Skip to main content

Brainless nation

 



“The ideas by which a ruling group maintains its power must be suited to the intellectual climate of the given epoch.” Barrows Dunham, 20th century American philosopher who was fired from Temple University for being “un-American” in his thoughts, wrote that in his famous book Man Against Myth (1947). There is a close affinity between the intellectual levels of a people and their rulers. There was a time when religion was the most powerful social entity among people and hence rulers claimed to possess divine rights to rule. Ancient kings worked in collusion with priests. Both together exploited the ordinary people mercilessly. Since the people also believed in the same gods that the kings and the priests did, the system worked.

But that changed when people realised that the gods weren’t exactly what they seemed to be. The rulers who once derived their power from the gods were now content to derive it from monkeys, as Dunham put it. Charles Darwin usurped the power of the gods and gave it to science. Governments changed. Revolutions took place in some countries. In others, the power shifted more smoothly to the people. And in yet others, gods continued to rule and the people there remained behind veils of ignorance.

India was taken over from sadhus and fakirs by Nehru who didn’t sell his soul to the millions of gods in the country. Nehru put his trust in educational institutions and dams and highways. He put the nation on a scientific path. He refused to succumb to the demands for a theistic nation like what Jinnah had created in the neighbourhood. Consequently India became a modern nation, a progressive one, one whose people were encouraged to use their brains freely.

More than half a century after Nehru, India got a leader who took the nation back by millennia. We have been taken back to prehistoric gods and their fairy-tale oases. We are taught to focus on temples and cows. Yogis and sadhvis dictate terms to us now. And who are ‘us’? The rights of the citizens are taken away and handed over to a particular community. Some are given to an animal! Women are once again being treated like the commodities in Manusmriti.

India has regressed as a nation by a few millennia. But this can’t happen without the support of the people. That’s what Dunham says. Why do majority of Indians support the present regression led by one man and a few of his henchmen? Is it because the majority lack brains? We would have to accept that if we analyse the contemporary reality in the country.

It’s a matter of consolation, however, that the ruling party of today never got more than one-third of votes in both the elections which catapulted the party to “brute” power. Two-thirds of the people voted against the party. But this ‘majority’ was not united. Hence the ‘minority’ won. And that ‘minority’ claimed to be the majority! One of the many paradoxes of democracy.

Nevertheless the silence of the two-thirds that didn’t vote for the BJP in 2014 as well as 2019 is mystifying. Have they lost their brains in the regressive motion of their compatriots? That’s some food for thought.

PS. There was a time when I had many blogger friends who used to discuss issues freely and intellectually at blogging sites. Today most of them avoid me and, worse, write stuff that smacks of prehistoric fatuity if not savagery. Rather pathetic condition for a nation.

 

Comments

  1. This is such a relevant thought Tomichan, sometimes I do worry about the pace and direction of change. In a lot of sense, if our leaders, their thoughts and directions are not changing with times and focusing on priorities of the day and world - it is a rather regressive trend. The point about people being at the centre of it - to know that even to this day, leaders can get away with statements of separation, caste based divide and what not in a globalised world where problems have become bigger, it does beg to ask - what on earth is really happening. What do people as a collective really want.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Someone with ambition rising to top position is understandable. But millions of people including intelligent ones supporting him is the real terror. What do these people want? You raise the right question. Do they really think that history can be corrected or avenged?

      Delete
  2. I had written a long comment with detailed argument. But instead of that, I'll talk in brief about why many good intellectual people are no longer debating. Because, people are tired of debating about how one evil is better than the other. The problem with this is, that whichever evil you choose, you are left to face the ire of the other evil. Everyone is hopeless.
    See, we need total change. And I think that can come only through people not some politicians, whatever their ideology.
    For people to bring actual change they need to have hope. That's where I feel different about history. From prehistoric era to colonial era or even now, there has been evil, but there was also good which survived. We don't need to avenge the past, but build a future. And future has to be built on this good. Unless, every good person believes they can win, they will never find the courage to fight. And that is why we need to remind them about little good things from history. To give them hope, that evil can be defeated, and it should be defeated.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Is it because people are "tired of debating" or because they've become afraid to debate? Too many people have been thrown behind the bars or assaulted in other ways just because they dared to debate in present India.

      And it's not about comparing one evil with another. It's about creating a better world for all of us. A better country, perhaps. At least a better society around one. It's becoming increasingly unbearable nowadays.

      Hope, yes. We need that. Undoubtedly. I wouldn't be writing otherwise. You wouldn't be either.

      Delete
    2. Afraid would be also correct. Debates are full of abuses, and then there's the fear of the bars.
      I agree that it is unbearable. Just last week a blogger told me, she is afraid even to comment on anything for fear of the verbal abuse that follows. And the sad truth is that I agree with her fears.

      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...

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...

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...

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...

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...