Writer, think

Image from CNN Asia

My job keeps me in touch with young people. An alarmingly increasing number of these young people tell me that they wish to leave India and settle down in a liberal country. I encourage them. India is governed by a warlord whose mindset belongs to the medieval era of fanatic wars. As a result, mindless violence is spreading across the country like a terminal cancer.

If you surf the writings on social media such as Facebook, you will realise that there is a whole army of people who propagate violence as the need of the hour. What is the need of the hour specifically? Once again, it shocked me to realise that the projected need is the redemption of Hinduism from its enemies in India. Who are the enemies? The Muslims, of course, first and foremost. And then the Dalits, the Christians, and so on.

The very first premise of all that logic is wrong. Hinduism has never been in any danger in India. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been the religion of the majority and continue to be so without any rival worth a mention. Yet why do so many thousands, if not millions, of people assume that their religion is in danger? Why do they propagate blatant lies in its name? Why do they support violence for its sake?

I’m not going to give answers. The answers are too obvious to be written here. That’s why I request today’s writers to think. Eminent writer and thinker Susan Sontag was of the opinion that every writer worth the label has a moral responsibility to the society. How can one be a writer without thinking seriously about the moral problems that surround him/her?

A good writer evokes “our common humanity in narratives with which we can identify,” wrote Sontag. Good writing should stimulate the reader’s imagination, “enlarge and complicate – and, therefore, improve – our sympathies.” Good writers “educate our capacity for moral judgment.”

What ought writers to do? Sontag was asked in an interview once. Her reply was: “Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.” The problem with most writers of today is that they pay undue attention to themselves, their popularity, their material rewards, and such things. Truth is the first casualty in such writings. No wonder there is so much falsehood being peddled on too many platforms.

The only remedy is to start thinking seriously. Our world today stands in need of serious thinkers and serious writers.