LIBERATING INDIAN MIND- 5
NON-TOXIC KNOWLEDGE

“When you are angry you lose your head and start slinging mud on those who enjoy International repute. It doesn’t help, my dear! instead, it show you in worse light than you are in sober moments. Do you know who you were dubbing irresponsible to defend the rowdy ones who know not what to say, and how to say, and when to say anything, because they apply their mind only after they have created a chaos by their outcry. Idiocy pays them because they are in the news just for that.”

I rejoined, “You have more aptly described what I meant. Only idiocy suites the news channels. They make researches to find out and highlight the idiots to paint an entire society in that light. You may easily judge for who they are working and for what and against whom. That is the outcome of the hard work of those historians whose side you take and resent when they are appropriately named and described. This is what I was a lamenting, when talking of the vacuum created by loss of sense of history. and that shows how important writing of scientific history is.”

“You are master of self-contradictions. The other day you were boasting we had developed sense of history right at the gathering stage and in that we were unique, and now you say we have no sense of history. Isn’t it funny?”

“Occasionally I call you an idiot, but I am wrong. You surpass them all as you you have not even the ability to ask right question at the right time. Had you asked me why, I should have explained how eagerly the numerous bands entering India as refugees at the time of last glaciation, were trying to preserve their identity, and what symbolic languages had they evolved and how to decode it. your internationally known historians have not even the remotest idea of that Age and fall foul on anyone trying to reach that remote age.

“Mind it, they are internationally known and pampered just for that. They are in league with the forces that destroyed our sense of belonging, our sense of individual and collective dignity. They have been commissioned and are being paid in invisible coins, for creating fissures and fragments in our society in order to create space for unchecked expansion of anything opposed to our national solidarity. And mind it, it was all done and is being done on the pretext of national solidarity.”

He had stronger dose than he expected, “don’t you get tired cursing and castigating all the while?”

“That is why I call you what I call you. I am explaining, and even explanations touch your raw nerves and smart you quick. How else could you ignore the obvious and instead of improving your understanding, come out with the spit accumulated in your head. You must know exactly what you know. You must discard what is doubtful, till something concrete emerges to invite a second look. You must know what you do not know, and must have courtesy enough not to interfere in those areas. You must respectfully learn from those who claim to know those areas. Your revered historians have been doing just the contrary and they enjoy benediction just for that from those who use them.”

He looked vacantly at me, his lips twitched, and fist getting tighter. I noted it and took a long breath in absence of anything better.

“You annoy me, yarr! You know them from a distance, I have been their student. I have seen them from closest quarter.”

“You should not have done it. you appear to have violated their privacy.” I intervened mischievously, and he raised his hand and gave me a first hand taste of his might on my shoulder.

“You shall have to bear the cost if there was a fracture, mind it.” I said rubbing my shoulder with the opposite hand.

“I didn’t intend to hurt you dear, but you deserved a payment for all your labour. Now you can not complain that I am a miser.”

“You shall be paid handsomely if you make a news out of this misadventure, for simultaneously my verdict on these chair-and-power-grabbing bigwigs shall also be made public. Not a bad bargain I think. But try to understand what payment in what coins you and your historians deserve for deliberately and constantly humiliating the most tolerant section of our society. The slightest provocation to any other community, you encouraged by design, could have sent you packed in your coffin to the place you over-deserve.”

“We are sick of this rhetoric, yarr! We taught you what we thought best as a potion for your maladies. Instead of feeling grateful you thanklessly blame us.”

“If that be so, allow them to humiliate you to give you a taste of your potion. Will you.”

“Simply, that lies in store for us if they get another round. The ugly face of Fascism covered under benevolent hoods shall come naked, and mind it you as well are not going to be spared, fight as much on their side as you can.”

“Those who know of only two colours, refuse to see the prism. I need no defense to prove me apart from my published words and deeds. Read me thoroughly to know me thoroughly. I am as honest as a pathologist, as cruel as a surgeon and as kind as a nurse. That is what makes me formidable to those who love their sickness. I consider all of you to be my patients irrespective of the sides. The problem is, they have no historian nor they need one. They are better with the vacuums and storms. You have no need of history, that is a finished job for you, not to be disturbed anymore but you have international market for your historians where they are in ready demand.”

He did not take me for my words, I did not expect it either. “The only cure of social maladies lies in a scientific approach to history. Non-toxic knowledge is a cure by another name.” I got up and left him brooding.