Grippingly philosophical

‘If one said to another ‘I love you’ snappishly, would it sound humorous or pitiful?
One community criticises another.
One political party criticises another.
One person criticises another.
Who is criticising all of us, society as a whole?’

Above are the lines in my translation from a Marathi novel: Kheksat Mhanane, I love you, which might be translated into English as ‘Saying ‘I love you’ snappishly.’ The author is Shyam Manohar, whose novel ‘Ustuketene mee zoplo’ was awarded by the Sahitya Akademi in 2008.

No other author, at least in Marathi literature, has been consistently examining, throughout his oeuvre, whether Indians have quest for mankind’s fundamental questions and what happens when Indians try to pursue such quests in the cotemporary political and social structure. His writing is highly experimental. It may not have a usual characterisation. Its events may not be chronologically important. But Shyam Manohar’s writing, however experimental it may be, has an objective. His Sahitya Akademi award winning novel focuses on whether Indian family system that Indians cherish a lot has a place for creativity and quest for knowledge. ‘Kheksat Mhanane I love you’ focuses mainly on following issues:

1) Why people, particularly Indians end up in either just quibbling over trivial issues or simply criticizing one another, though they aspire for grander and higher goals.
2) How Indian society is becoming increasingly susceptible to decadence. (Criminal or venal civilisation)
3) What the role of imagination is in making of civilisation

The novel ‘…… I love you…’ weaves mainly two narrative voices together. The novel starts off with the narration of a text, and it reveals that this text is a tape-recorded story that an educated criminal is writing down from a tape. The criminal is a first person character. He writes down the recorded story of a narrator from the tape on one hand, he narrates his own narration on the other. The tape-recorded narration that the criminal is writing down and the criminal’s narration keep coming on alternately. Initially it seems that the narrative voice of the tape-recorded narration is the narrative voice of the novel. However, since the criminal is the first person character, his narrative voice is the narrative voice of the novel. The tape-recorded narration has occupied most of the pages of the novel. At a point, through the criminal, it is revealed that this narration’s narrator himself is a character who is a very old man.

This old man’s tape-recorded narration has five characters, which are from his imagination: an elderly man, a professor, a dentist, a young man and a young girl. The elderly man is a hard-core Hindu ideologist. The professor is an ardent champion of socialism. The dentist is a spiritualist. The young man is a software engineer. The young girl is a B.Com graduate who comes from a higher middle class family and has no aim in life. There is one more character in the tape-recorded text. He is a friend of the young software engineer. His name is Dayal. The old man says that he has not imagined Dayal’s character. Dayal once happens to go into seculsion. He finds seculsion interesting and starts maintaining diary to write about his experiences of seclusion. The old man takes inspiration from Dayal’s diary to send his five fictional characters into seclusion to enable them find their life-goals by themselves. The old man-cum-narrator finds places for his characters' seclusion, describes their secluded lives in detail and intermittently intersperses Dayal’s diary which not just reflects on seclusion but also criticises Indians and Indian society as a whole. Looking at the diverse backgrounds of these six characters, it seems the old man wants a complete picture of India for his experimentation.

The old man’s fictional characters appear flat, emotionless, like characters from a carton film, as if they are just samples of his experiment. Yet, at the same time, they appear authentic with the vivid delineations of their physical characteristics such as body structure, colour and voice. Some of them are evocative too, for instance, to describe the voice of the Hindu ideologist (the second uncle), the old man-cum-narrator says, "the second uncle’s speaking voice is as sweet as the Alphonso mango". Most characters do not belong to any particular place except the young software engineer, who belongs to Pune. There are ironical, sarcastic and critical remarks on the city of Pune in his characteristic incisive style which Shyam Manohar is well-known for.

Whenever Dayal’s diary appears, the tape-recorded tale gets a different narrative voice. And another time the Novel’s voice ruptures when a long story appears consuming almost nineteen pages of the novel. The old man-cum-narrator shows that the young girl is reading the story. The title of the story is the title of the novel. This story from the magazine is placed almost in the middle of the book. It gives a novel spatial symmetry. It is not just characters or events that ‘form’ the novel but mixing voices in a smooth and structured manner can ‘form’ the novel too. This story’s writer is none another than Dayal himself. However, it is shown that Dayal reveals this secret by mistake. Such arbitrariness in the novel creates a sense of detachment in the reader.

Voices of the criminal, the old man, and Dayal look prominent. Voices of the first two are clear right from the beginning while Dayal’s voice slowly emerges and becomes prominent in the end. These are the three characters who are used as vehicles to carry the main objectives of the novel. However, they look more like narrators than like characters.

At a point in the novel, the old man makes it clear that he fails to imagine his fictional characters achieve their aims by themselves. But he makes them have realisations instead. The Hindu ideologist realises ‘Faith lacks wisdom. The bhakti (devotion) has wisdom. Faith is incapable of inventing anything’. The professor realises ‘He does not have intelligence’. The young software engineer realises ‘Nothing about Physics makes his Physics teacher happy’. The young female graduate realises ‘I lack depth, I am superficial’. The spiritualist realises, ‘He is not spiritual’. Dayal realises ‘He is criticising all Indians’. These realisations look abrupt. However, it is to be noted that they are realisations or revelations but not conclusions or inferences.

The deconstruction of faith as part of realisation of the Hindu ideologist is a case. Let me reiterate the realisation: Faith lacks wisdom. The bhakti (devotion) has wisdom. The bhakti is the word that is used as synonymous with faith in India. Shyam Manohar seems to separate ‘the bhakti’ from ‘faith’, probably because the bhakti movement which was once established in India to fight against the fanaticism and ritualism of that era has itself become the fanaticism and ritualism of this era.


The criminal does not simply copy the narration. He reflects on the narration. He is shown as an educated criminal, a useful vehicle to examine the following possibilities:
1) People (pre) tend to be aspirants of high aims but end up in only fulfilling small aims.
2) Indians are cantankerous in nature. They quibble over small issues and criticise one another.
3) Such hypocritical society becomes a breeding ground for criminals, crimes and a venal society.

At a point in the novel when the old man happens to meet the criminal, he sadly confesses before him that he fails to make his characters achieve their aims. He weeps and feels sad
as he fails to bring any emotions to his characters. He gives a reason why he is unable to do so. And here it looks as if Shyam Manohar himself cites reasons why his characters in most of his novels appear emotionless. Following are a few of them:

‘All of them (all five characters) are sent to seclusion and they are mulling over issues other than family matters, so their emotions are not active’

‘In India a way of acquiring thoughts (opinions) and putting them across is being increasingly established’

‘Newspapers mostly have just thoughts (opinions), and most Indians read only newspapers.’

Here Shyam Manohar seems to make a point that Indians’ emotions are active only when it comes to family matters. He, perhaps, also wants to link emotions to the way Indians
think: Indians tend to give importance to acquiring thoughts (opinions) instead of letting them appear on their own. This means that Indians mostly know how put across only opinions. Is this because Indians like to have realisations but they do not like to come to inferences and somehow the kind of atmosphere or freedom that is needed to have realisations has very little presence in today’s India?

Even the old man’s characters have realisations but not inferences. In this regard, I have an observation that the Indian languages do not have any room or a facility for drawing inferences (no facility for make-believe game), which is clear from the fact that the Indian languages have dispensed with the use of the articles (‘a’ and ‘the’).

The technique of mixing narrative voices has its pros and cons. One disadvantage is clear: no emotional bonding. Characters look emotionless. However, it will be interesting to see whether it is the drawback of the experimental writing technique such as Shyam Manoahar’s or it is an essential narrative technique to examine Indians’ indifference to man’s fundamental questions.

Another disadvantage is that there is a high amount of arbitrariness. Characters are undermined. The objective is undermined. However, it is tough to say that Shyam Manohar’s narration loses its focus, though it tires to undermine the topic, and also the characters.

But such narrative technique gives Shyam Manohar maximum freedom, the greatest advantage. He uses most of it to give a new dimension to a character. The old man’s characters are unemotional. But he becomes emotional. Thus, the narrator himself looks emotional. The criminal is not like a villain; rather he appears an anti-villain when he saves the old man from burglars. He appears like a philosopher, when he raises such deeply fundamental questions:

“For hundreds of years man has been living with the help of religion, race, province, ideologies. Will man ever have to merely live or survive? Is there a mere living or survival?

For hundreds of years a criminal has been doing crimes with the help of religion, race, province, ideologies. Will a criminal ever have to do a mere crime? Is there a mere crime?”

The criminal who does not do any crime in the novel (rather saves the old man’s life) is a link between the failure of the old man’s characters and the high susceptibility of India to a venal civilisation. Only he is the one who brings Dayal in the end as a kind of denouement to give a hint with which this big Indian mess can be solved. The end, thus, tries to seek answers to these questions: How civilisation can have the place for the creation of fundamental knowledge? What is the role of imagination in knowing the universe, and in creating art and philosophy?

Such incessant philosophical pursuits have been interwoven in the narration in such a way that the reader is not supposed to leave them away ever.

Get an idea, please!

Perhaps, Raj Thackeray’s recent address to a rally in Aurangabad was his most restrained speech, though it did use very crude and uncivilised language. A few days ago, the Aurangabad police ruthlessly beat up his party’s legislator Harshawardhan Jadhav who had tried to run over a police van. The media hyped the issue expecting that Raj Thackeray would flare it up further. However, it didn’t happen. Even though his political opponent Uddhav Thakeary, leader of the Shivsena unexpectedly condemned the assault, Raj Thackeary kept calm. He simply called a rally in Aurangabad. After being asked by the media about his reaction to the assault, he told the media to wait until the rally. There was also news that the police warned him to avoid saying something that would incite his followers.

However, the much-hyped rally turned out to be a damp squib for those who had expected a sensational speech. He avoided being provocative, yet he was aggressive. Like an opportunist as he is always, he cleverly used the emotional support that Harshwardhan Jadhav had received from everyone. Calling the assault a conspiracy, he targeted NCP leaders R.R.Patil and Ajit Pawar. Referring directly to the removal of the statue of Dadoji Kondev, he lashed out at NCP for doing caste politics in Maharashtra.

‘Maharashtra is for the Marathi people, not for just the Maratha caste’, this is how he tried to shape his political agenda against the caste based politics. As he has been very successful in creating an image of a saviour of Marathi people, the repackaging of his political ideology in terms of “Marathi, not the Maratha” looks cleverly opportunistic.

He has always tried to make himself appear as a state-level leader. No one looks at him as an Indian leader. Though he has said that he has no intention to separate Maharashtra from India, Maharashtra is rapidly being perceived as a state of intolerant and xenophobic people. Thanks to the Thackeray family’s politics based on language. So it looks strange when Raj Thackeray lashes out at caste based politics. Caste politics polarises society, so does language based politics. India is so diverse that it is always vulnerable to sectarian politics. If Raj Thackeray fears that caste based politics divides Maharashtra, then it should also be noted that his language politics divides India. His criticism of caste politics, therefore, gives a screwed impression that the unity of Maharashtra needs to be achieved at the cost of “India”.

Now it is accepted that he wants to be the messiah of Maharashtra, I want Raj Thackeray to give an idea that should bind the Marathi people together. Can he look at the Marathi society as a whole? No matter however he is criticized for his seatrain politics, he certainly has an edge over other politicians as he has created an image of a leader who can represent the entire Marathi society. Now in order to sustain this image and to gain more credibility, he has to give Marathi people an idea that keeps them together. We hope that he will not follow the path of Hinduism as his uncle did switching from “Marathi” ideology to Hinduism. If he does the same, he will lose credibility as a leader of the entire Marathi society.

One of the eminent political analysts, Pratab Asabe says in an article that Raj Thackeary has created a bigger space for himself in the Maharashtra politics by making the NCP as his main opponent in addition to the Shivsena. But Partat Aasabe doesn’t criticise the manner in which Raj Thackeary has done it. Our journalists are shying away from criticising the crude and uncivilised language that Raj Thakceary uses to attack his opponents.

Pratab Asabe says that if a political party wants to rule the state, then it needs to establish itself a chief opponent of the ruling party. This is insightful. Raj Thackeray has realised that the NCP which is the major party in the coalition government in Maharashtra has to be his chief opponent, not simply the Shivsena. Being an astute politician, Raj Thackeary has understood that the image of the NCP is becoming a party for the Maratha people. That is why he has taken the clear stand to give himself a space in politics by directly attacking its caste based politics. Whether NCP does caste based politics is a different matter, however he has become successful in making that impression in his Aurangabad rally.

However, we need to notice that Raj Thakeray’s politics is established on the same kind of sectarian politics, if not directly caste based politics. His ideology of being the messiah of the Marathi people is, at the moment, his advantage. Thanks to the current political chaos. In Maharashtra, no politician or political party, including the Congress, can directly attack his political ideology, because two major parties, the NCP and the Shivena, are simply local parties, though they try to appear as national parties. Despite being a nataional party, the congress in Maharashtra is not strong enough to take on Raj Thackeary’s sectarian tactics.

However, it does not mean that Raj Thackeary’s political re-packaging in terms of “Marathi, not the Maratha” will work. The Marathi language is not enough to bind Marathi people together. Caste based identities in India are much stronger than the language based identities. Telengana should be a good example of this.

Raj Thackeary needs to give Marathi people a better idea than “Marathi, not the Maratha”. Our politicians do not have imagination power. They do not have ideas. They need to speak well. They need to improve on language skills. They should develop good oratory skills. Raj Thackeary’s recent speech was not civilised.

In order to emerge and to creat a poltical space, our politicians simply become demagogues appealing to the emotions and the prejudices of people. They simple criticise one another. They use a crude language. They present themselves as very bitter and nasty enemies of one another.

Dear Raj, we expect a lot from you. What you need is a better imagination, get an idea please!

The Raman Effect: the beginning and the end of Indian science.

Our Prime Minister addressed the 98th Indian Science Congress on 3 January 2011. While I was looking over its text, I stumbled upon a fact that he pointed out: “While C.V.Raman won the Nobel Prize eighty years ago for the Raman Effect, most of the instruments available in India today using this principle are imported. This is not an isolated example and many of our outstanding scientific discoveries have been converted into marketable products by technologies and firms based abroad.”

This is really appalling and shows how backward we are in the matter of science and technology. Prime Minister has also said that we need more Ramans and Ramanujans. Thanks to our Prime Minister. Someone has finally remembered C.V.Raman, the greatest Indian brain ever in the field of science. It is really important to remember them in the days when personalities like Dr. A.P.J. Abul Kalam and others are unnecessarily given the status of great scientists. They are given the status larger than life. Here I do not want to undermine their contribution. They are eminent personalities, but certainly not great scientists.

The point is why we have only C.V.Raman as a home grown Nobel Prize winner in science. Sir C.V. Raman won the Noble Prize in 1930. So in the eighty years we don’t have a single scientific discovery as great as C.V. Raman’s. We boast of I.I.Ts, but nothing great has happened also in the field of technology, which is clear from the fact that most remarkable Indian scientific discoveries are converted into products outside India. On one hand we do not have great scientific discoveries after the Raman Effect; we have not produced any great technology on the other. Our performance in the field of science and technology is extremely lacklustre. If I am not digressing, I must say that even in the field management, we have not discovered a single management theory which is so great that the world has to emulate it.

We generally tend to blame polity, bureaucracy and education system for our mediocre scientific progress. But this is barking up the wrong tree. We should blame ourselves for the fact that we have never given importance to pure science.

Shyam Manohar, noted Marathi writer’s latest novel has a character who is a software engineer, who happens to read an autobiography of his physics teacher. To his surprise, in the autobiography he does not find even a single mention of pleasure that his teacher finds in anything related to physics. This disturbs him. He wonders why his teacher does not have a single pleasurable experience related to physics to mention in his autobiography. He becomes introspective and starts looking back whether he ever had any moment of happiness during the years of his education. He remembers that when he was in 12th standard class, learning polarisation of light was the moment of happiness. He realises that as India always has given more importance to technology than to pure science, doing career in pure science has never occurred to people like him.

He finds that with the arrival of technology in India, achievements and financial growth became important. The fact that no one has realised the importance of pure science in India strikes him. ‘Nehru met Einstein, but Nehru championed technology in stead of pure science.’

However, our progress in the field of technology is also mediocre. The reason lies in our indifference to pure science. Shyam Manohar once said in an interview that we call physics a subject not a branch of knowledge. This clearly shows our indifference to fundamental questions. We have never looked at pure science as a source of knowledge, in turn as a source of technology. This exists everywhere, in all our Indian unversitites and institutions including our elite institues like Indian Institue Of Technology. Remember they are institues of technology not science. Even the goverment does not want institues of pure science. Great ideas are born in the attempts of solving fundamental and abstract questions. Unless and untill we bring about a change in our attitude to fundamental and abstract questions, we may have hunderds of I.I.Ts., nothing will make a difference. They will simply act as PLACEMENT AGENCIES, the way most parents today simply look at them. They hardly want their child to be the Raman of India today. They simply want him or her to be a technocrat who will be a highly paid 'servant' of some American and European and now Chinese multinational company.

C.V. Raman won the Noble Prize, with a simple instrument barely worth Rs. 300. Today very expensive instruments are needed for inventions. We do not have them, because we do not have technology. And we do not have technology, because we have never given importance to pure science.

It was a great beginning for Indian science, when C.V. Raman discovered the great Raman Effect. Sadly it is also becoming the end of Indian science.

Sculptures are not statues...........

It was a sad moment for art, when the Pune municipal corporation removed the sculpture of Dadoji Kondev. The sculpture was sadly made the symbol of the perception that it is the conspiracy of one caste to show its supremacy over the other to call Dadoji Kondev the guru of Shavaji Maharaj.

The sculpture of Dadoji Kondev was a sculpture, not a statue. Historians may have a dispute over certain historical facts and perceptions, but art is not history and sculptures are not statues.

This may be true that Dadoji Kondev was not the guru of Shivaji Maharaj. It may be a historical mistake of holding him as the guru of Shivaji Maharaj. But interpreting the historical mistake as a conspiracy of a caste to show its supremacy over the other is a perception but not the fact. And using an artist’s sculpture as the symbol of this perception is not only absurd but also deplorable.

Have we lost the intellectual ability to understand the difference between “perceptions” and “facts”, “art” and “history”? Let us assume for a moment that some historians deliberately cooked up the facts as part of the so called conspiracy. But the artist who had made the sculpture was not a historian. So it can not be said that he made the sculpture to support the conspiracy.

There was no need to use the sculpture to symbolise the perceived conspiracy. Without removing the sculpture, the fact could have been brought out to people. In stead of removing the sculpture, the corporation could have placed a written declaration alongside the sculpture: ‘Dadoji Kondev was not the guru of Shivaji Maharaj, therefore Dadoji’s gesture as shown in the sculpture does not have to represent him as the guru of Shivaji Maharaj.

However, those who opposed the statue were not interested in simply bringing out the fact that Dadoji was not the guru of Shivaji Maharaj. They were also interested in making their perception appear as a fact. In the process, the sculpture was made a scapegoat for historians’ mistake showing disrespect to the artist and his art.

Curbing migration is not a solution.

Migration makes emancipation literally possible for the migrants as well as for the natives by helping both get rid of the cluster of customs, set norms and rigid identities. In a way it fulfils an implicit human desire to become indistinguishable. However, the process is not free from conflicts. Migration that is not peaceful in its basic nature leads to an inevitable collision of cultures, which can morph into a placid fusion only if both migrants and natives have a strong urge to be indistinguishable. For a nation like India where the level of diversity and disparity is enormous, the desire to become indistinguishable is essential for peace and harmony. Prohibiting migration or even controlling it restrains people from becoming indistinguishable and it not only incites a temporary unrest but also creates an intolerant society in the long run.

Such thoughts come to my mind when I think of the MNS leader Raj Thackeray’s so called ‘movement’ against the migrants from Uttar Pradesh to Maharashtra. I feel that such ‘movements’ are not against the migration; but against the supremacy or dominance that migrants obtain during the process of cultural amalgamation. The migrants obtain an edge over the native people, which is an obvious and interesting phenomenon. To migrate from one’s native place to a completely different region one requires great courage. Though migrants generally possess such qualities, they can hardly get rid of the feeling of insecurity.

It is because of this constant feeling of insecurity that, in the initial period of settlement, migrants do not discuss the matters of humiliation among their small community members to avoid getting involved in any kind of controversy. From the experiences of my friends in Australia, I have understood how a new migrant ignores the humiliation in the initial period of settlement. Last year when I was in Australia, I met one who emigrated from India to Australia a few years ago. He told me his humiliating experience when he worked with an Australian fast food centre, which he had joined just after he had arrived in Australia. A customer at the fast food centre placed an order using the drive-through phone once. He couldn’t catch what the customer said and requested the customer to come to the customer window. ‘My handset has a problem, so I can’t take your order on phone. Please come to the window directly’, he told the customer the reason. ‘The problem is not with your handset. You can’t understand our English, coz you’re Indian. Better improve next time, otherwise…………’, the customer said belligerently at the window. What he said after ‘otherwise’ are the humiliating ‘fu**’ words that are not worth writing here. My friend was very mortified. However, he kept himself calm and gave the customer what he had ordered. He ignored the whole incident and avoided making an issue which he could have easily raised in his community. But he didn’t speak about it even to his close acquaintances. He didn’t want an attention and wanted to live without getting involved in any kind of controversy. I feel that it is a strategy that a migrant develops during the initial stages of his or her settlement.

Leaving their native place itself is a big risk for migrants; which rather prepares them to face any migratory challenge. The thoughts of failures do not deter their already worried mindset. They work day and night to settle themselves economically. However, even after their economic settlement they feel lonely and isolated, and the sense of security does not develop as strongly as it develops among the native people.

They get away from this feeling of insecurity only after retaining their identity through religious or cultural activities that also help them to build a strong community. And as their communities become stronger, they take humiliations seriously. Once a Sikh in Sydney had his turban ripped from his head. Two young men stole his turban while he was travelling on a public bus. Turban has a great religious significance for Sikhs. He found himself distressed and highly embarrassed when it was stolen. He had to cover his head with a piece of cloth while another passenger laughed. When he reported the assault immediately, the police could not recognize the religious significance of turban. They considered it a minor theft instead of an assault and asked him the worth of turban in monetary terms. For the Sikh it was depressing and annoying. After the matter was upheld by the community who persuaded Ministry to take it seriously, the police upgraded the case to a race hate crime from a minor theft.

This is how migrants, after being able to retain their identities, start influencing the politics in the region where they migrate. With unrelenting hard work they become economically strong; their communities influence the local culture, and for the politicians it gives an opportunity to make it a vote bank. For the native people who have been lethargic because of their feeling that nothing would deter their status quo, the sudden progress of the migrants becomes a matter of great concern. On the one hand migration releases the strong hold of local customs and traditions; on the other hand it slowly generates plenty of opportunities for them to dominate. Migrants are likely to become ‘conquerors’ over the native people.

In Mumbai ‘conquerors’ are those who migrate from other states in a large number. Their culture and language is imposed on the ‘conquered’. In Mumbai Hindi or English (not Marathi) is the language that is used in day to day affairs. Marathi culture is not the common culture among ‘Mumbaikars’. It is this feeling of getting conquered by the migrants is the main cause of the support that the Raj Thackeray’s movement receives. However, the point is that the banning of an Indian’s freedom to choose a place to settle can not be justified on the ground that migrants obtain supremacy or dominance over the native people. It will be in the interest of Marathi people that they accept the dominance of migrants. Such political movements aim to create a sense of insecurity among Marathi people and to attract a vote bank for the political growth. It will hardly benefit the Marathi people. That is why only in the metropolitan cities like Mumbai the Raj Thackeray’s movement is getting strong support compared to the feeble support that it has received in other smaller cities in Maharashtra.

An artilce written by a Hindu ideologist for Shri Ram Sene

Following is an article written by a Hindu ideologist for the organisation: Shri Ram Sene

Sri Ram Sene is Sri Ram Sene

It will be a blunder to ignore what organisations like Sri Ram Sene is fighting for.  There is an easy ingenuousness in calling such organisations antidemocratic or radical or fascist. It is fashionable to call such groups extreme-right groups. Such adjectives exacerbate the process of misunderstanding the implicit and suppressed voice of those who want to oppose the westernisation of Bharat.

Sri Ram Sene attacked a pub. This is antidemocratic. Sri Ram Sene decided to marry off the couples on Valentine’s Day. This is antidemocratic. Sri Ram Sene opposes rising pub culture that encourages the bonhomie fuelled by alcohol. Can this be termed antidemocratic? Sri Ram Sene opposes the celebration of Valentine Day, which is a western way of celebrating love as though this country’s legendary lovers like Radha –Krishna, Hir-Ranza, Laila Majanu, Nal-Damayanti, Bajirao-Mastani, Shah Jahan-Mumtaz are worthless for the cause of the celebration of love , and can we call this antidemocratic? There is little doubt that Shri Ram Sene’s method of opposition is antidemocratic. But can we equally certainly say that the cause that they are employing these methods for is also antidemocratic? Therefore, Sri Ram Sene is Sri Ram Sene.

In order to keep such cultural issues away from the democratic debate, the pseudo intellectuals (controlled by the global market forces) indiscriminately call such organisations antidemocratic. What kind of democracy do we want? Don’t we want a democracy that will pay its attention to the cultural issues that question whether Valentine Day is an Indian way of expressing love or whether dancing at pub is a cultured way of celebrating life? One can not say that these issues are trivial, when this democracy blatantly ignores issues of farmers and poor people. Whose democracy is this? Is this democracy of only Ambanis, Tatas, Birlas, Rajus, corrupt politicians, popular and purely commercial media and Sensex? Our democracy is rapidly becoming the democracy that is dominated only by the global market forces.

Many argue that it is the individual’s matter to decide whether he wants to celebrate the Valentine’s Day. To say that such cultural issues are individual matters is to show egregious apathy to the possibility that an Indian alternative to the western culture can emerge. This is pseudo-secularism, which is clearly visible from the fact that only when there is a strong (maybe violent in some cases) opposition to the westernisation of ‘BHARAT’, a huge outcry that the secular ‘India’ is in danger springs up. Why we want to believe that the western modernism is the only way to be modern and to be secular.

The global market forces have made us blind and pachydermically indifferent. We are unable to see how they use our own democracy for their benefits leaving us deprived of our rights to preserve our own culture. They want us to believe that the western model of progress can make us grow and prosper. They also make us realise that if their model is adopted for the development and progress, the westernisation of our democracy is inevitable. How far is to true that their model will make us achieve all inclusive growth? I do not want Paul Krugman or any other Nobel laureate in Economics to tell me that India’s economic growth is not all-inclusive. Any common Bharatiya will tell this ‘naked’ truth about our economy.

This incomplete economic development that we have had so far is based on the system and technology which is the product of the western models of development. The stories of those who have been kept away from this growth are not brought into the national debate. Which economic and cultural model has made them survive is not the matter of anybody’s concern. Which science and technology they use for their mere survival has been effectively ignored. The concern that has been raised here about avoiding calling the organisations like Sri Ram Sene is not to justify their acts, but to bring out the point that their so called extremist Hinduism needs to be understood as opposition to the one sided globalisation and to the pseudo-secular idea: the western modernism is the one and only form of modernism.  

If we continue to ignore them, and to sideline the cultural issues (in turn economic) by calling Sri Ram Sene and other such orgnisations antidemocratic indiscriminately, we will surely fall prey to the conspiracy of the westernisation of our bharatiya lokshahi.

A letter to Raj Thackeray from his poor and illiterate supporter

(The writer of this blog wrote it down in Marathi as the supporter told him. Then he edited it and finally translated it into English.)

Dear Raj,

                            

You fight for us. You fight for our language: Marathi. And we fight for you. Can we fight to invent a Marathi word that can not be translated into any other language? You may say that there are many such words in Marathi. But most of them may be religious and traditional. I want a modern untranslatable Marathi word.

Your party’s website has given a list of Marathi substitutes for the English words that we are used to. I have not read the list. But someone has told me about it. In the list the Marathi word “Namskar” has been given as a substitute for ‘Hallo’. But “Namskar” can’t be the substitute for ‘Hallo’. There is no substitute for “Hallo” in Marathi. Thus, “Hallo” becomes an untranslatable English word. Similarly, “Hi” is also an untranslatable English word that we are used to. But there is no untranslatable Marathi word that the entire world has been used to.

Can we invent at least one Marathi word which the entire world will have to get used to?

Though I am illiterate, I can speak a little English. I work with an international hotel as a janitor in Mumbai. Ever since a Canadian tourist asked me an untranslatable modern Marathi word, I have become restless to find it.

You insist on using Marathi, but you are not against English. You have never questioned the rapidly increasing English medium schools in Maharashtra. You have never said that the medium of instruction in all schools in Maharashtra should be only Marathi. Marathi medium schools are declining rapidly. The present government is punishing the owners of private Marathi schools. But it is not punishing the owners of private English medium schools.  The fetish of our people for English medium schools is dangerous to the existence of Marathi medium schools. But you have never taken this issue of dying Marathi schools very strongly. In fact your own son studies in an English medium school. The website of your party is in not simply in Marathi, it is also in English.

Thus you know the importance of English. English is the vehicle of knowledge. It is not just an international language but also the language that connects Indians. It is through this language I am reaching you.  English is the vehicle of prestige too. However, only rich Marathi people afford to educate their children in English medium schools. You are rich too. Everything is possible for the rich people in India.

But is it possible for them to find an untranslatable Marathi word? Is it possible for you to find an untranslatable Marathi word? Is it possible for your uncle to find it?

For an untranslatable word, what needs is a great idea. An idea that can be understood only in Marathi! An idea that can really change our lives! It should be so great that everyone in the world will have to need it. Everyone in the world will have to learn Marathi to understand it. Then a new era will emerge – an era in which Marathi will rule the world. The people of Maharashtra will rule the world.

However, I do not know how to invent a great idea. One needs time and money to invent. The most important requirement, perhaps, is a genius mind. Like any other common Maharashtrian, I have plenty of time but I have little money. The fact that my children study in a Marathi medium school is more than enough to prove my poverty. But I am very confident of your philanthropy. You are rich and generous too, right?

But what about the genius mind?

I can’t think of a genius idea because I am poor and on top of that I am illiterate. I am so poor that I can’t send my children to an English medium school.  I want my children to study in an English medium school. I have no money and there are millions of Marathi parents who have no money. Our children are deprived of the English language, so they are deprived of knowledge. Thus our children will remain poor as poor as we are.

While knowledge of English is essential for our survival in the present, an untranslatable idea is essential for our super-long term growth. Sounds ironical, but true.

You insist that you are not against the migrants but you want every migrant to learn Marathi and to respect our culture. Is our culture rich? The richness of any culture depends on great ideas. Is our Marathi rich? Is there an untranslatable Marathi word that the entire word has to learn?

Thousands of migrants have to come to Mumbai. They have to leave their places out of compulsion and out of poverty. They are so poor that I doubt whether they can afford to even educate their children, forget the medium of instruction. Most of them are illiterate. You want them to learn Marathi, if they have to live in Maharashtra. But what is the use of learning Marathi? I know Marathi, but I want to learn English. Marathi has no value. I serve international tourists who easily give me hundreds of rupees if I speak with them in English. They can do so, as they earn in dollars. A dollar is always greater than a rupee. So the more I know English, the more rupees I will earn. What is the using of learning Marathi?

But let me tell you that the Canadian tourist was ready to give me thousands of rupees for just one untranslatable modern Marathi word.

Either let me know an untranslatable Marathi word or teach me English. The one who knows English very well can easily get a good job. I do not know English. My wife does not know English. So we are poor. My children will not know English. So they will remain poor. Poverty grows because of Marathi. And ironically Marathi survives because of poverty.

In the last International Conference on Marathi, Ramadas Futane said, ‘as long as there are poor Marathi people in Maharashtra, the Marathi language will exist.’ But I have no concern for Marathi. Marathi should not be persevered at the cost of poor Maharashtrains like us. I have concern for my survival. I have concern for my poor family. I do not want my children to remain poor like me.

                                                                                                               

It is true that your fight to help us regain our jobs that we lose to the north Indian migrants. But I suggest that you should concentrate on overall poverty eradication in stead of simply trying to save our jobs. Create jobs, do not simply save them. For that a shift in the focus is needed. The focus should be on ‘ingenuity’.

We should understand that we, society as a whole, can’t achieve a long term inclusive growth unless we find at least one genius idea. At the same time we should understand that one can’t invent an idea when one’s survival is at stake. So the first priority should be poverty eradication. And for poverty eradication, knowledge of English (spoken and written both) is essential in today’s world. You can set a mission of making us proficient in English in the next five years. Even a free English coaching can be made available to every poor Maharashtrian on the behalf of your party. I guarantee that such efforts will eradicate poverty and you will deserve all the credit.

Once you have removed poverty, you can bring the question of a genius idea to the fore. This is a vision which focuses ‘ingenuity’. But the vision will become an illusion if you promise us a genius idea. A vision based on ingenuity can not be promised. But a vision based on ingenuity can be shared.

Will you share such vision with all the people of Maharashtra?

-         Your poor and illiterate supporter

P.S. - Though the question of finding a great idea will keep all of us dangling until we really find it, you are smart enough to use the thin line between a vision and an illusion for your long and successful career in politics.