Skip to main content

Power Games


The primary objective of power, particularly political power, has seldom been social service.  A peep into the history of political powers of various types will convince us of that without any doubt.  Political power is an intoxicant: as good as a drug is to the addict.  People don’t capture power by spending billions of dollars or crores of rupees on image building and propaganda in order to render service to anyone.  People ascend the rungs of political power because the heights intoxicate.  Putting it in a more acceptable way, success gratifies or gives one a sense of fulfilment.

The Hindu
Self-actualisation is the highest goal for any individual, according to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s theory. Alexander the Great had as much right to make his conquests as Diogenes had to sneer at those conquests.  Albert Einstein would have been as out of place on a Prime Minister’s chair as a Prime Minister would be in Einstein’s shoes. So, let each person gratify himself.  But let us be clear about one thing: Diogenes and Einstein didn’t bring doom on any section of people.

A Prime Minister who has put Machiavelli and Chanakya to shame with his manoeuvres and histrionics may describe himself as “Prime Servant,” while in the background
shrewd moves are made on the political chessboard.  It is important to understand those background moves if one is to know which discourse is being written upon the palimpsest that the country is. 

The discourse matters.  The Europeans colonised much of the world in the past two centuries in the name of a discourse which they fondly called the white man’s burden.  Israel has performed a vanishing trick in Palestine in the name of a discourse that Palestine never existed.  Hitler’s discourse cost 6 million Jews their lives and eventually cost the world 60 million lives. 

The discourse matters.  That’s why it is important to notice which individuals and groups are being given prominence and which are catapulting themselves into prominence. 

Powerful oratory is capable of creating impressive facades to edifices.  But what goes on behind the facades is what will matter in the long run.



Labels:

Comments

  1. Vinay NagarajuAugust 17, 2014 at 11:22 AM

    Its an interesting take Matheikal. With the existing frame of things, it looks like it is a power struggle more than a service oriented job and it is further more justified with every slight issue being made into a political one from a normal social one.The one day we might start seeing a difference is when we start looking at it as a job over a position of power..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 17, 2014 at 3:06 PM

      There seems to be an underlying agenda, Vinay. That's not at all an encouraging awareness/feeling.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousAugust 17, 2014 at 11:51 AM

    Absolutely....being a public or political figure, the power of oratory is a plus point...but time and again it's not just the talk but walk the talk will bring much needed changes... It's time the basic physiological needs to be taken into consideration by the ruling team.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 17, 2014 at 3:09 PM

      Mr Modi knows what he wants and he will achieve it. Will it be good for the country is something that can be debated. However, the debate will have to wait until his motives become clearer.

      Delete
  3. KalpanaAugust 17, 2014 at 3:48 PM

    hmmm….

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownAugust 19, 2014 at 12:56 AM

    I sincerely hope that the message that you are trying to convey - to look beyond the obvious and to seek the truth and not be gullible to misled ideals - does not fall on deaf ears (or eyes in this case)

    I hope that people become wise enough to sort stuff out for themselves. I am also beginning to write a more socially applicable topic. Let's see how it goes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 19, 2014 at 11:23 AM

      Quite many people in India are not interested in anything more than economic welfare and accompanying benefits. But some of our political leaders will bring in other things in the name of religion and culture and create problems.

      Delete
    2. UnknownAugust 19, 2014 at 7:37 PM

      Yep. The moment religion enters the arena, everything changes. All variables become obsolete and all that matters is the factor of religion. The leaders have realised this and are capitalising wrongly on it...

      Delete
  5. VetirmagalSeptember 8, 2014 at 1:12 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  6. VetirmagalSeptember 8, 2014 at 1:18 PM


    The majority, is coaxed to look at "only now " benefits, and is not given much time to go beyond religion , caste and community. They are not disturbed by the historical horrors of the past.

    Disturbing trends.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
13 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
19 comments
Read more

Randeep the melody

Many people in this pic have made their presence in this A2Z series A phone call came from an unknown number the other day. “Is it okay to talk to you now, Sir?” The caller asked. The typical start of a conversation by an influencer. “What’s it about?” My usual response looking forward to something like: “I am so-and-so from such-and-such business firm…” And I would cut the call. But there was a surprise this time. “I am Randeep…” I recognised him instantly. His voice rang like a gentle music in my heart. Randeep was a student from the last class 12 batch of Sawan. One of my favourites. He is unforgettable. Both Maggie and I taught him at Sawan where he was a student from class 4 to 12. Nine years in a residential school create deep bonds between people, even between staff and students. Randeep was an ideal student. Good at everything yet very humble and spontaneous. He was a top sportsman and a prefect with eminent leadership. He had certain peculiar problems with academics. Ans
17 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
15 comments
Read more