badly and ultimately spent up his fuel to know further success.”

“Then why are you so sore about this book, The Themes of History.”

“I am not sore I told you earlier as well. I find it amusing. The powers that could shape history to suit them kept looking for a safe hiding corner. Do you think it is small satisfaction for me. It is a certificate from the dying enemy that I have fulfilled my promises. That is what it amounts to.

“My verdict on them has nothing to do with my personal sentiments. But the students need a sense of history. That is being denied by them to avert their personal discomfiture. This attempt to create cultural vacuum is ominous.
“My verdict on them has nothing to do with my personal sentiments. But the students need a sense of history. That is being denied by them to avert their personal discomfiture. This attempt to create cultural vacuum is ominous.

कोई समझदार सरकार किसी की इच्छाओं, विचारों और सपनों को अपराध मानकर उसे दंडित नहीं कर सकती। ये उल्टे उसके आत्मसंयम को प्रकट करते हैं कि ऐसे विचार मन में उठते हुए भी उसने आत्म संयम से काम लिया।
नाकर्दा गुनाहों की भी हसरत को मिले दाद
यारब अगर इन कर्दा गुनाहों की सजा है।।
किए गए अपराध के पीछे यह पता अवश्य लगाया जाता है कि यह इरादतन किया गया है या असावधानी में हो गया है।

अपराध की प्रकृति से अधिक कठोर दंड देने वाला भी अपना अनिष्ट करता है क्योंकि इससे विक्षोभ पैदा होता है इसलिए राजतंत्र में भी इसकी सलाह नहीं दी जाती, यह अपराधियों को दंडित करने में शिथिलता के समान ही आत्मघाती है – तीक्ष्णदंडो उद्वेजनीयः, मृदुर्हि परिभूयते, यथार्ह दंडः पूज्यः।

अंग्रेजों ने पूंजीवाद का विनाश करने वाले, मजदूरों को विद्रोह के लिए भड़काने वाले दार्शनिक को इंगलैंड में रह कर अपना लेखन करने ही नहीं दिया, उस ग्रंथ को को प्रकाशित किया, क्योंकि लोकतंत्र के अपने लंबे अनुभव से वे जानते थे कि राजद्रोही दर्शन से भी लोकतंत्र मजबूत होता है। विचार और अभिव्यक्ति की स्वतंत्रताऔर लोकहित की चिन्ता को छोड़ दें तो उसके पास कुछ बचता ही नहीं।

हमने पश्चिम से लोकतंत्र लिया, लोकतंत्र की मर्यादाओं की शिक्षा लेना बाकी रह गया।