Monthly Archive for November, 2004

Page 2 of 2

A Profile in Courage

Published on November 10, 2004 in Uncategorized. 8 Comments

One thing that characterizes role models is success and fame. Hence Sachin Tendulkar, Shahrukh Khan and their ilk are the role models of today’s youth. These personalities symbolize success and power attained through some parameter of excellence (sublime batting and over-acting in these specific cases) and there is definitely worth in looking upto that. But are successful people, in the accepted sense of the word, the only people worth worshipping? I am sure all of us agree that that should not be the case. The worship of success to the exclusion of everything else is one of the fundamental problems of Indian society and such role models only affirm the “success is everything” paradigm. Success in itself is not the problem. It is just that the parameter of determining it is almost exclusively money and power.

So lets look at a true role model. He is not a politician. He is not an artist. He doesn’t flex biceps or bring crowds into the stands. He is not part of the “India shining” crowd of self-aggrandizing CEOs. In short, he does not meet the parameters of success which we have come to accept.

His name is Gopal Chandra Patra, principal of Baikunthapur Primary School, in West Midnapore district of West Bengal. Beginning his life as a daily laborer he got a job in a primary school in the backwaters of Bengal in 1974. If going from a laborer to a teacher wasn’t inspiring enough what he subsequently achieved is what makes him a giant among men. He set about creating a library and a science laboratory in his school. Where did the money come from ? It was his own; as a rule he donated half of his meager 8000 rupee salary back to finance facilities in the school he supervised.

He inspired a 70 year old illiterate man to learn to read, campaigned tirelessly against the ills of alcohol which plagued his village and organized health camps. Nine children with heart ailments were treated successfully due to his efforts. Of course he got no help from government agencies but then whets new about that ? His meager health and earnings atrophied but not the idealism inside him. He was diagnosed with gall bladder cancer but he carried on with the same fervor even as his life foirce seeped out of him. Ultimately recognition came to him from Amartya Sen’s Pratichi Trust and from the Telegraph which, in a star studded event with Sonia Gandhi as chief guest, recognized his contribution and his idealism. In an emotional acceptance he fought back tears as he accepted the award in his wheelchair and worried about what would happen after he is gone. The next day at the age of 53 he was no more.

In an age when many teachers have been reduced to becoming salesmen with reading glasses, Gopal Chandra Patra symbolized the true “acharya” or someone who instructs by his “acharan” (behavior). It is stories like Mr Patra’s which the media should be carrying for here was a life to live by. Unfortunately with the exception of newspapers based in Bengal, no other Indian newspaper carried anything about him. I suppose Shahrukh Khan turning 40, the re-release of Mughal-e-Azam, the never-ending death drama of a terrorist who won the Peace Prize and Uma Bharati’s tantrums are more newsworthy than the simple story of a man who symbolized courage and sacrifice.

Of course most of us are not going to change our behavior after reading his story. But maybe that is because this is just one story. We need more such stories. There are so many Indian heroes like this all over the country whose stories need to be heard. At the very least in an age of cynicism when we ascribe ulterior motives to all actions (mainly because there usually is one) it is humbling to see that there are people who do not follow the stereotype . People who can rise above the muck of our daily existence, people who show us how life is to be led, people who can bear unflinchingly what heaven sends. Which is how Euripides defines courage.

Share

A tinge of sadness

Published on November 5, 2004 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments

Let me stress at the onset: I am no card-carrying leftist intellectual. I have nothing but the utmost contempt for champagne socialists, dogmatic Marxist ideagouges, bleeding-heart genteel liberals who have selective myopia on issues and self-flaggelating (often self-serving) “humanists”.

It’s not everyday you get to see history being made. An Indian batting collapse: common. A defining moment in human progress played out in full technicolor: not so. And that’s exactly what I witnessed on November 2nd with the re-election (or his first election–depending on how you interpret the elections of 2000) of George W Bush. It left me with a profound sense of sadness because the way I looked at it: this election symbolized the culmination of a world-wide process of conservative ossification that has been going on for the last twenty years.

It’s the same kind of sadness I felt when Narendra Modi won the elections in Gujarat after the Godhra riots. Narendra Modi’s policies and his role during the riots were alarming no doubt. However what was far more disturbing was the popular mandate he received after the riots which could only be interpreted as an resounding popular affirmation of what he did. The tragedy was not one facist at the helm: after all history has endured many worse specimens than Narendra Modi and shall endure many more too. The tragedy lay in the fact that his behavior was not considered aberrant and despicable: hence Modi’s re-election to the chief ministership in free and fair polls.

In a way I am comfortable with the Talibans of the world…a barbaric fundamental totalitarian terrorist regime that sustains itself on totally subverting the free will of the people. Such regimes do not last: history teaches us that. What is disquieting is a situation like Gujarat when people’s opinions have been so shaped by fear that the basic quality of collective humanity is lost.

The fear majority Hindus feel may not be irrational: after all proliferation of madrasas teaching the philosophies of hate, minorities who support our opponents whether in cricket or in politics, foreign-funded terror cells, publicly-espoused Islamic fundamentalist agendas emboldened by mollycoddling by the pseudo-secular intellegentsia affirm the notion that Indians are under attack. So it’s high time we stopped treating the problem with kid gloves and search for solutions.

What I dont believe in is the Narendra Modi-Bal Thackeray recipe for the solution: the notion of pre-emptive strike. The problem with the doctrine of pre-emptive strike is that it absolves us of the moral obligation of identifying the enemy. Which is what lay at the heart of the Godhra riots: some Muslim miscreants have set fire to a train so let’s go and massacre as many Muslims as we can so that such incidents do not happen again. That such “pre-emptive” stikes create more terrorists and miscreants is of course the main reason why Modi and Mullah Omar endorse these tactics. It creates more enemies and generates an even more convincing argument for fresher violent pre-emptive strikes.

The irrational, frenzy-driven fundamentalist crowd’s one point agenda is to get into our brains. Besides the “we are under attack so let’s attack” doctrine their other favorite is “back to roots”. That roughly translates to cultural and moral hooliganism: Navaratri celebrations being stopped by Shiv Sena activists on the grounds of vulgarity, Archies galleries being stopped from selling Valentine cards, Kashmiri terrorists making women cover their faces and stop screening Indian movies on fear of death, right wing historian rewriting history, no shorts in TIFR (yes sometimes they do have a sense of humor and aesthetics)… the list is endless. While a previous generation’s reaction would perhaps been to rise up against these moral strictures , it is perhaps a sign of this age that we cower to them and start accepting them whole-heartedly. Why this is so I do not know. Perhaps it is because liberalism and conservatism follow each other in historical cycles…maybe it is because the last generations were so liberal the new attitude is a rebellion against liberalism. That explains why most of India’s youth are more conservative politically than their predecessors for whom socialism and liberalism defined “hip”.

It is a continuation of this trend in the American elections of 2004 that seems to suggest that our entire human civilization has suddenly swung right. At the beginning of the twenty first century, the freest country in the world willingly elects someone who opposes stem cell research, the right to have abortions, endorses drilling for oil in Alaska and propounds the principle of pre-emptive strike. And it does not stop at that: 11 states vote to outlaw gay marriage effectively affiriming the conservative agenda that gays are not “normal” even when science says otherwise. People who would stand to lose most under GW Bush’s pro-wealthy tax policies overwhelmingly vote against their own interests because they feel his “faith-based politics” is more important to them than medicare. The only way this could have happened is because people sincerly believe that it “us” vs “them” where the “them” can be an Islamic fundmentalist, any foreigner, someone gay…the list is endless.

George W is someone I admire because he is someone who stands by his beliefs and makes clear stands on issues and in the world of politics thats something to admire. I welcome his election because I admire some of his foreign policy initiatives and always think that Republican foreign policy is always better than the knee-jerk liberalism of the Democrats.

However what does sadden and alarm me is the death of rationality all over the world and consolidation of the fundamentalistic agenda in favour of faith-based politics. His election is an affirmation of that trend.

Religion and politics dont mix together: the middle Ages is proof of that. Then why now in the age of “englightenment” have we forgotten this lesson ?

Share