Reading Time: 3 minutes
Was the Early Man, living naked in caves and treetops, more civilised than most of us? We have clothed ourselves differently and have created a chasm between us and our lesser fortunate brethren. Bhaskar takes a ‘journey within’ to expose the deep rooted sickness ingrained in the Indian society.
Human civilisation, in time, as I see it, is in the shape of a U. I link here openness and degree of civilisation. One may link it also with sound, size, precision, etc. I, however, choose to be blunt, as I see things these days in audio-visual media and in the light of what I have gone through the history of mankind. Early man was naked as they came out from the caves, climbed down from the trees, etc and had to survive vis-à-vis the other competitors for survival. It was simple survival instinct with presumably no intention to get the others extinct. As man started to develop in the sense of being more civilised, he started learning the lessons of covering himself with tree leaves and subsequently with manufactured clothes. He started forming groups, including some in the common interest group and excluding others. The instinct remained survival but now a little more than that. Now we are in an era where we have again started unclothing ourselves if the audio-visual bodies are not virtual but real.
What bothers me more is not the unclothing of human bodies but the sick mentality of human mind. This has become more naked. Visionaries say it is shackled, some say it is colonised. What I find in the ‘Brahminical order’ in at least Uttar Pradesh is a shackled society with pervasive fear among the majority of people at the bottom of the pyramid. The top layer of society is constituted by birth by the Brahmins and the Thakurs, who run the society-economy-polity-culture by ownership-cum-control over land-money-muscle power. The cultural conquest is a corollary.
It’s a constant I and they discourse within us: I am superior, they are inferior. I am pure, they are impure. I am a Brahmin, they are Sudras (Dalits, marginalised). My job is white, so I am clean. They clean my desk, so they are unclean. I rule, they obey me. I keep si
What I conceal is stagnation and retardation. Through norms and rituals, I keep stagnation. The norms become parts of the routine that I impose on others. The silence of others is taken as consent. My silence is my plan (conspiracy) to protect my property and power. Civilisation reaches its higher stage by more silence. So I claim to be more civilised. I need not resist, I need not shout, because my property, position and power are protected. It is for others to prove their sense of civilisation by keeping silence. The silence keeps the society sick.
Pix from Net
A lucid and chilling analysis of the attitudinal chains that bind and stunt a society’s growth.