Skip to main content

Cows of Logic


A scene from Delhi.  Source: The Hindu

 In his book, The Rebel, Albert Camus speaks about two types of crimes: crimes of passion and crimes of logic.  Heathcliff of the Wuthering Heights will kill anyone who stands between him and his beloved Cathy.  This is a crime of passion.  He is motivated by his passion, and his passion is genuine. Camus calls him a man of character.  As long as you don’t get in the way of his love, he won’t touch you.  He won’t even notice your existence, in fact.  You are nothing to him.  All that matters to him is his love, his Cathy, nothing else.

Now, suppose Heathcliff converts his passion into a doctrine.  Suppose he begins to believe that Cathy is worthy of everybody’s admiration.  Suppose he asks all the people around him to venerate Cathy.  He can make a religion or a doctrine out of his love for Cathy.  He can build up a whole theology around his love.  He may get some supporters too.  He can get those supporters to drag out from home anyone who refuses to pay homage to Cathy and then lynch him on the street for the sake of Cathytva.  This is crime of reason.

Crimes of reason are very dangerous, argues Camus.  We can multiply reasons for anything and crimes will multiply proportionately.  Millions of people were killed in the past for the sake of doctrines that sounded very logical to some people.  Crusades and Jihads are examples.  Hitler had clear reasons for eliminating six million Jews.  Every dictator had clear reasons for committing innumerable murders. 

There’s only one problem with the reasoning of these rational murderers.  The very first premises of their syllogisms are wrong.  For example, Hitler’s logic rested on his basic premise about the superiority of the Aryan race.  It was an absolutely false claim.  As false as Heathcliff’s demand that everyone should share his passion for Cathy.  But Heathcliff’s love was genuine. 

Suppose the newfound love of some people in India for the cow was genuine, would there be so much sound and fury in the name of that meek creature?  We can be sure of one thing at least.  If the love was genuine, there wouldn’t have been so many cows roaming the roads of a city like Delhi where the gau matas feed on the garbage thrown in dumping lots. 




Labels:

Comments

  1. Sangeeta MishraOctober 29, 2015 at 4:58 AM

    Heathcliff couldn't turn his crime of passion into a crime of logic as he was truly in love with Cathy. But today he has turned into a foolhardy and Cathy, into a cow. So the change is obvious-- Love into hatred.
    Very inspiring post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 29, 2015 at 5:45 AM

      Yes, we are inverting things in wrong directions. There is no religion here. No love for anyone. Just games, political games and a lot of airy rhetoric!

      Delete
    2. UnknownNovember 1, 2015 at 3:26 PM

      Very true Sangeeta

      Delete
    3. UnknownNovember 1, 2015 at 3:26 PM

      Very true Sangeeta

      Delete
  2. sunaina sharmaOctober 29, 2015 at 6:57 PM

    Yes, there is a difference between love and mind-games. What we see today is a well-contrived dogmatic approach to things. Heathcliff's passion was far superior and pristine. A very very interesting post Sir.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 29, 2015 at 8:15 PM

      We are giving to God what is not his. We are giving him our integrity.

      Delete
    2. sunaina sharmaOctober 29, 2015 at 8:50 PM

      What makes you say that? Could you explain it a bit?

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 29, 2015 at 9:30 PM

      The present controversies surrounding issues of tolerance, for example. If we were honest would we support intolerance? Is our govt honest? Why does it involve religion in nefarious political games? Why don't more people come forward to protest intolerances?

      Answer: we have involved our gods in our silly political games...

      Delete
  3. Sunshine-struckOctober 30, 2015 at 7:45 AM

    Totally a different topic.
    Rapists who do their job neatly and murder women, what type crime is that? I want to know.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 30, 2015 at 8:15 AM

      Passion, no doubt. But passion directed AGAINST another person or persons. Hence crime. Heathcliff's passion was love. His passion would be directed against another only if the other stood in the way of his primary passion...

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
121 comments
Read more

Tanishq and the Patriots

Patriots are a queer lot. You don’t know what all things can make them pick up the gun. Only one thing is certain apparently: the gun for anything. When the neighbouring country behaves like a hoard of bandicoots digging into our national borders, we will naturally take up the gun. But nowadays we choose to redraw certain lines on the map and then proclaim that not an inch of land has been lost. On the other hand, when a jewellery company brings out an ad promoting harmony between the majority and the minority populations, our patriots take up the gun. And shoot down the ad. Those who promote communal harmony are traitors in India today. The sacred duty of the genuine Indian patriot is to hate certain communities, rape their women, plunder their land, deny them education and other fundamental rights and basic requirements. Tanishq withdrew the ad that sought to promote communal harmony. The patriot’s gun won. Aapka Bharat Mahan. In the novel Black Hole which I’m writing there is...
61 comments
Read more

Romance in Utopia

Book Review Title: My Haven Author: Ruchi Chandra Verma Pages: 161 T his little novel is a surfeit of sugar and honey. All the characters that matter are young employees of an IT firm in Bengaluru. One of them, Pihu, 23 years and all too sweet and soft, falls in love with her senior colleague, Aditya. The love is sweetly reciprocated too. The colleagues are all happy, furthermore. No jealousy, no rivalry, nothing that disturbs the utopian equilibrium that the author has created in the novel. What would love be like in a utopia? First of all, there would be no fear or insecurity. No fear of betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak… Emotional security is an essential part of any utopia. There would be complete trust between partners, without the need for games or power struggles. Every relationship would be built on deep understanding, where partners complement each other perfectly. Miscommunication and misunderstanding would be rare or non-existent, as people would have heightened emo...
9 comments
Read more

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
44 comments
Read more

The Circus called Politics

Illustration by ChatGPT I have/had many students whose parents are teachers in schools run or aided by the government. These teachers don’t send their own children to their own schools where education is free. They send their children to private schools like the one where I’ve been working. They pay huge fees to teach their children in schools where teachers are paid half of or less than their salaries. This is one of the many ironies about the Kerala society. An article in yesterday’s The Hindu [ A deeper meaning of declining school enrolment ] takes an insightful look at some of the glaring social issues in Kerala’s educational system. One such issue is the rapidly declining student enrolment in government and aided schools in the state. The private schools in the state, on the other hand, are getting more students. People don’t want to send their children to the schools run by the government systems. The chief reason is that the medium of instruction is Malayalam. The second ...
6 comments
Read more