BOON
OR A BOONDOGGLE?-3
M.Sc., Ph. D
Retired Principal
GUDIVADA- A.P
yernenivrao@gmail.com
B1-101
The spirit of sacrifice , dedication and
selflessness that marked the freedom struggle has been conspicuous by its
absence throughout the post independence era , and particularly so today. The
sweet dream of a just and equitable society of the freedom fighters soon turned
into a dreadful nightmare. Politics has become a source of material gain
instead of a means of service and corruption a way of life. One is dismayed by
the opportunities squandered, saddened by the years wasted, and distressed by
what the country could have been but never was. In short, our tryst with
destiny has become a date with disaster. In stark contrast to the pre 1947
‘young and innocent India’ where honesty was the best policy and truth did
indeed triumph and the self was meant to be subjugated in the cause of the
greatest good for the greatest number, and work was worship, and worship came
first and where duty and discipline were the watchwords’ and where simple
living and high thinking were not mere maxims but living truths , what we have
today is the almost tottering and totally demoralized India where dishonesty ,
selfishness, dereliction of duty, indiscipline, ostentatious living, blind
imitation and lust for power and pelf are the reigning passions of everyday
life of most people as if they are the insignia of the times. And what is
worse, some people , some phoney people masquerading as genuine leaders have
even gone to the bizarre extent of putting a price on the sacrifices made and
the sufferings undergone by them and their families during the struggle for
independence , thereby implying that there is a debt to be repaid by the country
and demanding that it be paid to them and their progeny in the shape for power,
perks and privileges, unmindful of how utterly demeaning it is to do so to them
and especially to the memory of their illustrious progenitors. More
fundamentally, don’t they cease to be sacrifices if they are so bartered away
as commodities in exchange for political power. Doesn’t Gandhiji’s appeal to
the congressmen in 1937 to attach to their posts ‘lightly and not tightly’ make
any impact/ difference to them? Does it mean that a generation of
self-sacrificing patriots is replaced by one of self-seeking hedonists through
some magical metamorphosis or by some strange quirk of fate? Or is it that the
struggle for independence was far more exciting and glamorous than the one, a second
freedom struggle for freeing India from the clutches of poverty , illiteracy,
disease and deprivation that needs to be waged on several fronts simultaneously
and the enemy better focussed than the one we are up against now? Excitement and glamour apart, are the two
struggles not of equal relevance and importance in their respective contexts
calling for the same genuine selflessness, total dedication, sincerity of
purpose, unswerving commitment and concerted effort? Then why this vast
difference in the responses they could elicit from the two generations? The
quality and character of the general populace remaining more or less the same ,
shouldn’t the reasons for the phenomenon of differential response be sought in
the differential quality and character of the leadership?
Now turning to the disparity in the nature
of the adversaries, a focussed enemy , no doubt makes an easy target and the
fight becomes fairly straight forward though not easy, while one who is
everywhere amounts to being practically nowhere and the fight against such an
enemy who has got no face is that much more difficult, troublesome, frustrating
and indeed daunting but the fruits of victory in either case are far too
precious to make the fight worth any amount of difficulty, trouble and
frustration in the world. Furthermore, while the former victory is a onetime
affair, the latter of course, needs to be won again and again ad infinitum
fighting not under a unified command but under a vastly decentralized
leadership—leadership devolving right down to the local community level—to
correspond with the nature of the multi capitate and multi faced adversary with
redoubled vigour , eternal vigilance , unflagging courage, sustained commitment
and passionate involvement and unflinching determination. Now the questions
that need to be addressed are, will we be able to unscramble the scrambled egg,
reopen the closed window of opportunity, shut the floodgates of profligacy, tap
the untapped potential, untangle the tangled ties and knots and finally harness
the untouched resources for the good of the country? And are we prepared to
shoulder this onerous responsibility of steering our country towards a
different destiny by carrying through the sacred but gigantic task? We should
be, for there is simply no other alternative available to us if we, as a nation
are to lead a life of dignity and self respect among the comity of nations.
Other pertinent questions that come to mind are why can’t the present
generation see the dismal picture, so vividly delineated by Justice VR Krishna
Iyer with a few deft strokes of his pen thus, “ Indian humanity began the
Swaraj journey with high hopes. But expectations darkened into anxiety, anxiety
into agony, and aspirations into frustrations”. Isn’t it time that it should
rouse itself from its self induced slumber, stall this drift to nowhere and
reverse it altogether by matching the great sacrifices of life and limb , kith
and kin and careers and riches for making India independent with small
sacrifices such as sacrifice of a little of our ego, greed, power-hunger, money
theism, lassitude and selfishness for making our motherland free, free in the
true sense of the word. And how long can today’s I-me-myself generation remain
oblivious to what our nation needs and our history demands by distancing itself
from its sublime obligation to contribute to corporate welfare and its sacred
duty to promote commonweal? Not for long as enlightened self-interest
emphatically asserts.
A
mahatma was needed to inspire that generation to scale those heights and attain
those pinnacles of glory but do we also need such a one to lift us from the
quagmire of self centeredness, apathy and cynical disregard for public good and
make us walk on the level ground of fair play, equity , liberty and justice?
Everyone of us owe it to ourself as the inheritors of a great and unique
culture and civilization to become a little more humane, if not little mahatmas
and carry forward the proud legacy of sacrifice , service and concern for
fellow beings and hand over the torch to the coming generation undimmed unless
we wish that it too, faced with a steady erosion of value systems of moral
courage and self esteem should be condemned to look back in anger and look
ahead in apprehension of what is to become of this country and its people as
the saner elements among us often do today.
In
any case, we should not let our despair at this desperate hour/phase in our
history drown us in a sea of cynicism and/or hopelessness but should march
forward with a spring in our step, a renewed sense of self worth and dignity,
total confidence in ourselves and abiding faith in our happy future in full
awareness of our inner resources and a firm resolve to see that our great
country assumes its lawful role in the international arena in a way that
inspires the younger generation to sweat and work for the vision of
transforming India into a major economic power playing a benevolent role on the
world stage. If that indeed happens and there is no reason why it shouldn’t, India India
B1-102
If
we cling steadfastly to anything in life, we can at once be sure of its
irrelevance/insignificance to life and its purposes, for everything essential
and necessary for life is provided in abundance by Mother Nature even to the
lowliest of the lowly creatures. Only in inessential or nonessential details
can there be any distinctions among different individuals. The unwise minds
dwell entirely on these superfluities and superficialities ceaselessly craving
for more of them and in the process , embroil themselves in needless quibbling
, frittering away their very lies. The wise few who know how to distinguish
between the needs and necessities and the wants and desires stay clear of the
snares set by the latter and lead contented and happy lives.
A
perceptive mind , throbbing heart, powerful lungs, functioning kidneys,
efficient liver, clear eyes, alert ears, sensitive nose , unimpaired speech ,
healthy skin, strong legs and dexterous hands—who does not normally have them
and who can get any of them if found wanting, even in exchange for all the
wealth one may have avariciously accumulated? Absence of any one of these may
mean no life or incomplete life but lack of wealth maybe an avoidable
inconvenience or worse, an insufferable impediment/nuisance in spite of which
life goes on as it must.
Again, sunshine , clean air, fresh water, rivers and rainbows, moon lit
nights and monsoon rains , peels of thunder and flashes of lightning, hills and
dales , forests and oceans , birds and beasts of the wild , love, beauty,
goodness—who can claim ownership over them? None, for they obviously belong to
all living beings on earth. Add to these the natural resources available in
adequate measure to cater to man’s every need though not his greed and you have
the full complement of the essentials and necessities of life together with
basic needs like food, clothing and shelter of which the former are already
equally distributed while the latter are to be so shared by us. In the
perspicacious words of Mahatma Gandhi, “nature provides for everybody’s needs
but not for everybody’s greed. Hence it is only such wants and other comparatively
inconsequential peripherals and trivialities that go by the name of amenities
and comforts that can be preyed upon by our always hungry and ever devouring
acquisitive instinct, which in its mad frenzy for more and more , converts life
into an unrelenting battlefield.
Shouldn’t the imbalance in our
nature as evidenced/reflected by the unbridled play of this impulse be set
right/corrected by kindling the spark of idealism in our hearts? Unless and
until the flame of idealism burns bright in the clean environment of altruism,
suffused by love and compassion, undimmed by such pollutants desire , greed ,
envy , anger , selfishness , possessiveness, egoism , pride and prejudice and
dispel the darkness of ignorance from our minds , we cannot repay our debt of
gratitude to Mother Nature for all the invaluable gifts—the gift of life being
the most precious of them all—which she has so generously showered on us and
worse still, we will be guilty of letting her down badly by disowning the
sacred responsibility and unique privilege of not only holding aloft the torch
of evolution but also carrying it forward to ever newer and higher planes of
excellence and perfection, entrusted to us with such faith and confidence by
her.
As
a first step in this direction, taking a cue from Mother Nature’s principle of
equi partition of all life sustaining
and life enhancing essentials and necessities, should we not proceed to
build a more egalitarian, civilized and
humane society by extending the equi partition principle to cover the basic
needs and other superfluities and peripherals, trivialities and trinkets we so
wistfully crave for and assiduously accumulate instead of sharing at least what
we have in excess with our less fortunate brethren, who tired of negotiating
life’s many major and minor tragedies have fallen by the wayside deprived of
the former and denied access to the latter , and who are depressed, dispirited
and dejected by life’s many inscrutable twists, incomprehensible turns ,and
intriguing roundabouts?
B1-103
Predetermined or Free?
How
much of our life are we really in control of? Next to nothing, I’m afraid.
To
start with, we have not chosen our parents who have endowed us with our entire
genetic make- up, which means everything of our nature, nor even our
circumstances and environment which means everything of our nurture.
Nature is thus predetermined completely and nurture , to a predominantly
great extent. These two being the major determinants of the trajectories of our
lives, what part is left to be played by us in shaping ourselves into what we
are or what we want to be? Innumerable factors—domestic, social, religious,
cultural, historical, economic and political—each of which , if altered even a
wee bit may singly and in combination bring about a sea change in our
circumstances and fortunes as testified by the contrasting status of people
from different social settings and states with differing levels of economic
development over which we have little or no control, have together thrown up
some opportunities to choose from during the formative years of our life/ by
accepting a few and rejecting others, we appear to groom/appear ourselves for
waging life’s battles.
Again , the type of work we do , the people we relate to in our work
environment, they successes we achieve, the failures we encounter, the benefits
we enjoy and the losses we suffer are all determined by events and
circumstances beyond our ken. Even the spouses we apparently choose, apparently
being the operative word, and the children we get are not of our choosing in
reality, we being mere conduits for their coming into this world just as our
parents were at the time of our emergence into this life. For that matter, the
physiological processes such as hunger , sleep, digestion, breathing,
excretion, heartbeat, blood circulation, immunity, homeostasis and renal
functioning that sustain and support our very life take place totally
independent of our volition, and the mental activities and states which power
our thoughts and ideas and feelings and emotions that set us apart from other
animals and give each of us his/her unique personality almost always lie
outside the pale of our control( it is just as well that it should be so, for
otherwise our mind will be deluged with so many demands for attention that it
will be virtually paralysed and rendered dysfunctional in no time. To assume
then, free choice , doership and a determining role for ourselves in anything
that happens to us is wishful thinking, if not a grand illusion. Even so, we
feel jubilant or depressed over events attributing their outcomes to our
heroism or others’ villainy. Events take place in spite of ourselves and not
because of us, while in contradistinction to this, we continue to cherish the
illusion—or is it delusion?—of our doership /agency because of the accident of
our proximity to the place or time of their occurrence. Almost never are we the
soul cause of any of their happening but find ourselves involved in them not by
choice but by accident.
Thus hardly have we any scope to make or mar our or others’ lives to any
significant extent on our own in total isolation. There are always other people
and other factors to reckon with. From all this, is it not evident that we are
after all mere knots in a vast web of relations encompassing everything that
ever was, is and will be? How much of the individuality we each claim for him/herself
is illusory and how much of it actual? I’m afraid the answers will have to be
almost everything and virtually nothing respectively. Such being the case
whence arises the question of doership and credit or discredit for the results
?
Hard as we may think otherwise, we are
almost like straws in a stream being carried away by the flow of life finding
ourselves involved in only those events and not others, and thinking and acting
in only those ways and not others. Why only those and not others will forever
remain a mystery lending life its charm like the enigmatic mystique of the
distant mountains constantly beckoning to us.
Prime of life being what it is, it tends to becloud our vision and
impede our seeing things for what they are. However, as age advances and scales
begin to fall from our eyes paving for the way for clearer vision , we cannot
but have a glimpse of that great truth of life in its purest and simplest form.
And the truth is that just as we were not masters of our past so too shall we not
be masters of our future; nor for the matter of that are we any more than mere
pawns on the chessboard of life at any given point of time in our lives.
Perhaps there is no need for sulking or fuming and fretting at so little
freedom and so much unconscious control. Nature, like any young mother of a
first born baby, eager to see her tiny tot take the first faltering steps but
afraid to loosen her protective grip completely, in her new role as the mother
of/to us homo sapiens, the first species to be endowed with self-consciousness,
characterized by a reflective mind is yet not sure how much autonomy is good
for us and tentatively granted a little while retaining power over, and
responsibility for a whole lot of functions in its exclusive preserve. Such a
stance seems to have the weight of logic on its side. It is for us now to prove
that we deserve more freedom by exercising it within the overall teleological
plan of life to achieve a deeper purpose than what meets the eye. In so far as
we are able to discern that purpose and operate in consonance with that plan ,
we find fulfilment or else face frustration and failure in the ultimate sense.
To be able to do so, however , we have to have a lot of wisdom and
discrimination. Otherwise , even as we appear to be winning the battles all
along the way, we may end up losing the war of life altogether. But
unfortunately, wisdom is scarce and discrimination hard to come by. If they
keep pace with our vaulting hopes, soaring aspirations and escalating ambitions
, we probably will become eligible for greater free will. In the absence of
such an eventuality , we have to make do with what little we have instead of
bothering about more.
One
may wonder at this point as to why one should, at all, view our free will to be
restricted to no more than a little as is assumed to be the case here. It is
because of the patent fact that one hardly ever takes a decision or performs an
act/deed which has not its roots in one’s nature, which is a given.
If
the whole thing smacks of fatalism, so be it. But then truth is always bitter
being an implacable enemy and ruthless destroyer of even the most impregnable
fortresses of illusion we so solicitiously build around ourselves.
Then the question that naturally arises is , is that all that there is
to life? Should man always submit himself meekly to the dictates of life? The
short answer to both is an emphatic no. In view of that fact that there have
always been people , certain exceptional people who by virtue of their infinite
wisdom, disinterested /unconditional love and boundless compassion transcend
the limitations imposed by both their nature and nurture, and who make life
conform to their wishes. Their actions, marked as they are by renunciation of
ego and its wily strategems for self preservation always lead to harmonious co
existence with nature and with other sentient beings. “Their faith is
essentially life-transcending and as a result, life-transforming.”( S.
Radhakrishna) Their effortless achievements point to a transcendental dimension
of life in which the human spirit soars above the outer context pursuing an
unfolding inner logic of its own. They refuse to be distracted from Truth,
Beauty and Goodness by attachment to the fruits of their actions, ever
remaining unsullied by fear , greed , rage and such other baser instincts and
impulses that normally colour and fundamentally structure our world view and
our perceptions of reality. In short, they lay the path for sanctification of
all activity and divinization of all humanity for others to tread.
As
against these are those people who too are special, but in a
negative/destructive sense. They are the titans and monsters who, enslaved by
their nature and egged on by their nurture constantly battle against life,
wielding awesome powers in their fiendish but Sisyphean attempt to pervert and
subvert life and its purposes to accord with their megalomaniac and wholly
egotistical and purely personal agenda with the sole ambition of emerging as
world conquerors. These apocalyptic personalities appear fairly frequently on
the stage of life with their audacious objective seemingly within easy reach of
them but invariably end up totally frustrated and thoroughly vanquished but not
before causing untold misery, destruction and devastation. However mighty and
invincible they appear to be their inglorious end is fore ordained, for they
are after all part of life and part hardly ever succeeds in overcoming the
whole, it being greater than the sum of its parts. The lesson therefore is
clear: never fight with life, however overpowering the temptation maybe.
Turning once again to free will, it is necessary here to make one point
clear. There are some who believe that everything is determined in principle
but there is no way of knowing what has been determined and what is fore
ordained or ever will be. On the contrary, there are others who are equally
convinced that determinism is but an illusion and somewhere out there, there is
an essential indeterminacy, a fundamental freedom. Either way, it is eminently
practical and absolutely essential to operate on the premise that one has free
will and that one is morally responsible for one’s actions. Additionally, such
a stand confers certain evolutionary advantages on a society of free
individuals in that it ensures its survival so it may spread its system of
values. Thus, man is both (in)determined and free. Destiny and freewill coexist
and interact all the time, sometimes complementing, and at others contradicting
each other. Influences and tendencies arising from nature and nurture impel but
they do not compel like a raaga which lays down the musical pattern but at the
same time allows the artist to revel in freedom.
They can be overcome by the conscious will, that is, one can choose to
act as one desires to act and be what one wants to be. That everything good and
desirable in life is scarce is not exactly new insight; in fact, it is its very
scarcity that endows anything with value in the first place—the scarcer it is ,
the greater is its value. So is the case with free will. It is so precious and
significant in life that its use and misuse or abuse may make a world of
difference as outline above. So, what makes a difference between fulfilment and
frustration, success and failure is not how much free will we have but how well
and wisely or otherwise we use it.
Even with the limited free will, man is courting so much trouble,
causing so many disasters and precipitating such dreadful calamities as to make
one shudder. How much more catastrophic will it be if we are granted unlimited
free will? On the other hand, there are many, a vast majority indeed who dread
the very prospect of their having to live free for they are mortally afraid of
the responsibilities and consequences that go with freedom and choice. That is
what prompted the existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre to declare that man
is condemned to live free, condemned being the operative word.
Looked at from another angle, doesn’t the whole thing make a
refreshingly different sense? Just as an accomplished musician has/finds enough
scope to experiment, innovate, improvise and invent within the melodic and
rhythmic structure of a given musical composition like a raaga to bring it to
life, so can a man of discrimination and wisdom, imaginatively exercising the
little free will he has transcend the limitations imposed by his nature and
nurture and elevate and ennoble life by spreading a feeling of peace and
harmony and a sense of security and well being all around him. At a more modest
level, any individual has enough room for making all that is bad in his
character good, whatever is good better and better best as also for bettering
even the best in him by remaining within the narrow bounds set by his
biological, environmental, social, cultural, religious, economic and physical
determinants through sheer will power and character. The issue therefore is one
of quality of use which free will is put to rather than its quantity. It is,
after all, one of those instances in which more is not better where less is
adequate.
In
the final analysis it is by far the best policy to avoid the extremes of either
shying away from exercising the little choice and liberty one has or clamouring
for more and more freedom of action only to end up misusing and/or abusing and
to strike a middle course of creatively using this most precious resource in
full awareness of the connection between causes and consequences as well as the
need for checking the ego from raising its ugly head every now and then. If
such a course proves to be too daunting,
then the only wise alternative for all excepting those exceptional individuals
is to flow with life harmoniously like notes in a melodious raga and beats in a
rhythmic taala apparently doing doable things skilfully with neither aversion
nor attachment and stoically accepting what falls to their lot , letting the
latter decide in their infinite wisdom, what the raga and taala of the song of
life should be, which things are doable and what results should flow from them.
In the recent past, such sages and savants, saints and seers as Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Bhagawan Ramana and Mahatma
Gandhi, exceptional souls all who symbolized the Vedanta, which sees God in all
life, tried to awaken humanity, particularly the people of India, through
precept and example to the eternal verities underlying Indian thought at its
highest and pristine best. The striking characteristic of these exalted souls
and epitomes of virtue is that there was never any deviation between their
thoughts and words, and their words and deeds, virtues that highlight the
importance of righteous conduct in one who aspires to sublime heights in one’s
spiritual life. Vivekananda , for instance , told us: “Do not be led away by
the appearances. Deep down , there is a providential will, there is a purpose
in this universe. You must try to cooperate with that purpose and try to
achieve it.”
With ardent hope in the future and faith in one self, and a
transcendental divine order, one should strive towards this end—integrating
one’s will with divine will—reconciling seemingly conflicting ideals and
harmonizing one’s good with the greater good of humanity instead of getting
carried away by life’s ephemeral accidentals and evanescent trivialities, like
the outdated customs and time worn traditions , iniquitous social dispensations
and the prevailing perversions and aberrant compulsions of the moment.
(To be continued)
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