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.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Lancelot QuadrasFebruary 19, 2015 at 11:01 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 19, 2015 at 11:06 AM

      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. Saru SinghalFebruary 19, 2015 at 9:47 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 20, 2015 at 9:56 AM

      Our politicians want only short term results, Saru.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

The Call of Islamic State

A year ago, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) reported that about 4000 people from the West left their homes and countries to join the Islamic State (IS).  Many of them are women.  The reporters had made a special study of the women who joined the terrorist outfit and found that it was difficult to categorise which type of women were particularly drawn to IS. “While most of the girls are young, some as young as fifteen,” says the report,  “there are also mothers with young children who make the trip. Some of the girls have difficulties in school and are said to have an IQ below average,  but there are also women who are highly educated. It also appears that even though a relatively large portion of the girls had (or still have) a troubled childhood, there are some who come from families with no known problems with the authorities. Most of the girls come from religiously moderate Muslim families,  yet some converted to Islam a...
33 comments
Read more

AAP and I

Who defeated Arvind Kejriwal?  Himself or us? His party ruled for just 49 days.  They were momentous days.  He implemented his promise on setting up a number for reporting corruption; in two weeks instead of the promised two days.  He met people to discuss corruption issues, though the crowd was beyond his control.  He did what he could.  He would have done more if he could.  He put an end to the VVIP culture in politics.  The politician became aam aadmi.  Ministers started travelling in vehicles without the screaming red lights and horrifying screeches.  But the police had to go out of their way to provide protection to the chief minister.  Who defeated the chief minister’s vision that political leaders need no such protection from their own people? He revolutionised the admission procedures in schools.  Schools which charged hefty amounts from parents illegally stood to lose.  The aam aadmi would have g...
25 comments
Read more

The Plague

When the world today is struggling with the pandemic of Covid-19, Albert Camus’s novel The Plague can offer some stimulating lessons. When a plague breaks out in the city of Oran, initially the political authorities fail to deal with it as a serious problem. The ordinary people also don’t view it as an epidemic that requires public action rather than as individual annoyances. The people of Oran are obsessed with their personal sufferings and inconveniences. Finally the authorities are forced to put Oran in quarantine. Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest, delivers a sermon declaring the epidemic as God’s punishment for Oran’s sins. Months of suffering make people rise above their selfish notions and obsessions and join anti-plague efforts being carried out by people like Dr Rieux. Dr Rieux is an atheist but committed to service of humanity. He questions Father Paneloux’s religious views when a small boy is killed by the epidemic. The priest delivers another sermon on the necess...
28 comments
Read more