I heard about Dharampal ji for the first time in 2006 during
my stay in SIDH, Mussoorie. Pawan ji was addressing a group of Engineering
students from Raipur. As a volunteer with SIDH, I was playing to local guide
for this group. I was also new to SIDH then, and therefore it was an
oppurtunity for me to learn about it- their world view, their work, their
contacts in surrounding villages, while I hosted the group from Raipur
Engineering College. I and Raj (an NRI volunteer at SIDH), along with Jitendra
bhai and Jagmohan ji had planned the itinery. The first 2 days were reserved
for sessions with Pawan ji, which would give a broad outline of SIDH's vision.
After this, we had planned a few days of trekking to near by villages, to see
some SIDH schools (SIDH in those days had schools running in around 18 villages
in the adjoining hills).
The team from Raipur had come with Hina ji and Sandeep (an
old friend). Both were part of the Human Values program in the college that
time, which was an initiative of a local organization called Abhyudaya
Sansthan. The Sansthan, mainly under the facilitation of Somdev Tyagi ji used
to organize 8 day Jeevan Vidya workshops for engineering students. This
workshop played a complementary role to Human Values classes that were
regularly conducted by Hina ji and Sandeep in the college. A field trip to SIDH
for some selected students was planned under this effort. I think the objective
was to give a direct exposure of rural life and SIDH's initiative in the field
of education. Since Human Values and Jeevan Vidya, primarily focusses on the
need to reform education, SIDH's work perhaps came closest to their approach that
time. There was also mutual respect and admiration shared between SIDH and
Abhyudaya sansthan in those days.
My landing in SIDH had happened only a month ago, again the
common thread being a JV workshop. I had attended one the previous year in
2005. JV was perhaps the only exposure I had then (though I did also had some
surfacial understanding of Gandhi then). As a young Engineer myself, I had
basically two convictions that time- rural India is the place to be in and
education is the work to get engaged with. For some reason I beleived that
rural India is undergoing a more exciting change as compared to the urban
areas. SIDH was ofcourse a very exciting place in those days. It was a place
where an urban youth like myself could work with rural youth- that formed the
the SIDH team. It had an exciting team then- Jitendra Sharma, Jagmohan Kathait,
Rajesh Bahuguna, Manju, Siya Singh Chauhan, Shobhan Singh Negi to name a few.
All of them were rural youth and for me it was refreshing as well as reassuring
to see the quality of teaching they brought with themselves. My schooling was
from one of the best schools of Delhi, and the young teachers at SIDH were of
comparable quality to the teachers I had in my school. In addition to them,
urban (and sometimes non residential) volunteers like Raj and Sumati made the
team of high quality.
There must be many reasons for SIDH to be able to achieve
such a quality of teachers and volunteers, but I think the fundamental reason
being the beleif that rural India had the potential to produce quality people.
It had the potential to produce quality people in native language and in native
work environment. There was a beleif that rural talent is immense and it can
blossom in a rural set up. It does not need an urban set up, a 'global'
anglicized exposure to stand tall. Pawan ji and Anuradha ji, the couple who
started SIDH in 1989, had this beleif and were successfully able to transfer it
to these young teachers.
For people like me, seeing SIDH's beleif and its
acheivements was a releif. I on one hand had romanticized the Indian village
(perhaps due to influence of my father), but on the other hand was still
struggling with the 'Mother India' (a bollywood film) image of our villages- a
place of curse, exploitation and bankruptcy of all kinds. Growing up in
IIT-Delhi (both my parents were faculty members there), and studying in one of
the most elite schools the city had, I had naturally come to beleive that if
there is anything which is worth in India, it exists only in South Delhi or South
Mumbai. The rest of India (even rest of Delhi) constitutes of people who are
not worth talking to, worth engaging with. And like many 'sensitive' urban
youth, I beleived the only form of engagement with the rest of India can be
where we would extend an helping hand to them.
This image of rural India was directly being confronted by
another image which was given to me by my father, my mother and one of my uncle
(Ransingh Arya). They presented to me by their direct example an image of a
villager who had the capability of fathom the West. They would critique the
West and put their hope in Indian villages. It's interesting to mention here,
all three of them, were not taken very seriously by rest of my family. All my
uncles were of the same background as my parents and Ransingh ji. They too had
spent their childhood in villages, helping their parents in agriculture, going
to the most humble schools and working hard to find a place in urban cities.
But they sharply disagreed with the world view of my parents. For them, the
village was a desolate place and West was a dream worth chasing. For them,
coming out of village and settling down in urban cities was a hard earned
product and anyone talking about going back to the villages seemed threatening.
Although they all had respect for my parents (for what they had acheived in
life), but they also felt threatened at some level. I guess this was the reason
why some of them very cautiously kept away their children (my cousins) away
from my father- for they should not get 'corrupt' listening to him. I do
remember, two of my elder cousins in their college days getting influenced with
my father. Of and on they used to debate with him on issues of philosophy,
modernity, Gandhi, tradition etc. I think they were like any other college
going students then, who were not scared of exploring alternate and dangerous
territories. But just as college gets over, and one gets into earning a
livelihood and finding one's growth in one's career, one is forced to join the
flow of zamana and feel apprehensive to step out. I beleive for my
uncles it must have been a sigh of releif to not see their sons stepping out.
I on the other hand had no place to go. I on the other hand
did not had to carry the apprehension of my parents towards stepping out. I on
the other hand did not had to carry the aspirations of going westward. I felt
the freedom to ride on two boats- one which leads to west and other which leads
to rural India. I could revolt against my parents and get onto the first boat
or I could leave it with their full support. It was a decision I had to make,
and for some time there seemed no hurry. Just that one day all of a sudden I
realized my father is no more. All of a sudden I realized, I could have learnt
so much about India, about villages, about west, about modernity, about
tradition but I didnt. The person whom I had saved to be my teacher was gone.
My mother all of a sudden felt the pressure to play safe and was scared for me
to step out. Though in her mind she was clear that west has nothing substantial
to offer, but she was also not sure how safe an option it would be for me to
step out of the race. For her, it wasnt important for me to come first in the
'rat race', but it was important for me to continue running with other rats, or
I would find myself alone. And Ransingh ji, having lost his guide-cum-friend,
vanished from my life. He perhaps didnt know how to handle me or my mother's
fears. Probably he too was feeling orphaned like me- so much we could have
learnt, but the guru is no more.
And so with a very partial knowlege of JV and a romanticized
image of Indian village, in 2005 I found myself in SIDH. Both Pawan ji and I,
along with 33 others were attending a JV shivir facilitated by Ganesh ji. It
was perhaps my best shivir. The audience included Prof Sangal, Shriram
Narasimhan, Vinish, Renu Bhatia, Venkatesh Rajan amongst others. The quality of
discussion that happened due to the aggressive yet polite audience was amazing
to my young mind. Seeing Ganesh ji handle the questions with ease, was very
impressive. And what probably impressed me most was the set up of SIDH. I didnt
know then, that after an year I would find myself there again, this time for a
longish stay. I returned the next summer (now having finished with my Engineering)
to be a volunteer there. There were two groups would had planned to visit SIDH
for the summer. I was given responsibility of one and Raj had responsibility of
the other (a group of school chilren from Delhi's Sriram school, sent by the
effort of Mridu).
The group from Raipur was to have a two day interaction with
Pawan ji, followed by a few days in the field. This was the first time for me
to have listened to Pawan ji at length. And it's here that I first heard of
Dharampal ji.
Pawan ji began by challenging our image about India- rural
India, it's past etc. He quoted Dharampal's work on education (The beautiful
tree) and on Indian science and technology (Indian Science and Technology in 18th
century) in great detail. He mentioned how he understood Gandhi only after
coming in contact with Dharampal ji. As a child, I had always been impressed by
Gandhi, his honesty, his integrity. Listening to Pawan ji, for the first time I
started getting a feel of politics of Gandhi. As a child I was fascinated by his
strategy of showing left cheek, when slapped on the right. I thought it was a
brilliant strategy. It has the potential to throw the opponent off-gaurd, to
leave him confused, to leave him defeated for sure. My friends, found such a
move to be cowardice. What was brave was to hit back, for them. An eye for an
eye was an brave act. But I was convinced, that this strategy of Gandhi
required lot more courage. It required a guilt free mind.
Listening to Pawan ji then, I started getting a deeper feel
of Gandhi. I started to understand, that Gandhi's real concern was not
independence from the British, but the loss of confidence of Indians in
themselves, in their backgrounds. All of the sudden, the scene in
Attenborough's Gandhi (1982), came to my mind where Gandhi asks Charlie Andrews
to leave India and its struggle for indepence. The concern of Gandhi was to
instill this confidence that Indians by themselves could acheive freedom. For
me, the debate between Bose and Gandhi got more or less settled there.
Pawan ji talked about how according to Gandhi the root cause
in loss of self confidence is the 'increase of distance between school and
home'. While most of the things about home- dresses, language, manners remained
traditional, almost everything about school has become western. The situation
is of course worsened in english medium schools. There seems to be an ever
increasing fascination towards western mannerisms. In schools, inclusion of tie
and blazer can be an important step. It somehow brings 'sophestication' to the
education provided.
What became increasingly clear to me in that discussion was
that we suffer from a sense of inferiority. And perhaps this was the gravest
problem facing the youth. As Pawan ji very aptly put it, the rural youth looks
upto urban people, and they in turn look upto westerners. Why and how Yoga or
classical music became trendy was now clear to me. We seemed to have become a
nation of imitators. Or more seriously, we have become 'generational imitators'
(a term I used this time while conducting a Human values shivir for ug1
students in IIIT-H). Imitation seems to have become a habit. It passes from
parents to children. And we are probably now the third or fourth generation of
inheriters of inferiority.
I realized over the years, the gravity of the situation when
a habit becomes generational. It no longer remains a question of a few
individuals suffering from the problem, but a whole generation. It no longer
remains a surfacial problem, but a deep seeded one. The problem is so deep that
somewhere imitation has reached the level of our sanskaras. At that
level it appears 'natural' to beleive in our inferiority and west's
superiority. It has become the 'collective conscience' of our society (a term
used by Supreme court of India in reference to Ajmal Kasab's case). Kasab was
sentenced to death for shaking and hurting the collective conscience and death
penalty to him was probably the only way to put a balm on it.
Of whatever little exploration I've done of Indian society,
I am gettig a feeling, that a whole range of intellectual class, social
reformers and even spiritual reformers (at some level) suffer from such a
conscience. All of them seem to have a frozen image of India- a cursed,
superstitious, feudal place where production is minimal and of worst quality,
education was prerogative of Brahmin elites, zamindari was the system of tax
collection, caste system formed the basis of social organization, women were
confined to homes and within purdah etc. And so the only engagement
possible with the past is that of reformation. There is hardly anything India
of 21st century can learn from pre-British India (the urban India
now lives in the 21st century, while the rural India is left behind
in the dark ages of 18th century). The engagement between the two is
to raise the darkened India into modern enlightenment. This is probably what is
meant by bringing people into the mainstream. The mainstream India is the 21st
century India.
I had also followed in my limited capacity the debate on
development in the 1990s. Thanks to liberalization policy of Congress
government in 1991, and the debate centred around the Sardar Sarovar dam, the
debate on development and globalization was gathering steam. I could follow
this debate very closely by listening to my father interact with many IIT
students (and also my two elder cousins in those days). I was of course too
young to participate in those debates, but I was getting old enough to listen
to it and make sense out of it. The result of that on my personality and
growth, now as I look back was fascinating. While my friends enjoyed the new
found liberation in indulging in western style consumerism- Reebok shoes for
playing sports, munching at fastfood centers like Wimpeys (McDonald's had still
not entered the Indian market), I on the other hand started taking a naive
stand on swadeshi (influenced by my father). As young 13 year olds school kids,
Divya Chandrasekhar and I once had a long and emotive debate on development and
globalization. These debates continued at length for many years with another
close friend Manisha Sharma. As teenage kids, we followed and debated these
issues. In the family, Amit (my cousin from Bombay) and I had these debates.
Abey George, who was a student of my mother and often frequented
our home, got closely associated with Medha Patekar and the Narmada Bachao
Andolan (NBA). Listening to his dialogue with my father just fascinated me.
Abey and Medha (though I never met her personally) were like rockstars to me.
Following them, and the NBA, my disillusionment with western style development
never got a chance to root itself.
As I started understanding Dharampal in greater detail, all
these issues resurfaced again and their context became deeper. Recently, while
reading his article Bhartiya Chitt Manas aur Kaal I was struck by an
important observation Dharampal makes about current state of Indian society.
According to him, we somewhere have got stuck in between two different time
lines. One discourse on time tells us that long long ago there was stone age,
then came iron age, copper age, followed by age of electricity. And now there
is computer age and space age. From a primitive state of hunter-gatherer
living, we seemed to have progressed to a highly sophisticated state of living.
The other discourse on time is that there once was satayuga, followed by
tretayuga, dwaparyuga and now there is kalayuga. From a state of
eternal bliss, we now have come to the age of corruption, war and environmental
breakdown. Both the discourses seem true to us. As a society we are not able to
choose one. It is like riding two boats, and unable to decide which one to
leave. This probably according to Dharampal ji is the tragedy of post
independence India. This division is not only between the two Indias (the 21st
century mainstream India and the 18th century subaltern India), but
this division exists even in our families. The educated modern fathers are on
one boat, while the traditional mothers are on the other. The division has in
fact seeped into the conscience of an individual too. The professional life one
leads in office and the personal life back home are split in between the two
boats. While profit and success form the bottomline at workplace, morals and
Truthfullness form the bottomline in families.
Through Pawan ji I got introduced to Dharampal ji's work.
And through them I got reintroduced to Gandhi and the Indian village. My beleif
in Gandhi further strengthened. Books like Hind Swaraj, all of a sudden gained
a new depth. For many years after that I used to carry copies of the book in my
bag, and gifted it to many friends and sometimes even strangers in buses and
trains. Only one person, my younger cousin Rahul (who had then finished his
engineering from IIT Roorkie and was about to enter management program in
IIM-A), got back to me after reading it. The book had left an impression on
him. It disturbed him. He later payed a visit to SIDH and at one point was
seriously reconsidering his decision to join IIM. His new found excitement to
step out was quickly sensed and curtailed by his father (my mother's brother)
and I was very politely asked to leave him alone through indirect channels.
Rahul went on to join IIM-A and did well there. He is now married and settled
in London. He and his wife (also an IIM graduate), work as consultants with big
multinational firms. Some years ago we had a brief tryst at Delhi airport where
he promised me to revisit Gandhi and SIDH after 10 years, but for now he wanted
to chase the 21st century India.
I on the other hand continued to be fancied by the 18th
century India of Dharampal and Pawan ji. My stay in SIDH was for a few months.
Being there, listening to Pawan ji and sometimes interacting with other friends
like Vinish Gupta and Ankit Pogula, slowly resulted in me seeing the extent of
modernity that had percolated inside. I was one who wasnt bowled over by the
west, who felt fortunate to have direct and live contact with the village life
(half of my uncles and cousins still lived in villages and did farming), yet at
a deeper level my way of thinking, way of looking was still western. This
realization took some time to dawn upon me. The broken taps in mountain
villages disturbed my mind constantly. An open tap is a symbol of wastage of
water. For us water conservation began (and probably ended) with closing of
tap. On the other hand, the traditional wisdom of hills told me that ruka
hua paani kharab hota hai. Paani ko to behte rehne chahiye. It was in
direct contrast to my deeply urbanized activist mind. At first it only seemed
an excuse on part of the villagers to not repair their taps. But i soon
realized a more deeper conflict. The water tap, is a symbol of the
civilizational conflict. On one hand, tap symbolizes freedom for women, on the
other hand it symbolizes control (and hence commodification) of water. Talking
to Vinish in a greater detail on this topic, I realized that tap is also a
symbol of impact of technology on our personal and social way of living. A
simple water tap can be of such importance, has slowly dawned upon with over
the years, as I have continued to engage with Indian society.
For urban people, leaving the tap open is logically wrong,
as it is a waste of not only water but also precious energy. As we live in
cities, the water is first pumped-up to over head tanks, consuming a lot of
fossil fuel energy. The tank then makes 24 hr water supply available in the
taps of our kitchen and bathrooms. And so, leaving the tap open not only would
result in wastage of enegy, but also create a risk of cutting short the 24hr
water supply. On the other hand, water in the mountain villages is tapped from
the water streams, which are naturally flowing downwards. A small part of the
water stream is diverted through the village. The flowing water is somewhere
diverted at a higher altitude, and again allowed to converge at a lower
altitude. In between a village consumes as per its needs. Closing the tap is a
sin, as it would mean depriving the villages downstream (and in the plains) of
the water. It is a sin to stop the flow of water.
This simple point took some time to sink in. It wasnt easy
to let go the 'closed tap'. What took an even greater time to sink in was the
contrast between logical thinking and ethical thinking. The urban approach to
the problem was of reasoning. The rural approach was more of ethics. To
constrain water for oneself was an ethical problem.
This was my first encounter with the modernity in me. The
other one was more direct and probably more brutal. The only thing about SIDH I
did not like was its kitchen. The food served there was tasteless. One day, as
part of a casual conversation with Jitendra bhai, I complained to him about the
food. He acknowledged that there was a problem. And then he made a confession,
the cooks (Swaroop bhai and Khumani bhai) were actually flukes. They did not
know how to cook well. They ran the kitchen by fluke. Jitendra bhai made this
confession smiling. I was not impressed. It seemed as if he was taking the
matter lightly. As my first response I said “then why dont we fire them and get
someone better”. He was shocked to see that response. Seeing his reaction, I
realized I had done some mistake, but exactly what it was, I didnt know. After
all my statement seemed fine. Jitendra bhai said “how can we fire them. They
are both of my village. I address them as bhai sahab. Their kids call me
uncle”. At first, to my urbanized mind, it looked a classic case of bhai-bhatija
waad, (another problem rural India suffered from). Relations are given a
priority over competence. How is the quality of work suppose to improve with
such an attitude? Jitendra bhai went on to add “firing them is something that
never occurred to us. How are they to run their family then? Either we can find
a new job for them or improve their skills while they are here”. This answer
was brutal to me. It took me many years to get a grasp of this response. Only
recently after spending a considerable time and deliberation in understanding
the Indian society, I am now able to fathom the depth of it. The difference between
a village and a city becomes clear to me here. A village is a unit where it
provides aahar ki suraksha to all its inhabitant families. This forms
the bottomline on which growth can be built. In city, the growth is not rooted
anywhere.
Spending time in SIDH, I observed slowly some transitions in
me, in my way of thinking, in my aspirations. Through engaging with JV, my
enquiry was about 'human way of thinking', while understanding Dharampal and
Pawan ji, the enquiry slowly changed to 'Indian way of thinking'. This is not
to mean that the so called Indian way is something special and one needs to
boast of it. This is only to mean, the the enquiry slowly turned towards
understanding the Indian culture- good and bad both.
I think Dharampal ji's quest was similar. The social
intervention which he intended to do (and did) was to 'domesticate' the West (I
heard the term in such a context much later through Navjyoti ji). His effort
was not to reject or discard west, but to make sense of it in our context. I think
his greatest worry was that we have become contextless people. And therefore
anything that is thrown at us in the name of West or modernity, we grab it. The
capability to make sense of West and modernity can only come when we understand
our context. In absence of that, even the understanding of West is meaningless.
My quest since then I guess has been to understand our
context. A sense of our context has made me relook at the water tap. This is
not to say that the tap is bad and destructive, but this is to understand how a
tap can affect our contexts, ways of living and even ways of seeing. It's to
develop an ability to domesticate the water tap, to mould it as per our context
(our needs, our beleifs, our aesthetics).
This shift from Human centric thinking to Indian centric
thinking is not nationalistic in its nature. This shift should be seen more as
going from a context-free way of thinking to contextual way of thinking. It is
not to limit oneself in a context and then see the world, but it is to develop
a sense of context and change of contexts. After all wisdom is nothing but to
be able to differentiate between contexts, to be able to sense what stands in
which context and what doesnt. And to be able to also see that certain things
are context free.
At SIDH, I was only introduced to Dharampal. My quest into
understanding him better, went beyond my stay there. My second tryst with
Dharampal happens after moving to IIIT, Hyderabad. This was a more indirect
confrontation with him. I read his work, but this time I started placing them
in a context (or at least try to that).
The first task given to me in my persuit of understanding
Indian society by Navjyoti ji was simple. He said “try imagining what it would
be like to be a potter in 16th century India”. The task seemed
simple but very strange. To get a hang of Indian society, he wanted me to
imagine and not read any literature. For some years I wondered, why was I asked
to imagine?
Imagination came in direct conflict with my beleif system
then. Ganesh ji, through whom I explored JV, had a totally different take on
imagination. For him, it was nothing but mungeri laal ke haseen sapne, a
line he would often use while conducting JV shivirs. Imagination for me was
nothing more than day dreaming, something I was succeptible to. But for
Navjyoti ji, imagination was much more than that, it was the path to Truth. The
whole world, in principle was available in imagination, in better words kalpanasheelta
(the power to imagine).
The shift from mungerilal ke haseen sapne to kalpanasheelta
was not a smooth transition. There were many to-and-fro moments for me. I
took some years to idealogically make that shift. Its important to mention
here, that ideology or mata, is different from imagination (kalpanasheelta).
Ideology does not have space to include the world, imagination does.
Ideology is exclusionary in its nature, while imagination is inclusionary.
Ideology is stagnant, while imagination is navya-nootana, ever evolving.
Creativity and recreation is possible only in imagination.
For Navjyoti ji, kalpanasheelta was the way to Truth.
He was convinced about it. So much so, that one of my colleague, Prakani
Cherukuri under his guidance started working on Fantasy. Her thesis was to be
on how Fantasy discloses Truth. I must admit, at first the whole idea looked
self contradictory to me, but I was thrilled at something else. As a result of
this approach, all of sudden I found a place for mythology in my quest for
Truth. If what Navjyoti ji was saying was true, then it would mean there is a
direct linkage between mythology and Truth. All of the sudden Ramanaya,
Mahabharata and other pauranic texts became relevant. I no longer needed
to scientifically prove the rationale behind these texts. I only needed to see
the context of myths in the path of Truth.
One thing that is common between the left wing rationalists
and right wing nationalists in India has been their approach to mythology. The
rationalists have rejected it due to want of rationale. After all, how can a
sane person beleive that there existed a ravana who had ten heads. And
each time, a head is cut off, it grows back again. On the other hand, the
nationalists have painstakingly tried to show the scientificity that existed in
mythological texts. It is a matter of pride for them that our ancestors
designed and flew aircrafts thousands of years ago. In both the approaches,
myth and Truth cannot go hand in hand. We while in Center for Exact Humanities,
were attempting to connect the two.
And so when Navjyoti ji asked me to imagine like a 16th
century potter, I was at a loss, not knowing what to do. I must admit, I still
find myself at a loss sometimes, but slowly I am able to get a sense of this
approach. What this approach did was that it reintroduced Dharampal to me, and
this time in an all together new form. The new Dharampal was different from the
earlier one I had known.
The old Dharampal is found in his writings like The
Beautiful Tree or Indian Science and Technology in 18th century.
These works are a result of hardcore archival research. Dharampal ji spent
years lost in the British archives of 18th century India, stored in
the India library, London. By reproducing the archival material most of which
were the correspondence between British officers stationed in India at that
time and their superiors based in London, Dharampal was successfully able to
break the frozen image of India. His work showed us the extent of spread of
education in Indian villages in 18th century. It showed that schools
were present in almost every village, and that education was accessible to all
sections of the society. The British records tell us that almost 70% of the
students enrolled in schools came from what we now call backword communities.
Only 30% students were from the Brahmin or Kshatriya communities. So much so
education of girl child was also the norm. Though most of the girls had tutors
coming to their homes, still many did go to schools. The average time spent in
schools was of the order of 15 years. This was three times greater than that in
England in those days. The content of education in India was also far superior
to the content of education in England.
Similarly his other work on indigenous technology gives a
picture of the sophistication India had achieved. The process of making ice was
mind boggling. The British only knew how to collect and store ice, when it
snowed, but in Indian plains where it never snows, ice was manufactured.
Similar descriptions of observatory in Benaras, inoculation of small pox,
manufacturing of wootz (rust free steel called faulad in India) gives a
glimpse of sophistication and extent of education system in India. His work
goes on to claim that India contributed to more than one fourth of world's
industrial production. Dharampal writes that around 2 lac tonnes of faulad was
manufactured annually in central India. Other works seem to corroborate
Dharampal on this. It is estimated that India and China together contributed to
less than three fourth of world production. And we are talking about industrial
production here, not counting agricultural produce.
Such an image comes in direct confrontation with what I call
the Mother India image we urban educated Indians have grown up with. Mother
India is an acclaimed movie which came out from popular cinema of Bollywood
(the name is imitated from Hollywood). The movie gives the image of rural India
which is a cursed place. Majority of the population is forced to work as bonded
laborers in the fields of the landlord, who is as brutal and ruthless in his approach
as one can imagine. The village baniya (moneylender) is another symbol
of cunningness, who would not even mind sucking the last drop of blood of poor
villagers in order to get his money. A village is a place where industrial
production cannot be imagined. Whatever little production that happens, is at
best primitive in nature. India, as Nehru famously said is an agrarian society
and not industrial. And so as per Nehru's vision, the course of development
would necessarily include the transformation from agrarian society to
industrial society.
Dharampal ji, from his work, broke this frozen image of
Indian society. He clearly showed the extent of education, the sophistication
of technology and the quantum of production in the society. His work gained credence
because he was directly quoting the British archives. His tool, archival
research is an accepted tool among intellectuals in the study of history. To
discount British archives for Indian intellectuals is impossible, but to accept
what Dharampal was saying was also not going to be easy, after all the
Macaulayian discourse on India has been completely different. This discourse
also swears by the British records. And so probably the only charge that one
could be leveled against Dharampal was
that he was being selective. Of course the counter charge on the Indian
intellectual class can also be same, that of selective and convinient
interpretations. I do not know for exact who has been more selective, but what
I know for sure is that Dharampal ji was successfully able to crack the frozen
image of India. And his tool was archival research.
That was the old Dharampal to whom I was introduced in SIDH.
The new Dharampal, whom I was encountering in IIIT-H, was attempting to break
the tool itself, which he so successfully used in his earlier work. And this
rightly was the next step to be undertaken. Once the frozen image of desolate
India was broken, it was now time to break the western tools of exploration.
After all one's context is not fully found when one has used somebody else's
glasses to look at the world. The question now was how would Indians approach
the Truth? What would be the 'Indian way' of looking at past?
I could see this quest of Dharampal ji in his later writings
such as Bharatiya chitta manas aur kaal. His attempt there is to
understand how does an Indian mind understand things. Priya, who spent many
years with Dharampal ji, mentions in one of her writings, that Dharampal ji's
quest in latter part of his life had turned away from the question of why to
the question of how. This aspect of him, comes out in almost all the writings I
have read about him. People who had spent many fruitful years with him, and
later wrote about him, somewhere point out that he was a keen observer of the
ordinary Indian, trying to understand how he reaches a decision.
Can imagination, stories, art, myths, dharma constitute
the 'Indian way of approaching the Truth'? Will these tools be able to fulfill
the need of rigour and exactitude which the western tools bring with them? Does
establishment of these tools (and breaking of western tools) be a social
intervention towards Swaraj? I think the
new Dharampal was attempting this in his last days.
While persuing to understand and implement the 'Indian way',
I realized that I needed to make a few distinctions in this journey. For
example history and Itihaasa, society and samaaj, religion and dharma
and most importantly imagination and kalpanasheelta were not same.
An historical approach to India would be different from an aitihaasic approach.
Theorizing the Indian society would be different from theorizing the samaaj.
A space for stories, myths, devi-devatas, parloka would have to be
created. The 'Indian way' would include bridging the bhuloka with the parloka.
As Dharampal ji would say, for an ordinary Indian they both exist, and to
discount one would defeat the idea of moving towards swaraj. In this process, a
bridge would also have to be formed between linear time line (from stone age to
space age) and circular time line (from satayuga to kaliyuga). An
ordinary Indian after all lives in both the time lines.
In this quest, I came across Ravindra Sharma, who is fondly
called Guruji from his wrestling days. Listening to Guruji, I could sense a
seamless integration of history and Itihaasa. If Dharampal ji can be
called a historian, I would call Guruji a story teller. I am told by my elders,
who have spent time with both, that they enjoyed mutual admiration and respect
for one another. I having spent time with Guruji knows that he certainly held
Dharampal ji in high regard. This to me indicates that in samaaj a
historian and a story teller are not in confrontation with each other. They are
not fighting for the same space, but creating their own space in the minds of
an ordinary Indian. They are not in confict with each other, but in
complementary spaces.
As Navjyoti ji would often put it in many of his classes,
the space of Itihaasa exists in Kalpana. Itihaasa is made of
personas (personhood), while history constitutes embodied men. The personhood
creates the scope of stories and myths to exist. They in turn give the freedom
to create and indulge in artistic endeavour. A finished work of art then in
turn connects the disembodied person (of parloka) to the material realm
(of bhuloka).
Tradinationally we see an ordinary person as dwija, the
one who is born twice. The first step towards understanding Dharampal ji's
fascination towards the ordinary Indian would be to understand the phenomena of
two births. The first birth happens in the bhuloka or the material
world. A man is born out of mother's womb and is made of 'motor organs' (in
Navjyoti ji's words). This man is tangible. He has weight, can be touched,
lifted, and most importantly be co-measured with other men. He has five motor
organs- two hands, two legs and speech organ. They are called the karmaindriyaan
or faculties to act. All actions are performed using the karmaindriya. It
took me a while to understand that even speech is an action (and probably with
highest potentiality). Other than these five faculties, man has another five
faculties which are called gyanindriya or the faculties of knowledge.
These are popularly also called the five senses- touch, smell, taste, of sound
(ear) and of vision (eyes). As the name suggests, knowledge (gyana) is
available through them. They are considered transparent in nature, as they
present the reality to man as it is, without any coloring. While the gyanindriya
are inward directed, the karmaindriya are outward directed. What
gets captured by gyanindriya, necessarily goes in and what gets churned inside
tends to come out through karmaindriya. The churning inside takes place
in kalpana of man. What goes in and comes out is nothing but
(in)formations. What is the nature of these formations, what are they made of
and how are they transmitted (bimban) are questions I am leaving for now
(but answer to them would be required in order to build a comprehensive theory
of samaaj). This is the constitution of the embodied man who exists in
flesh and blood. Like any other material, even this man has a life cycle, whose
other end is called death.
The second birth of an ordinary Indian happens in parloka.
This is when a man is able to perform finetuned actions and able to leave
impressions in the kalpana of other men (also himself). This is the
begining of his personhood. As the man lives life, he acts. As he acts, he
leaves impressions. These impressions are modified and remodified over and over
again. The impressions slowly start stacking together into a persona. The man
slowly starts becoming a person. The quest for man is to continue refining his
persona, or in Navjyoti ji's words to make a career in parloka. Education
is not about making a man out of young kids, but about making a person out of
man.
The content of parloka is absolutely objective. It is
objective because it is ordinary. It is personal but not private. It is in full
glare. The parloka exists in kalpana, which is accessible by all.
Kalpana of one permeates into the kalpana of other. It is in
principle impossible to identify which part of kalpana is mine and which
is of other.
This came as a brutal shock to me. Something which I was
considering as innermost to myself, as absolutely private, is now turning out
to be public in principle. Though one does try to bring certain privacy in
one's kalpana, by attaching certain visheshtayien (visheshanas or
attributes) like names and emotions. These attributes tend to make our kalpana
personalized and private, but the nature of kalpana seems to be such
that the visheshanas seem to melt away after some time. What however
remains permanently are roles. Our kalpana constitutes roles of
motherhood, fatherhood, studenthood, teacherhood, kinghood, primeministerhood
etc. These roles are absolutely ordinary or sadharan in nature. There is
absolutely nothing personal or private about it. And this is exactly what makes
them public in nature and therefore accessible to all.
When Navjyoti ji asked me to imagine like a potter, he
wasn't talking about a particular potter (with attributes like name, location
etc), but he wanted me to try and access the potterhood that already exists in kalpana.
The potterhood is made out of countless impressions formed by countless
potters in the past through their actions. Some of their actions have been
towards perfection while some away from perfection. The resultant of countless
negotiations between perfect and imperfect actions has resulted in formation of
potterhood, which is stacked in kalpana.
This second birth, does not lead to death unlike in the case
of embodied man. Due to the longivity and ordinariness of personhood, it
remains accessible in principle. I had met Dharampal ji in flesh and blood only
once (in 2006 in SIDH). He was very old then. I got an oppurtunity to listen to
him only then. After a couple years he died. Yet I had access to the personhood
of Dharampal, through stories of him. How accurately I've been able to access
Dharampal, I do not know. Only those who have spent many years with him will be
able to ascertain that. But, its possible for me to access him in principle,
long after he is gone.
The samaaj exists in this realm. Being samaajik is
about being in touch with this realm. Being samaajik means trying to act
from the inspiration of personhoods that exists in kalpana.
During one of the many conversations with a dear friend
Kanwarjit (an architect by training), he mentioned that a true architect is not
the one who brings in his own ideology and preferences while constructing a
house. An architect has to leave behind everything that is his own, and just
think by putting himself in the customer's shoes. If a customer wants a fully
concretized, glassy and flashy home, so be it. An architect cannot bring in his
ideology of green buildings and natural material while constructing someone
else's home. A similar point was once made by Prof Ashok Chatterjee, former
director at National Institute of Design, during his address in IIIT-H. He said
that a designer has to be like a lover. He needs to only worry about the other
person and bring nothing of his own (likings, preferences) in between. To let
go that what is one's own and not worry about oneself, was an important lesson
to all designers and wanna be lovers. And letting go is not easy at all. It
demands a tremendous sense of selflessness. Indian feminism if understood
correctly is in letting go, highest order of selflessness. A designer has to be
feminine.
This lesson I got from Kanwarjit and Prof Chatterjee, was
incomplete. Later on while discussing it with Navjyoti ji and another friend
Anurag Sahay from Dehradun, a deeper dimension was added to it. It is true that
an architect has to keep aside his own wishes and worldviews while designing,
but it would be a mistake if he was to succumb to the customer's views and
fancies. Letting go of one's own wishes was only step one of the process. Step
two includes getting an access to the dharma of architect or the
architecthood which is formed out of countless actions of architects in the
past. Access to the dharma would tend towards the perfection in design.
The first step of letting go is a necessary precondition of
the second step of accessing dharma. It involves letting go of one's hit
and ahit. Ordinariness or sadharanikaran is such a stage. Samaaj constitutes
of sadharan persons, which are objective and public.
The Sufist view of love is something similar. When in love,
one is not worried about one's own hit and ahit, one's own
wishes, one's own views. But what is one only worried about is the other. For
sufists, this other is not some embodied being, but God. I dont know about God,
but for now, this other is the personhoods for me.
The story at the introduction of natyashastra mentions
the need of sadharanikaran, precisely for the purpose of getting away
from one's own hit and ahit and have access to the dharma. The
story mentions that one of the principle requirement for constitution of samaaj
is sadharanikaran.
Dharampal ji's quest for ordinariness, is leading me to sadharanikaran.
Harsh Satya
14th Dec, 2012
