Thursday, July 24, 2014

Reflections : A response to posting Titled Discrimination

Here is a response from Narasimhan to my last (previous) piece in the blog. 

Since there are space limitations for responses in the blog site, I decided that this should go as a main piece. 

The last piece does seem to put troubling doubts to rest with feeling. Good as far as it goes but for me it stops short of arousing your "Idu Ennadaadhu" sentiment. 

As for the earlier essay on " God made all men equal" cliche, it did not merit the elaborate treatment that you took the labour to give it. I do not know who originally propounded this wisdom and what that was meant to convey. Except in the highest sense of declaring all perceived inequality to be illusory, it is shallow pontification by those who are securely conscious of their superiority or the resigned unequals who feel safe being on God's right side by speaking up for his impartiality. We believe God knows it all and indulges both, the delusion of the former and the majboori of the latter and impartially leads them through their own separate paths to realisation. 

I should be closing my response here but am impelled to share an allied thought that is rushing in. One another cliche that's freely exchanged among the smart, successful, mature management fraternity is this" There are no free lunches" maxim. Those that quote this with sagacity are the ones who live and thrive on patently free lunches. And there are those who work hard and wander around not knowing where to pick up their lunch for which they know they have paid the cost. Here again this is true only in the highest sense that the law of karma is unfailing in its promise of fit compensation, well earned or otherwise, for all deeds done by anyone though it appears to fulfill its promise almost deliberately, over several life times. 

Shallow understanding or less charitably, rank hypocrisy, seems to be a defining feature of our era when devils habitually quote the bible or the Geetha. We have a country like the US announce with pride that they have brought democratic revolutions all over the world; in erstwhile USSR, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Egypt( Face Book takes credit for the Arab Spring!), in Libya.... . The US and the Christian West, champion the cause of human rights again the world over, fabricate stories of gross violation which are planted on countries of their choosing. Swiss banks practise the highest standards of confidentiality to protect their rogue depositors' interests. Vijay Malya buys Tippu Sultan's sword at enormous expense to bring back India's honour. The Congress and the SP decry communalism. The spiritual leadership of our times does not seem to convey their disapproval of any of this even in private. Perhaps they are aware of the devilish power of our times and submit without conflict to the Divine Will and carry on with their mission in full awareness. 

In contrast to today's hypocritical conduct our mythology is replete with plain villainy where defiance to God and His ethical codes were  open and without pretense to some deep wisdom. The worst they indulged in was plain deceipt such as Ravana and Duryodhana chose to employ on their victims. There might have been a rare Mahabali whose understanding of virtue needed a correction for him to become truly enlightened. All that some of us who despair about the "all pervading decadence" around us could do is to pull their attention away from the "depressing surroundings" and totally turn their attention inward, even if that's the most infuriating cliche they have come across. The difference between a shared wisdom and a cliche is determined I suppose by who quotes it and in what bhaavam.     

May God give us peace. 

Gulpa


1 comment:

  1. A terrific critique of another inane cliche "there are no free lunches"

    BTW the first piece on discrimination was triggered by the recent agitation by Hindi belt students taking UPSC exams where the agitating guys are quarreling about what they perceive as Govt's/ public's bias for English speaking guys. This is so pronounced according to them, that Hindi translations of questions in English are so atrociously & perhaps deliberately done as to make it impossible to attempt an answer. So the argument goes that there is a huge amount of discrimination. .

    In a panel discussion in a TV show there was this someone (Munshi Prem Chand's son or grandson) who made a comment that every exam is discriminatory, as not enough seats are available to take every one aboard. So the actual issue he said was this; One must examine as to whether this discrimination is fair, that's all.

    This set me up & the next day I wrote that piece about creation being itself akin to discrimination.......etc etc...This was a short off-the cuff piece with a few embellishment.

    Love

    Vichu


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