महाभारत आज भी -2

ध्रितराष्ट्र ने भी तो गीता सुनी थी संजय के मुख से। पर ऐसा क्यूं है कि उसे वो समझ नहीं आती. इतनी ज्ञान ध्यान की बात उसे क्यूँ नहीं समझ आ रही? समझ तो आती होगी पर उसे हजम नहीं होती होगी कि यह क्या बात हुई कि कर्म भी करो और फल की इच्छा भी न करो! उसने शायद विश्वरूप भी देखा होगा पर उसने इस पर भी सवाल उठाया होगा। वो हर चीज़ में बड़ा सोच समझ कर, मोल-भाव कर के चलने वाला इन्सान है। उसे लगा होगा कि क्या यह विश्वरूप गांधारी की तरह मेरे साथ-साथ चल सकता है पक्का आसरा बन कर ? जब भी जरूरत हो, आवाज़ लगाई और लो हाथ में! उसे पता था कि कृष्णा बहुत चतुर है इसलिए उसका निष्पक्ष होना असंभव है? उसके लिए वफादारी किसी की चतुराई से भी बढ़कर है।ईश्वर भी इसी कसौटी पर खरा उतरना चाहिए, तभी तो उसे ईश्वर मान के पूजा करने का फायदा है। (पोलिटिकल इस पर्सनल के अनुसार चतुर और निष्पक्ष साथ साथ हो नहीं सकते ) ऐसे हालातों में उसके लिए गीता मात्र कचरे के सिवा कुछ भी नहीं थी।  जीवन एक उपहार है या फिर एक संपत्ति? ध्रितराष्ट्र एक ऐसा व्यक्ति है जो कहता है सीधा साफ कि यह मेरी संपत्ति है।  इसे जिंदा रखने और भोगने के लिए मैं सब कुछ कर सकता हूँ। अगर कर्म का फल ज़िन्दां रहना नहीं है तो क्या फायदा कर्म का और भाड़ में जाये ऐसी गीता ! मसला असल में यह है कि गीता की ज़रुरत ही उसे है जो यह मानता हैं कि कुछ ऐसा भी है जो मेरा नहीं है कम के कम अधिकार की दृष्टि से। उसके साथ मेरा रिश्ता संयम और संतुलन का होना चाहिए। यही उसके अन्दर सवाल पैदा करता है और उसी से पैदा होता है वो जो निष्पक्ष है, जिसकी बात सुनी जा सकती है पर अगर फैसला पहले ही हो चुका है कि सब कुछ मेरा है और मुझसे बढ़ कर कुछ भी नहीं है तो फिर गीता पर टाइम ख़राब करना मूर्खता है और कमाल की बात है कि सौ में से निन्यानवे बार ध्रितराष्ट्र ही जीत जाता है पर क्या करें उसे गीता का शोर सुनते रहना पड़ता है! उसके लिए प्रॉब्लम यह है कि यह कृष्ण गीता का बाजा बजाने बार बार आ जाता है, जाता ही नहीं है। उसे यहाँ हर हाल में पता करना है कि उसका कर्मफल उसे मिलेगा कि नहीं और यह साला कृष्ण बीच में अर्जुन को लेकर हर बार बैठ जाता है और  कान पकाता  रहता  है. धृतराष्ट्र के  लिए गीता एक पक्की बोरियत है और  कभी न साथ छोड़ने वाली बोरियत है.

Thinking Ecologically than thinking of ecology-V

Thinking ecological happens to be a method where the immediate next moment is always a mystery. This next moment is not the future rather the bridge between the present and the future. We, human beings have got accustomed to the future and the futuristic thinking so much that the importance of the next moment is never underscored. The next moment is tactical, moral and hence essential. One can do anything except avoiding the next moment. The essential reality of this moment is that it is subjective. It's a zone of so many clashes and convergences that the act of facing the next moment becomes the most decisive act of being. Whether we like it or not, the decisive character of this moment is because of its being a link between the present and the future. We may assume to postpone the issue of decisiveness but the way we handle this moment gets permanently registered in the continuity of time and hence life. Every next moment has this character attached to itself. Whatever we have contributed to this series of moments, shall keep on building but we may call as our past. This past shall be a permanent reference point for all moments to come. This reference may crop up as a matter of bondage or a matter of liberation but I would say that reference should remain first and foremost only reference. The meaning, positive or negative may be a contextual force but the basic fact shall remain that a reference is only a reference.
People might find it a bit uncomfortable because we have remained the beings of moral thinking. A moral thinking will either make you a prisoner of the past or achiever of the past. I would maintain that this reality should not be taken out of a certain context. In objective terms, the past to remain a reference point. Why I am saying that history of a person may define the future of a person but may not determine too. The distinction between defining and determining is because of the presence of one universal which is nothing but death. This universal was present during all the moments of the timescale that a person has gone through. It shall also be present for all the moments that are yet to come in somebody's life. That is why the context of death was there, is there and shall remain there. A person may ignore to authenticate the presence of death but this ignorance is not an unlimited act. It may be broken anytime anywhere. This brings out the distinction between defining and determining. The past shall remain a defining possibility but the person shall remain the determining entity. The process of determination is a process where desire and death are in the state of immediate face-off. This kind of meeting is not based upon any kind of astrological understanding of timing of death rather it is founded upon accepting death as the immediate possibility in the next moment. Anybody who takes a shot in this interface may fulfil the desire of the moment. She may die after that but she has the option of giving priority to desire and not to survival. It's like trying out bungee jumping for the first time but it is much more than that. Death may eliminate her in the next moment but she has chosen her desire to live with. She may die but if she doesn't die in the next moment, she can realise with awkward relief and a bit of common sense that the context of death is as alive again as it was in the last moment. This time, it is not equal into bungee jumping but it may turn out to be again a case of priority of desire over the priority of survival. I'm not saying what a person can accomplish with this kind of practical experimentation by assuming the context of death but I would definitely say that she can realise the sustainability of this context as a permanent context. She may refuse to participate consciously with this context but her refusal will not eliminate this context.

Death is like a wayward traveller that can venture into our life from any point of time and space. So, the question is if the desire can sustain its power in each coming moment despite the context of death being operational at every moment? Generally, what happens is that the idea of death and its power can distort many desires and almost vanquish the paraphernalia of those desires. This can be the time of great personal tragedies, critical occasions or social disaster and so on but my experience tells that death does vanquish many but not all desires. There is no method of calculating that in any scientific terms but still, every person does perform somewhat more or less beautifully in such a situation though not at the first occasion. And this process continues its improvement till end. This realm of desire that remains untouched by the fear of death is the fundamental construction that everybody wishes to be part of. Of course, it may be multi-faceted but the structure shall vary from person to person. This is something that not only explains the intrinsic exclusivity of all souls as well as the essential plurality of human existence. A desire can look a very selfish concern at the first glance but all desires have an in-built design for the other's role. In the Part-IV of this series, I have explained the factor of “the other” but here, I would only say that the desire is the only force which builds the basic equation between the self and the other. This equation may turn out to be a question of ethics but it's the subsequent question. The primary force shall remain a function of desire.

Desire and Death

It is quite a difficult question for me when I am asked to write about the most powerful stimulator of my life. Over a period of last two decades, I have ventured into quite different disciplines beginning from Indian spiritual history, political theory, global economy, Mahabharata, Indian politics, World cinema, contemporary Hindi and Punjabi Literature and ecological activism. Apart from my intellectual interests, I have been quite active in administrative reforms within my campus,career counselling and student movements. Naturally, this kind of background can give me sufficient reasons to list some powerful motivators of my life but whatever I try has turned out to be quite amorphous once I attempt to phrase it. Perhaps, it was the change of contextual coordinates of space and time that really determined my course of action but it has been a very mysterious exercise to pin down the science of motivating desire as to when it arises, how it arises and what makes it getting transformed into an active and creative pursuit. I generally try to ask myself if I am to die in the very next moment, would I be really bothered about the quantum of task that remains unfinished or unfulfilled? This exercise reveals a lot of internal paradoxes and inconsistencies in my life-pattern. Death is like a wayward traveller that can venture into our life anytime, anywhere. So, the question is if my desire can sustain its power in each coming moment despite the context of death being operational at every momen? Generally, what happens is that the idea of death and its power can distort many desires and almost vanquish the paraphernalia of those desires. This can be the time of great personal tragedies, critical occasions or social disaster and so on but my experience tells that death does vanquish many but not all desires. There is no method of determining that in any scientific terms but still, every person does perform somewhat more or less beautifully in such a situation though not at the first occasion. And this process continues its improvement till end. This realm of desire that remains untouched by the fear of death is the fundamental construction that everybody wishes to be part of. Of course, it may be multi-faceted but the structure shall vary from person to person. This is something that not only explains the intrinsic exclusivity of all souls as well as the essential plurality of human existence. A desire can look a very selfish concern at the first glance but all desires have an in-built design for the other's role. I don't essentialize this design as the non-violent only; it may not be like that. A soldier may not be enjoying that luxury but the other is as much circumscribed by the context of death as the self is. So, the relationship may also be following innumerable possibilities but the mediating factor shall be the desire that remains unperturbed by the idea of death.

मृत्यु के अगल-बगल

ऐसा क्यूं था कि लिखना था जीने का अधिकार और लिखी जा रही थी मृत्यु ?
ऐसा क्यूं था कि लिखना था ईश्वर सर्वज्ञ, सर्वत्र-व्याप्त और सर्वशक्तिमान पर लिखी जा रही थी मृत्यु ?
ऐसा क्यूं था कि लिखना था स्वधर्म पर लिखी जा रही थी मृत्यु?
नियंत्रण की हर कोशिश को असफल करते हुए सुध बार-बार विक्षिप्त हुई भाग रही थी एक ही विषय की ओर जहाँ से सुनती थी मरघट की वीरानी और रास्ता! बस, वही एक नज़र आता था।

यह ढोंग काफ़ी देर तक साथ रहा कि ईश्वर की खोज ही एकमात्र सच है पर सुनहरी मछली की तरह हाथ से हमेशा फिसलता हुआ यह सच एक दिन त्यागना ही पड़ा और मंजिल को शब्दों में बयान करने की योग्यता भी हाथ से छूटती गई। एक निरंतर बढ़ती आश्र्यहीनता और क्रमिक बलहीनता का भाग्य मेरी होनी बनकर रह गया।
किसी से एक बात सुनी थी कि अकिरो कुरोसावा जब पैदा हुए थे तो उनके हाथ ऐसे बंधे हुए थे जैसे प्रार्थना कर रहे हों। हालांकि तब यह सच नहीं लगा था पर अब बार-बार सुध यह रेखांकित करती रहती है कि इसके अलावा कोई सच नहीं हो सकता। लेकिन संशय-विद्या ऐसी है कि पीछा नहीं छोडती। प्रार्थना एक निहायत ही मुश्किल कर्म है। किसी पल की भीत में से कभी-कभार शायद यह उभर आए पर हरी-भरी ज़मीन जैसा यथार्थ अभी तक इसका नहीं बन पाया। कौन जकड़े है ज़मीन की इस मटमैली ककर्षता को ? अपने मिट जाने का डर या फिर मृत्यु?
एक और अपराध काफ़ी देर तक होता रहा है- ख़ुद को दार्शनिक कहलवाने के अहम् का अपराध। दर्शन अर्थात दृश्य और अहसास की सम्यक भूमि पर होने वाली प्रक्रिया पर मेरे पास दृश्यों की कभी न ख़त्म होने वाली अपार श्रृंखलाएं थी। रंग-रूप उभरते, बढ़ते, बदलते और फिर किसी अन्धकार में लुप्त हो जाते। दृश्य की क्षुधा सिनेमा के भीतर ले गई। सैंकडों फिल्में देखने के बाद भी ऐसा एक भी दृश्य नहीं था जो अंधेरे के सामने टिककर खड़ा हो पाता । कुछ प्रिय दृश्य ज़रूर थे पर वक्त पड़ने पर उनमें से कोई भी काम नहीं आता। बस एक अन्धकार ही था -दुनिया के सारे दृश्यों की मृत्यु-शय्या। आँख भी काम की नहीं थी इस एक ऐन्द्रिक जीव की। अगर कोई अहसास था तो मात्र एक ही। ख़ुद का पर ख़ुद को कैसे पकड़ सकता था? एक अंधे मानव की नियति भोगते हुए बार-बार यही डर था कि कहीं अगला कदम ग़लत न रख दूँ, गिर न जाऊं, मर ना जाऊं। आँख ही क्या ऐसी एक भी इन्द्रिय का आसरा नहीं था जिस पर टिक सकता। हाथ, पैर, कान, नाक, त्वचा, कहीं से भी ऐसी उम्मीद नहीं थी कि मेरा जीना सुरक्षित हो सके।
मृत्यु अपने प्रछन्न रूप में मुझ काठ की गुडिया के सारे धागे तोड़ रहीं थी और उसकी इस विपरीत-कलाकारी के सामने एक विशुद्ध भयपूर्ण अनुभव ही था मेरी एक मात्र कमाई। सारे अंहकार त्रस्त, महत्वाकाक्षाएं पस्त। आश्रय केवल ऐन्द्रिक अर्थों में ही नहीं बल्कि अपने अस्तित्व के किसी भी रूप में गैर-हाजिर हो गया था। हाथ जोड़ना भी अपमानजनक, ग्लानिपूर्ण कार्यवाही सी लगती थी। कुरोसावा शायद भाग्यशाली होंगे। मेरे पास भाग्य नाम का कोई सौदा नहीं था। चलना भी चाहता था पर डरता भी था। ईश्वर-संधान की सारी माया यहाँ आकर थम चुकी थी। किसी से कभी 'योगक्षेमं वहाम्यम' के अर्थ पूछने चाहे थे पर अब वो हिम्मत भी जा चुकी थी। ईश्वर(?) ईश्वर से भी बड़ा अहसास था जिसने मुझे एक अजीब दुविधा में बाँध लिया था। मंजिल के मायने ख़त्म हो चुके थे। जीना मजबूरी और प्रलोभन के दो पाटों के बीच कहीं था। मेरे पैरों के नीचे क्या था? ज़मीन? पानी? गहरी खाई? किसी भी सुरक्षा का मतलब नहीं था जो अगले कदम के डर से मुक्त कर सके। भगवान् एक काल्पनिक मुद्दा था पर मैं जहाँ था वो एक घोर व्यावहारिक समस्या थी जो किसी के साथ बांटी नहीं जा सकती थी। चीखो-पुकार भी व्यर्थ की कोशिश थी। आसरे अब थे, अब नहीं थे। कहीं भी टिका नहीं जा सकता था। मौलिक की कल्पना ही एक कोरा झूठ साबित हुई थी। मैं कौन था, किस देस का, किस काल का? कुछ भी निर्मित किया जा सकता था मेरी पहचान के रूप में। कुरुक्षेत्र की लड़ाई में पहले ही दिन मार्रा जाने वाला सिपाही भी मैं हो सकता था, फूको की दुनिया का कोई पागल आदमी भी हो सकता था या फिर कीस्लोव्सकी की फ़िल्म "Three Colours-Blue" की वो लड़की भी हो सकता था जिसे वेश्यावृत्ति एक प्रिय व्यवसाय लगता था पर ग्राहक के रूप में जिसे पिता और भाई कदापि स्वीकार नहीं थे। मेरी पहचान के सारे सूत्र अत्यन्त लचकदार हो गए थे। पर इस पहचान का मैं क्या करता जिसके मेरे लिए कोई मायने नहीं रह गए थे?

काश! यह समस्या जाग्रत तक ही में रहती तो कोई चारा था, पर मर जाने का डर स्वप्नावस्था में भी यूँ ही विद्यमान था। भागने और बचने की सारी कोशिशें मृत्यु के और करीब ले जाती थीं। स्वप्न ज़्यादा असुरक्षा का लोक था। मात्र सोना ही एक सुखकारी क्रिया थी जहाँ ऐसा कुछ भी नहीं था। न कोई डर था। न कोई दुविधा थी। पर नींद कब छोड़ कर चली जाती थी, पता ही नहीं चलता था और मेरी नियति फिर मेरे सामने खड़ी होती थी मुह्न्बाये। नींद को वापिस बुलाने के लिए थकान जरूरी थी पर थक जाने के लिए जागना और काम करना जरूरी था। जागकर लेकिन क्या करते? किसी भी दार्शनिक विधि के अनुसार मुझे स्वधर्म निभाना था पर स्वधर्म क्या था? फिर वही मृत्यु का राग बजना शुरू। डर और अविश्वास से किया गया कर्म कहाँ स्वधर्म हो सकता है? सो, बात वहीं पर आकर रुक जाती थी। स्वधर्म किसी अव्यवहारिक दर्शन पर निर्मित नहीं हो सकता था। जब तक सामने मृत्यु थी, मेरे पास बाय-पास करने का कोई तरीका नहीं था। एक इंच की दूरी से तेज भागती कार से बाल-बाल बचने पर जो सनसनी पैदा होती है, भूख के डर से जो घर के पीपे भरने की लालसा पैदा होती है, 'पाप कहीं जग-जाहिर न हो जाए' का संशय कितने पाप और करवाता है- यह सारी उदाहर्नें मृत्यु के सूक्ष्म आत्मसात अन्त्र्लोक से उपज्तीं हैं। इन सबके सामने इश्वर का सवाल बेतुका सा लगना शुरू हो जाता है।

अंत में, जो शक्तिशाली है, जिसका राज्य चुनौती-हीन है, उसी का स्वामित्व बनता है और वो ईश्वर नहीं बल्कि मृत्यु है। आत्म की बात करते-करते देह-आत्म की की दुनिया में आ गिरना। एक चमत्कारिक आसुरी शक्ति है मृत्यु में। इतनी साक्षात्, सगुण, निराकार कि काफिर होने की पहली डिग्री उसी वक्त हाथ में थमा जाती है। एक नॉन-सेकुलर अनुभव के रूप में अद्वितीय, सर्वत्र व्याप्त। मैं, मेरा और मेरा शरीर- इन सब को एक ही सूत्र में पिरोता हुआ अनुभव। Dichotomy की कोई जगह नहीं। सुध बस यहीं पर खड़ी थी, बहुत देर से। आसपास बस अँधेरा था। अगर कोई मित्र थी, वो सिर्फ़ एक सहमी हुई इच्छा थी जिसके पास चलने की ताकत नहीं थी पर थोडी सी उर्जा के साथ वो जूझ रही थी।

कितनी हैरानी की बात है- ये सब मृत्यु की प्रतिध्वनियों के अहसास थे, स्वन्यम मृत्यु के नहीं। अगर कुछ मौलिक है सिवाए मृत्यु के कुछ भी नहीं पर यह मौलिक कहाँ है? जीवन के रूप हैं, सभी मृत्यु के अधीन हैं पर इस मौलिक का अनुभव कहाँ है? शायद सम्भव भी नहीं है। किसी सनसनीखेज डॉक्युमेंटरी का विषय ज़रूर हो सकता है लेकिन मृत्यु का अनुभव बयान की दुनिया में नहीं है। सर्वत्र और सर्वकालिक होने का बावजूद भी अनुभव की इकाई नहीं है।

इक्कीसवीं सदी के इंसान को इस बात पर ज़रूर आश्चर्य करना चाहिए की उसे 'लेखक की मृत्यु', 'भाषा की मृत्यु','इतिहास की मृत्यु' आदि घोषणाएं सुनने को मिलीं हैं पर वहीं 'मृत्यु की मृत्यु' की घोषणा अभी तक सुनाई नहीं दी है। क्यूं? शायद 'लेखक','भाषा' और 'इतिहास' आदि की निर्माण प्रविधि और निर्माता को लेकर एक सर्वमान्य व्योम बनाने का प्रोजेक्ट एक सत्ता तंत्र की प्रभुता (हेगेमोंय) से कभी अलग ही नहीं हो पाया। सो, इसलिए एक अविकसित भ्रूण की तरह अबोर्ट कर दिया गया पर मृत्यु न केवल अस्तित्विक सत्य के रूप में सर्वमान्य रही बल्कि हमारी चेतना के विकास पर सबसे बड़ा प्रश्न-चिन्ह बनी रही। मौत के सामने कौन सी रणनीति अपनाई जाए? क्या इस के खिलाफ अमरीका और यूरोप मिलकर कोई मिजाइल डिफेन्स सिस्टम बना सकते हैं? क्या क्लोनिंग की कोई भी किस्म मृत्यु के भय को सदा के लिए ख़त्म कर पाएगी ? ऐसे कार्यक्रमों पर हो रहे अरबों डालर क्या मृत्यु की विराटता से सहमी हुई मानवता की कहानी नहीं बयान कर रहे हैं? चौबीस घंटे मौत हमारी चेतना को डर नाम की पोटली में कैद कर के बैठी रहती है।

मृत्यु के साथ हमारा ऐसा विचित्र सम्बन्ध है जो विचार की श्रेणियों से बाहर है। यह सही है- मृत्यु निर्धारित नहीं हो सकती। यह भी सही है- मृत्यु से संवाद सम्भव नहीं पर क्या अलावा सम्बन्ध का कोई भी ऐसा प्रारूप नहीं हो सकता जिसमें मृत्यु चिंतन-यात्रा का अंश बन सके। इस ब्रह्माण्ड में जीवन की अनेकों फार्म्स हैं जो कभी न कभी जन्म लेती हैं और कभी न कभी ख़त्म हो जातीं हैं। जो उदय के अंतर्गत है, वो अस्त भी होगा। अश्वात्ठामा का सबसे वफादार उत्तराधिकारी भी ख़ुद न मरना चाहे पर मौत के सच को पल भर के लिए ही सही, स्वीकार ज़रूर करेगा। तभी उसके न मरने का संघर्ष शुरू होगा। अगर जिजीविषा हर जगह विद्यमान है, मृत्यु भी एक अटल, सर्वत्र व्याप्त होनी है। ईश्वर के बारे में अनेकों सत्य लोकप्रियता और कट्टरता के लोक में खड़े हैं, जबकि मृत्यु के बारे में एक ही सच है -यह अवश्यम्भावी है। चाहे जलाया जाए या दफनाया जाए या फिर चील-कौवों को खिला दिया जाए, मतभेद लाशों के ऊपर हैं, मरने के सच के ऊपर नहीं हैं। मैं डरता है, जीवन की एक फार्म मरती है और एक रूप दृश्य-जगत से मिट जाता है। हमेशा से ऐसा होता आया है- 'मैं' अभी भी डर रहा है, फार्म्स अभी भी लुप्त हो रहीं हैं। मृत्यू का काम बराबर जारी है। यह जो 'मैं' अभी भी डर रहा है, क्या उस का यह डर सृष्टि की प्रक्रिया में कोई भी परिवर्तन कर पाया है। बचने की लाख कोशिशें हुई होंगी, झूठ-सच बोले गए होंगे, वफा-दारियाँ बदली होंगी, बहुत कुछ हुआ होगा, इतिहास बेचारा हिमालय की तरह यूँ ही बढता गया होगा पर क्या इस सब के बावजूद कोई मूलभूत अन्तर नहीं आया। इतना सब कुछ होता रहा पर डर फ़िर भी बचा रहा। किसी भी इतिहासकार की नज़र में सबसे बड़ी मूर्खता डर ही होनी चाहिए। डर कुछ भी नहीं बदल पाया पर फिर भी बचा हुआ है। उत्तरजीविता (Survivorship) इतनी गहरी आज तक विद्यमान है - कोई भी अदालत इसके ख़िलाफ़ फ़ैसला क्या, बयान भी नहीं दे पाई है।

यही एक ऐसा बिन्दु है जो एक ही पल ऐतिहासिक होकर भी गैर-ऐतिहासिक है।

Resituating the context of Death-10

Understanding the mind of a Suicide Bomber

Dying remained confined within the selfish realms of survivorship but it also took certain shapes which were more of political strategies and less of any remarkable creative break from any mainstream survivalist thinking.
In 20th century, Satyagraha was the most important strategy and philosophy evolved to beat the fear of death or to destroy the fetish built around life. The gandhian force behind its active pursuit in the freedom struggle made it into a viable political method to extract the maximum from the rival without inflicting any violence upon him/her. There was a strong element of mutual goodwill and benevolence built into it but in the post-independence India, this force has been appropriated in such a manner that the sheer creativity of Satyagraha has been replaced with a sense of fatal fastidiousness, mutual destruction and use of dying as an instrument of vengeance. Revenge-killings, compulsory bandhs, self-immolation and suicide bombing are some of the political strategies that have gained widespread acceptance as the tools of resistance. Though all of them are negative in spirit but the phenomenon of suicide bombing is the most confusing one. A society that promotes survivorship as the core value also generates suicide bombing as a gory reaction? This area is perhaps the most difficult to handle. It is like revisiting a mix of Ashwathama and Ghatotkach. At one level, suicide-bombing is a highly effective political strategy but at another level, it is a highly ineffective living proposition. Suicide-terrorism is not just an anti-thesis of globalizing nation-state, it is more than that. It is like taking the right to life to the apocalyptic level in an unprecedented collusion of killing of both self and the other. It is not just nullifying resistance; it is nullifying even life.

Resituating the context of Death-9

Rise of apocalyptic visions

It is quite shocking to see an entirely anti-life image receiving a great acknowledgement in the public thinking. i.e. the idea of a frozen city, the idea of a city attacked by aliens, the idea of a world governed by machines. The films like ‘Dark City’ by Alex Proyas, ‘The Matrix’ by Wachowski Brothers, ‘War of the Worlds’ by Steven Spielberg and many more are in the making. People imagine collective and horrifying death in a sudden apocalypse triggered by strange factors. The hysteria and mass delusions built around the cases of a serial killer, monkey-man and strange diseases entering humans through animals have already uncovered the superficial peace of urban comforts. The auto-immune system of a city is so weak that it transforms even a smallest danger into an unprecedented crisis. Ghosts and witches were always present throughout the human history but their image makeover in an urban mental make-up is strangely beyond any fun. An imagined destruction is more shattering than an actual destruction.
Perhaps, it is time to imagine a J. Krishnamurthy working in waste-recycling plant, a Vivekanand teaching in a slum school, a C.V. Raman experimenting in a glass factory, a Chanakya working as a police constable or a Ramakrisna Paramhans selling oranges in streets. It will definitely look a demeaning, idiotic or even blasphemous approach but if an urban mind is to reconnect with the tradition, it must start somewhere even if they are such foolish imaginations. If we can imagine a monkey-killer killing thousands, we should also be capable of imagining Sri Raman Mahrishi working as night watchman saving us from the aliens. Actually, the fundamental question is that an urban system is fast turning into a closed system as far as a creative relationship built around death is concerned. A beginning must be made through religious, scientific or political means.

Resituating the context of Death-8

Urbanization of the village or Marching towards Dystopia

A village is just not a retreat from the madding crowd; it is also a buffer zone between the nature and man-made civilization. A village is built by carving nature but a city is built by replacing nature or by transplanting nature. Simplistically, a village is an abode of a poet but a city is an abode of a novelist but this is no more the case. The relationship between the village and the city has entered into a very complex zone. A village may be a site of palatial farmhouses, a dump yard for urban waste, an industrial area for a highly populated city, provider of cheap labour for urban enterprises or a backyard of urban poverty. The equation has not remained harmonious at all. In terms of a complete habitat system, the village has been engulfed by the progressing urban civilization. The rural folklore, rural art and rural living practices are fast depleting into the urban black-hole. The crumbling of rural replenishment systems has deteriorated the natural balance. A village as a village is no more living.
It is time to think about putting some kind of control over uncontrolled urbanization but it is easier said than done. The pace and history of development in both the developed and the developing world points towards the utter failure of this suggestion despite even accepting the fact that urban civilization in its present format is sinking and not at all sustainable. Perhaps, the reason lies much deeper in the public reasoning around death. Nobody wants to die but nobody wants to fight holistically with the wasting of life. A collective remedy is missing. For a particularly lower middle class or a poor person, living in a big city is like passing through a process of slow suicide. The basic question is why urban thinking does not allow death an interactive space instead of allowing it to live like a terrorist or a hacker in the underworld of their consciousness. What we need to ask is if there is a possibility of redefining death in an urban sense and secondly, if there is a possibility of developing different kinds of thinking schools of sustainable habitat systems.
Utopia has been a very powerful hope of the modern civilization. In both the highly popular socialist and liberal ideologies of the modern period, the conception of a Golden Future is the most assumed truth. This truth may or may not be that deterministic but a kind of halo effect is definitely built around it. If it is a classless and stateless society for one stream of the political philosophy, it is a free, open and peaceful world for the other one. The entire agenda behind creating an urban civilization was based on the creation of living heaven on earth. There is no doubt that human rationality was supposed to be capable of creating a true Utopia though its versions may be different.
But the reality has turned out to be something otherwise. The ecological disasters like global warming, tsunamis, ozone depletion, widespread air, water, soil and noise pollution, slum growth, clogging of public transport systems etc. have raised the fear of coming of the inverted utopia i.e. Dystopia. Recently in July, in only the weekend supplement of The New York Times, there were five full-blown features on Shanghai’s traffic problem, Ireland’s garbage disposal problem, Mexico’s logging war, New Hampshire’s illegal immigration problem, and ill-secured nuclear arms in Ukraine. An international paper is carrying the stories of impending disasters cropping up round the world. Is it not the end of romance with utopias and utopian thinking? The notion not rather the reality of a dystopia has started catching fast in the public mind. This has made the entire civilizational progress of past couple of centuries a problematic and debatable one. It is like sculpting with the conception of Vinayaka and ending with the face of monkey instead. Where things have gone wrong? India is quite mid-way through this phenomenon. It has lot to learn from the world and lot to unlearn also. The 21st century should not prove to be a blind path but before that, a total understanding of a global challenge is needed.

Here, the whole issue can be seen in already mentioned three dimensions i.e. first through the study of salary-imprisoned professional structures of contemporary public life, secondly with the slow death of rural buffer zones through urbanizing villages and finally through the fanning of apocalyptic visions through the media.
If we try to see through these undercurrents, we can easily find a sustained replay of the myth of Russian Roulette. The continuous constriction of our consciousness through varied forms and symbols was happening in our country. The either-or mentality was replacing the plural nature of our living systems. The presence of death was being squeezed out gradually. The fundamental criterion of our actions was extinguishing in our thinking methodologies. It is not that only India is suffering from such problems; perhaps all the continents are engulfed in it but it is only India that is one of most fertile grounds for contemplating such phenomena. A society still saving a tradition like Mahabharata can surely have strength to identify a missing link through the intricacies of playing, gambling and war-waging.

Resituating the context of Death-7

A Bollywood Construction of Death

Indian society is as much enamoured with cinema as old the technology itself is. The best products of Hollywood were available in India way back in 1920’s. Till date, in a national sense, Indian cinema is deeply entrenched in terms of market domination (as high as 95%) as compared to non-Indian cinema. It is one of the most globalized art form yet we are the most rooted in this art form vis-à-vis our languages and participation. It is not accidental that the whole of India is so much attracted to popular cinema particularly Bollywood that it is almost beyond any caste and class-bias. It can be undeniably called as one of best agents of political socialization producing as much impact (if not more) on the society as other state-managed agents have done. A vast space left by various art forms like nautanki, ramlila, jatra etc. has been successfully embraced by cinema. It is integrated into the public culture of the land in a quite composite manner. Though it is not as organized and networked as Hollywood is yet its role in massification of culture cannot be underestimated.
But the area of cinema studies is not a very developed stream of knowledge in our country. The interdisciplinary focus of this area is yet to reach its desired level of expertise. The sociology of death in last six decades can be easily gathered from a representative study of our cinema. We aim to undertake a case study of three highly popular Indian films i.e. The ‘Hakikat’ of 1960s, the ‘Sholay’ (directed by Ramesh Sippy) of 1970s and the ‘Satya’ (directed by Ram Gopal Verma) of 1990s. If we simply focus on the treatment of death in these three films, it generates very interesting shifts in the public perception of death. A slight analysis of these films can easily reveal that the public conception of death has undergone a complete inversion. Death of the self as a moral choice in the first film is totally taken over by death of the other as the only path of existence in the last one.
All these films do have a historical context which catalyzed their making. It may be simply a commercial motive but we are more concerned in the type of sensibilities it catered to. The first film ‘Hakikat’ was a patriotic movie based upon 1962 Indo-China war. It was not an isolated film rather it was one of many such sacrifice-centered thematic films like ‘Hum Hindustani’, ‘Naya Daur’, ‘Purab aur Paschim’, ‘Do Aankhe Barah Haath’, ‘Jagriti’ etc. The idea of nation-building caught the fancy of film-makers deeply and these films turned out to be the best tools of political education. There was a sustained current of such sentimental films which valorized death particularly for the sake of country. The construction of heroism is quite straight-forward. In ‘Hakikat’, the hero is hero because of his commitment to saving the territorial integrity of his nation. No distinction is made between the state and the nation. The nation is presented as a simplistic monolith which is beyond any critical analysis. Its integrity and safety is the only motive for its citizens.
The irony of the situation was that despite dealing with the contemporary politics of the war, these were not political films because a general notion of political film carries a critical, dissenting or an alternative perspective. Of course, there were directors like Guru Dutt and Bimal Roy but they were very subtle in their political treatment. Theirs was a minor current of films which translated into perhaps, a genuine wave of political films in early 70’s with the beginning of auteur cinema or new wave cinema. The decades of 50’s and 60’s were more or less similar in their treatment of death in the popular cinema.
The development of public culture in 70’s faced a very unpredictable turn. It was a period when three five year plans had passed but the development of state apparatus did not change the true picture of Indian society. A kind of deep dissatisfaction was emerging in the masses. The counter movement by J.P. had started and the emergency was imposed upon the country for the first time. This was quite a contradiction to the popular mainstream feeling of the public. As the expectations from the modern nation-state were dying day by day, the notion of death was undergoing a serious change. Death was primarily a sacrifice in the first film ‘Hakikat’ which turned into a murderous existence in the final film ‘Satya’ but such a marked tilt was not sudden. It did have an interim phase which was quite intelligently accomplished particularly in the middle film i.e. ‘Sholay’.
The violence around dying can be both ambiguous and direct (as in ‘Apocalypso Now’ of Francis Ford Coppola and ‘The Blue’ by Krzysztof Kieslowski) but Bollywood churned out movies which only highlighted the directness and missed the ambiguity around it. There was a specific mode of construction of death in those decades. The ‘Sholay’ by Ramesh Sippy is a prime example of this tendency. It was a film which institutionalized the notion of revenge in Indian films. Of course, this was as simplistic as it was a decade earlier but the nation-state was markedly absent as the primary motivating agent. This vacuum left by nationalism was filled by a kind of wronged and mutilated individualism. This was again not an isolated film rather a wave of films like ‘Zanjeer’, ‘Deewar’, ‘Coolie’ etc. ‘Sholay’ was only an epitome of this trend.
This film has a dialogue which is the most repeated dialogue in the public memory of entire India i.e. the dialogues of Gabbar (Amjad Khan) delivered to his men particularly Kalia. The mockery of predicament right at the point of death is driven deeper by Gabbar through his playing the game of chance. India never realized that these dialogues entrenched a process of internalization of gambling mindset and justified violence. These dialogues are a perfect example of how the myth of Russian Roulette has assimilated into popular Indian mind. It can be assumed that the soul of kalia has percolated deep down in the citizen of Indian state. It is a kind of a terrified mass of people who don’t have any option other than obeying the commands of the state. The defiance means death and that too, an immediate death. The notion of Satyagraha was cleansed from the public memory. The force of sustained struggle was replaced with the power of vengeance and counter-violence. The concept of clean heroes was replaced with the heroism of the underdogs and wronged individuals. The state-system was turning into a non-responsive one for the masses and individual battles started possessing the public mind. The violence of suppressed anger turned into a reality on the screen. This film was definitely not a political film again but its politics was quite obvious. The public mood had changed and death was redefined by the filmmakers.
‘Sholay’ did not only have a socio-political context it also had a cinematic reference point. The emerging trend of making westerns in Hollywood was a strong influence behind its choice of faraway rural expanse. The gun-totting vagabonds were picked as it is from Sergio Leone’s movies. It had also borrowed a lot from the classic motion picture ‘Seven Samurai’ of Akira Kurosawa but the collective spirit of sacrifice and self-defense of the Samurai fighters was remarkably reduced into an individualized killing and revenge in this Ramesh Sippy’s feature.. To be appropriate, ‘Sholay’ was only a good mix of all successful box-office formulas. The duo behind its script ripped the best out of contemporary popular and classic cinema of the world and translated it into a fresh hybrid product. The commercial bonanza the film reaped, justified all the liberties taken with the literary and humanistic angles. The script-writing and plot-building got entrenched in a way where the cinematic forms got hijacked by the ‘star culture’ thus making the film and the Bollywood a chief instrument of promoting and legitimizing alienation as a way of life. Many other films of this trend share these themes but the image of ‘angry young man’ and brazen violence were the most important themes that dominated the public culture and Indian cinema for all times to come.
‘Satya’ is the last part in this reversal of theme series. It was released just around the end of the millennium highlighting the nature of times to come. These times were dominated more by the commercial confusion and bonanza of Y2K error and less by any global initiative for a sustainable and equitable habitat system. Again, it is a story of a young man who comes to Mumbai to realize his dreams but finds him suddenly gobbled up by the underworld. His search for a clean job nets him into a job which must be done only in a ‘clean’ manner. He has reached a point of no-return where only his death can free him of his destiny. He wants to live like a normal man, marry a girl of his liking and raise kids but his life is threatened by police as well as rival gangs. His life is a dead-end but his self is not dead of desires. His mind cannot harbour any second thought; if it has to live, it has to kill.
The director of the movie, Ram Gopal Verma is known to be close to underworld themes but again, his movies cannot be called political rather they should be called both anti-political and anti-life movies. He keeps frying these dead-end themes in the box-office pan without trying to touch the depth of psychological grounds the way it was done somewhat in ‘Maqbool’ by Vishal Bhardwaj. Mumbai underworld has been a much repeated theme in many other films made in last 15 years but most of such films share a closed and repetitive outlook. The kind of buck sadistic violence generates in this industry is more instrumental in Indian film factory. From the sacrifice of self to the slaughter of the other, Indian popular cinema is not a small story. What a kind of metamorphosis? Kafka would laugh at it.
Indian cinema could not create a big civilizational shift the way Coppola did from ‘The Godfather’ to ‘Apocalypse Now’ where death was transformed from an existential limitation to existential choice. Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), a gangster in ‘The Godfather’ prefers to die as a tribal war-lord (Marlon Brando again) of a remote Asian hinterland in ‘Apocalypse Now’. His choice of Marlon Brando for both the roles is quite symbolic. At both the places, death particularly in terms of killing remains the central theme but in the first film, Coppola remains a bit selfish in his treatment of death where godfather and his family’s survival is the main focus. In the world of ‘Might is Right’, Vito Corleone takes up murder as a matter of profession. He assumes the intactness of his family but finds that killing is always more than a business, it continues till it kills the killer oneself too but the other film portrays a totally different understanding of death in the character of Walter Kurtz, he shuns this selfishness even and embraces a pagan combination of primal selflessness and self-entrenchment. He realizes the artificiality of the difference between compassion and slaughter. He proclaims the true freedom i.e. the freedom from the opinion of others and embraces the sharp choices which such a freedom warrants. Violence and love both derive new meanings once the pre-conceived structures are detached from them permanently. Coppola began with an existential deadlock in ‘The Godfather’ but rediscovered himself in ‘Apocalypse Now’ in a realization that the basic question is not to survive in this strife-torn world rather it is to live by performing before death from moment to moment i.e. to choose a form of life which is not afraid of death and is devoid of any utopian fallacy.

Resituating the context of Death-6

Fainting echo of ‘Hind Swaraj’

The historians of modern India have done a lot many good things in establishing the pluralistic study of history. We can easily identify four or five major schools of Indian history today but this spectrum can be broadened. The 20th century India is yet to be studied in terms of history of science and technology. Such a study has the potential of creating vastly new sub-disciplines. This venture is yet to be taken in a big way. We have seen only monographs, extracts or small books on this theme but a sustained philosophic thought is yet to take shape. The last century started with a small attempt in form of ‘Hind Swaraj’ by Mahatma Gandhi. It was a small book scribbled in less than a month on the deck of a ship that ferried between South Africa and England.
The basic reason behind choosing ‘Hind Swaraj’ is primarily to relocate the chance of a viable philosophy of technology. A deeper synergy between philosophy and science is yet to be built. Both of them are first the methods of questioning and hence constitute the fundamentals of politics but such a positioning in a newly independent country was regarded somewhat dangerous. The post-independence India embraced a culture of science which was quite singular in approach. The Nehruvian era was over-enthusiastic in terms of bringing the modern technologies to the rescue of Indian planners and statesmen. A dedicated lot of scientists were incorporated into the mainstream development of science especially in the areas of nuclear technology, space sciences and agriculture but India mastered the art of fabricating technologies. They remained quite backward in developing theories of science. No resident Indian scientist could ever win a Noble prize in post-independence period. The best of talent migrated to western universities for better opportunities. S. Chandrasekhar and Hargobind Khurana did win this award but when they had left India. Of course, this smacks of narrow nationalism but the basic point is that Indian sciences lacked theoretical rigour and discipline. The realm of developmental sciences also could not take roots. The experiments like Hoshangabad Science Teaching Project and Vigyan Bharati did not go beyond a certain point. They were somehow, mired in the ideological wars Indian politicians vainly fought. Science could never occupy a central place in the broad futuristic plans of any political party. We did progress but our strength was more in the applied fields. The basic sciences could never undergo a desired paradigm shift as was the need of hour.
Traditional technologies did survive but they were not the result of a conscious choice rather they remained present because of an existential and financial compulsion of the masses who remained untouched from the modern fruits of technology. ‘Hind Swaraj’ was the most important treatise in highlighting the political struggles primarily in terms of technical choices. Doctors, railways and lawyers were the main focus of critiscism. It was quite clear that Gandhi wanted to deal with a commoner’s predicament vis-à-vis the politics of such forms of professional choices and non-local technologies. The railways and the modern medicine were severely treated as enslaving choices. Gandhian concern was quite like that of an elderly tribal leader but the broad spectrum of contemporary political groups could not go deep into the futuristic compulsions that these choices would generate. The position of science and modernity was not that thoroughly put under a discursive analysis. Our struggle with British government remained to the end only a struggle for political power. It was not an ideological war because we were never as cohesive a unit as the British imperialism was. All the modern choices were regarded more or less harmless. In such an amorphous ideological environment, ‘Hind Swaraj’ could never gather much strength. This text might have been criticized a lot because of its seemingly anti-western or anti-scientific stances but today, the kind of paraphernalia of physical and psychological dislocation, we have accumulated around, has something to suggest towards the cost of ignoring such a book. Contemporary Indian scholars have begun to take note of this blunder. Anupam Mishra, Ashis Nandy, Vandana Shiva and Shiv Vishwanathan have come out with remarkable studies in this regard but a vast work is yet to be done. The question of technology works within a matrix of modern ideologies which was not refuted by Mahatma Gandhi in a systematic manner. His stance was more of an activist and less of a theoretician. His distaste for the slogan of ‘technology for technology’s sake’ finally proved to be appropriate by the end of the century. The century-old fatigue of a cosmopolitan Indian is well visible in these words:
“In fact, the theories which vested rationality in techno-systems and technicians – and withdrew it from other human beings-lie in fragments around us, unable to cope with the fact that modern technology today has become a major bastion of irrationality and domination, apart from being a major eyesore. Our times have made it possible for a film-maker like Jean-luc Godard to think of a cinematic climax in which the world ends neither with a bang nor with a whimper, but with a traffic jam.”
-Ashis Nandy at page-85 in an essay ‘The Traditions of Technology’ in his book “Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias”, OUP, 1987

Mahatma Gandhi was rejected without even an attempt to ascertain his basic intention behind writing such a book. It was a kind of work that aimed at building a self-reliant politics of science instead of fabricating already developed technologies at home. His view was not a political one only rather it was focused on developing a complete philosophy of science and technology of a free Indian. Indian struggle could be called multi-dimensional but it was not holistic in approach. Gandhi tried in this regard but towards 40’s, he was as trapped in the hasty politics of driving the British faces out as others were though the imperialistic roots had already made deeper inroads into Indian mind without any resistance at all.
His work may be a bit polemical or crude in approach but its essence was not. It was a classic case of throwing baby out with bathwater. This was quite evident in the living choices we made. Why another Gandhian Masanobu Fukuoka was never even allowed any functional presence in Indian state sponsored agricultural policy? The philosophy of natural farming could never take roots here. Perhaps, the reason was inherent in the kind of agricultural methods we adopted in the high noon of green revolution. The notion of water-communities could not find any space in the bureaucratic structures. Land desertification, water shortage and silting of hydro-power generating dams started coming out as some of the most dangerous ecological crises of the waning century. Indian planning of the land, water, air and sea resources turned out to be the anti-thesis of what nature had planned for this land. All these things point to a sheer lack of any living philosophy of technology in the independent India.

Resituating the context of Death-5

The Myth of Russian Roulette

This portion is going to be a sustained contemplation on the Indian chance of facing death. A philosophy for the Form-for-death was expected to furnish the plural paths for growth of talents but with the death of Mahatma Gandhi, this opportunity was systematically obliterated from the mainstream political thinking. A kind of state-building mania took precedence over the needs of holistic habitat thinking. The national goals drafted by the constituent assembly and parliamentary sessions were more of meta goals and showed less and less of coherence with individual, vernacular and subaltern visions. These meta-goals were built on elitist stances depriving non-modern voices any space in it. The minds of ‘free’ Indians were filled with the dreams of ‘anglicized’ prosperity through the modes of planned growth. The ever-present element of death was never allowed to work its magic into the scheme of things.
The understanding of dying was subverted away from the possibility of a creative praxis and replaced with a gambling mindset associated with Russian roulette. Here, for Indians, the only presented path of nation-building was just one form of development in tune with urban, westernized, semi-socialist-cum-semi-liberal agenda. No other form of development was allowed in a political, economic or cultural sense. The other forms were doomed, became extinct or were cleansed.
What is being tried to explain is that even the dying was constructed in public mind as a game of gambling the way two gamblers play in Russian Roulette’s version of death. It was reduced into an ‘either-or’ game. It was not a construction rather a constriction. There was no functional space for an old person, a differently- abled person, a non-literate folklorist or a tribal on their own conditions. Death was built into a sudden explosive which eliminates the individual instantly from the slate of existence but the reality is that the process of dying is like engaging live with the death.
The strength behind death is not about its power to eliminate rather it is about the fear of elimination. Actually, we don’t live life; we live the fear of death. The compulsive construction of this fear in the course of political socialization today is a questionable element. That is why it is needed to replace the imagined fear of death with the imagined performance with death. That also makes dying more questful than living. It happens breath by breath; it does not lie in the future rather it is always in the present. The process of dying is, in a way, also the process of living.
What Paulo Coelho says is not just a literary performance but this is a classic choice which can be exercised by any individual whoever, whatever or wherever he/she is. The common mass of Indians was made to believe that a modern, prosperous and globalized India would be a deathless wonder. Even time was redefined nationally. The entire India was made to look towards a future which was not synchronous in any way with the local times i.e. the conception of time nurtured by the locals spread over different parts of India. This was a kind of a very subtle and constructed balkanization of cultural spaces through uniformizing time. There emerged a solidification of mainstream time in contrast to peripheral time thusby making the notion of choice a politically essential and hence a volatile issue.
This kind of public culture was quite paradoxical. Death of the self was projected to be a non-possibility but the death of the other was being made into an option more and more available as an alternative morality. A clear disjunction between the ends and the means for different strata of people started emerging. The construction of debates like ‘rural vs. urban’, ‘english vs. vernacular’, ‘modern vs. traditional’ was made by those on the favorable side of development to present a liberal face but the basic division of centre and periphery in the modelling of independent India was always dominant at all levels. This kind of working created and strengthened the alienation both at the top and at the bottom which delinked people from their fellows, environment and cultural heritage. Thus, narcisstic structures and identities built around Indian state transformed death of the other into the indirect elimination of the other and later on, killing of the other as a viable political method.Such a formation of Indian public culture was happening at a pace much hidden and faster than we could ever imagine. The rapid urbanization of living styles, the spread of a centrally controlled educational curriculum in learning minds and shifting of symbols from cultural to political happened in a vastly under-studied manner. From a much autonomous life to highly market and state-dependent living styles, India did not change only rather it underwent recasting in whole somewhere and in parts somewhere else.

Resituating the context of Death-4

....... I think the answer cannot be found in terms of any single current ideological perspective. (contd.)

It is quite difficult here to pinpoint the primary actors involved here. Somewhere it may be culture and the state, somewhere it may be tradition and ideology, somewhere it may be modernity and tradition or it may be state and civil society elsewhere. The shifting of primary actors is a challenge that has confused everybody a lot. Had John Rawls been alive, he would have been of some help to us. Perhaps, he would have suggested us to go back to original position i.e. a position with a veil of ignorance about the current social, economic or any cultural identities. Though everybody conceptualizes it differently but the practical need is to derive the lowest common factor among our millions of acquired features. Any individual can be and is a theoretician at least in his/her realm where theory and practice are in immediate collusion. Can Rawls be repeated individually here? Perhaps, it is the time to forget that we have any straight forward analysis out of current diagnostic tools. Perhaps, it is time even to forget that we are even Indians or even Asians. Perhaps, it is time to forget that we carry the logo of singular spirit of Homo sapiens. Perhaps, it is the time to identify the organic whole that makes the lowest common factor among all living beings. This organism has an in-built drive to live but has only one threatening challenge to face i.e. the death. If any basic equation of primary actors prevails, it is here. All other equations erupt from this root equation where living is an inherent right not a constructed right and death is a pre-historical rival. This equation lived then, keeps living till now and shall live till humanity becomes immortal.
Now if we relocate this equation in the series of identities that we have acquired, we shall find this operational function active right in the spirit of Home Sapiens, in the Asian identity, in the Indian identity or any other identity we have chosen to embrace. All other made-up universals may crash but this fundamental interface between right to live and death never ends. Such a kind of approach to the issue does create problems for the existing tools of analysis but relocating the depth of our memory is more important than simply sticking to the present pathological techniques. It is a general menace that our thinking does not go beyond an immediate context which is more or less accepted as given but the existence of a primal time scale cannot be erased so easily.
Now, it is the time to keep track of this equation and review the variety of actions that post-independence India has produced. The notion of death was quite a prominent building element behind these varied and even contradictory forms of actions but there was a very important change in the notion of death that was created by the history. The pre-historicity of this fundamental reality of life never died but it was definitely made almost opaque by the layers of history. It is very important to mention that time and history are totally different processes because time maintains the transparency of human relationship with death but history is marked by the intervention in the defining process of death. It was a rival which needed to be eliminated. As a sheer solid force of undeniable superiority, it could not be eliminated but death was more than that. It was a point of creative construction for every living soul; a kind of conceptual tool which defines the life-world of communities and individuals. It was here that the constructions of denial were built and hence the resultant effect was the transformation of life both in a singular and plural sense. Indian history, like others, too participated in this megalopolis of denial. Who cooperated and who rebelled in it, is a different question but the basic point is that with respect to death, Indians definitely tried to eliminate it from the conceptual tools of past and future generations. A nuclear bomb, hi-tech state machinery or secular curriculum tried to save Indians from death but all promises of eternity fell flat both for a top-notch CEO of Indian multinational and a poor and starving farmer. The partial or full disillusionment with the process of nation-building process is prevalent every where but its visibility is transformed in the many genres of actions that Indians chose to embrace during this learning period.

Resituating the context of Death-3

(Here becomes the notion of ‘right to life’ a problematic one which needs to be replaced by a concept less selfish and more realistic in terms of self-learning provided by history.) contd.

Indians are no exception to this need. They are as cosmopolitan as any other urban land today is. The destiny of this sub-continent is carrying same crisis and eventuality as many other developing and even developed countries are carrying today. The constitution of Independent India is, no doubt, a conceptual sub-set of this entire challenge or opportunity. Being an Indian, it becomes quite imperative to look up to it as a source of vision and strength. And at the time of independence, India was facing exactly the circumstances which were potent enough to develop a philosophy of the constitution which could go beyond the selfishness of human beings and uphold the national symbols both as universally valid and individually flexible platforms. There was needed a thinking which could define both national and individual praxis that could be operational even beyond the communal set-ups. India was just not going to be free rather it was about to tread the path of self-assurance both for its polity and individual praxis.“What happened finally and why” is the subject-matter for this introductory portion of this work. The reality that we face today has emerged out of the choices we made half-a-century back. Was this encapsulation of “We, the People of India” a philosophical milestone or only a legal innovation to an Indian mind?
The constitutions have tried to be a mix of charter of demands of people and expectations of the state from the people. Ours is a similar book of excellent wordsmanship. It was not simply a brainchild of constituent assembly rather it was a choice of a distinctive set of political ideologies that were ruling the universe those days. The construction of the highly debated document actually followed the choice which was almost without any question-mark. The essentiality of a nation-state necessitated the obliteration of any other thinking models whether gandhian, swadeshi or any non-modern and local one. After six decades of strengthening nation-state, it becomes quite relevant to ask whether that essentiality has really done its job that was expected of it. The actual history of the country presents such a wide variety of praxis totally out of tune with national/constitutional aspirations that is almost baffling. Constitutions are expected to be guide maps of human actions but the native land has come out with so different results that the politics of India today is governed less by any philosophy of constitution and more by a strange set of motivations. That is why a kind of theoretical format is needed to explain this unexpected transformation of the right to life. In academic circles, the notion of nation-state is being questioned radically and several of its limitations have been rightly pointed out by some intellectuals but a holistic explanation of the anatomy of praxis Indians chose, is still absent.
The preamble of the constitution, despite sounding like a sacred chant, proved somewhat ineffective in the civil life of the country. Human lust for life surpassed all constitutional limits and generated a series of genres of political action. The existence of this multi-genre praxis is a critical question before the theoreticians and policy-makers. The country has seen insurgencies in Kashmir, Punjab and North-East on the one hand and phenomenal growth in Metros and state capitals. There are world-ranking educational institutions as well as the hundreds of pockets of chronic illiteracy. The corporate India is fast churning out Fortune 500 companies whereas half of the India is still suffering from a capability poverty ratio of 60%. At one extreme, there are activists like Medha Patkar, Anna Hazaare, Baba Amte, Rajendra Singh who are developing indigenous systems of sustainable growth and at the other extreme, there are urban dystopias threatening the existence of life itself. These trends can be safely considered to be too diverse to deserve any explanation yet it won’t be wrong to say that civil aspirations of India(24X7) are not within the realm of available constitutional objectives. The grassroots are driven by a sense of action driven more by the natural right to life and less by any of its political branches but it is the unexplored plasticity of this right that has produced unbelievable results. The inorganic nature of constitutions has failed to keep pace with the moment-to-moment organic interface with every passing breath. People have kept on living at a level of control about which the state had never any clear idea. They responded to the civic life in a thoroughly pluralistic manner totally counter to the state-sponsored pluralism. This turnout can be broadly classified into the following forms of action.

I. Hacking (in form of terrorism, secessionism, political assassinations etc.)

II Conceit (forms of corruption, crisis of governance, vote-bank politics etc.)

III Passive obedience (the forms of a failing but sustainable state)

IV System-building (state-building, elitist goals and media circuits)

V Parallelism (alternative philosophies of ecological, cultural & social movements)

Such a kind of categorization of the contemporary praxis does seem disturbing but a brief overview of the course of events can easily prove the existence of all forms of these political actions. Any dependence upon the philosophy of constitution and civil society does not explain these contradictory forms of praxis. In some contexts, the right to life has been fully inverted while in others it has been subverted. Why this country generated what was beyond the imagination of statesmen and policy-makers. I think the answer cannot be found in terms of any single current ideological perspective.

Resituating the context of Death-2

The moment we talk about death, the existence of many concepts suffers seismic shivering. The first tragedy happens with the right to life. The introductory portion of this study rests upon the interface between death and this fundamental natural right. It can be safely presumed that all other rights, civil, political, economic or cultural ones are actually offshoots of this right. While constructing the constitutions of the newly independent nation-states, these offshoots became the basic building blocks of emerging and establishing political thinking and in the course of development, they have concretized so much that the root of these rights has almost been forgotten. But the present times are questioning times. The saviour of rights i.e. the nation-state is itself a questionable category today. The concept of ‘ideology’ which formulated the notion of ‘rights’ is nearing the state of formatting. With the end of a millennium, many concepts are facing death. Perhaps, it is time to go back to the roots not in a traditional sense rather in an existential and theoretical sense.
The right to life is a very plastic kind of right. It is not subject to the vast genre of legal footnotes and exceptions rather it is such an endnote that surpasses all the mainstream legal forms and formalities. The right to remain alive or the right to survive in all the circumstances within or outside a nation-state is well-defensible. In all the wars, the rights of POWs are well guarded by international conventions. Although, in some countries, the provision of capital punishment presents itself as an aberration but this too is fast losing its strength against this right. Besides, the plasticity of this right is easily vulnerable to the creation of an anthropocentric view of the world. The right to life of a human being is regarded as superior to that of any non-human individual. To be fair, this right has enabled the selfishness of humans to find democratic (from demos or humans-only) validity sufficient enough to create a world owned & controlled by human beings. All other species and ecologies have a secondary importance in the scheme of things. A close scrutiny of the subject can easily highlight that the right to life should not have carried itself as a right beyond a permissible extent but this limit has remained stretchable, particularly, in modern times. The notion of ‘right to live’ is so entrenched and acceptable today at even archetypal level that this particular right needs to be encountered by its complete anti-dote i.e. the presence of death.
Death is a complete leveler. It destroys all machinations of human beings to save themselves. It does not allow human individuals to prolong their life beyond a particular age. They have been allowed to live as a species only till date but all the other human-made categories like civilizations, kingdoms, cities have fallen prey to death. Despite this great history of futility, death is the most prominent reason of generating fear in the minds of human beings. In almost all the critical junctures, the mass of humanity has been found to stick to the survival as the most relevant value. Instead of living, not-dying becomes the fundamental logic supported by the right to life. Here becomes the notion of ‘right to life’ a problematic one which needs to be replaced by a concept less selfish and more realistic in terms of self-learning provided by history.

Resituating the context of Death

“I began to see death as a great travelling companion who is always sitting by my side saying: ‘I am going to touch you and you don’t know when, so don’t stop living as intensely as you can.’ That is why I never leave for tomorrow what I can live today.”
-Paulo Coelho in ‘The Asian Age’ (30th Jul, 05)

Paulo Coelho is a serious exception. We rather think in terms of not-dying. The basic thinking happens in terms of living and living more & more. In ‘modern’ times, living is a much discussed, debated and pampered subject. Both living for self and living for others gets so much attention that the whole exercise never comes out of the confines of a narcisstic project. The word ‘living” is actually less of a word and more of a phrase. It is always imagined in the sense of ‘living for’ or ‘living towards’. This phrasal connotation is not an accidental matter; it is the result of quite subconscious attempts of ours at building a life-world in which death is subtracted thoroughly and permanently.
Death may be a significant point of strength but living constructed around death is a vastly ignored phenomenon. It might have hit news headlines whenever some gory incidents occurred in Gaza, Baghdad, Kabul or Kashmir but the horror and not the creative element of death keeps looming large over such journalistic pieces. Life and death are regarded as so powerfully antagonistic forces in the public realm that to imagine dying in a creative sense carries a remote possibility. The public construction of living is so absolute that it is almost equivalent of a myth that pulsates through the spatial transformations and diachronic changes in the conceptual methods of people. It becomes a qualifying mark of fulfillment for the individuals of that period.
A myth might be a falsehood but the main point is not its falsehood rather it is the force and the weight it carries in a historical sense. It works through branching out via metaphors and symbols. The architectural manufacturing of space in form of multiplexes, mega shopping malls & multi-storeyed buildings and housing complexes has grown so symbolically into our thinking that an idea of death-yard around is callously absent. In some rural areas of Kerala, people used to bury their dead in their back courtyard. Today, we don’t even have houses with a true courtyard; what to talk of back not even in the front. If there is any space for that, it has been replaced with a porsche in the front and servant’s quarter in the back. The spatial progress of our housing sense has turned singularly in favor of living. Dying is neither adjusted nor provided any admissible space.
Dying is relegated to the level of something abominable. It is seen as co-terminus with decaying. It is a wonder that everybody knows about the inevitability of death but life is still considered only living and not dying. Yudhishtra’s answer to Yaksha stands the test of all times. This sustainable wonder is a result of consistent denial of the fundamental reality of life i.e. death, of anybody and anything that lives. Instead of an interactive face-off, living becomes a matter of begging or an escaping attempt in front of death. This denial has always trapped humanity in its course; it has always clouded its vision; it has always weakened its spirit of action. It has remained intact though transformed in all ages. History has been witness to its bitter lessons. The South Asian sub-continent is no exception to it. A thousand years of slavery, anarchic decimation of healthy and self-sufficient habitat systems and the eventual balkanization of the entire cultural space called India have been the main benchmarks of this period of denial.