Skip to main content

The Tolstoy of Hindi

Image from Time

Weekend is the time to catch up with all the reading that was missed during the week. It is during that catching up I came across Yuval Noah Harari’s article in the Time [Jan 30 – Feb 6, 2023]. Titled ‘The Dangerous Quest for Identity,’ the article argues why undue stress on one’s identity as a member of a narrow group can hamstring our understanding of ourselves.

If you choose to emphasise those parts in you that connect you to a group and ignore the other parts, you will obviously see only a small part of yourself. For example, if you define yourself as a proud Hindu Indian and believe that your culture is the best, you are obviously ignoring a lot of things in your personality that came from other places and cultures and religions. There are, probably, more factors which came from other sources than your religion and nationality that make up your personality. You ignore all of them the moment you choose to see yourself primarily as a Hindu Indian.

If you are reading this post, obviously you know English and that is not a contribution of Hindu India. The writers who have influenced you, the artists you admire, the music you go to bed with… the medicine that runs in your blood right now... so much of the technology without which your life would be miserable… there’s lot that came from somewhere out there, from beyond the Arabian Ocean. To know you fully is to know those things that came from other sources too.

Let me adapt a parable used by Harari. Suppose someone asks a Hindi chauvinist, “Who is the Tolstoy of Hindi?” Well, there may be certain writers in Hindi who can be named in answer to that question, no doubt. But the best answer would be “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of Hindi.” What that means is: Tolstoy is not just Russian. He belongs to the whole world. He is an integral part of humankind. He belongs as much in Hindi literature as in Russian. If you are able to say that, your thinking has gone beyond the narrow confines of languages. You belong to the universe just as much as Tolstoy does. You become greater than if you were to define yourself as a Hindu Indian. You become a universal citizen, a citizen of the cosmos. When I say “I am a human” I belong to a society of nearly 8 billion people. Why would I want to trim down that to a much smaller figure and limit myself?

After all, Tolstoy does belong to the world. He was influenced by Victor Hugo, Arthur Schopenhauer, Jesus and Buddha – none of whom were Russian. We are all similarly influenced by many things which are not Indian. It is possible to ignore those influences by declaring our pet ideas and ideologies as the only right ones. But, in the words of Harari, “As long as I adhere to that narrow story, I’ll never know the truth about myself.”

Narrow identities are political gimmicks that can win votes. Harari agrees on the vote-winning potential of such identities. But those leaders who make use of such strategies as identity politics have no right to claim to be Vishwa Gurus. You cannot be the guru of those whom you shut out from your horizons. If you refuse to accept the relevance of other traditions and ideas, how can you be their guru? 


Comments

  1. magiceyeFebruary 12, 2023 at 4:59 PM

    The dangers of being ethnocentric.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yamini MacLeanFebruary 12, 2023 at 7:13 PM

    Hari OM
    Excellent article - and ponderment upon it!!! As a universalist, I am applauding loudly... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rajeev MoothedathFebruary 12, 2023 at 7:37 PM

    Very nice, thought provoking post!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 12, 2023 at 8:28 PM

      I found Harari irresistible. So reproduced him this way.

      Delete

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
47 comments
Read more

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...
17 comments
Read more

Ram, Anandhi, and Co

Book Review Title: Ram C/o Anandhi Author: Akhil P Dharmajan Translator: Haritha C K Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2025 Pages: 303 T he author tells us in his prefatory note that “this (is) a cinematic novel.” Don’t read it as literary work but imagine it as a movie. That is exactly how this novel feels like: an action-packed thriller. The story revolves around Ram, a young man who lands in Chennai for joining a diploma course in film making, and Anandhi, receptionist of Ram’s college. Then there are their friends: Vetri and his half-sister Reshma, and Malli who is a transgender. An old woman, who is called Paatti (grandmother) by everyone and is the owner of the house where three of the characters live, has an enviably thrilling role in the plot.   In one of the first chapters, Ram and Anandhi lock horns over a trifle. That leads to some farcical action which agitates Paatti’s bees which in turn fly around stinging everyone. Malli, the aruvani (transgender), s...
8 comments
Read more

The Blind Lady’s Descendants

Book Review Title: The Blind Lady’s Descendants Author: Anees Salim Publisher: Penguin India 2015 Pages: 301 Price: Rs 399 A metaphorical blindness is part of most people’s lives.  We fail to see many things and hence live partial lives.  We make our lives as well as those of others miserable with our blindness.  Anees Salim’s novel which won the Raymond & Crossword award for fiction in 2014 explores the role played by blindness in the lives of a few individuals most of whom belong to the family of Hamsa and Asma.  The couple are not on talking terms for “eighteen years,” according to the mother.  When Amar, the youngest son and narrator of the novel, points out that he is only sixteen, Asma reduces it to fifteen and then to ten years when Amar refers to the child that was born a few years after him though it did not survive.  Dark humour spills out of every page of the book.  For example: How reckless Akmal was! ...
5 comments
Read more

A Curious Case of Food

From CNN  whose headline is:  Holy cow! India is the world's largest beef exporter The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is perhaps the only novel I’ve read in which food plays a significant, though not central, role, particularly in deepening the reader’s understanding of Christopher Boone’s character. Christopher, the protagonist, is a 15-year-old autistic boy. [For my earlier posts on the novel, click here .] First of all, food is a symbol of order and control in the novel. Christopher’s relationship with food is governed by strict rules and routines. He likes certain foods and detests a few others. “I do not like yellow things or brown things and I do not eat yellow or brown things,” he tells us innocently. He has made up some of these likes and dislikes in order to bring some sort of order and predictability in a world that is very confusing for him. The boy’s food preferences are tied to his emotional state. If he is served a breakfast o...
6 comments
Read more