Bored of loud things, and my Chomsky-esque dilemma

2010-11-01T18:14:00.000-07:00

I read Ms. Arundhati Roy's comments on Kashmir with great interest, and found them to be what no one else seems to find them - funny. I forgot about them almost as soon as you forget a sub standard joke. But the incredible amount of interest this has generated on the internet makes it really hard to ignore. Ms. Roy has, yet again, picked her controversy well. And for this I must congratulate her.

As a keen reader of Chomsky in my student days, I grew up to be very afraid of the power wielded by words, particularly those written or uttered by a self-proclaimed authority. It is ironic that even though I grew up to be a fan of Chomsky, it was through his writings that I realized I shouldn't take all that he says seriously. He tells us to guard against propaganda that attempts to legitimize half-truths, and even lies. The drivers of this propaganda, as he sees it, are powerful groups, often corporates and governments. His argument has some merit, but in employing my guard against propaganda, I extend it also to personal agendas of people who seem to espouse a 'just' cause. Let me take a step back in order to explain myself better. One of the many cycles in life is how we all start happily illiterate, oblivious and immune to propaganda, graduate to being a vulnerable lot as impressionable young adults, easily agitated by what we see, read or hear; and finally, some of us learn to be skeptics, not to be overly affected by all that we come across. There is so much nonsense doing rounds in the world today, not all of it can be true, can it? Maybe we should all be selectively numb; we should measure the worth of the author and the content before we decide to take her seriously. If a cheap sleazy magazine runs a cover story on UFO's, I won't believe it. On the other hand, if someone publishes a paper on this subject in Science, it will interest me greatly. Sadly, not everyone has access to, or interest in, Science.

We must try to identify personal agendas in pursuit of which individuals might be tempted to make tall, and often, bogus claims. Before you let a claim disturb your peace, ponder over the a) Qualification and b) Motivation of the individual making that claim. This is usually a good place to start.

Let's discuss qualification first. My view is that on the issue at hand, Ms. Roy is probably as qualified to speak as Suresh Kalmadi is to play tennis for India. After all, his primary role was that of an organizer, just as Ms. Roy's is that of a writer. If you talk about a field that is not yours, you should at least do your homework, and try to learn about it. While I do not insist that Ms. Roy should have read Rajatarangini from cover to cover, to say that Kashmir never had any historical links with

India

is utter nonsense. Kashmir, which is a Sanskrit word, was a hotbed of Hinduism and Buddhism in the 1st millennium and the 1st half of the 2nd millennium. Later, with the spread of Islam, it became a model of Hindu-Muslim unity and peaceful co-existence. It boasts of a centuries old Sufi tradition, lending a moderate touch to Islam. Many Muslims in the state still go by the surnames that point to recent conversion from Hindu ancestors. And this is a state that, we are being told – and that too through words that are violent and repulsive – has had nothing to do with India. Like I have said earlier, peoples’ reaction to her statement is far more surprising than her statement itself. She is not a historian, what did you expect?

The question of motivation I find very puzzling. Since I am positively predisposed towards authors, my first thought was to give her some benefit of doubt. Maybe she really believes she is championing a just cause? But if that were the case, what explains the statement that she most definitely would have known to be false, and yet chose to make it: "Kashmir was never a part of India"! If I didn’t know better, I would have ascribed it to ignorance. Therefore, my premise is that Ms. Roy made those statements deliberately, hoping that they would have the impact that they have had subsequently. Let's try and drill into the question of Ms. Roy's motivation further. When an author publishes a paper, you look at other work that he has produced, to get some idea about his interests, and motivations. Amongst other issues, Ms. Roy has made sensationalist comments about dams, Indo-Pak relations, Mumbai attacks, and now Kashmir, and always taking the contrarian view. Surely, one can't be an expert on all of these disparate fields. One spends a lifetime researching the properties of pi, or trying to be a great violin player, and still doesn't succeed. What makes Ms. Roy see so clearly through the haze of these myriad complex issues? Social activists normally champion "a" cause, as you can do that more effectively than championing "many" causes. Ms. Roy wants to champion many causes. What is the common thread that binds them all? All of these are issues that make fellow Indians emotional, not that that is a good thing. You see, this is what keeps Ms. Roy alive in the minds of the people. I am convinced that this is her real motivation, for novelists are easily forgotten after their first decent work, unless you are a Joseph Heller or a Harper Lee. Ms. Roy doesn't want to be forgotten, she wants to be fresh in peoples thoughts, to be a part of their lives. Being a contrarian normally gets you back in spot instantaneously. Would we be discussing Ms. Roy if she had said Kashmir is an integral part of India?

Ms. Roy, I think, feeds on maintaining an appearance of challenging established stereotypes of injustice, which are often imagined, and with a shameless disregard of facts. Moreover, her indiscriminate and violent support to so many different issues brings me to my chomsky-esque dilemma, since I smell an agenda. When you build a career out of a single-minded abuse of the majority view, that's pretty much your motivation, and that's precisely what keeps you in business. If you realize that any of what you have been saying is nonsense, would you retract it and run the risk of becoming irrelevant? I doubt it. If Ms. Roy tries to be the Leonardo da Vinci of social justice, and carpet bombs all issues that the country faces, she loses credibility. One might have an opinion on all of them, but to make sweeping statements about issues one and all, is a bit too much for me. Therefore, one must discount what Ms. Roy, and the likes of her, say.

Ms. Roy is a sensationalist, more than anything else. Terms such as "bhookhe-nange" even when directed at a foreign country, let alone your own, are extremely violent. This is bound to pain people. Read any of her writings, they might be weak in content, but are replete with a very deliberate choice of words, words that mock. When discussing serious issues, if you are given to using flowery phrases, you have already made your choice: that you are here to sensationalize, so what if it’s not the entire truth; leave this word out as it doesn’t rhyme; let’s use this one as it is insulting. Ms. Roy would probably say that hyperbole, and her pointed words are just tools that she intentionally employs to shake people from their slumber. But, for me, if you base your premise on a lie, that too a lie that you fully well know to be a lie, the game ends there; you have my ears no more. You are a public figure, and therefore honesty is important. You have to be more responsible. You have to be more responsible because when Tendulkar tells kids on national TV to drink boost, they drink boost. People are influenced. It is the duty of those who have the power to influence to be responsible, and honest. Again, be wary of personal agendas.

I am fully conscious of the many faults of my country, and am not someone who would deny that our successive governments after Independence have marginalized many Indians. But, while introspection and criticism of the system are important, we must ignore the likes of Ms. Roy, who are more celebrities and less social activists. My head hangs in shame when I read about P. Sainath’s or Ramachandra Guha’s accounts of large-scale and criminal exploitation of the poor in India. These accounts move me because these individuals are change agents, not celebs. It is a pity that our media gives disproportionate coverage to Ms. Roy’s loud shrieks and theatrical gambits to stay afloat, over some solid, hard-hitting, factual criticism of the government.

lazyrus

Bored of loud things, and my Chomsky-esque dilemma