The privilege to delve in philosophical inquiry and nature of self, is a rare one. It involves not only a satisfied stomach, but also an inquisitive mind, for a stomach satisfied without an inquisitive deposition is more likely to pass-out than inquire anything, just as an inquisitive mind with non-satisfied physical hunger, is likely to be not able to think freely. But, does this make philosophical inquiry, usually associated with lofty thoughts of a well fed and read university-goer, totally irrelevant and frivolous in the real world, ranging from chaiwalas, rickshawalas and small time wage earners to doctors, professors and big time intellectual wage earners? I`d say, not at all, for philosophical inquiry, with all its vague metaphysics and high sounding ideas, IS, the most immediate and physical inquiry, based on sound logic and reasoning of the world outside and inside of all these mind bogglingly motley brackets of humans, because it tries to put out all absurdities and harmonizes the world, making it a better place to be in.
In this sense, a highly relevant form of this inquiry is manifested in the cultural context, called political philosophy; inquiry in to the nature of a cultural entity, in today`s world, outlined by the national boundary of a modern nation-state or a country, on a most basic level. It seeks to put straight all the complexities and bizarre within the boundary to provide an atmosphere where its body of humans can live peacefully, constantly striving toward self actualization, the highest achievable goal of a human life. And an inquiry within this, more or less imagined boundary of a culture, situated in the southern hemisphere of a little blue-green planet, third from the a star named sun, of a solar system somewhere in the lower left corner of a galaxy suspended freely in a timeless-spaceless capsule called universe, doesn’t make it meaningless or irrelevant, for it IS, aimed at making its inhabitants achieve all that limitless possibilities, that a non-starting-unending-time-space construct, essentially promises.
Given the fact that this culture of India, as we like to call this cultural entity now, is about to plunge itself into another political construct of this inquiry named democracy, which has been going on in some form or the other, for the past 50 centuries or so, is considered much saner and efficient than the remaining wide array of mostly failed human attempts to create a perfect one. And the utter inescapability of this duty to give a name and face to our highest decision making unit, we have to stop for a second and inquire into the nature of this construct and the most important decision making unit of it, from within and without and try to harmonize them with the present absurdities.
Democracy, as a construct within a culture, has been there on this little-third planet from sun essentially since its ancient times of history. Political philosophers from the Greek Aristotle to close cultural one Chankya, have all proposed essentially similar constructs, where the decision making capacity is invested in a body of its cultural inhabitants, rather than a sole ruthless or enlightened inhabitant, which tends to turn into a perfect horror-show every modern, post modern or present time. Our memory knows that whenever a Hitler or a Genghis Khan or even a delusional Asoka has played the show, how it has ended with howls and heart-attacks. The present cultural memory aches with these late realizations of the faulty choices embedded in the past, but only on hindsight, for whenever a show is being put, it is for a certain brackets of humans to enjoy, who keep them running, till these brackets become so insignificant that they cannot hold the ocean-size amount of faith put in them, by the political constructs of that culture, by the entire body of humans within it.
Democracy, in the post-colonized cultural construct of India, started with attaining of freedom from the occupying-British in 1947, is a Universal Adult Franchise, where every adult of the this culture despite her color/caste/creed/sect/region and religion has the right to choose the humans in capacity to take decisions, to provide the perfect atmosphere for the body of humans within it, to enlarge their possibilities, and achieve their own self.
Steeping into some mature 60th birthday, after rising and falling with the tides of time, democracy in this cultural entity has come to be identified with meaningless tussle between these mind bogglingly motley brackets of humans and an increasing sense of insecurity in the larger body of humans who themselves put these brackets to make things easy. This contradicting situation has created stark absurdities and dichotomies, just so inhumane, that one feels incredulously dizzy and downright deranged, even while strolling down a gali on a, calm-Sunday-late-afternoon, calling it a good show, after all.
Most of the non/metropolitan members of the various sub-political communities of this culture, while fight for the basic physical aspect of survival and meaningless procreation or lacking insightful inquisitive disposition, remain a rat in some of the many rat races going on and on without ceasing, the bracket with capacity to make decisions, in itself has become one of the most coveted pieces of cheese, for it seems the biggest, brightest, cheesiest. In a culture were, the decision making bracket of humans have become so fruitlessly insignificant that it is not able to nourish and educate even a forsaken miniscule 4 year old, who comes, trying desperately to sell some red and blue cheap bullpens, followed by her brother, elder sister, third cousin, fourth son, fifth neighbor and some four or five equally helpless friends, as one stops at the red light in front of that burnt building on Barakhamba Road. And one need not go anywhere else to know any better about ‘possibilities’ and ‘self’ and its ‘actualization’ and whatnot, because this Barakhamba Road is at the centre of the centre from where this democracy is emanating in this culture. This is just one single strand of that gigantic hairball of an absurdity that this body of humans in this culture are so starkly unaware of, for the rat race doesn’t leave much scope for inquiry.
But, as the maddening timeless-spaceless capsule boils down to some mere hours, days, years on this certainty of a planet, this largely warm culture has a chance to take that small initiative that can turn millions and billions of coming possibilities actually possible. And this time the body of humans of this culture, has found a totem of change in the form of a ‘cap’. Sadly, this totemic God of a change is already taking forms which would even make a blind see the future in invisible darkness. Falling off of an inactive Creator, passing to his renegade of a Messenger, the latest version of this ‘cap’ says, 'MODI for PM'.
A Prime Minister of this culture`s form of democracy, is the most important decision making authority, and its incumbent upon the person serving as that authority to make the geographical region within the country, at least bearable for every human inhabiting it. And the fact that more and more inhabitants are adopting the hippest new totem of change, (itself three generations old) makes it clear that they are being spoon-fed on a different arrangement of things rather than change. Carbon is carbon even in its differently arranged forms of chandan, churan or the chared remains of life in a shamshan.
MODI, the person who is reselling this recycled cap, broadly bases his viability, bordering on demanding it, with looming Orwellian postures, on the fact that within the confines of a small sub-political entity, Gujarat, within this much larger collection of some 30 such entities, this tout of change, has created a highly complex and possibly evolved mechanism which keeps throwing these tantalizingly amazing figures and stats which claim to be defeating the West at their own game. Firstly, the West is not this part of this perfect sphere of mamma Earth, at least immediately, and stats dont create possibilities, but rather point out to where things are going. But with all due respect to the oncoming fellow passengers of recent or earlier times, this culture today offers a far limited, suffocated, badly truncated, curtailed rip-off disk of a possibility, even in comparison to what it started off by offering some 25 centuries ago. This is a dichotomy, which simply put means, can Modern be modern? without being meaningfully better than Ancient?
But in the light of the ongoing public discourse, happening through the omnipresent channels of communication, a rather vaguely-morbid-mystery surrounds MODI as a highly complex and unprecedented list of awards and accolades never heard before, cloud that entire red autumn which ended with a lot of non-live organic carbon scattered everywhere and made MODI come to light outside the confines of that little subculture i.e. for the total lack of empathy he showed which still remains essentially unresolved. Even the body of humans supporting or not supporting MODI cannot help but smart or wonder why the whole grand MODI-syndrome is grander than those little kids knocking constantly at closed doors, at stopped red lights, trying to sell the tools of evolution and enlightenment and everything along with it, while all the time remaining completely unaware of who sits behind those closed doors and why their own existence come to life only when the light is red?
There isn’t any way to be absolutely sure what happened then, for most of the people immediately involved are either no more or are conspicuous by their absence, which leaves us to trace the developments through recorded but forever evolving, history, on newspapers, on magazines, in chat rooms, on line discussions and court records. But history, essentially a collective memory of the body of humans involved in its making, remains subjective, and can change from one telling individual to another, depending on what bracket that individual belongs to, in the show. But the essence remains, just like a lotus, in a quagmire, smiling like Truth. The horrifying news of a genocide in that sub-political unit of this culture, which was making decisions through MODI, was followed by the 'justice drive' to find a culprit for this amazing but not unprecedented suffering and pain inflicted on the body of humans in Gujarat. And the process still continues, more or less, trying to justify or denounce the phantom phenomenon, by chasing names and faces of which essentially remain nothing more than formless carbon, floating throughout this timeless-spaceless capsule, probably at peace, forgetting, forgiving. And all the literature/advisement/propaganda/senselessmindbog, arising out of this ‘justice drive’, has given the body of humans of this culture, just one single meaningful metaphor, complete even in its isolation, like Truth, that can possibly be the only way to understand the genesis of this ‘cap’ we are on the threshold of placing above us. And that highly ambiguous uncertain Kafka`s K of a metaphor, is a woman shrouded in black, constantly changing her statements, endlessly shuffling through the labyrinth of all local, district, state, national, ultra national courts and stalls mongering justice, all of which would probably cease to even exist, realizing their own meaningless existence based on carbon in its very primitive form, if she could even utter a single cry of the horror she must have felt or say what really passed and not just keep proving ceaselessly, with no logic or reasoning in even asking, to what she really felt when she saw humans chopping each other like dead carcass of a buffalo, during that red-autumn-massacre which she survived, somehow. But because even a physically-satisfied-philosophically- inquisitive mind behind this construct of a construct of a construct cannot remember the name of that woman, I think, the relevance of it is already lost on this humongous body of humans, who ARE nothing more than a big black buffalo, in today`s Republic of India. And as long as this culture is inhabited by a body of a black Buffalo, it will need a Rancher to direct it, tell it not just what is right or wrong, but ALSO what is Truth and non-Truth, holding a gun, riding a horse and yeah, wielding a stinging-biting whip to direct the curious baby Buffalo, if it tries to take a stroll in the pastures.
But this inquiry into the essentially 'MODI for PM' discourse, will remain crooked and unsubstantiated, without the within aspect of the inquiry. MODI, born Narendra Damodardas Modi, during a time when, the sub-political community of Gujarat today, was a part of the bigger Bombay state then, spent some time of his childhood selling chai in trains going in and out of the Vadnagar station, before he opened a tea stall along with his brother, near a bus terminal. As a satisfied inquisitive mind whose only knowledge of the little Narendra, comes from the few scattered literary references here and there, I cannot help but speculate, that some were in the unending clatter of cups and kettles of this much bigger tea stall, that the little boy from back in the days, possibly about to acquire as MODI in a few weeks, is not *actually* hiding in one of the compartments of a train going in and out the Vadnagar station in the 1950s, doing what he loves best, adding different forms of carbon and watching it magically turn into a soul-quenching-warm-cup of chai, and then giving it to people and making them calm and content, feeling proud of justifying his name, Narendra, the King of Men, who keeps his people happy and satisfied on an unending stressful train journey, helping them reach wherever they want to go. And if that little boy, so perfect within the constraints of this construct, can somehow shed the contradiction, Damodar-das, from his true self, this complete postmodernist horror show promoter of a MODI will dissolve and the body of humans within this culture so insignificant in the eyes of the non-starting-unending universe will bow to a little Krishna of a Narandra, knowing that they are in Godly hands, being lead where they will be at peace.
But, this speculation remains to be proven right, and the minuscule 4 year old, along with her own hopeless gangs, is becoming more and more aware that she is being wronged, in every city or village, of every district, in every state of this imagined construct of a nation.
P.S: YOU can go easy on your inescapable Duty of forming an opinion, by telling what you *think* hmm/nice/speech(less).
*Just drop in a comment if you accept my apology*
