Books become my ideal companions in times of political
turmoil. Right now, as you’re reading these lines, there are dozens of active
armed conflicts going on around the world. Besides, developed countries like
America are asking foreign students as well as others to leave. The global
economy is experiencing significant instability, characterised by weak growth
projections, persistent inflation, high debt levels, and geopolitical
conflicts. Even when a country like India advertises itself as becoming the
third largest economy, the living conditions of the poor aren’t showing any
improvement. Nay, the world isn’t becoming any better than it ever was.
It's when such realisations hit you
from all sides, you need the consolations of an abiding hobby. Reading is at
the top of my list of such hobbies. First of all, books help us understand current events in a
broader context. They can reveal patterns in history: how democracies
falter, how propaganda spreads, how resistance movements rise, and also how
revolutions fail utterly. Even a simple fable like George Orwell’s Animal
Farm can be shockingly relevant in a world where the leaders embrace
each other with broad grins in global meets while one of them is kicking out
the citizens of the other’s country behind the curtain.
One of the inevitable fallouts of political
turmoil is disinformation. If you are living in India and have the habit of
watching news on TV, you will recall the amount of government propaganda that
hits you day in and day out, trying to convince you that you are living in the
best possible period of your country’s history. That’s when books become highly
serviceable. They force you to challenge official narratives and ask difficult questions. They
teach us to be critical, to question, to analyse, and evaluate rather than follow
blindly with bovine docility.
Books offer solace and solidarity in times of turmoil.
Anne Frank and Viktor Frankl can sponge up much of our pains. One of the most
helpful books of this type I read recently is Hope
by Pope Francis. It inspires us deeply with the persuasive compassion that trickles
from every page of it.
Books can inspire purposeful action. Arundhati Roy’s
fiery defence of the Adivasis and Sheela Tomy’s
literary understanding of the Adivasi problems in Wayanad can move us to
act with greater sensitivity than our various governments all of which
victimised these people in various ways. Even if you can’t lead a revolution on
behalf of such exploited people, you can at least write a few blog posts like
me or draw the attention of others on social media platforms. Those whom the
governments call offenders and encroachers are actually the innocent owners of
the lands. How many of us have tried to understand such truths? It is books that
helped me with such understanding.
Books give sanctuary to radical,
suppressed, or dangerous ideas, especially when free speech is threatened. In
other words, reading can be a quiet act of rebellion as it is for me along with my writing.
The book that I’m reading right now
is William Dalrymple’s The Golden Road, which is about “how
ancient India transformed the world.” Among many weird historical characters I
have encountered in that book so far is General Yang Jian of China. He killed
59 members of a family in order to exterminate a whole dynasty and set up his
own dynasty as he crowned himself Emperor Wen. The guy was a devout Buddhist who
believed in serene nonviolence! He built countless Buddhist monasteries. In the
year 583, he got an Indian Buddhist monk named Narendrayashas to produce a
series of translations from Sanskrit (supposedly) which were meant to prove
that he was an incarnate Bodhisattva who had the divine sanction from the
Buddha himself to rule over China and, if possible, larger areas. In short, he
used religion and propaganda effectively to impose his will on a large
population. Do you find a parallel in your own country right now?
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| From my bookshelf |
Books can be of immense use, right?
PS.
This post is written as part of #BlogchatterBlogHop
Books have a number of advantages over other platforms of communication. Research has shown that reading books improves our cognitive functions by letting our brains work. It also helps us to focus and it also boosts our creative abilities.
ReplyDeleteAnd, writing can be a hugely cathartic experience.
Unfortunately reading books is fast disappearing as a hobby, it seems. Most young people are too busy with their phones and/or jobs to find time for reading.
DeleteWhile I used to be teaching courses in Epistemology, dealing with hermeneutics, I used to pose a question to the students of philosophy. " What exactly is the difference between watching the news on the T. V. and reading a book." It would take some amount of reflection on their part to realize that while watching T. V., the images are thrown at you, whereas while reading a book, you have to enter into it, encounter the author, who is "Dead", but much Alive, and encounter also the readers, who have read the book, preceding you, who had invested their meaning and world into it. Also encounter those who would read the book, after them, from multiple locations.
ReplyDeleteReading is a lot different from watching TV. We can read at our own pace, comprehending, contemplating, researching... As you said, join other readers too.
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteI'm a huge fan of Willie Dalrymple (and the podcast 'Empire' that he runs with Anita Ananda). There is so much of such history that reveals how what we are faced with in the world now is nothing but a 'rinse and repeat' - proof that Mankind knows not how to move beyond the animal instinct territorialism... YAM xx
Yes, we haven't come much beyond... On the contrary, some of our leaders seem to be travelling back to savagery's wildernesses...
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