Long Live the Raj, the Raj is dead

     Long Live the Raj, the Raj is dead

Ghost stories

The English have a saying, “The king is dead, long live the King.” India has taken a straw out of the English hat, for now we too have sayings like, “Long live the Raj, the Raj is dead”.And no, we are not talking about the pale ghosts of the British hovering around in the hills and old Bungalows.

This might be true of all the other post imperial colonies as well, where the structures of exploitation have been readily 'indigenised", the local elite taking over what was the position of the colonialists once, not only in the socio-economic terms, but also in terms of adopting the culture, language, dress, food habits of their former masters. 

Our  Indian independence was the death of the British Raj, but then for the people, the Raj simply never ended. It was a transfer of authority that they saw happening, but the same sort of mentality, institutional structure and public dealing of the Raj continued, with “Desi Sahibs” taking the coveted positions of our new masters. 

People see the Raj everyday, seeped into the uniforms of the police, carrying the same bludgeons. They can see the Raj in the un-responding legislators, running on the orders of their party whips. They can see the Raj in the apathy, the cowardice and ultimately the surrender of their own countrymen. 

Even as the red beaconed cars pass, children would line up the streets to see which which convoy it is, of the Maharajas of the modern times. Then the offices of these ‘Babus’ would be unapproachable, just like in the older times. People would still be beaten for demanding their rights in a similar manner. What is the most disturbing is that this non responsiveness, this brutal use of force against the citizens, this high handedness has become the norm and no one seems to mind!

Orderlies and Batmans

Foreign observers are more venerated in our country. ( Perhaps they’re the only ones who are allowed to speak their minds). One of them had this to say, “ Ostentatious pageantry and grandeur of senior officers was an obvious, visible form of authority. The morning parade and the salute to the commanding officer, the armed sentry at the superintendent’s gate,  and armed escort on their torus were symbols that placed the officers on a high pedestal. A deliberate paternalistic style of governance was created in which a few selected officers took all the decisions for the people.” (Griffiths 1971)

This form of governance was required in the Raj to maintain distance from the masses so that no one could complain, this distance was required to maintain the dignity of the few thousand “Sahibs” ruling over the millions. Tiger hunts and other entertainments were adjunct to propagating the myths of the Raj, thus institutionalising corruption in the ranks of the police. The subordinate officers had to arrange all of the entertainment and shelter for the large visiting party, making bribes, commissions a necessary part of duty. 

The same traditions of senior officers are still visible in a new manner. Since tigers have become rare, there are New Year parties, picnics and official get togethers at “Dak Bungalows”. The expenses for entertaining the senior officials are still passed down to subordinates. The officers are proud of their association with the British legacy. In some offices, the ‘succession list’ coming from the British period are still seen. The same palatial ‘bungalows’, house the present officers, the baton has successfully been passed to the IPS, army, Vice chancellors, collectors, Secretaries of government… and so on. 

There’s a wide gulf between the ‘ruler’ and the ‘ruled’. Class hierarchy even within the force is strict. Constable and middle level officers won’t sit in front of the SP. IPS officers still use constables as personal orderlies ( euphemism for domestic servant).Army officers have a more colourful name, that of the Batman ( no one knows the origin of this one). Drivers, coolies, gardeners, helps, call it by any name; all of them are state employees paid by taxes of people, taken out of their duty to serve whims of ‘sahib log’. The poor Kipling would have been infuriated with the misappropriation of his term for the 'bandar log' ( the monkey people). 

Un-Azaadi in Democracy?

We know that India is an elitist society, but the superior officers take it to scandalous level. The blatant use of official resources in name of cultural traditions is rarely criticised and accepted, to the point that the not accepting these would be considered deviant. 

One of the bitterest fallout of such cultural practices is that the democratic ethos of our society has been damaged to the root. Public institutions stifled by their own damning cultural practices cannot get out to reform themselves. We know that the police needs autonomy, needs an independent investigation department, we know that the IAS needs lateral entry, mid career checks for incompetent officers, we know that the army needs to be organised on more egalitarian lines without breaking it into regional silos, we know that the politicians need to stop interfering in every association/governing body/regulatory organisations. 

There are sporadic outburst of public disgust against the obsolete system. We saw the effects of it in the Anna Hazare’s movement and more recently in the JNU fracas. The consciousness of the people transcended the grumbling in bedrooms to the streets. Against the lathi charge, reminiscent of those six decades back, people demanded their ‘Azaadi’, the freedom to practice their religion, to live with their sexual orientation, to have justice, to be protected against discretion, to have accountability and to implement the constitution that we have given to ourselves. 

 Our sleeping destiny can awake only if implement what  we already know, that the ‘we’ the people of India should realise the power in our hand and exercise it by voting for the right candidate and civil society organisations. Our Independence didn’t come from the top, and our ‘Azaadi’ can’t come from the top, it has to come from within.

The only problem is then, that why do the people of one nation possess the ability and the will to wake up from their slumber and break the chains of the powerful few and why do others not do so and even if they do, they place someone else in that place. Is it the culture that's to be held responsible, or is it the geography, the religion, the race... what is it that allows the essential spark of men to flower and come alive in form of collective progress of a nation? 

Project Freedom

Freedom - this might be one of the most powerful words ever coined. With the help of a few alphabets it represents an indefatigable urge of a living being. I’ve never heard of something that conveys so much passion in so few letters. 

Freedom, almost seems like a magic word to me. There’s nothing that a man can or should value more and there I violated my own principle by imposing my idea on you, or did I ? For you too have a brain and may very well decide that it is love which is the most important value of all, or hard work you might say ( if you live in China). But I too have a freedom to let my own views out and therefore, the onus is upon the receptor to judge my statement and then to accept it or not only after due deliberations.

The fact of the matter is that there are a very few people who actually analyse what is happening to them and are thus even capable of evaluating all the dimensions of freedom and what it really means. What is it and who is stopping whom? Is it then an affirmative right or is it some sort of a restriction on one party to not violate the rights of the other. 

My actions, the one that I supposedly am performing completely free of any influence whatsoever, might in reality be the expression of the social values that have been forced upon me from my childhood. There is a search for a characteristic ‘me’ in the life of every individual and the tid bits of information that comprises this basic question cannot be procured separately from the society that we live in. The whole of our existence is shaped by the lens that we adopt for viewing and filtering all the information that gets to us, is it not therefore implied that a part of us is also the society that we lived in? 

That might be an obvious statement. But, then let us take it further. Are we therefore not defined by the people surrounding us, for it is their thought patterns that we ultimately are going to imbibe and then shape our incoming stimuli through. 

The unlimited expression of any individual is thus a myth, as much of a myth as is the existence of big foot. Apparently every one of us only has had small feet. The fixture on individual right to freedom has been a part of the modern discourse. The label of mad is given to anyone who deviates a certain degree from the norm, even he/she does it for the expression of their true selves. It’s not surprising that it is the people who’s job is to analyse their own emotions that are regarded as the most ‘weird’ or even as mad. Artists, the expression of the bare human soul are not likely to fit with any one size system. 

They are the people who’ve had the courage to dissociate from the popular trends and then to delve into their own minds. Artists have therefore been able to change how people think about themselves by being able to insert their own touch into the general. Acceptance of a particular trait is preceded by ridicule and then a grudged allowance. 

For freedom to be expressed, courage is the foremost requirement. Courage to be yourself is a difficult job, as it robs the people of an easy characterisation matrix that they’ve been using. For knowing an individual, especially a unique one, it requires years and years of interaction and experience. It is here that the heuristics serve their purpose. 

The point that I’m trying to make is that a life not analysed isn’t free, for you are falling for the popularly established forms of perception and judgement making. Not only that, in your daily life, all the decisions that you make are going to be derived from an external framework, which might be that of the religion that you follow, or that imposed by your parents, or that of your peers or whatever. If you don’t analyse the why of your life, your life also remains a big question mark. 

Not that everyone does care. I don’t think most of the people want to care and the others can… but still if I was the only one who could see the chains that the people drag at all times, should I have kept quiet or put some on myself so as to not appear different?

I am in a quandary. How can I justify switching on a light bulb?

This isn't the question that the philosophers in the past had had to face. But before you can ponder upon it, let's just consider what all goes into lighting the bulb. The task itself doesn't consume many calories or rattle brains.

The process of reaching out and pressing a button produces a reaction wherin electrons are hurtled headlong into the filament of the bulb, where they get excited and climb up an energy shell in their atomic structure. These electrons are being pushed by another reaction taking further off in a generation unit somewhere where coal is burnt and the heat used to drive a turbine which excites a magnet which propels these electrons.

Further back, the coal is taken out of mines by digging out earth and the vegetation that lay above it. The process of turning on the bulb represents just the last stage in the process which spans from the absorption of energy by the organism that was turned into coal and the eventual liberation of it through our light bulb.

By turning on the light, we are taking part in the process wherein the forests are cleared, earth is dug up and the smoke released. If we can't see it happening in front of our eyes, we don't see the process as it is. We see only the part of it which we accept.

The chicken that you eat, ultimately comes from the bird that once lived. You can't deny that. You don't care about the feelings of the bird, it's dreams, aspirations and happiness. You don't because all you've ever seen is the animated bird that wants you to eat it. The advertisement, who's role is to remove the guilt of the wrong being done in the process and give to you the final product as a gift, which you are made to think you deserve.

The mobiles in our hands in this manner constitutes several trees that stood over the land that must have been dug to pull the minerals that are essential in its hardware, the earth that must've been violated, the animals that must've been driven out and the insects that must've been killed. If we had the perspective to see all of this simaltaneously,we wouldn't have been able to carry on with our lives for very long.

The point is we don't even consider the norms that have been set in the society. It's a slavery that we have accepted.

                                                                 Freedom

The concept of freedom is a complex one. It isn't the mere freedom from the overt controls of others. A person might be in chains for a revolutionary cause and yet be more free than any of the 'free' men slaving under an oppressive regime.

The mind, determines how free you get to be. The modern man has submitted his mind. Literally bowed without being able to realise that it has done so. The cleverness underlying the consumerist culture is making the consumer think that he is the king, while in reality the tiny threads of enslavement emanate from every and each one of the product that he uses.

THE SIMPLE TRUTH

What did I just Blabber in the paragraph above? The simple truth.

Imagine the phone. We were alright without the smart phone. Infact the marginal productivity that it does add is decimated by the amount of time wasted by us on its several distractionary features. We continally have to spend time updating, recharging, searching for apps and n other things. We are on a lookout for newer models, for newest features, fawning over every new stripe of metal added to the plasticky screen.

EVEN if you were a slave bought by a 17th century english baron, you wouldn't have spent this much of time and attention for your master. True, we do it out of our own self will. But then, how much of our self will is our own?

The action of a DRUG ADDICT who conciously makes a decision to consume a drug isn't an action of free will. He cannot, EVEN if he wants to, get clear of his habit. The habit drives him to not only consume more of the drug, but also to find new ways to finance his 'habit'. The habit has extended its tentacle into every sphere of his life, moulding him, his actions and ultimately him in the apparent process of serving him. Clever.

CLEVERER still is how we fall prey to advertisements subtle messages in films and the peer pressures of social media. We emulate others, without analysing how or why we do it. IF the hero on the screen smokes, we automatically integrate the action as being cool in our inner self.

NO one has to tell us that the sleek puffing of the cig is a cool thing to do. Since we too want to do the cool thing, we too buy the cig and get hooked. The society has absorbed many such assumptions. These are passed on and adapted. Its like PASSING on the chains on our individual thought process and extending it to the entire humanity. Every one is forced to think along the same lines.

THE globalised world has set its standards of happiness, deteremined by products. You cannot be happy if you don't have a certain product. That is happiness in so many advertisements, movies, shows and what not..... and finally you start to beleive. Happiness is using old spice deodrant, happiness is using apple computer, riding lamborghini..... what not.

Each of these products represent a part of the mother earth cut out brutally out of her breasts. The cars that we ride in with the petrol extracted from polluting drills, built with the iron which had been lying in the pristine jungles, with the coal who's extraction destroyed an entire ecosystem.

LIVES

EVERY PRODUCT that you use has cost some lives. It would squirt blood if the metaphor could be translated into reality. It would also squirt the chains with which it has enslaved your mind into accepting that product as the barometer of your success and happiness.

HUMAN mind cherishes and values object with the social criterion over all else. We like gold because everyone wants it. A tulip mania occurred breifly in Netherland in 17th century. Everyone wanted a tulip, because everyone wanted it.

OUR present mania has gone on for a long long time. Industrialisation created the inevitable need for a way to sell the overproduced products without regard to needs. Terms like Nationalism, patriotism, duty were used to force people to accept the order. Workers had to leave pristine natural setting and work in dirty factories because their "NATION" required it.

ALL of the nations used the same SLOGAN, the incessant chorus of enimity with other nation. We had to work for that imaginary idea of nation, to preserve it, to help it grow. Every dissent was crushed by a machinery of law. Armies sprouted to ensure that the "NATION" functioned.

What is this "NATION"? A naiton is a society united by a delusion abou tits ancestory and a common hatred of its neighbours. It is an idea exploited by the powerful classes to maintain its control. It is a perverse exploitation of the majority of the people, in which the people themselves let themselves being raped by the industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats and what not.

WHAT CAN we do.... ?

Take the red pill (previous post).

What the f**k are we doing? Destroying everything for the things we don't need. Hypnotised by the ads... we are killing the animals, environment.. and our own souls......

I don't know what the right way is.
But this isn't it.
We are digging our own graves with the kind of society we have.

We have to pause and look at the branch beneath us that we are senselessly chopping off with an ever evolving technology.

Do you know the way? Because I am in a quandary, if you get what I am saying....................

Red Pill

THE most important thing in your life.

What does this sentence mean for you? Does it conjure the image of a car, a bike, your expensive mobile perhaps. It might be a relative, a friend, a mission, an idealogy or even a memory.

Increasingly, the sentence just refers to the quest of achieving more money, power or even a status. The funny thing about it is that all of it makes sense, but only as long as you are in the process of acheiving these. When you have a hope of making it big in your life, these words mean everything. When you have an education, support and opportunity, then it would be ludicrous for you to risk it all for something stupid. That is how a law abiding citizen is made.

IF..... we wonder about the grass on the other side of the fence, not the other side really, but further off into the unkept lawns of the people who really don't have grass, but really a few patch of brown mould that they pretend is grass. That grass is definitely not greener. What I am referring to in an inarticulate manner are the millions upon millions of people who have been left out of the dream.

THEY don't retaliate, can't fight. They work in the lowest levels. Forever filled with self hate and pity, they roam the dirtiest parts of the world, beleiving everything that the rich have to say about them. THEY are more than you can realise. THEY are invisible. THEY are not part of the dream.

The dream of the modern life encompasses the quintessential house, car, corporate job, shopping and as many products as there are almost a part of the identity of the successful person. We don't consider it wrong to live such a life. There is nothing immoral in buying unnessary things that pile up in our house, that line our garages, that drain our credits and yeah..... also destroy the environment.

If I am not the part of the dream life and cannot even pretend to be somewhere near that, then what does that make me? I am definitely not the model citizen that the corporates want. I cannot afford to spend on an overpriced cup of coffee in a decked up environment, just because I need to feel good. I need food more than I need to satisfy my artificially bloated ego.... hehe... that sounds mean. But i didn't mean that. I was actually talking about the artificially deflated ego, that can only be brought to bear the pressure of modern life if enough money is pumped in keeping it running.

Blah.. Blah.. What is the solution to the problem you point out.


GOOD question, if you asked it. GOOD enough if you read it with an avid interest.

This so called problem has been around for as long as we began to communicate in broken sounds that seemed like a language. The solution has been quite a simple affair as well. Untill we lived the life of a nomad, consumerism was limited to extraction of required resources and that too sustainably so that you can take that resource again next time.

Living like a nomad is a bit impractical I understand. So what we need to do is to first to know our own minds. It is akin to realising the source of our inner conflicts, complexes, desires. You need to know your enemy before you develop a strategy to take on your enemy, (not that your mind is your enemy). But surely the adverts, social media, songs and the digital world takes advantage of our weak control on our own selves to modify our behaviour for their own interest.

SHITT...

I know its nothing new. You probably know that it's happening. Billions of dollar on behaviour of consumers and means and methods of controlling their behaviour are not spent on merely creating banners.

HOW TO KNOW YOUR MIND

So far, meditation has served as the most effective tool for this. Staying without any stimulation allows your innermost thoughts to softly float to the surface.

Religion does allow the same thing, when you converse with God in prayers. That process is like talking to your subconcious self, but using a round about method. The danger here is that you fall under the influence of the so called leaders of your religion and forget about your own mind, thougts, rationality.

Talking, well really talking..... a heart to heart conversation with someone who understands you can perhaps help too. But then, that is what has been the biggest victim of our hectic lives, the ability to be able to really bond with others. TV being the most important member of the family (or mobile, Xbox, PC, Music player) makes the intimacy of family a pipedream.

George Orwell wrote about this in his seminal work 1984, where government spies on its citizens through TV and controls their thoughts through a thought police. Reality proved stranger and perhaps more advanced than his fiction. We are controlled by private multinationals through media, to buy buy buy buy buy buy and die and leave descendents who buy buy buy buy.

Wake up ... HERE is the red PILL

- Have principles in life, carefully thought values which constitute your inner ethical code
- Be true, if not to anyone else then atleast to your own self. Absolutely, unbiasedly true.
- Take time alone without any tentacle of digital world and then meditate upon your thoughts.
- READ READ READ... books, thoughts, blogs. Read the meaningful, the thought provoking, the insane and then you can place a framework of what constitutes reality, the constructed world or the real one
- Reduce the space for things, energies attatched to longings for things and spend time developing the most important resource that there can be...... Your own self.
- Be Critical of any advice, command or subtle message given to you. Think about it, even about the sentence you are reading now. What could have been my purpose in writing these lines? Why should you listen to me... Should you?

Take the Pill Neo. BUT think before that.


PS> NEXT blog deals with the subtle ways in which we allow our mind to be enslaved.