US Elections

When I heard Sarah Palin's speach it didn't really feel good. Those sarcastic under the belt statements reeked more of theatre than good politics. What gave me that sinking feeling is that she was good on the stage, and unfortunately, that is all what most people see. I have never lived in the US and for that matter never wish to if the Republicans win this time too. But I like the battle of ideologies that is played in the US elections and like most academically qualified people, I support the Democrats.
Obama in one of his TV interviews said that Republicans don't govern the country that well but are good campaigners. And that is a sad fact, which Obama, inspite of being aware of, proved yet again. I fail to understand why he didn't choose Hillary Clinton as his running mate. I guess with the kind of wave he was riding on, he felt he didn't need her. And that is the problem with these Ivy League educated people, they underestimate the uneducated masses. Biden is a non entity when compared to Clinton. People were already calling the Obama-Clinton a 'dream team' and I believe Palin would have had no chance against her. But what is done is done.
I had read an article which said that people vote for politicians who inspire them. Politicians with whom they can identify themselves. They vote solely based on emotion. And the failure of Democrats to appeal to people lies in a lack of understanding on the part of the Democrats, while the voters have failed to understand that just because a politician can make a dramatic speech and hunt moose does not mean that he/she is a good administrator. People look at personality and not policies. Unfortunately 8 years of Bush rule hasn't made the Americans any smarter. With the 4 point lead that McCain has now, it seems they are ready to vote for him (actually her).
Though the situation is not new for an Indian. The Congress still finds it hard to get votes without a Gandhi at its helm and the south is known to have film stars influence elections. Sometimes I feel democracy overestimates the intelligence of the people.

Identity

Cable TV came to Baroda in early to mid nineties. So I basically grew up watching Doordarshan. The state decided what I watched on TV, what I read in my text books and what should be shown in the movies. So I like everybody felt proud to be an Indian, proud of India's diversity, culture, religions, mountains, rivers, valleys, languages, food etc etc. The usual bad guys against India in movies and some TV series were either the British (read Tom Alter) and Pakistanis (How could I forget Mogambo here?). Every Independence Day I like most Indians felt proud for the years of struggle against the British and believed strongly that Indian independence was a good thing.
Did we ever think that we have been brainwashed into believing all this by a nation whose survival depends on such a belief. How else could it send people on a battle front to die for India. Recently Kashmir has seen a lot of unrest and it would be difficult to find a single person who shared this concept of India with me. For a Kashmiri he/she is a Kashmiri first (read Muslim first) and then anything else. I often ask myself whether their belief in a Kashmiri identity is in any way different from my concept of an Indian identity. What I mean is that Kashmir for most part of history was at least one nation, while India never was. Taking a step further, it would not be unfair to say that India, before it came into existence on 15 August 1947, had never existed as a single entity. It would not be wrong to say that there existed nations within what is now India and they were fiercly nationalist and fought against each other. Now the Indian government has made us believe that the concept of India is nobler, better, but do we ever question that whether it actually is? I can already see myself as being branded as an anti-national.
I had read in a book there was only one way of creating a completely fair society. Get a group of people to design it, such that the people know that after they have designed the system they will die and and will be reborn. What they don't know is which section of the society they will be reborn in. This will ensure that they create favourable conditions for every section of the society. I am an Indian and understand that Kashmir is important for the concept of India and support the government in its policies there. But what if I was a Kashmiri living under the shadow of the gun, under the fear that I could be the next victim? Would I still want India to exert its control over Kashmir?
It is not for Indians to realise but for Kashmiris to understand that in this clash of identities India is a stronger power and that it is impossible for Kashmiris to exert their concept of nationhood. But for that every Kashmiri has to let bygones be bygones and look at the situation objectively. Every Kashmiri has to realise that Kashmiriyat is similar to Indianism, just a concept in our minds. India has never asked Kashmiris to give up their identity. It actually gives them special rights under the constitution. Every person has an identity and if we keep segregating people, at one extreme end we could have each individual representing one country. It is not difficult to find things that make Kashmiris similar to the rest of India. Start from there and make the most of what the world order has to offer. True freedom is to break away from these predefined concepts and to be able to determine ones own identity.

Morality???

Robert Pirsig (I do admire the way he thinks) in his book Lila describes an incident where he and a colleague are walking with the chief of a native American tribe. After some time a dog starts walking beside them. Pirsig's colleague thinks that the dog looks weird and asks the chief,” What kind of dog is that?". The chief thinks for a while and then says, "That is a good dog". The answer surprises them both because what they are referring to is the breed of the dog. This is what Pirsig describes is the dichotomy between the western culture and Native American culture. The western culture has devoted millions of dollars, human effort and huge universities to help humans understand what is what, while very little effort has been spent on finding out what is good. The problem according to me is not whether a government should try to imbibe good among its populace, rather than spend millions on academic institutions to understand our world. The problem according to me is whether the government or any other body has a right to determine what is good for its people.
I guess, the only country today which does that unabashedly is China, and also a few religious countries. What I will discuss is whether it is good for a government or a social organisation to enforce its view of what is right. The world has been evolving and in the process has seen various philosophies gain strength at different times. I will classify each of these philosophies into two categories: philosophies allowing individual freedom of thought, philosophies enforcing one view of the world. The world, and more so India, will be analysed with respect to four phases it has been through:

1. The golden age of Indian philosophy - The time of Buddha, Mahavir, Kautilya and many other schools of thought
2. The advent of Islam and Christianity its successes
3. Communism
4. Western Democratic Tradition

The first phase was when India was culturally and socially dominating the world. It was the time of intense thought and also freedom from dogma. The people were trying to escape from only one view of truth and as I have heard it was very common for people to adopt different schools of thought at different stages in their lives. Greece was going through a similar period with the great philosophers deviating from prevalent concepts of what is right and wrong and redefining morals. India and Greece were the success stories of that time and I believe their successes defined the morality of those times which allowed people to think for themselves.

The second phase defines the spread of Christianity in Europe and Islam from the Middle East to north India. Now both the Abrahamic religions are quite conformist. The church ruled over most of Europe through the middle ages while Islam kept making its conquests into Europe on one hand and eastern Asia on the other. Both the philosophies have a predetermined morality and both have enforced their concepts at times by use of violence. So while they succeeded, conformist thought became the norm while individual freedoms became old fashioned.

The third and the fourth phases almost came together. The freedom from the church created the renaissance and eventually led to the industrial revolution in Europe while the resulting inequalities led to the birth of communism. While democracy was adopted by most of west Europe and America, communism became the ideology in Eastern Europe and then China. Communism was definitely conformist, while pure democracy allowed individual the right to think for oneself.

My analysis brings me back to the same result I had come to when I was trying to analyse skepticism. Indian and Greek cultures progressed not for some inherent quality in them but essentially because at that time the two countries were socially, militarily and economically stronger. Islam and Christianity spread because the people who adopted them exercised significant control over the world affairs. Democracy and Communism had the world polarised because they were both supported by two very large and influential countries.

I will take the example of the concept of celebrity here. When Shahrukh Khan wears a certain kind of clothes, talks in a certain kind of way it becomes widely accepted. You look at the 60s clothes and find them funny. 15 years down the line our children will find our clothes in our old pictures funny. The point I am trying to make is that the concept of right and wrong keeps changing and hardly do we realise how we get influenced by personality (read celebrity) and society in our definition of what is acceptable and what is not.

There are two incidents I would like to describe here. James Watson (of the Watson and Crick DNA model fame) some time back made a statement which in essence meant that Africans had lesser intelligence. I was discussing this with some of my friends who were appalled at the statement saying that they were quite disappointed with him. The reaction to the statement was so unanimous throughout the world and he became a pariah and I believe he had to later take the statement back.

The second incident relates to Salman Rushdie and his book the Satanic Verses in which, I hear, he wrote something against Islam. A fatwa was passed against him as his life was at risk. Now though the western world's reaction was more social and political rather than actual physical violence but in both cases, non adherance to a particular point of view was not accepted.
What I essentially mean is that though the western culture seems to promote individual freedom it finds itself at times incapable of accepting difference of thought. The problem that I am trying to solve on a personal level is to find out whether I am right in supporting democracy and opposing intolerance. If success is the criteria then it would be impossible to determine. I guess this decision too like most has to be a personal one, which means less rational and more emotional.