Mother of Democracy

September 13, 2023

 

I woke with a lot of agitation — some good, some unpleasant — this morning. I had barely slept because the mind was active and heavy with memories of painful interactions, and dreams of betrayal kept waking me up, so trudged through the morning hours and got to my desk late. 

 

I have got into the habit of copying one or two chapters of the Tao Te Ching every morning before I work. It grounds me and soothes stress. But today I decided to stay with the agitation and write here instead.

 

I have been attending a play writing class and for that we had to first find an idea to work with. The first step in good play writing. Then go on and create a question that could be answered with a yes or a no, and the shades in between. I of course wanted to work with nationalism and democracy. 

 

Meanwhile in life these questions also floated around with things like the G-21, the presence of a certain kind of coverage and absence of another. Me trying to find sources that would fill in the missing bits of the picture provided by lap dog media. This along with the difficult interactions helped clarify what I would work on in the play. One-sidedness and manipulation are the micro ideas, by micro I mean detailed in a very personal situation, I want to write around, and explore how both are detrimental to true nation building. 

 

I used to be terribly and self-righteously one-sided at one time. I felt I had to be so to express the marginalized side in a conflict. I don’t like that part of myself so much anymore. I feel like this one-sidedness prevented me from seeing anything else, but more so it prevented me from listening, from softness, and from compassion for an individual because I was so aligned with a cause while the other was aligned with another. The other reason I don’t like it anymore is that I saw how it also prevented the other person from listening to me. And with both not listening no shifts happened. Shifts are needed for change. Ideally now I still want to stand for what I believe in but also stay open to understand where the other side is coming from and hope to create a dialogue even in the midst of battles. 

 

The thing though I hate even more is stating one is neutral while being entrenched in one position. Sometimes perhaps the person can’t see themselves and thinks they are neutral but other times it is a front they put up to manipulate and ‘persuade’ others. 

 

And it is because of both these that I dislike the BJP so much. They pretend to be neutral. It’s best I write from specifics. At the recent G-21 all participants were handed a booklet which had Bharat the Mother of Democracy. The next page had PM Modi saying he was proud to represent the mother of democracy. I had to laugh but I was so pained by this too. India was always at best a struggling democracy and has back-slided into authoritarianism in the last years. And there no evidence of democratic rulers in India's history. Perhaps the ruling party does not understand democracy but more likely it is manipulating perceptions.

 

Again let me be specific. India now stands at 161 out of 180 as far as press freedom is concerned. People will laugh at this number and say it is a conspiracy of the west against India. But with most/all mainstream media now being owned and controlled by corporates or individuals closely connected to the ruling party and funded (tax-payers money) through advertisements by the ruling party there is coverage filled with absences and bordering on both hate speech and propaganda. The government is perfect and needs no critique is the picture Indians are shown. The supporters of the government will say but look at all those youtubers always criticizing the government. If press freedom were dead, they would be behind bars. Well in my opinion the government has calculated that their viewership is small compared to the lap dog media viewers that the government can afford to let them be. In fact by letting them be they can maintain the illusion that press if free. 

 

So the Government calls itself the representative of the Mother of Democracy, Bharat, but has cultivated an army, media and foot-soldiers whose only purpose is to one-sidedly cut down every critique of the government and re-inforce the superiority of Hindus in our so-called democracy. It works best this way. Pretend neutrality so you stay light and clear while having your army do the dark work of hate. 

 

And unfortunately, the Foreign leaders, particularly Nato countries, have chosen to allow the PM to perpetuate this as shown by the recent G-21. Do they care for democracy? And do they think that the down-slide of democracy in India will not ultimately affect their own democracies? With a country set to be the largest population in the world it is obvious that the ideals and values of that country will spread through the world, particularly as other democracies allow it to represent itself as a democracy.

 

I don’t know why ‘India that is Bharat’ even bothers to keep the mask up. Any thoughts?

 

I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone but me. What are the holes here that I do not see? 

 

Anyway this being said I can do other things now. 900 plus words, decently strung together (I hope), in less than an hour — good writing practice.

 

G-21

 September 12, 2023

 You can’t please everyone and nor should you try. The reasons you might try to please someone at the cost of another someone could come from a wide variety of reasons. You actually agree with the someone you decide to please — personal preference, or that someone is more powerful, more useful, than the other one — a practical consideration. 

 

I’ve been watching some of the G-21 debate shows coming from India. Most, or should I say all, were/are tomtom-ing India’s ability to have got a consensus — particularly on the Russia-Ukraine situation. I’d prefer to call it an invasion of Ukraine by Russia than the war between Russia and Ukraine for really would Ukraine have voluntarily waged a war with Russia? 

 

This consensus was achieved by considerably watering down the words of the Bali declaration which named Russia as an aggressor. One of the participants of the show said this aspect of the Bali declaration was an aberration. I disagreed, shouting at him on the tv screen from my sofa. The statement this G-21 has adopted instead merely says, ‘Today’s era must not be of war…We call on all states to uphold the principles of international law including territorial integrity and sovereignty, international humanitarian law etc…’ Apparently this declaration upheld the human suffering in Ukraine while not blaming Moscow. 

 

Russia thanked India for preventing the Western leaders from Ukrainizing the summit. They were pleased. I don’t know who else, besides me, is dissatisfied by this but Ukraine has criticized the declaration’s text for not mentioning Russia. 

 

The only person on the debates I watched who called this what it is — shifting the balance towards the Russia-China bloc — was criticized by the rest of the participants. Some might say so what? About time Western countries were shown their place. 

 

Where do you stand on this? Is it enough to say states (powerful ones for sure) must honor the territorial integrity of other states (less powerful than them)? Is it enough to say that father’s must not abuse their children but when a father does, then respond by saying, ‘we sympathize with the pain of the children,’ but make no mention of the aggression of the father. You know what I mean!

 

I have presented it in a simplistic way. There are nuances to this. But the idealist in me does not like how the aggression has been swept under words of generality, under preferred values  and behaviors that the world should follow. How about living by those values too and calling out those who don’t? But this happens less and less everywhere. Lofty, nice sounding declarations, but no walking the talk. 

 

Of course, once this consensus was reached the summit could get on with the real work of economics. About one of these outcomes too, the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor, the same reporter from above pointed out how the details were not available. Who would be bank-rolling it, he asked. Some of the other participants did lower their enthusiasm for this achievement when this was mentioned. Kudos to them for being open to perspectives — one though still praised India the new super-power under PM Modi. 

 

So where do you stand? Was this summit the success that it says it was? 

 

Today I am pondering why I, who has no power to change any outcome of anything, even ponder these things and write blogs. I don’t know. But I am glad I feel strongly about things outside my power. I like this part of myself.

 

Now that I have got this out of my system I might actually do some productive work.

 

The Tao that can be…

September 5, 2023

Since I re-discovered my love for fountain pens, I have wanted to use them to copy something out, just to practice writing and to use my pens and inks more. Many fountain pen lovers do this regularly.

 

I never thought that what I would copy out would be four translations or interpretations (as all translations of something where the author is long gone are but interpretations) of the Tao Te Ching.

 

I spent the morning perusing the six translations I had downloaded from the library. I wanted to only read two or three in entirety but couldn’t eliminate three, so kept four. And then I wrote in different inks, and pens, (I won't bore non-fp lovers with the details of which pens and which inks and why) notes from the introduction and the first chapter of each on foolscap (A4) paper. And I hope to spend an hour everyday with one or two chapters until I finish them. I hope the library lets me renew the books for I won’t finish before they expire.

 

I guess it was the relentless search for the theme for my karate stories, the willingness to stay with the not knowing for as long as it took, and sheer good fortune or something akin to that which cannot really be named, that brought me to this task. I definitely, momentarily at least, must have been in sync with the Tao to arrive here. 

 

There is a joy in being here today that I haven’t felt for ages. A feeling that enduring the darkness of the last eight-nine months was worth it. I didn’t ever think that it would lead me (back) to the Tao Te Ching. But isn’t this the essence of my seeking? Perhaps all seeking?

 

I had a dream in 2003 when I asked for guidance to deepen my meditation that lead me to goju-ryu karate. Twenty years later, I see another layer in the wisdom of that simple dream. And I am eager to find further layers, though I don’t know if I ever will. To look for something that I don't know if I will ever find is both a 'senseless' task, and the only task that matters.

 

But the Tao Te Ching, whose characters can be described as, ‘to go together, or to see’ as well as ‘being in harmony with the tides and phases of the moon that brings us light in darkness’, is exactly what I need to try.   

 

If we all read the first verse of this classic, we all may finish the title of this blog differently, and maybe also the same person might finish it differently at a different juncture of time. Today I would simply say that the Tao that can be written about is not the eternal Tao.

 

Very short post as I have much else to get to today.

Mini Eureka Moment!

 September 5, 2023

 

Last Friday I hit a mini eureka moment. After having ‘What’s the theme?’ floating around in my head, at all times of day and night, I caught a glimmer and I think I have a ‘feeling’ for the organizing principle for the memoir, if I write it. Phew!

 

For a ‘nobody’, like me, even writing a memoir is edgy stuff. It’s like giving myself and my life an importance that it has no business having. Every life is unique, and I feel curious about most people I meet, but spending months excavating my memories to write a narrative about myself feels hugely narcissistic. 

 

This is not new. Many memoirists struggle with this but until this weird urge to explore and record my karate journey exists, I guess I will do it. 

 

But really there are so many more important issues in this world that I could spend time thinking and writing about, maybe even finding ways to act on, so why do this? Maybe many of us grapple with the conflict between the personal/family and the larger socio-political-environmental needs we have. I don’t know how you have done it but at different times in my life I have balanced these differently, neglecting one for the other, seldom finding phases of perfect balance. When one dominates there is depression and exhaustion and naturally the self moves to make space for the other? Maybe there are people within whom there is no conflict around this. Who know what, why, who, and how they exist around. I am not one of those and often I envy people who know. Or those people who don’t know but also don’t need to know. I don’t fall into that category either. So, I exist in this state of angsty unknowing for major parts of my life – it is exhausting at times, exhilarating at others. And perhaps many others do too?

 

Right now, I feel a lot of general anxiety about the state of the world, some unspecific fears about my personal life and choices. I wake and sleep with these yet when I am writing about this, the karate stuff, they fade and I feel happy — as I do when I am reading well written fiction or non-fiction, or something that makes me ponder, or absorbed in any kind of training, or of course picking an ink for a fountain pen, filling it, and writing on a blank sheet with it.  

 

It is nice to find the few things that shift that heavy mood. 

 

Oh, I am not going to reveal that organizing principle I thought I caught a glimpse of from the corner of my eye. It is too tiny, too vague, to name yet. I need to let it ripen within quietly.