Skip to main content

Buridan’s Ass


Source
Buridan’s Ass, named after 14th century French philosopher Jean Buridan, is both hungry and thirsty.  It is placed midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water.  If the ass decides to exercise its free will, it will starve to death.  When it turns to the haystack, it can exercise its freedom to choose water first instead.  And when it turns to the water, its free will can interfere again.  Thus it can go on exercising its freedom of choice until it dies of starvation amid food and water.


Let’s take the example of Kashmir.  Indian patriots are supposedly in love with that piece of land.  Their love denies freedom to the people of the land to choose their own destiny.  Hence the civil war kind of situation in the state. 

The question is whether the Indian patriots are really motivated by love.  Or by greed for the land.  Or by nationalist pride.  Or plain greed, hatred or sheer perversion.

Love does not create the kind of situation that prevails in Kashmir.  Love liberates.  It does not enslave.  It cannot go about shooting unarmed people (unless stones are counted as arms) with machine guns.

The people of Kashmir are caught between freedom and love.  They love their homeland and they want freedom to live in that homeland.  Freedom from gau rakshaks, for example.  Freedom from people who impose themselves in the name of culture, religion, gods that include cows.

What’s the consequence?  Strife.

The ass needs both food and water.  Buridan’s Ass will not die of starvation except in philosophical discourses because the ass will choose one or the other and get on with life.  It needs both the hay and the water. 

We need both freedom and love.  Existence without one is a hypothetical conjecture fit for blogging discourses.  Denial of any will lead to destruction of the individual.  Or to strife.


Comments

  1. 'freedom to the people of the land to choose their own destiny..'?
    I beg to differ, Tom sir. That means the Indian government (irrespective of which political party runs it) should allow Khalistan, Bodoland, Tamil Liberation and the likes too to choose their own destiny?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, Amit ji. If the people have strong reasons for their demands the govt must listen to them and find solutions. In fact, many of these are creations of the govt itself for political purposes. Khalistan was Indira Gandhi's political agenda. Bodoland is based on genuine grievances that need be addressed. Tamil liberation was Sri Lanka's problem, not ours. Kashmir problem has been aggravated by Muslim bashing in India. It has now gone out of control... Time to ask whether we can find amicable solutions and stop hatred-based policies.

      Delete
  2. I can get what you are saying, the freedom and love are equally important and a choice from two equally weighted options presents and confounds indecision.

    But love towards homeland and freedom from intolerance of a particular section are two things which are not equally weighted. If they have more love for their homeland than their need of freedom, then a solution to come across is a possibility. And I am betting that they do have more love towards their homeland. It would be scary to think otherwise.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The notion of freedom assumes some worthwhile significance only in some socio-political context. That's why I brought in the Kashmir example. In individual affairs, the issue is rather insignificant.

      In the case of Kashmir, the people have been alienated from the majoritarian nationalism and the solution lies first of all in ridding ourselves of that attitude and the ideology which drives it. But that's only part of the story. Pakistan has played a terribly nasty game in that region which has muddled the game way too far for any solution that is acceptable to both sides. So we will go on asserting that Kashmir is ours and even POK is ours. And they will go on fighting for the same pieces of land. So the fight is the only option. Might is right. Will it lead to nuclear might and its rightness? What will be the fate of the people on both sides of the border then?

      Delete
  3. Love and freedom co-exist. Love can not be in a place that takes your freedom away. In that situation, there will only be fear. Politics of possession has neither love nor freedom, only greed, and desire to dominate.

    ReplyDelete

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

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...

I’m Alive

Illustration by Copilot Designer How do you prove to anyone that you’re alive? Go and stand in front of the person and declare, “I’m Tom, Shyam or Hari”? No, that won’t work in India. Let me share my personal experience. It’s as absurd as the plight of Kafka’s protagonist in The Castle. A land surveyor is summoned for duty, only to be told that the mere fact a land surveyor was summoned does not prove he is that land surveyor though he has the appointment letter with him. I received a mail from the Life Insurance Corporation of India [LIC] that I should prove my existence in order to continue receiving my annuity on the sum I had invested with them five years ago. They’re only paying the interest on the sum I have given them. They’re not doing me any charity. Yet they want me to prove to them that I am still alive in order to continue getting the annual amount they are obligated to pay me. This is India. LIC is a government undertaking. If I don’t follow their injunction, I wil...

Hindutva’s Contradictions

The book I’m reading now is Whose Rama? [in Malayalam] by Sanskrit scholar and professor T S Syamkumar. I had mentioned this book in an earlier post . The basic premise of the book, as I understand from the initial pages, is that Hindutva is a Brahminical ideology that keeps the lower caste people outside its terrain. Non-Aryans are portrayed as monsters in ancient Hindu literature. The Shudras, the lowest caste, and the casteless others, are not even granted the status of humans.  Whose Rama? The August issue of The Caravan carries an article related to the inhuman treatment that the Brahmins of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh meted out to a Yadav “preacher” in the last week of June 2025. “Yadavs are traditionally ranked as a Shudra community,” says the article. They are not supposed to recite the holy texts. Mukut Mani Singh Yadav was reciting verses from the Bhagavad Gita. That was his crime. The Brahmins of the locality got the man’s head tonsured, forced him to rub his nose at t...

Independence from Dictators too

Kerala Governor Rajendra Arlekar asked the state to observe ‘Partition Horror Day’ on 14 Aug instead of celebrating the country’s Independence. His organisation, the RSS, as well as its ideological sibling the Hindu Mahasabha, had explicitly directed its members not to celebrate the Independence on 14-15 Aug 1947. From Bombay Chronicle, 9 Aug 1947 Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins gave us a graphic description of what the RSS did on 15 Aug 1947, in their classic book Freedom at Midnight . When the rest of India celebrated its new Independence, the RSS hoisted its own flag, “an orange triangle, emblazoned upon which was the symbol that, in a slightly modified form, had terrorized Europe for a decade, the swastika.” About 500 RSS men stood saluting the swastika on 15 Aug 1947 in Poona. Lapierre and Collins describe the RSS as a “para-fascist movement” whose members “saw themselves as the heirs to those ancient Aryans.” Rajendra Arlekar is an RSS man. He has been doing whate...