Poets Against Arms Trade

The following poem was read by Mr. Henry Beissel in Iran in 1986, responding to statements by a Kuwaiti princess that this was no time for poetry, but a time to mobilize the military. Mr. Beissel read the poem again in June 2010 at the Ottawa arms trade (un)fair, one of the largest weapons bazaars in the world, supplying over 80 countries with weapons of death and destruction, surveillance, simulation (and some search and rescue!)

Manifesto in Times of War

Tell the enemy this:
that missiles can no more blow up the human spirit
than tanks can crush an idea.

Guns are the weapons of the impotent,
and I wouldn’t trade one line of true poetry for a thousand of them.
The blood flowers in a poem while bombs can only spill it.
Shrapnel can shatter glass and shred the flesh
but it cannot silence the song in a people’s heart.

Tell the enemy this: that our missiles fly on imagination’s wings
they’re poems aimed to explode in the heart
with all the violence of love and compassion.
It may flatter princes to think the sword mightier than the pen,
but we have the last word.
The true poet pioneers paths of freedom and places on the future’s mouth a brotherhood kiss with the rage of a rainstorm that makes the desert bloom.

Tell the enemy this: that every man, woman and child wears a helmet poets hammer from a metal
harder than any steel the metal of their faith in creation.
You can tear a person limb from limb
but you cannot sever a song from the listening heart,
and when your missiles long rust in scrapyards
today’s tears will have watered the desert
to make yesterday’s laughter blossom into tomorrow’s love.

Tell the enemy this: Yes, we’re still writing poems,
and if your grenades blow off our hands,
we’ll sing them into the future.

© Henry Beissel, 1986,2010

The Animal School: A Parable

Once upon a time the animals decided to do something decisive to meet the increasing complexity of their society. They held a meeting and finally decided to organise a school.

The curriculum consisted of running, climbing, swimming and flying. Since these were the basic behaviours of most animals, they decided that all the students should take all the subjects.

The duck was excellent at swimming, better in fact, than his teacher. He also did well in flying. But he was very poor in running and he was made to stay after school to practice. He had to drop swimming in order to get more time in which to practice running. This continued till his webbed feet were so badly damaged that he became only average at swimming· But average was an acceptable grade in the school, so nobody worried about that except the duck. The rabbit started at the top of her class in running, but finally had a nervous breakdown because of so much time spent in practicing swimming. The squirrel was excellent at climbing until he developed a psychological block in flying class, when the teacher insisted he start from the ground instead of from the tops of trees. He was forced to practice flying until he became muscle-bound and received a ‘C’ in climbing and a ‘D’ in running.

The eagle was the school’s worst discipline problem; in climbing class, she beat all of the others to the top of the tree but she insisted on using her own method to get there. The gophers, of course, stayed out of school and fought the tax levied for education because digging was not included in the curriculum. They apprenticed their children to the badger and later joined the groundhogs, and eventually started a private school offering alternative education.

Apprehending Gandhi…

Some of our events have led us to thinking about Gandhi in many different ways. We’re planning to study his impact in his times and his relevance in our times through our activities in the future. So this is an warming-up article that invokes curiosity by sharing a personal experience about reading Gandhi. Lets know him better like Mukta here is aspiring to. :)

Graphic Design by Mukta Ansikar

Few years ago, I was a ‘Gandhi-detractor’. .. It would be baffling to read such a line right at the beginning. But thats where my acquaintance with the skinny man began. And thats how I was exposed to the ‘Mahatma’! In school-days , we used to spoof over his appearance, used to fire our aversion by listening to the stories of the mistakes he made as a national leader.
Of course we did not form such opinions all by ourselves. They were some of our teachers, elders and people whom we considered ‘authority’, who sowed many of these views in me and my friends then. I used to thought of practice of Ahimsaa as an exhibition of powerlessness, inability to fight back. And I did not believe in Satya as potent and applicable value.
For the first two years of college, my attitude towards Mr. Gandhi remained quite the same. But as I stepped in FY class..Thanks to Philosophy. It made me realize how narrow my world-view was. It coached me to draw the lines between opinions, assumptions and biases. And it bestowed me the ‘Courage’ to say “Yes, I was wrong. I will start to grasp it all over again .” So, I decided to do the same with this person. I admitted that my understanding of Gandhi was based on someone else’s vague arguments and now I should explore him by myself.
An year has passed to that, I’ve started with his autobiography: ‘My experiments with truth’.
‘Gandhi’ is a journey. And he did not ‘happen’.He was ‘made’. The rational, critical.. the ‘questioner’ was always awake within him. From very small age. That is why he could retrospect. Was he adept in doing so? -No. He had many mis-beliefs, biases carried on by the people around or imposed by customs. But he at times took kind of a charge of his life, his beliefs, his decisions to shape his character the way ‘he’ wanted. So he did not flow with any of the emotional, philosophical, religious, practical impulses blindly.
He is a good story-teller but telling one’s own story by oneself with the element of ‘truth’ ..I think it takes astronomic audacity . But the audacity which seems ‘enormous’ to me ,had simply became a part of his personality. After years of sincere practice. He could not bear the discomfort brought by ‘untruth’ even for a moment. And he did not suppress it too as we do ..at every step. I remember him saying something like this to a missionary : “I do not want to get rid of the consequences of my sins, i want to be freed from the sinful nature, sinful acts.” That is why he could ‘mend’ his mistakes.
There are many things I have started admiring him for. There are many things I have decided to follow. This is my journey to understand the flourish of Gandhi’s philosophy and its significance, practicality.
I always ask myself – what i would be ending up in? In this case, Will I finally acknowledge him as a ‘Mahatma’ and start adoring him? -No, I will not. I believe in gravity of his ideology, influence of his work and the transformations it led to. I definitely appreciate his contribution in India’s Movement for Freedom.
But once you start ‘worshiping’ any ‘person’ for his/her magnanimity, majesty.. anything, you insult his/her ‘being human’. You forget his limits as a mortal, finite though extraordinary being. And moreover, you stop accepting his mistakes, misbehavior trying to justify it. You do not analyze but keep ‘advocating’ the person. And you give up rationalizing. Gandhiji was himself against this.
Well, I am reading Gandhi, grasping his morals and I’ll do it as far as I it interests me. And I say, It is a pleasant, peaceful experience.
– Mukta Asnikar.

‘CHANGE’: Through the Language of Pictures.

Walt Disney had said ‘…pictures speak the most universally understood language.’ So we thought why not explore this language and reach new places of understanding of a particular theme? This time the theme is ‘CHANGE’ and the two pictures are here and here.

Please give your take on these and feel free to go beyond the basics. So, let’s see (in a different light) how it goes. :)

Bullet Holes

Here’s a poem by Alia Farooqui. After you’re done reading it, do share how you interpreted it, especially the context of the poem, and other wonderings such as ‘why would..?’s and ‘what if…?’s. Maybe in the end Alia could herself tell us what she had in mind while crafting the verse, and we could celebrate our variety of imagination.

Bullet Holes

He fired,

The shot travelled,

Travelled at the speed of light.

She didn’t know,

Didn’t know when it her.

She was standing near the window,

Just after her bath.

She was drying her wet hair,

Her skin tingling,

With the feel of her wet hair.

Bang,

The bullet was fired.

It hit the window first,

bursting the glass,

shattering an illusion.

It grazed the curtain,

left a singeing tear.

Then finally;

It hit her,

left her gasping for breath.

She looked down,

felt her hand

going to her chest.

She felt something warm,

something thick,

something red.

Her family saw her, lifeless

slumped against the wall.

They saw something more,

A bullet hole.

Where were we?

“Where were we, re baba?”, not only you, the genuine readers, but even us, the should-be keepers of this blog were wondering this for quite a while. Embarrassment took refuge on our faces when we realized we do have a rusting, dormant little blog, that needs a resurrection before it becomes extinct. We tried to do something many times but it seems a blog cant be taken for granted like we do with our parents, friends, and almost everyone.

So we won’t take our blog and our readers for granted. Gluing the apology of the lost time and value due to our carelessness to the promise of keeping our blog bubbling and brimming with ideas and thoughts; I hope we (the readers and the keepers, often the same people) go together hand-in-hand and
create a space to discuss, to precipitate our ideas, to be poesy, to view things in different lights with different spects, to connect and celebrate our togetherness.

All said and done, let us take you into a black and white flashback into ‘where we really were’. We last updated in July, after which we screened the Japanese Anime movie ( Barefoot Gen ) to observe Hiroshima Day. We took up another man-made disaster, the Bhopal Gas Tragedy for a group discussion later, which moved us quite a bit in terms of impact and the ‘what-can-we-do-now?’ questioning.

Next up, we took up ‘Peep Culture‘ as a broad theme, screened ‘The Truman Show‘; and discussed ‘From Pop Culture to Peep Culture’ with a main focus on reality tv. (By the way, this blog, like any other, is also a quantum of peep culture). Towards the end of the year, we also did a picture analysis plus discussion on a similar topic: ‘Society and Surveillance. Right to Privacy vs Right to Information’with the spotlight on the UID debate and the Radia Tapes.

We visited Hiware Bazaar ‘the model village’ in September, and participated in KKPKP’s eco-friendly Ganeshotsav.

We celebrated twice with our study circle friends, once in September and once in January (Louis Braille Day). We also worked with the study circle before and during internal exams. We came back to prepare for Human Rights Week in December. We started with a street-play, a poster exhibition and a few activities in our college, then took it to 5 more colleges. We screened ‘One Night in Bhopal‘ beech mein, and concluded the week with a poetry and music session with Open Space.

With/at Open Space, we were a part of many ‘Peace Talk’ lectures: by Linda Hess, by Nivedita Menon, by Dilip Simeon and by Teesta Setalvad. All these lectures brewed an insightful thought about violence, peace and justice which was very relevant since disorder and violence has become more ingrained in the fabric of our surroundings.

Some of us also attended a film-making workshop at Open Space, by director Nitin Das.
We learnt about the technicalities of film-making, and tried our hand at some of them.

We celebrated Sameeksha-2011 in January by learning about the intriguing ways in which tribal and folk life exists. It was different in terms of scale, experience and activities from previous Sameekshas and events; but the preparation for the fest was pretty enriching.

Also, we performed our street play called ‘Paniless Panipur’ at the Dept of Sociology, University of Pune and put up the best of our posters. We learnt how to work on short notice, exchange roles and put up a good show.

Throughout the year, volunteers visited Door Step school and Ankur school. Ayushi Rawat narrates her beautiful experience with Doorstep school, here.
The last but far from least activity was a poetry-reading session with Anjali Nerlekar about the Kala Ghoda Poems of Kolatkar. What we read was the most crisp, honest and lucid expression of a society and the way it negotiates with a physical space.

So that’s all we did, folks. Hope we don’t have to roll it all up in a glob article next year. We will make sure we keep you and us posted on what’s happening, what’s up and down around, and include what you want to contribute.

Let’s water this plant of a blog with articles, musings, photos, doodles, stories, verse, analysis, even limericks will do re!

Going back ‘to School’: The Doorstep Experience.

I first heard about Door Step School in one of our meetings of the Sociology Club. Doorstep School is a centre of non-formal education for the children of construction site workers and slum children. I first visited Door Step around 6 months ago. I remember I was very reluctant to go as I had a bad mood that day. Finally, out of a moral obligation, I decided to go. I went there along with a friend of mine. That one day, changed me, it moved me. I’d never imagined this would be so great. Since it was my first time, I hadn’t really planned anything. So, all we did was sing songs, rhymes and play games. It was a transforming experience. The kids, they were bubbling with enthusiasm. They had so much energy in them, if channelized appropriately; we could really light up so many homes, literally and figuratively. There was something contagious about that energy, the eagerness, the inquisitiveness. In our classes, we try to break the social constructs, but how big the difference between theory and practical really is, was experienced by me at Door Step. The kids at Door Step School come from very vulnerable backgrounds and so there were many apprehensions. There were some notions which dissolved when I went there and interacted with them. I ‘knew’ that such and such constructs exist and we need to deconstruct them to analyze but there I could ‘feel’ it. And I think the ‘feeling’ part is always very important.

Since that first Saturday I have been more than eager to go to Door Step School. And now, there is a comfort level that has been established between me and the kids. It is very important to have a one to one relation with them and it feels great to know that I have been able to achieve that with most of them. It’s a beautiful feeling when you go there and some of them are standing in the balcony and as soon as they see you, they come running to greet you. Also, when you leave, some of them come to you and tell you about their day or what they did in their other classes. It’s overwhelming.

The first thing that anybody would notice about those kids when they go there is their enthusiasm. They are all so energetic and waiting in anticipation, to be involved. Eagerness and will comes out very profoundly. And I believe that has made it easier for me to work with those kids. You get a feeling that they like this place and are willing to spend time here.

There are a few things that I know from my own experience at school. And I tried to keep all those things in mind when I went to Door Step. One of those things was: the attention span. The kids’ attention span varies according to the activity being conducted and the individual interests. So, there always have to be things to distract them from the monotony of the activity. I started thinking of the teachers that we liked when we were in school and why we liked them and tried to apply it with the kids. There are a few kids who won’t open up initially but they do eventually when the mood has been set.
I try that whatever activity I take has to have more inputs from them and less from me. So, sometimes, I go talk to them about things which are happening around them. Whenever, we watch a short (10-12mins) animated story, we have a discussion after that on the same.

There is a minimum ‘order’ of the way things are done. Like, for example, we once had this activity where, I would say a word out loud and they had to either write down or draw or express in any form they want, the first thing that comes to their mind after hearing that word. So, here the medium of expression could be anything, writing, drawing or even talking about it.

Another thing I noticed was the language. When you ask the children their names, a few of them, usually the elder kids, fold their hands, stand straight and proudly say, in English, in full sentence “My name is so and so”. When I ask them to write their names, they ask me whether it’s supposed to be in English and I tell them they may write in whatever language they are comfortable with. And some of them call me near them and timidly tell me that they don’t know English. And it is the shame in their voice and the feeling of inferiority in their expressions that makes me feel sad. Not all the children there are Marathi speakers, even if they are Maharashtrians; they have very different dialects of the language.

When we talk about kids, we can’t leave out fights or bullies. The elder children bully the younger ones. There have been quite a few fights but the younger ones don’t resist or hit back. When I would try to call the kids’ attention to me, one or two of the elder kids would take the lead and start hitting the other children and forcing them to sit down and listen to me. At such times, it becomes very difficult because I don’t want to yell at anyone. And I don’t think yelling or silencing helps at all.

There is also the ambitious, attention–seeking, ‘ideal’ student kind. They would never disobey you and would voluntarily ‘monitor’ the other kids. I learnt and am still learning a lot about kids’ behavior. Whenever they are working, I always observe them, very intently. Each one of them has her or his own style of doing things and it’s so beautiful to see it being synchronized in movement; like noises turning into a rhythm.

There is a minimum ‘order’ of the way things are done. Like, for example, we once had this activity where, I would say a word out loud and they had to either write down or draw or express in any form they want, the first thing that comes to their mind after hearing that word. So, here the medium of expression could be anything, writing, drawing or even talking about it.

I personally never liked the seating arrangement we had in schools; it makes the teacher seem very unapproachable. And the whole thing about “Don’t talk amongst yourselves”, doesn’t appeal to me. I think, if the students sit in a few circles or semi circles equidistant from the teacher, it will encourage the necessary interaction among
the kids as well as the teacher’s approachability.

When I go to Door Step School on Saturdays, I don’t know what age group of kids am I going to get to interact with. I might have prepared something according to the kids aged 7-8 and I might get kids aged 4-5. Or the kids might just get bored of the activity. Hence, there always needs to be a ‘Plan B’.

One time, a group of girls came to me after the session when we were leaving and one of them started telling me what songs she wants me to get to class next Saturday so that she could dance on them. She candidly asked me to prepare and rehearse one of the songs because she wants me to sing it to them. It feels wonderful.

Going back to the first day, I remember when we were returning from Door Step, the journey back home was probably the longest silent journeys with a smile fixed to my face.

Ayushi Rawat.

Reading Together: Kala Ghoda Poems by Kolatkar. With Anjali Nerlekar.

Arun Kolatkar through his work, tried to connect poetry with the world outside. Kala Ghoda Poems by Arun Kolatkar (Pras Publications, Mumbai, 2004) deal with urban spaces. The poet, through his poems brings the lives in the margins of the society center stage.

Title

The title ‘Kala Ghoda’ comes from a very crowded location in South Bombay, where is located one of the very famous art galleries in Bombay-the Jahangir Art Gallery. This is a space that has imposing colonial monuments, like the Rajabhai tower and the Prince of Wales museum. The Hindi phrase, “Kala Ghoda” literally means “black horse”; it refers to an equestrian monument of King Edward VII in black granite, a statue that was donated by Sir Alfred Sassoon in commemoration of the King’s visit to India and to Bombay in 1876. This monument was vandalized by some miscreants with a nationalist political agenda in 1965 and it now graces the zoological gardens of the Jijamata Udyan in Byculla , Bombay. But the area continues to be referred to by this now non-existent statue of colonial hegemony.

Prof.Anjali mentioned that there is an aptness in the usage of the phrase ‘Kala Ghoda’ as it reminds us of the imperialist power (of British Raj) and how it was substituted by a ‘Neo-colonial Society’ of Capitalist Bombay which marginalizes the poor and criminalizes poverty.

Site

The lives of these urban poor populate Kolatkar’s poems. Anjali Nerlekar laid great focus on the ‘site’ of Kolatkar’s poetry, in other words the geography of Kala Ghoda. She emphasized that studying ‘space’ is not just measuring the area or other geometrical proportions, but understanding the relations established in the space. Thus the focus is on ‘relational’ space, termed as ‘site’. Kala Ghoda is a triangular space, called a traffic island (trisland, a word coined by Kolatkar). This triangle has ‘rounded’ corners, thus is not a rigid structure. Anjali explores the meaning of ‘softened, rounded’ corners of the Kala Ghoda triangle. Rounded corners remove the inflexibility of the site thus linking the lives in Kala Ghoda with the world outside the site. The rounded corners make it impossible to understand things as ‘black’ and ‘white’. It removes boundaries and binaries. To further explain this Anjali Nerlekar gives an example- Let us imagine a dark room with a lighted candle in its centre. If you were asked where is light you would point at the candle. If you were asked where darkness is you would point at the corner of the room. However, the space in between (where light and darkness meet) cannot be understood as ‘light’ or ‘darkness’!

Subjugated knowledge

Anjali said that the Kolatkar’s poetry is a resurrection of ‘subjugated’ knowledges. Subjugated knowledge are ideas, issues, arguments which are not visible to the ‘normalized’, ‘institutionalized’ set up. It is an effort to study the ‘invisible’ from underneath. Anjali linked this central aspect of Kolatkar poems to our micro-level ‘Informal Economy in Ganesh Utsav’ Study. She said that such studies essentially try to understand marginality from bottom. The monolithic and central explanations are dismantled through such efforts. There is strong rejection of globalism and ‘functional coherence’ of institutionalized knowledge. In the context of our study based on Ganesh Utsav, Anjali said that the dominant understanding of Ganesh Utsav of being ‘purely Hindu’ and ‘purely Marathi’ are troubled by exposing the contribution made by a large ‘Non-Hindu’, ‘Migrant’ workforce. By dismantling the dominant it becomes very difficult to assume. It removes the two-dimensional nature (flatness) of the issue and points at its depths.

While mentioning the significance of recording subjugation, Anjali pointed at the fact that there is a strong nexus between’ knowledge’ and ‘power’. The ‘accountability’ to the respondent is often challenged in the discharge and use of knowledge. This is a dilemma which concerns researchers, poets, artists etc. Arun Kolatkar calls himself a voyeur as he peeps into the private lives of urban poor on the street. He deals with this voyeurism by just allowing a ‘peep’ into their lives and not expanding it further. Anjali referred to the 31st poem (Breakfast in Kala Ghoda, a series of 31 poems) to explain this further. Kolatkar writes – ‘the pop-up cafeteria disappears like a castle in a children’s book……’ which clearly indicates that the lives of the homeless poor are not enduringly exhibited for ‘free’ gaze.

Discussing poems…..

Anjali Nerlekar discussed four poem series- Pi-dog, Meera, the barefoot queen of the Crossroads and Breakfast Time at Kala Ghoda.

Through his poems Kolatkar draws an entire gamut of the many kinds of people and things that throng the streets of Kala Ghoda– as in the child prostitute; the idli vendor; idlis; the waste picker; pi –dog; the grandma; the blind man; the alcoholic and so on..

Anjali began with the ‘Pi-dog’ series. Anjali emphasized on the spatial descriptions of Kala Ghoda (a triangular island with rounded corners). In the poem a pi-dog claims ownership of Kala Ghoda in the early morning hours. Probably that would be the only time a stray dog could call the place its own.

As she progressed, Prof. Anjali brought to our notice the use of subversive idioms by Kolatkar in his poems. Words like ‘bitch’ are considered to be outside the norm of civility. But by the very use of such words Kolatkar comments on the social construct of (in) appropriateness of words and phrases. He mocks at the idea of purity and impurity which is integral to the Hindu religion.

Through Meera, Kolatkar tries to dismantle the elitist, exclusive, museum nature of art by describing garbage piles outside the Jahangir Art Gallery as art installations. And the poet states that the little piles of garbage collected in front of the elite art gallery are the true works of art because they are ephemeral, the real key to Bombay life and a homage to the people on whose backs it is built ( ….. ‘Homage to Bombay, one’, ‘Homage to Bombay, two’)

Prof. Anjali spoke about Michel Duchamp (‘Dadaism’) who also tried to redefine the conventional understanding of art. However such acts of rebellion get co-opted with time.

In ‘Barefoot Queen of the Crossroads’ Kolatkar stares at a child prostitute as she stands ,back to her sun to dry her washed hair. Prof. Anjali states that what Kolatkar is doing is precisely an act of voyeurism. The people living on the streets have no privacy of their own; they are exposed to public gaze. These stares which include the gaze of a poet (….poets with tongues hanging out….) create a kind of ‘privacy’ which is out of sheer contempt. She further said that documenting the urban poor is in one way taking advantage of them.

In the last poem series, ‘Breakfast time at Kala Ghoda’ Kolatkar gives a panoramic view of people having breakfast across the globe and then slowly moving towards India, Bombay and ultimately Kala Ghoda. Prof. Anjali spoke about the ‘politics’ of food. She said that more than the breakfast it is the context in which it is positioned, consumed that lends it meaning. The subjectivity and sensuality with which Kolatkar describes idlis in one of the poems points out at the pleasure with which the homeless urban poor of Kala Ghoda have them. This may be their only meal for the day and thus becomes a heaven- like experience for them. Idlis being described as Infant Krishna also points at the same fact. The homeless poor of Kala Ghoda resist by staying alive on these idlis served by Annapurna.

-N.Shobhana

Sameeksha 2011: Celebrating The Folk Spirit.

This year for Sameeksha we tried to experience life from another point of view, from the point of view of the Adivasis. The fest was held on 31st January 2011 and our theme was to celebrate the vast knowledge and the distinct culture of the Adivasis.
Since our theme was so different this time, we thought we’d approach it differently as well, instead of a poster exhibition, we had a hatke-matke exhibition, we had all painted some pattern or the other on the matkas, some had Warli paintings, while some had art that depicted other tribes; along with this display of art, some matkas showed information, like the depiction of a Gond settlement and other information about the Adivasis of India. It was an entirely different experience, the responsibility of painting wasn’t primarily on the artistically gifted but even those who might feel that they were lacking in that department, let go of their inhibitions and grabbed a paintbrush and let their creativity flow, in turn realizing that they weren’t so bad at art to begin with! In addition to the matkas, we also had a hut that the students made from scratch. The dawn of 31st January 2011 brought to realization the community architectural dream of the Sameeksha hut, complete with colorful painted walls( as inspired by the Adivasis) and its entrance graced with rangoli that was made using natural colors that was prepared by the students itself. Haldi, rice and dal got a whole new meaning!
To get this ambiance to life we had events such as folk games, applying mehendi and a quiz. All of us got in touch with our bachpan with games like Tinka trying very hard not to get out! For those of us who were feeling a little more adventurous, tried out ‘ Reigning in the Deer’, where we tried hard to lasso a(fake) deer, but realized it’s not easy as it looks with some players ending up lassoing themselves. The quiz was a light one but it made us realize that there’s more to Adivasis than we know. That they have languages cultures and rights.
Next was the street play titled “Gaon Chodab Nahin” which was inspired by the protest video of the same title. Agreed, that for our fest we wanted to celebrate the culture of the Adivasis, but looking at various aspects of their life and not looking at the violence that they have to face wouldn’t be right. This violence might not leave any Adivasi culture left to celebrate! So, our street play dealt with the issue of the Adivasis being displaced, their culture and life being snatched from them by the forces of Development and how amongst these atrocities committed against them the Adivasis unite and vow to fight against these forces, to fight for what is rightfully theirs.
All these activities combined, made us understand that Adivasis aren’t “jhingalala people” as is normally understood. Certain aspects of their life that we consider “rudimentary” and “primitive” have deeper meaning and purpose than we would like to know. We might consider them as weeds that need to be pulled out as we don’t see any apparent use for them but it’s time we understood that even “weeds” have the right to life and have their own intelligence.

Lecture Notes: ‘Going beyond the Hum Saab Ek Hain Rhetoric’. By Dilip Simeon with Open Space

Dilip Simeon started off by stating that rebellion against dominant rhetoric has been his engagement since a very long time.

On Gandhi

Prof Simeon went through the papers that he was carrying along. He held up a 1931 photograph of Mahatma Gandhi with the female textile- mill workers of Darwin-Manchester.1931 was a time when the Swadeshi Movement was at its peak. This resulted into a decline in imports of foreign garment. The decline severely affected the female textile workers of England. They lost their livelihood.

It was in this background that Mahatma Gandhi decided to pay a visit to the female workers. They were convinced about the significance of the Swadeshi Andolan and also demonstrated their solidarity. The photograph is a material proof of this genuine love and respect. Dilip Simeon added that no other World Leader could possibly click a photo (a brilliant one!) with workers who have lost their livelihoods precisely because of him!

Gandhi was not a peace builder, he was a trouble maker. The British documents of the early 20th century record Mahatma Gandhi as an ‘anarchist’. He was a rebel/revolutionary with a difference. He realized that non-violence is in the ‘core’ of courage.

Ideological Blinkers

The terrorist insurgency of India began in 1907. Khudiram Bose is among the first ‘martyrs’ of the Indian Revolutionary Terrorist Movement against British Imperialism. Dilip Simeon described the event that led to the martyrdom of Khudiram Bose. He clearly pointed out that Bose never killed any British officer instead killed two women who were the officer’s friend’s wife and daughter. Martyrdom is the greatest enemy of truth. The alive interpret martyrdom. The focus is never on what actually happened. No one asked why they were punished. The murders of the two women are explained in terms of ‘collateral damage’ and abberation!!

To explain this further he quoted a recent example of Graham Stains Judgment (The murder of an Australian missionary, Graham Stains and his two young children) The court observed that communal animosity reduces the crime of murder. In this obnoxious judgment, which reduced the sentence of the Murderer from ‘capital punishment’ to ‘life time imprisonment’, there was no mention made of the two young kids who were also burnt alive. This example amply proves that, the focus is never on the act of crime committed. Prof. Simeon also mentioned a 1985 PUDR Case which urged the court to investigate upon the Sikh massacre of 1984. PUDR also submitted a report to sufficiently prove their stance. The Judge harshly dismissed the plea and stated that the Sikh massacre of 1984 had a ‘background’. The background was the murder of ‘Indira Gandhi’ (a Hindu) by her Sikh bodyguard. Thus in yet another instance ‘communal hatred’ reduces and even invalidates the crime as horrendous as ‘mass murder’.

How is violence justified? How do ideologies help in this process of justification?

Dilip Simeon, who is critical about the Naxal Movement, was once a part of it. (….I was a Maoist and now I am not a Maoist…) He was in the revolutionary underground of the first Naxal Movement in 1969-1972.

He said that Naxalism is an intellectually driven movement. The use of violence is justified by saying that the goal (which is supposedly good) is more important than the way implemented to realize it. There is always an element of faith which justifies violence for a ‘greater’ good. Dilip Simeon referred to an EPW (around 2006) article, where in Azad and Ganpati the general secretaries of the Maoist groups justified the use of violence. When they were asked about the killing of civilians the answer given was remarkable. They said that it was unfortunate (a useful euphemism) but added that war actions cannot have clinical precision!

Prof. Simeon explained that ideology is like a stone in your head. It is dogmatic and claims to have superior knowledge of the world and good intentions. Thus with such ideological blinkers it becomes very easy to ‘dismiss’ the other viewpoint. All ideological dogmas exonerate themselves from moral values which are applicable to individuals. This self- exoneration helps them to act with impunity.

Militarism and Democracy

In his lecture he explained how Fascism and Radical Conservatism have embraced democracy for militaristic goals. Modernity is all about war and militarism. It is overtaking our culture. He pointed out at the usage of words – as in war against terror; to fight AIDS.

The modern nation state first democratized military. All communities were democratically allowed to be a part of military. Democratization of military (violence) was aimed at organizing people for military (violent) purposes. Dilip Simeon interestingly draws a link of similarity between the right wing and the left wing extremism. The similarity being, a mutual admiration among the opposing groups, when it comes to ‘mobilizing’ masses. Dilip Simeon mentioned that the Erstwhile Soviet Union was ‘an armed camp of the proletariat’ from the day of its formation till its collapse in 1989. He also mentioned that notorious a dictator like Hitler was also democratically elected.

Prof Simeon further adds that in our present times which are characterized by violence the role of ‘truth’ is diminished to a mathematical dimension.

In his conclusion Prof Simeon stated that Democracy is the ‘Rule of Law’. Real generosity to the future is giving everything to the present. Futuristic ideas are ideological in nature. The focus should be in the present. Our intelligence lies in our capacity to make linkages. He further added that we live in an Era of Nihilism which does not provide any common premise to discuss issues of concern.

QUESTIONS

Relevance of Gandhi in Present Times…..

Gandhi considered truth and non-violence, more important than nationalism. As mentioned earlier intelligence is our capacity to make linkages, this could be explained further when we learn how Gandhi interpreted Mahabharata. He did not glorify the violence in Mahabharata on the contrary he pointed out at the ‘futility’ of violence.

-N. Shobhana