(Written on the eve of India's Independence Day)
The celebration is on and right before the day's mid-night sun.
And there is so much gung-ho as ever. Right in the nick of the moment and in right earnest. With flying colours and mightbe with much fanfare, razzmatazz and razzle-dazzle.And with blaring of conchs and mouthful of words.
It is 60 years' old but is yet to come of age.
60 years but not come of age?
Actually it is over-aged but yet not come of age. That is, it is aged or over-aged in figures but not in spirits. The spirit is full of beans.
What is there if it is still going on all fours?
Going on all fours is the index of its true face, the baby-faced facade of its 60 years' encumbering is all too evident in the annals of its naive amnesia.
How amnesiac its patrons and guardians are!
Yes, they have buried everything into oblivion to salvage their well-earned salvation. They have forgotten the days of 1975 when the holy cow was solemnly sacrificed at the behest of the Almighty and the bleary-eyed ghost-writers kowtowed at the altar of omnipotence to face her face with white hair-line and to reinforce her cathedral by scripting a new manifesto of songs of freedom.
The sacred river was strewn with skull and bones. The insipid potion gradually turned gray with the tears of Auswisch.
Nobody bombed for the fear of freedom.
And culture of silence hit the rooftop in cahoots with more somber silence.
All the Goebels fell to talking tongue-in-cheek with open-chested breast-stroke of machismo.
History is to be glossed over, history is to be forsaken in the brown pages of history. The pages are all too tattered.
But history repeats itself.
Now again the same ghost-writers are acting like animals of the Animal Farm. crying themselves hoarse to glorify the songs of freedom for the same fear of freedom.
The songs of freedom are splattered all over, the dins and bustles are spilling over as usual as though they are racing one against another to show the world who is more equal than the others to be qualified for the olive branch in the Olympiad.
But they have forgotten that the 60 years’ toddler has failed to deliver the goods at the fair-price shop for those millions who are shedding bloods and sweats at the sweat-shops in excruciating diurnal drudgery.
What is that to them?
Nothing and nothing whatsoever.
They only know how to get paid in their own coins.
Everything dies. Only callous cash nexus remains for good.
The sweat-shoppers do not know how to sing songs of freedom.
The street-children do not know how to dance in tune with the songs of freedom.
They just ask silently.
They ask violently in deafening silence.
Yeh Ajadi Kya Hai? Jhuta Hai Na Sach Hai?
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Poor Man's Education : Freire's Pedagogy
Is education a one-way traffic? The teacher will gorge out something from his memory or from his notebook and the students will listen to him like some dumb dudes? If this is education practiced in one-way-traffic module, what is destined to happen is happening all over the world and most predictably the so-called educated people have been turned into dumb dudes. They have fallen a victim to 'culture of silence'. This 'culture of silence' is the way of life that the powers-that-be have intelligently instilled into the mindset of the common denominators and that is what they want.
Paul Freire in his seminal book Pedagogy of The Oppressed says that it is not education. Conventional education is mechanical and parroting to the point of being corrupted to the core in so far as it tends to exert pressure on the common people to eat the humble pie of existence. It cannot enlighten the students with new visions and thoughts. According to his opinion, proper education should be dialogical and interactive between the teacher and the students. Only that way education can become pro-active in the sense that proactivity with the existing standard of life would interact with the way we should live.
So, education's sole objective should be to educate the mass of people how to change this world. To change the world, people have to know the actual reality of the world in due perspective and thereby to transcend that reality. If they know it, they will automatically want to change the undesirable societal condition of the world. On that condition, the teacher cannot parrot some methodological ideas which are barren and inefficacious. From the teacher a student will learn something and then he should be prompted to ask questions one after another to get plausible answers themselves with the aiding and abetting with the proper help and guidance from the attending teacher.
That is a two-way traffic and two-way-traffic education is truly dialogical and interactive. And interactive and dialogical education is the only proper way to educate the mass of people who are burning within themselves to change the unjust world. To reiterate it again, first and foremost they should know and be of the firm conviction that the world they live in is utterly an unjust one. Gaining this conviction is not just gaining in knowledge but remould one's mindset with a vision, a vision that shows the new light at the end of the tunnel at the crossroad of life's one and only true mission.
Freire is a Brazilian educator who conducted many educational workshops among the poor and illiterate peasants and factory workers of Latin American countries to lend a hand to their political education so that they could know the world better. And he returned with immense and enthusiastic responses from them. He says in his book, "In the midst of the argument a man who previously had been a factory worker for many years spoke out : 'Perhaps I am the only one here of working class origin. I can't say that I've understood everything you've said, but I can say one thing - when I begin this course I was naive, and when I found how naive I was, I started to get critical...' "
And getting critical is the bottomline of Freire's pedagogy as far as the liberating education is concerned. It generates critical consciousness and that "conscientization" then cries for freedom from all shackles of oppression prevalent in the society. Freire says : "Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsively. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for the human completion."
Now let us briefly point to the "culture of silence" which shackles the mindset of the wretched of the earth. The oppressors of the world do not like the idea that the wretched people never raise their voice against injustice and cry for their legitimate demand of freedom. It is rather that they remain "dumb dudes" meekly surrendering themselves to their existential fatalism. They should not get critical of their essences of existence reverberating in their political consciousness. And here lies the crux. As long as the oppressed people eschew the "culture of violence", their juggernaut of economic appropriation and political shenanigans will roll on undisturbed and uninterrupted.
So, let them sing the songs of silence!
Paul Freire in his seminal book Pedagogy of The Oppressed says that it is not education. Conventional education is mechanical and parroting to the point of being corrupted to the core in so far as it tends to exert pressure on the common people to eat the humble pie of existence. It cannot enlighten the students with new visions and thoughts. According to his opinion, proper education should be dialogical and interactive between the teacher and the students. Only that way education can become pro-active in the sense that proactivity with the existing standard of life would interact with the way we should live.
So, education's sole objective should be to educate the mass of people how to change this world. To change the world, people have to know the actual reality of the world in due perspective and thereby to transcend that reality. If they know it, they will automatically want to change the undesirable societal condition of the world. On that condition, the teacher cannot parrot some methodological ideas which are barren and inefficacious. From the teacher a student will learn something and then he should be prompted to ask questions one after another to get plausible answers themselves with the aiding and abetting with the proper help and guidance from the attending teacher.
That is a two-way traffic and two-way-traffic education is truly dialogical and interactive. And interactive and dialogical education is the only proper way to educate the mass of people who are burning within themselves to change the unjust world. To reiterate it again, first and foremost they should know and be of the firm conviction that the world they live in is utterly an unjust one. Gaining this conviction is not just gaining in knowledge but remould one's mindset with a vision, a vision that shows the new light at the end of the tunnel at the crossroad of life's one and only true mission.
Freire is a Brazilian educator who conducted many educational workshops among the poor and illiterate peasants and factory workers of Latin American countries to lend a hand to their political education so that they could know the world better. And he returned with immense and enthusiastic responses from them. He says in his book, "In the midst of the argument a man who previously had been a factory worker for many years spoke out : 'Perhaps I am the only one here of working class origin. I can't say that I've understood everything you've said, but I can say one thing - when I begin this course I was naive, and when I found how naive I was, I started to get critical...' "
And getting critical is the bottomline of Freire's pedagogy as far as the liberating education is concerned. It generates critical consciousness and that "conscientization" then cries for freedom from all shackles of oppression prevalent in the society. Freire says : "Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsively. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for the human completion."
Now let us briefly point to the "culture of silence" which shackles the mindset of the wretched of the earth. The oppressors of the world do not like the idea that the wretched people never raise their voice against injustice and cry for their legitimate demand of freedom. It is rather that they remain "dumb dudes" meekly surrendering themselves to their existential fatalism. They should not get critical of their essences of existence reverberating in their political consciousness. And here lies the crux. As long as the oppressed people eschew the "culture of violence", their juggernaut of economic appropriation and political shenanigans will roll on undisturbed and uninterrupted.
So, let them sing the songs of silence!
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
The World is our Idea, The Idea is Our World
They say, the world is our idea. That is to say that it is a construct of our sensations and perceptions, and memory as well. This is the subjective view of the objective world. The world exists objectively on its own and subjectively as well, nothing comes into fray. But in absence of our perceptions and sensations, does it manifest simply because of its presence and existence? Its being to becoming is rather conditional, conditional in the sense that certain happenings and events in its very existence happen to be the brainwork of our perceptions and sensations. Otherwise, it remains dead as dodo in its very existence. Without our perceptions and cognitive faculty the world exists in way that it does not exist. This is like being-in-itself.
Our mind, on the other hand, remains as usual with or without the pre-existence of the world, remains active and sensitive as ever in our spatio-temporal world, 'more ghostly than a ghost'. But is that really so? If there is no world or no world of physical objects, can our mind exist at all? How will it exist without the world being perceived by it, without anything for its food for reflection? And our mind too cannot survive without its reflective food. This heavenly 'manna' is quintessential for its existence. As if, the world is our mind's one and only 'fodder' and our mind its one and only 'cannon' to burn the Promethean fire of knowledge. This 'canonical' message is very important in establishing the embedded relationship between the world and mind or for that matter the mind.
Mind and matter never exists in virtual duality, rather they both complete an integral whole. They are always comprehensively in elastic relationship with each other. Here, the Cartesian duality does not hold water. In the idealist worldview, this material or the physical world has just been constructed and construed in the mind's view, as it were it has been at the cost of taking the human self to a seventh heaven where only mind can dictate terms without giving a due credit to the world of matter. On the other hand, in Marx's materialist worldview, there had an unqualified preponderance over matter where matter enslaves mind and mind just plays second fiddle to matter. From both of these counts, it can be inferred that mind is out of the world, never a part of it or never with it and both are mutually exhaustive and both the epistemology subscribe to the duality principle of De'Cartes in one way or another.
Let us take a quick look at what Erwin Schrodinger has to say regarding mind and matter duality : "Mind has erected the objective outside world of the natural philosopher out of its own stuff. Mind could not cope with its gigantic task otherwise than by the simplifying device of excluding itself - withdrawing from its conceptual creation. Hence the latter does not contain its creator." He also said that the localization of the personality, of the conscious mind, inside the body is only symbolic and just for an aid and extension of practical use. So, as per Schrodinger's contention, mind cannot be left behind the body of the natural world so much so that mind is an integral component of the body-world.
Yes, the world is our mind and the mind is our world. In the ideas of the world, our mind is nourished and nurtured, and in the mind's vision and perception the world or for that matter, the matter-world gets life and is born and reborn in this world. Otherwise, it remains dead camouflaged within itself, none and nothing to wake it or none and nothing to conceive its existence. And who is there or what is there to conceive our own existence? It is mind only what reminds us that we live in our ideas and the idea is our world. And whatever we do or think is a reflection of the world, the world that nourishes us both physically and epistemologically.
Our mind, on the other hand, remains as usual with or without the pre-existence of the world, remains active and sensitive as ever in our spatio-temporal world, 'more ghostly than a ghost'. But is that really so? If there is no world or no world of physical objects, can our mind exist at all? How will it exist without the world being perceived by it, without anything for its food for reflection? And our mind too cannot survive without its reflective food. This heavenly 'manna' is quintessential for its existence. As if, the world is our mind's one and only 'fodder' and our mind its one and only 'cannon' to burn the Promethean fire of knowledge. This 'canonical' message is very important in establishing the embedded relationship between the world and mind or for that matter the mind.
Mind and matter never exists in virtual duality, rather they both complete an integral whole. They are always comprehensively in elastic relationship with each other. Here, the Cartesian duality does not hold water. In the idealist worldview, this material or the physical world has just been constructed and construed in the mind's view, as it were it has been at the cost of taking the human self to a seventh heaven where only mind can dictate terms without giving a due credit to the world of matter. On the other hand, in Marx's materialist worldview, there had an unqualified preponderance over matter where matter enslaves mind and mind just plays second fiddle to matter. From both of these counts, it can be inferred that mind is out of the world, never a part of it or never with it and both are mutually exhaustive and both the epistemology subscribe to the duality principle of De'Cartes in one way or another.
Let us take a quick look at what Erwin Schrodinger has to say regarding mind and matter duality : "Mind has erected the objective outside world of the natural philosopher out of its own stuff. Mind could not cope with its gigantic task otherwise than by the simplifying device of excluding itself - withdrawing from its conceptual creation. Hence the latter does not contain its creator." He also said that the localization of the personality, of the conscious mind, inside the body is only symbolic and just for an aid and extension of practical use. So, as per Schrodinger's contention, mind cannot be left behind the body of the natural world so much so that mind is an integral component of the body-world.
Yes, the world is our mind and the mind is our world. In the ideas of the world, our mind is nourished and nurtured, and in the mind's vision and perception the world or for that matter, the matter-world gets life and is born and reborn in this world. Otherwise, it remains dead camouflaged within itself, none and nothing to wake it or none and nothing to conceive its existence. And who is there or what is there to conceive our own existence? It is mind only what reminds us that we live in our ideas and the idea is our world. And whatever we do or think is a reflection of the world, the world that nourishes us both physically and epistemologically.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
The Prophet : A Rare Touch of Mysticism
Kahlil Gibran's book of poetry The Prophet is already a widely read book. Its language is ethereal and of celestial beauty. Life is delved deep and explored in all its possibilities, life is celebrated in all its nuances. Here life is passionately in love with life so much so that the pangs of death diminish with life flourishing in all its sublime beauty.
Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) from Lebanon is of very humble birth. He immigrated to America to pursue the profession of a painter. He later joined Rodin school in Paris . His surrealistic touch of paintings did earn him a lot of accolades in no time from the connoisseurs of art. Had he been destined it could have created a world of himself and etched his name in the annals of art and painting. But that was not to be. The Prophet has made him all too famous all over the world.
Philosophy is literally littered and splattered in all passions everywhere in this book. What kind of philosophy? Very simple – spiritual and mystic in good measure - it is spiritual philosophy all the way. It is a spiritual odyssey into the human life and it particularly rests on the common people's craving for life. That is why Gibran is called to be the peoples’ philosopher. His philosophy is just situational and is situated within the nitty-gritty elements of life.
It should reiterated that The Prophet is no common book of poetry, rather it is a book of philosophy passionately conveyed in verse and in impeccable simplicity. By the way Al Mustafa, the protagonist of The Prophet, leads us to ultimate destination and to a quest for meaning of life. Here Al Mustafa acts as the exponent of Gibran’s philosophy which he does in a prophetic manner of a sage. He preaches truth and wisdom with prophetic authority. Truth opens the vista to wisdom and wisdom explores the pulsating love for and unflinching adherence to life. That is the true beauty of wisdom. It is mystic in subtle sense. And a kind of mysticism not far removed from spiritualism is explicitly imbued in Gibran’s philosophy and literary works. That is why he is most often referred to mystic poet-painter William Blake (1757-1827). He had religiously carried his legacy to the point of revivalism and reaffirmed it in the faceless world of the 20th. Century.
I think in The prophet, Gibran has embarked on a mission to get to the meaning of death vis-à-vis life itself and to create a niche for death in life and this death instinct is very common with the mystics like Gibran. Like life itself, death has a strong metabolic consonance in life. As we can never disown life, so we cannot disown death either and in death only life becomes full and complete as though death is an open speculum in which life’s whole universe gets reflected in full gaiety so much so that we can do a thorough soul-searching in a trinity of time. The trinity of past, present and future are inflated and deflated simultaneously to give way to a flux of time in temporal space and in the process life is laid bare and at rest to the eternity’s sublime tranquility.
In The Prophet, Al Mustafa is all set to bid adieu to Orphalese to return back to the isle of his birth and for him to return back his ship is coming with the mist. Where will he return back? To the isle of his birth. Then the burning question prompts us to immediately ask that where he had been so long away from his home and hearth. He had been with his people alive with life’s full glory and that is where his home and hearth is. He had seen all and experienced everything of life with a sage’s wisdom. And now he is wise enough to leave a legacy and testimony to life for others to imbibe to life’s content.
He will deliver everything what he has gained all through his life. That ‘everything’ is his wealth of wisdom. Now is the time to depart from this temporal space and to go back to his isle of birth where he will attain salvation. This salvation is a sort of mystical rebirth of his. So, he had had no right to prolong his stay. He had waited too long and at last he had got the call of his vehicle. He will board on that vehicle to carry him on to the path of salvation.
He will live in eternity but he will never be dead. His physical death ends only in spiritual birth, a beginning of a whole saga of life and death in continuity. That was why his beloved Almitra happened to hear him say at the departing moment :
“Forget not that I shall come back to you.
A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”
So, he departs only to come back again and again. He will come back to the whirlwind of life in many lives and deaths. The Prophet cannot be mortal, he is immortal in his wisdom.
Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) from Lebanon is of very humble birth. He immigrated to America to pursue the profession of a painter. He later joined Rodin school in Paris . His surrealistic touch of paintings did earn him a lot of accolades in no time from the connoisseurs of art. Had he been destined it could have created a world of himself and etched his name in the annals of art and painting. But that was not to be. The Prophet has made him all too famous all over the world.
Philosophy is literally littered and splattered in all passions everywhere in this book. What kind of philosophy? Very simple – spiritual and mystic in good measure - it is spiritual philosophy all the way. It is a spiritual odyssey into the human life and it particularly rests on the common people's craving for life. That is why Gibran is called to be the peoples’ philosopher. His philosophy is just situational and is situated within the nitty-gritty elements of life.
It should reiterated that The Prophet is no common book of poetry, rather it is a book of philosophy passionately conveyed in verse and in impeccable simplicity. By the way Al Mustafa, the protagonist of The Prophet, leads us to ultimate destination and to a quest for meaning of life. Here Al Mustafa acts as the exponent of Gibran’s philosophy which he does in a prophetic manner of a sage. He preaches truth and wisdom with prophetic authority. Truth opens the vista to wisdom and wisdom explores the pulsating love for and unflinching adherence to life. That is the true beauty of wisdom. It is mystic in subtle sense. And a kind of mysticism not far removed from spiritualism is explicitly imbued in Gibran’s philosophy and literary works. That is why he is most often referred to mystic poet-painter William Blake (1757-1827). He had religiously carried his legacy to the point of revivalism and reaffirmed it in the faceless world of the 20th. Century.
I think in The prophet, Gibran has embarked on a mission to get to the meaning of death vis-à-vis life itself and to create a niche for death in life and this death instinct is very common with the mystics like Gibran. Like life itself, death has a strong metabolic consonance in life. As we can never disown life, so we cannot disown death either and in death only life becomes full and complete as though death is an open speculum in which life’s whole universe gets reflected in full gaiety so much so that we can do a thorough soul-searching in a trinity of time. The trinity of past, present and future are inflated and deflated simultaneously to give way to a flux of time in temporal space and in the process life is laid bare and at rest to the eternity’s sublime tranquility.
In The Prophet, Al Mustafa is all set to bid adieu to Orphalese to return back to the isle of his birth and for him to return back his ship is coming with the mist. Where will he return back? To the isle of his birth. Then the burning question prompts us to immediately ask that where he had been so long away from his home and hearth. He had been with his people alive with life’s full glory and that is where his home and hearth is. He had seen all and experienced everything of life with a sage’s wisdom. And now he is wise enough to leave a legacy and testimony to life for others to imbibe to life’s content.
He will deliver everything what he has gained all through his life. That ‘everything’ is his wealth of wisdom. Now is the time to depart from this temporal space and to go back to his isle of birth where he will attain salvation. This salvation is a sort of mystical rebirth of his. So, he had had no right to prolong his stay. He had waited too long and at last he had got the call of his vehicle. He will board on that vehicle to carry him on to the path of salvation.
He will live in eternity but he will never be dead. His physical death ends only in spiritual birth, a beginning of a whole saga of life and death in continuity. That was why his beloved Almitra happened to hear him say at the departing moment :
“Forget not that I shall come back to you.
A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”
So, he departs only to come back again and again. He will come back to the whirlwind of life in many lives and deaths. The Prophet cannot be mortal, he is immortal in his wisdom.
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