Skip to main content

Systems and Perversions


 The last quarter of the 20th century witnessed the emergence of the systems perspective in contrast to the reductionist approach that was followed earlier.  The reductionist approach viewed phenomena by their parts and treated them as such.  For example, if you have a headache you kill the pain with an Anacin ignoring the harms done to the body by the drug.  In the systems perspective, you look at the whole rather than the parts.  You use available knowledge and technology to find out the root cause of the headache and make the whole system healthy. 

Any system such as the human body or a society is not just the sum of its parts.  A system is a complex and inter-related network of interacting components.  Relationships among the components are of vital importance in any system. 

India is not just a sum of its states and union territories (Gujarata-Maratha-Dravida-Utkala) or a sum of the various religious communities (Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Isai).  Any nation is much more than such sums.  Today, people's identities are not straitjacketed by nationality or religion or language or any one parameter.  Parameters cut across one another making a complex network which transcends the sum of the parts.  Any leader who fails to understand that is sure to be a millstone hung around the nation’s neck. 

Leader: of a System or?

One of the questions that is shot at me frequently by different people nowadays is why I question the BJP so much when other political parties have been worse in many ways.  Yes, the other parties were steeped in corruption.  Their politicians were selfish and filled their pockets and their Swiss bank accounts with more zest than looking after the nation.  Greed and selfishness are normal human vices.  The BJP is guilty of a vice far more vicious than greed, jealousy, and the normal list of vices seen in moral science textbooks.

The BJP and its numerous allies like the VHP pervert the entire nation, the nation’s imagination.  Consider, for example, the interpretation given by the VHP to the Prime Minister’s statement on the need for communal harmony in the country.  The Times of India quotes the VHP joint general secretary Surendra Jain, "The Prime Minister did not say 'minorities' nor did he mention any particular religion. The news traders are misreading his message to suit their agenda. When he has not taken any names, you have to see in what circumstances he has made the statements. The supposed attacks on churches have been going on for a while now but the PM never came out and spoke. He spoke only after the Delhi Police pointed out that 206 temples were attacked. He spoke on a day a temple was vandalized in the US." 

People like Surendra Jain create their own truths and shove them down the throats of jejune people who are more than willing to swallow whatever is given to them provided they perceive some benefit in doing so.  People like Surendra Jain replace truths with myths and falsehoods.  Such people should found new religions and write scriptures.  Instead, in India today, they enter politics and mess up the social networks in the country.  They bring fragmentation where there is integration, strife where there is peace, hatred where there is tolerance.  Worst of all, they fabricate a new history for the country.  Murderers of mahatmas and perpetrators of genocide are canonised and put up on pedestals in temples. 

Perverting a nation’s psyche is a crime that is far more vicious than stealing from the nation’s coffers or even using people as vote banks.

Comments

  1. That's really true... All these attacks on churches and temples have had a drastic impact on BJP and our religious communities too. People will believe what they want to.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. BJP accused the Congress of pseudo-secularism because of its vote bank politics. What is happening now is much worse: dividing the entire country into more pieces than the British could have done!

      Delete
  2. I agree, Sir. Like you mentioned in the post, you are taking something without realizing the side effects it will have in the long run.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Our politicians want only short term results, Saru.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Helpless Gods

Illustration by Gemini Six decades ago, Kerala’s beloved poet Vayalar Ramavarma sang about gods that don’t open their eyes, don’t know joy or sorrow, but are mere clay idols. The movie that carried the song was a hit in Kerala in the late 1960s. I was only seven when the movie was released. The impact of the song, like many others composed by the same poet, sank into me a little later as I grew up. Our gods are quite useless; they are little more than narcissists who demand fresh and fragrant flowers only to fling them when they wither. Six decades after Kerala’s poet questioned the potency of gods, the Chief Justice of India had a shoe flung at him by a lawyer for the same thing: questioning the worth of gods. The lawyer was demanding the replacement of a damaged idol of god Vishnu and the Chief Justice wondered why gods couldn’t take care of themselves since they are omnipotent. The lawyer flung his shoe at the Chief Justice to prove his devotion to a god. From Vayalar of 196...

Taliban and India

Illustration by Copilot Designer Two things happened on 14 Oct 2025. One: India rolled out the red carpet for an Afghan delegation led by the Taliban Administration’s Foreign Minister. Two: a young man was forced to wash the feet of a Brahmin and drink that water. This happened in Madhya Pradesh, not too far from where the Taliban leaders were being given regal reception in tune with India’s philosophy of Atithi Devo Bhava (Guest is God). Afghanistan’s Taliban and India’s RSS (which shaped Modi’s thinking) have much in common. The former seeks to build a state based on its interpretation of Islamic law aiming for a society governed by strict religious codes. The RSS promotes Hindutva, the idea of India as primarily a Hindu nation, where Hindu values form the cultural and political foundation. Both fuse religious identity with national identity, marginalising those who don’t fit their vision of the nation. The man who was made to wash a Brahmin’s feet and drink that water in Madh...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...