LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -18
PERSONAL IS UNIVERSAL

“Have you heard about cheats, pickpockets, snatchers and gangsters or not?”

He simply smiled without uttering a word.

“ Your historians have been all in one and each one all.”

“I know you are so sore because of your personal grudge.
There are people who universalize their personal issues to set score while others try to gulp the poison down to avoid being stuck up in a muddy pond.You fall in the first category, the category of light-headed, peevish ones.That is one reason you do not count for much as a scholar. “ he didn’t miss any opportunity to berate me.

“In normal discourse I should not defend myself despite the fact that your imputation is wrong. I would like to underscore only one thing: there is nothing personal except material gain or loss which I did not suffer. In absolute terms personal is universal and universal indeterminate. You cannot collect information about love and write a single line on love that may impress even your neighbor, not to talk of the universe. Only personal sufferings and agonies expressed even with personal touch or through imaginary characters takes you in its grips.

“What you call personal is first hand knowledge of something, while universal is obsolete information much of which is of little use in forming even an opinion regarding something, not to talk of solving a problem. Read as much you can about Shakespeare and his plays, but unless you have read any of his dramas or seen any of them enacted you cannot know what Shakespeare is. The difference between your historians and me lies in the fact that while in the most taxing situations I tried to go to the original sources of whatever I wrote, they disdainfully avoided to reach-out to them and gathered whatever they could from secondary sources. Likewise they avoided to face me and yet did not hesitate from spreading all sorts of canard Against me, and adopted sacrilegious tricks to gag the voice of dissent, in order to perpetuate the incoherent history they had written, whereas I was ready to sit at their feet to learn the shortcomings, if any, in my writing, despite it all.”

“I could believe you if I did not know that they are abundantly more informed than you, and in their personal life, normal behavior and speech they are much more polished, sober, and caring than you. You were deprived of the opportunity to come in their closer contact otherwise you could be much more cautious in use of your tongue and much more dignified in response.”

“I agree with you more than you might expect. But that is the ploy. People mistake outward sophistication for honesty, and store of knowledge for correct understanding. You are no exception. Did you read that best seller The Godfather, or see the picture produced in the same name. Have you heard anything about the competence and mesmerizing sociability of legendary Natwarlal? if yes, you may catch my point.

The test of prudence does not lie in racks of books transferred to your head and your ability to shuffle them deftly. I make a simple query as to why did they fail to learn the language through which they could have a first hand glimpse of the age which they chose to specialize and taught throughout their teaching career? How could one prefer to remain blind in the area which they claimed to illuminate? Through mirror effect? taking light from those who were eager to rub down the haughty culture looking at their colonial and missionary prejudices with derisive smile?”

.”What do you think to be the reason?” He asked with genuine curiosity.

“I have myself not been able to sort it out but the possibilities that flash are many and inter-connected.

“The first one is that the Western educated and occidental leaders who launched Communist movement were as remotely controlled by their mentors as the Congress of initial years. Those who ignited the fire of socialism in the Hindu youths who spent years in British Universities, ignited the sense of insecurity among the Muslim youths to gravitate them covertly towards separatist Muslim demand. They aimed to disrupt the call for unity by the national movement under the banner of Congress. In India they had overtly and covertly planned the formation of the Muslim league, Hindu Mahasabha, RSS, urge for Khalistan and the most impracticable demand for Dalitistan, I forget the exact name Baba Saheb had given it. The bane of the communist party was that It lacked the touch of soil and national fervor which other Communist parties of the world had.

Secondly, it was from its very birth a parasite organization.

Thirdly, it lacked the sense of direction and suffered from self contradictions. For that matter, on the one hand it ridiculed reformatory measures as deceptive and detrimental to revolutionary zeal on the other, in its progressive craze it tried to play the role earlier played more successfully by Arya Samaj. The other CPs throughout the world deferred it for post revolutionary projects.

Fourthly, It became the gravitational core for brilliant, ambitious, well-off guys more interested in collecting the crop raised by Congress, than tilling and preparing their own field and scatter the seed of their ideology. In other words it was ready to capture power without doing any hard work and in a sense it was crowded by talented idlers.

Fifthly, Learning Sanskrit and Vedic demanded some hard and dry work not liked by brilliant brains. In its tentative approach in most of the matters, it encouraged a misleading belief that Sanskrit language and the liturgical literature in it could foster reactionary /revivalist tendencies. This last belief created a despise for the language, suspicion towards the people who learnt it adequately well and in turn a despise for the entire period of ancient past.” I turned to ask him.”I think I am not over-amplifying it? “

“Although the approach you have taken is dubious, some of the conclusions baseless, such as despise for Sanskrit, as many of our leaders had good background of Sanskrit, yet I don’t mind the elaboration. The angle is new. You may continue. I want to read what those who have developed the skill of slurring the immaculate movement can read in the text prepared by sweat and blood of revolutionary workers.”

“I know there is no sense in playing the flute before a buffalo, but irrespective of its rumination, the joy of playing the flute is not neutralized. I simply wanted the emphasize that the communist movement in India look a reverse course at the very outset. It failed to correct fundamental errors, as its discomfiture suited those who were adamant to prove India a cultural vacuum deeply indebted to it’s western neighbor in all matters.’

Ultimately you have come to admit that the Marxist historians were writing their textbooks on the principles of Marxism as understood by them and were not playing in the hands of any individual or group as unjustly alleged by you. That is all I wanted to listen from you. The fisher has been caught in his own net.” He rose to leave with the air of a victor.

I tried to stop him, “wait. Let me complete my argument, but he was in no mood to listen anything further.