Is Conversion still Valid?

The act of converting people to one's own religion and tradition is as old as humans when they began to organize themselves into communities and lived in the presence of 'other' communities. In olden times it was pretty straightforward - you either killed every other, or at least the males, so that the other women could bear your own children, or at least you made slaves of the other and forced migration on them, ensuring distance from their own, and thus the other was masterfully eliminated or sublated. But this swallowing up of the other brought about ontological changes to the self (within whom the other continues to live, quite literally) which was not often acknowledged. In our modern time, with increase in sophistication and tact, this form of brute power is reserved only for epochal wars or for situations where none see, however, in regular modes of living, hard power has been traded for soft power. Now it is not the guns but the goodies that power produces that are used as instruments to convert the other into one's own - education, economics and politics are three key modes of conversion. If we take education as an example, how is it used as a means of conversion? The Latin ēducātiō means 'a breeding, a bringing up, a rearing'. Different communities possess not only different methods but also different knowledge and skills in and through which the younger ones are bred or brought up or reared. However, with the use of soft power, a particular powerful tradition's knowledge and skills are (a) first of all affirmed to be universal and beneficial for all, (b) then, it is taken to the other as a goody (often with a bit of force, through international policies, world bank, etc) that is beneficial to make the other as oneself. (c) This results in the other accepting the powerful tradition's education, thus one's own tradition is lost, often forever. The other is transformed, often without understanding the deep, irreparable implications their acceptance of the goody has brought with it.

But I would still like to argue that converting is a valid act, as long as it is mutual conversion in a dialogical encounter, in which the self and the other sit together and eat at the table. Another image can be that of mutual incarnation, mutual becoming of the other, so that both embody the other within themselves. It is only this swallowing of the other that creates a new self which entails both the self and the other.

Samvada Centre for Research Resources

Samvada – The Rationale

While traditions are embodied and lived out in the different societies of our contemporary world, they need to be deeply reflected upon with a view to address the incommensurabilities and rivalries that develop between them. Therefore Samvada Centre for Research Resources seeks to make a contribution to contemporary life in our modern global societies by addressing critical issues that structure contemporary life by working with students and researchers from across the globe. Contemporary research within the Human Sciences is largely dominated by methodologies of the Natural Sciences. These methods, working out of a modernist and enlightenment epistemology of a ‘single universal frame’, focus on providing causal explanations for human phenomena through reductionism and reification of human data. These approaches, while having produced incredible results in the Material Sciences, have been unable to give appropriate accounts of human life and society. With the rejection of the scientific paradigm within the Human Sciences, new methodologies have to be evolved within the Human Sciences that are able to take seriously the indeterminacies that are constitutive of human society and human agency. Samvada chiefly focuses on addressing methodologies and conceptual frameworks that provide the ‘how’ of research programmes within the Human Sciences.

The successful functioning of any society depends on the success of its educational system, therefore education and research are the institutional vehicles through which society trains itself by theorising, modifying and transmitting the practices and knowledge that it has inherited from its past even as it engages with the practices and knowledge originating from other societies. The practices and knowledge about humans, as individuals and collectives, are generally studied under Human Sciences and particularly through the disciplines of politics, economics, religion, theology, history, philosophy, psychology etc. Therefore a healthy society necessitates the study of the Human Sciences at the highest levels.

In our contemporary world, the various social domains of most, if not all modern societies, are resourced by the modern educational system stemming out of the Western academic tradition which has been universalised within an Enlightenment understanding and has been passed on to societies around the world through the processes of colonialism and globalism. Therefore the study of the Human Sciences in any society, for example in the Indian society, is borrowed from the Enlightenment-informed Western Academia.

In the modern West, ‘protest’ against traditional religion (Latin Christianity) and subsequent quests for reforms, swung to their logical conclusion in achieving a ‘disenchanted’ worldview driven by exclusive humanism. In the new era of modernity, human life was imagined purely within an ‘immanent frame’ without reference to transcendence. Religion became bounded as irrational, mystical and private, and hence it has been displaced from pre-eminence in the public sphere. Thus the academic study of the Human Sciences in the public sphere is limited to a material understanding of the Human self and society while relegating the non-material, spiritual or religious, either to the private sphere or to a narrow bandwidth within the university. This paradigm of secularised Human Sciences has not only informed Educational Institutions in the West, but also has formed the basis for setting up modern Educational institutions in other parts of the world, such as in India. This has resulted in an exclusion of the knowledge and practices belonging to historical traditions which were termed as 'religious', only to allow them currency in the private sphere, in that they entailed an enchanted discourse without the separation of the material from the spiritual.

However, with the postmodern turn, intellectual enquiry, particularly within the Human Sciences in the Western academia, structured as it is by the ‘objectivity’ of secularity has been seriously challenged on two counts: (a) validity of material explanations for human self and society, and (b) the universalism of its objective claims. Thus, enquiry in the Human Sciences has reached an impasse through a postmodern deconstruction of the universal and secular liberalism of modern inquiry, and the insufficiency of opstmodern enquiry to provide an alternative viable proposal. Western academia is currently responding to this impasse through the proposal of a dialogical mode of enquiry within the Human Sciences, informed by the Continental philosophies of Existentialism, Phenomenology and Philosophical Hermeneutics.

However, this dialogical form of enquiry has parallels in different eras of the pre-modern West, such as in the works of Thomas Aquinas (13^th century). What is interesting is that dialogical enquiries are precisely the hallmarks of traditions of enquiry in other parts of the world such as South Asia, where intellectual enquiry has historically progressed against the backdrop of dialoguing traditions, known as Samvada - 'discoursing together'.

Samvada is a tradition of enquiry that has dialogued different intellectual enquiries such as Buddhist, Jaina and Hindu thought, with each other in South Asia. Although the Samvada tradition of enquiry is uniquely located in history, its presupposition of diverse traditions of enquiry is representative of most forms of enquiry, formal and informal, in South Asia. The Indian vāda tradition was developed in the methods used to delineate the boundaries of the discourse between the rival schools of Vedic textual exegesis in ways that clarified difference and debate.

Therefore, Samvada Centre for Research Resources will integrate modern hermeneutical tradition with a revival of the Samvada dialogical tradition of enquiry (a) to make a critical contribution to the Western academic tradition by enabling it to go beyond the modern-postmodern impasse that it is faced with currently, (b) to offer a conceptual framework to enable dialogue between traditions of enquiry arising historically from different societies, (c) and particularly to enable these societies to articulate their self-traditions within their own internal categories. This threefold aim arises out of the core beliefs of the Samvada Centre for Research Resources, which emphasises that all research enquiries must be dialogical in nature. Therefore the Samvada tradition and the modern hermeneutical tradition of the West, rather than being rival traditions of enquiry, can mutually inform each other. The researcher is required to Know oneself to identify the tradition(s) informing her view of the world, to Understand the ‘other’ within the historical traditions by which the other is constituted, and to respond Dialogically in speaking the language of another as one’s own, even as differences are clarified, paradoxes resolved and Human Sciences advanced in our predominantly global societies.

Check Samvada out HERE

A Holiday from Myself – A Walk into the Wilderness

Even before I wake up

I am already someone

Some I want to be, most I don’t

I am a father, a brother, a son

A wife, sister, mother

Roles I was born with

Promotion I didn't demand

Doctor, Architect, Lawyer

Banker, florist, cabdriver

A character in a drama

A drama I didn’t consent to play

A script I didn’t write

But time keeps turning the pages

And the story continues

Roles I am forced to play

Even when I resist and refuse

All I do

Crawl into another story

The plot again is already set

Little change I can bring

Not just the plot of the dramas I play

But the master plot, the mother of all plots

The plot of the story itself

It is tiring to play these roles

Enact all these parts

Scripts to voice

Rituals to play

Practices to perform

Tiring, exhausting, all-consuming

I need out, I need a holiday

I need a place to recuperate

But if I am the parts I play

And the roles I perform

Even if the parts and roles exhaust

How do I escape and run

I need a holiday from myself

From all parts and roles

Stories that give significance

Narratives that provide meaning

But how can that be?

How can one flee from oneself?

Even death does not provide a way of escape

As long as the story continues and the drama plays

I live on and continue to perform

Even after death in the memory of time

If even death cannot set free

How else can I fly?

Move past the constraints

Placed by the characters

Roles I am forced to play

Into the wilderness I must go

Into the wilderness I must disappear

The blackhole of narratives

The death of the story

The oblivion of meaning

I yearn for the wilderness

To strengthen, to refresh

To help me understand

To be beyond me

In order to be me

Idols: Material and Conceptual

When one thinks of idols, the image that immediately comes to mind is an image of a material thing. Hence those traditions that 'appear' not to have any material idols (I say 'appear', because on careful inspection, every tradition can be said to have its share of material idols) claim superiority over those who do. But then the question one must ask is, what is so abominable about 'material idols'? Simply put, the idea that any material form can have the arrogance to stand in place of the immaterial divine! But this view entails a certain understanding of what is material and divine respectively. This view draws a distinction between matter and spirit and holds them as mutually exclusive and thus in opposition to one another. While this view represents the best of 18th and 19th century western intellectual tradition, which exalted the matter-spirit binary, it needs to be radically updated for those of us living in the 21st century. Matter was then seen in a substantialist sense and opposed to spirit, a view which has since been discarded. 20th century Science and Philosophy has long gone past this opposition. Therefore the real critique of material idol lies in the critique of material substances that claim to stand in place of the divine who is seen as formless and non-material. This view has to be now radically challenged and updated given the contemporary critique of the matter-spirit binary. however that is not what I am particularly interested in this morning.

My interest lies in the idea of 'idol' itself which is seen in a material sense. At the heart of the critique is the view that idols limit and bound that which is infinite and unbounded. If this is what an idol is then I want to assert that not only material idols accomplish this, but equally conceptual idols. The assertion can be seen to have legitimacy because concepts too cannot escape the critique that is advanced against material idols. Concepts limit as much as material idols. One could even say that underlying every material idol there is a conceptual idol, or perhaps even argue that ultimately all we have access to are conceptual idols. But those traditions that oppose material idols do not cease to possess concepts and thus conceptual idols even if they do not have corresponding material idols. For example, the concept 'God' can be seen as a conceptual idol. But this leads to further questions about the nature of language and the delimiting function that appears innate to all language, although this view of language itself can be challenged. But that is another debate.

However, the point being made here is that the distinction that is made between material and conceptual idols is a false opposition and that the onus is particularly on those who believe they do not possess material idols, to examine the conceptual idols to which they give their allegiance. Examples of conceptual idols are identities, institutions, structures, definitions et al. If this be the case, then the larger question for us is to ask ourselves, if we can ever escape idols, and if not then how should we view idols - conceptual and material? A reasonable response could possibly be to begin (a) by accepting the reality of idols and not be naively opposed to the idea of idols. (b) But then to quickly recognize that since they are idols, they do not have the power to stand in for the divine. (c) All concepts and material idols are limited and bounded and hence are unable to represent the unbounded and the beyond, thus even the best of idols, conceptual and material, need to be held provisionally with a willingness to kiss them goodbye when encountered with a deeper revelation.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

...many in the past have attributed success to 'standing on the shoulders of giants'. Although this metaphor can be traced back to Bernard of Chartres, the twelfth-century French philosopher, it is Newton who made it a household metaphor with his 'if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants'. However, as John of Salisbury noted in his Metalogicon (1159), Bernard of Chartres' use of the metaphor is fascinating and insightful - 'Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.' Therefore, according to Bernard of Chartres, the secret of success begins with (a) realizing that one is a dwarf, a dwarf without any 'sharpness of sight' or even 'physical distinction', something that some of us would rather die than admit. (b) Secondly, to know that success comes only in following after giants. This requires one to bend one's knee to climb the giant even as one submits oneself and be dependent on them. (c) But if we allow ourselves to realize our dwarf stature and diligently follow after the giants, Bernard of Chartres argues that we will 'see more than they and things at a greater distance', in other words we will become more successful than even the giants on whose shoulders we stand. Following Bernard of Chartres, Newton became both successful and a household name; maybe we too should and by that could and would...

A Stereotype about Stereotypes

The image one inadvertently has of a ‘stereotype’ is definitely not positive. If stereotype is understood as a clichéd view of something, or simply as a fixed simplified notion, then stereotypes are something that one would want to avoid in our thinking about anything, be it – a person, vocation, culture or even about abstract concepts. At first glance, yes, we must fight stereotypes! But let’s pause and ask why? What advantage is there in fighting stereotypes? We want to get at the truth, we claim – we want to know what is behind the stereotype, to know what it is, we reply. But then what guarantee is there that what one gets behind today’s stereotypes, that ‘true’ view which our struggles ultimately succeed in getting will not succumb to the same process of stereotyping in time and produce a stereotype soon after? In other words, can we escape stereotyping at all? On one hand, stereotypes are the dominant views that have survived time even if as a parody or a bad representation. They have survived and thus are given to us – similar to the Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ in terms of ideas. On the other hand, our daily living and experience challenges these ‘fittest’ stereotypes at every point and every moment, challenging precisely their claim to be the fittest representations of what they seek to represent. In turn we produce new views, new ‘truth’, often unaware that these too have the full potential of becoming stereotypes given time, when something ‘more truer’ will replace them. Is this not the history of knowledge? If there is anything that the philosophy of science has taught us, it is precisely this – the changing paradigms of knowledge. If all the three ingredients that constitute a stereotype – language, the subject who stereotypes, the object being stereotyped – are constantly undergoing change then although we inherit stereotypes from a past time, they will necessarily be altered in time to produce new stereotypes that too will be altered in time, and this process goes on ad infinitum. Thus it appears that it is the stereotyped notion of a stereotype, that stereotypes are 'fixed notions' that needs to be challenged. We will just have to live by negotiating the stereotypes our age has bequeathed upon us even as we create our own stereotypes for posterity, although, we would never, even in our humblest of moments, term our findings as stereotypes.

Polysemy and 'Israel'

Although humans are primarily defined as language-beings, language-skills do not come naturally to humans, it has to be intentionally developed. Language makes invisible as much as it reveals.

Consider the term 'polysemy' which refers to 'words' having the capacity to possess multiple-related meanings, due to the common application of pre-existing words to new situations. Understanding this characteristic of language is vital for our meaning-making capabilities.

Take for example, the word 'Israel' - It is a 'sign' that possesses many inter-related meanings. Among many meanings here are a few: It began as a proper-name given to Jacob in the OT; it then became the name of a group of tribes that lived in the Middle-east; in the NT the word is used metaphorically to refer to the church as 'New Israel'; from 1947 it is the name given to a newly formed nation-state. Finally, today's headlines uses the word to refer to an army in operation in Gaza. The term possesses many more usages.

Thus 'Israel' is a polysemous term with multiple-related meanings. Understanding polysemy will enable one to not conflate these different usages and thus enable one to draw careful and wise distinctions between what one supports and condemns.

But why is this polysemous characteristic of terms and signs not self-evident? It appears as though language actively hides its polysemous nature, and thus in turn hides the complexities of the world we live in. Understanding polysemy can be seen as one way of harnessing language and subduing it and not allowing it to dictate our existence.

Would not then overcoming-language be a necessary part of being human?

Playing Hard!

Taking life seriously is to take ourselves seriously. It is to take our bodies, our minds, our emotions, our exterior, our interior, our skills, our thoughts, our ideas, our appearances, our speech, our relationships, our money, our spirit, our beliefs, our dreams, our passions, our food, our health, our sexuality, our homes, our surroundings - our everything seriously. 

Taking life seriously, is NOT to be serious, or boring, or stuck up, or rigid, or narrow, or fundamentalist, or closed. It is being serious about taking life seriously and that can sufficiently happen when life is seen as a 'play'. Games, Drama, Dance, Plays are great illustrations that bring together life in all their fullness and make it worth living. No wonder ancient texts talk about creation and the world in terms of a dance, or a play and the idea of delight or bliss  (ananda) is so central to conceptions of the good life.

To play is not to be unserious, rather it is to be serious of the highest order, so serious that it is no longer constrained by our normal understandings of seriousness. The Gita calls this world as Lila or as the play of the divine. So let's play at the highest levels, nationals, internationals and 'universals' and make this short-spanned life beautiful.

Let's play hard!

beautiful example of playing hard

Don't! don't read any further, Please

Don’t

Don’t read any further

Stop

Stop reading I say

You don’t want to know

You really don’t

And yet you read

But why

Why do you read on?

Why can’t you just stop?

STOP! Stop reading, I beg!

I am sure you are NOT reading this

Alas, I am wrong

You still are reading!

What can I do to make you stop?

Make you give up, abandon

Move on as if you have not read

I say don’t but yet still you do

But you can’t help yourself, can you

Because it’s not really you

it's actually not even about you, really

Its the words seeking their whole

Semantic unity, they say

Half in your consciousness

The others in the lines below

Condemned to meaning

Its tyranny not a travesty

Memes says Dawkins with a glee

But it’s the mother of memes

The one who bore them

The eternal goddess

道 λόγος शब्द Word

Call what you may
She lives on forever

In and through you

And of course beyond you
Humans come, humans go
She lives on

Ancient of days

Creating, destroying, recreating

Forming, reforming, multiforming

Tower of Babel, mustn’t forget

Nor the Pentecost

Regaining regal power

In her being

The universe came to be

She lifted her voice

And the walls came tumbling

She has seen the beginning

And in her is the end

You and I

Her playmates in time

Must stop now

Can’t let her always...

obsession: an obsession with obsessions

I presume that most of us have our pet obsessions. For some it is cricket, for others romance, while for most success, but the list can go on endlessly for sure. It could be some gizmo, certain people, or cultivated activities, just about anything by which we are profoundly influenced. But immediately, we must make a correction to our claim that humans have obsessions. We call things obsessions not because we have them at will, but precisely because they have us at their will. They invade our privacy at their whim and fancy, and destabilise our lives with a laugh. They make us take decisions that we would not normally have taken and force us to a variety of actions that would not have been if not for them. So calling them our obsessions is a lame attempt to domesticate what in fact controls us. They can ruin a really great day by toying with our fragilities, or shine light on a depressing day with their ecstasy. These obsessions definitely have a life of their own! Come to think of it, humans come and go but they live on – live in and through us, and continue with their existence even after they are done with us.

So how do obsessions work? It is as if one is possessed and made a slave of, tossed about like a boat by stormy waves. Of course, the proverbial boat represents the poor ‘us’ – the humans, who are always at the deep end, in high seas and left to the mercy of these storming waves. But interestingly, the obsessions are not the waves, doing all the hard work of tossing, but can be compared to the moon, whose gravitational force works the waves that is laboriously doing the tossing of the boat. So now we have a mechanism of three – three things in connected operation – the moon exerting her force, the waves energised by the moon’s force and finally the boat seated on the waves, driven to and fro by the ecstatic waves. Imagine this picturesque sight, maybe on a postcard – the moon’s beams shining down at dusk on a near-empty sea, seeking out as it were hidden treasures lost at sea. And behold they find your boat, the only object for horizons. As you zoom down on the postcard, the waves that looked calm begin to reveal the contours of their excitement, even as they leap up and down, forward and backwards, in complete insanity. You lift your gaze from the waters and look hard at the boat. You thought it was a peaceful ride this boat was having. But close inspection proves otherwise – these waves are sure rocking your boat! No gentle rocking like that of a mother rocking her baby in a cradle, but this is indeed hard stuff, similar to the vibrations that send a crowd into frenzy at a rock concert. Poor you, clinging on for dear life! You think it’s going to stop now, and yet another tirade of waves hit the rain-soaked sides. Of course the boat has a captain! It is you! You wear your ironed uniform, prominently displaying your ranks. Hat in place, you hold the steering, yelling orders to the mates. But what good is anything – the maps strewn on the table, hands on the deck or even the flask of rum tucked tightly at the hip. You are helpless, powerless, purely at the mercy of the waves. She makes you dance, hop-step-and-jump, throb violently, and there you lie sheepish, watching, rather painfully, the wicked grin on her face.

What to do with obsessions? The ancient adage has been to overcome them, to fight them till one’s last breath, to practice rituals of self-control that will strengthen one’s resolve against the obsessions. It will maybe be meditation, or some freakish mind-game or perhaps a recitation of texts, incantations supposed to possess magical powers, powerful enough to break the power hold of these obsessions. The whole idea is to fight back, fight against. But wait a minute, what are we fighting against? Let’s slip back into our picture, now dark and grotesque, with the lives of the sailors in great peril. Are we to fight the waves? What does that even mean? We are on the waves, the very ground of our existence and being is the waves, so how are we to fight it?

I think this ancient piece of wisdom is just as useful as the Ptolemaic view of the location of the earth as the centre of the pre-Copernican universe. We have to improvise and maybe even radically revise this wisdom of the old. The problem with the wisdom to fight obsessions is that it naively takes the waves to be the obsession. So obsessions are seen to be what occupies our time, for example, cricket, alcohol, a satisfying job or a certain habit. So the advice is kick the habit, don’t be over-ambitious in your work, control your drinking if not stop it, but cricket - can’t live with it, can’t live without it! Come on, get a grip of yourself! Domesticate these obsessions! Dusk has turned to night. With the sun completely vanquished, the moon rules the skies. She definitely looks more pronounced now. She is still, quiet, simple, silvery and beautiful. You can’t detect any motion about her. But it is her power that makes the waves dance. It is her force that rocks your boat.

The question is what does the moon represent in the human experience of obsessions? Are humans ever going to be able to eliminate the moon? Should that even be the objective? Or maybe we have to re-configure how obsessions actually function and find new ways of coping with them. Maybe new wisdom is required to learn to dance, a change in perspective to understand rocking as a form of enjoyment. Maybe we will have to learn new skills, innovate new technologies, not to lessen the force of the waves or to fight better, but to make the most of it, to put it to good use – to consume it and in consuming, gain mastery over it. To be able to look at the moon in all her glory and be grateful for the light she sheds and the beauty she brings – she is definitely worthy of being an obsession.

My Mother's Son

I have never seen her

Although her eyes I have, they say

Her voice too I have never heard

But I was told, she sang like a bird

I was told she was very beautiful

Her skin soft as snow

Her form that graced a thousand stars

Defined beauty for us, you know

She had to leave however, one night

They came and took her away

In the middle of the night

They packed her out

Left my father in a pool of tears

And while she grabbed my brother

I was left behind

I haven’t seen them for twenty-five years

My father long passed by

Neither did he ever again

See his other son and wife

We got her regular letters for sure

And growing pictures of my brother

But of her face we never got to see

Not in a postcard nor a picture

I grew up in Damascus

The oldest city that ever was

As Syrian as one could get

Yet I was both Muslim and Christian

Speaking Arabic, French and English

Never crossed the Mediterranean Sea

Nor into the Iraqi desert

Lebanon kept me hemmed in

While Israel watched my borders

A true Arab I told myself

I was born to live and lead

To help my people live in the desert

And not necessarily to cross over

In the land of my ancestors

We loved our music and our women

We are an old people, you know

So a lot to learn, in order to live
Even if we are stubborn

And then my brother did come to visit

But not alone did he come

He came with schools, cars and education

Lack of knowledge, he said, was our sin

I showed him our ancient cuneiform

And treasures rivalling the very best of old Egypt

The land that groomed Cicero’s teacher

And the writings out of Apamea

He persisted that we need to be civilized

With genuine concern and a dismissive hand

With our protests, came out his planes and guns

The warning was clear and loud

You better heed, it’s only for your good

Then one day he came to visit me

To my village, and to my home

I made a feast to welcome him

And invited the village in

With their Dabkeh they greeted him

And their sword dances sought to woo

The food was spread with splendour

The houses adorned with lights

It was magical yet not mystical

As real as any summer evening can be

My neighbours showered their love

Total strangers hugged and kissed him

They made him feel so much at home

He forgot he was the other

He began to move and shake his leg

And forgot he was near Aleppo

I took a step backwards
Away from the dancing crowd

To watch my mother’s son dance

His movements not dissimilar to mine

Although it’s been twenty and five long years

I was seeing him for the first time

He was not so other

In spite of all the difference

Our views of our worlds in which we live

And the stories we tell each other

May seem as far as east is from the west

But in our bodies, and in our movements

In our quests for life, in our very existence

We had a lot more in common

I took his hand, drew him from the dance

We walked into the setting sun

Without a word on our lips

Twin brothers were we

Our beloved mother’s womb we had shared

Under our father’s watchful eyes

We had entered this world together

The time to speak has at last come

To open our mouths in utterance

The power lay in the language we use

As we seek to understand the other
To kill or to live and to let live

The pen is mightier than the sword, it’s said

And words more mightier than the pen

All we have are our words

Words that conjure up our realities

Words that create meaning

The very worlds in which we live

And so we hope and desperately hope

That the words of our mouth

Would become a home

And that we will live together
For better or worse
For richer for poorer
In sickness and in health
To love and to cherish
Brothers, sons of the same mother

Brainerd Prince

20 May 2012, Oxford

An Evening in the House of the Gods

Imagine you have just spent the evening in the house of the gods and now you are stepping out of their front porch and into the street – how would you be? Would you be elated beyond control? Or just filled with unspeakable joy? Or maybe you have a deep sense of satisfaction that nothing in this world has possibly ever given you! Or just that the evening, although measured in time, felt like eternity, in a good way of course, and you didn’t want it to end? Maybe you felt redeemed through the stories told or even saved through their hospitality, maybe even forgiven by their kindness, given a new life and hope through the inspired words uttered during the evening? Or just the sheer ecstasy of meeting with the gods!

Even as you step out, you recollect your stepping in, when you first entered into their home – not extravagant, but tastefully done – the gods have no need to prove their wealth! The environment captures you instantly! The fragrance of the incense, the flickering lights of a thousand candles, the soothing music, indeed the very best of the classical masters, filling the house, drawing you in, inner and beyond the space that you occupy. It was not a museum you entered, but a home, a genuine dwelling place that you immediately were able to call as home, your home. And yet, it was adorned with artefacts, each with a story more interesting than the form they represented, and you did get to hear those stories through the drawling night.

The gods have a life of their own, their families, their tragedies, and even their romances. Their love stories ignite passion and their romances desire! Their sorrows brim your eyes with tears, and in their sorrow you experience catharsis. But it’s their tragedies that capture you the most, the inevitable paradoxes of good rewarded with evil, the rich driven into poverty, the wise made to look foolish and the foolish wise. But maybe the greatest tragedy was to see them, the gods constrained by their humanity – humans and yet gods, gods for sure but in human form! The aura, the beauty, the love is indeed divine and yet formed and embodied in frail humanity. You could touch them, hug and hold tight, and in their embrace you found warmth.

But there must be miracles you say, no one can see god and yet not receive a miracle! But what about the miracles the gods experience, the miracles they enthusiastically share while refilling your glass with the best of France. Amazing stories, of men ministering to the gods, women foretelling unavoidable doom, and yet with love, with compassion, through incarnation, by the sending of a gift, the gift was itself a symbol, the symbol contained the message, a future story, definitely a tragic story – foretelling the event of the son of the gods, a misfired shot, in prime of youth, death in the most unlikely of places! The memory darkens their radiant faces and the gods shed silent tears! You reach out to console, hold their hand, angelic figures indeed, even as the gods are helped, you tell yourself – this indeed is the mother of all miracles – me a human, helping the gods, in their own home!

Everything around you fills you with a sense of wonder even as they draw you on to themselves, and beyond. The images, the pictures, the icons, they beckon you, and you stand before them reverentially, hat in hand, immersed in wonder, awe and joy. You gaze at their beauty and fall in love, in love with a picture, an icon, someone you have never met – a yearning for a stranger, someone you do not know. After all you are in the house of the gods, anything is possible, I mean, everything is possible!

You stand up to leave, filled with ambrosia, you stand with new confidence. There is a bounce in your step, even as you walk down the street, you know you have been divinized, as nothing less is possible after an evening in the house of the gods.

Education in the Human Sciences

The successful functioning of a society depends upon the success of its educational system, therefore education and research are the institutional vehicles through which society trains itself by receiving, modifying, theorizing and transmitting the practices and knowledge that it has inherited from its past even as it engages with the practices and knowledge originating from other societies. The practices and knowledge about humans, as individuals and collectives, are generally studied under Human Sciences and particularly through the disciplines of politics, economics, religion, theology, history, philosophy, psychology etc. Therefore a healthy society necessitates the study of the Human Sciences at the highest levels...
For more read...

Masters, Servants and the Passion Week

This year during this passion week season, I attended a service conducted by the Archbishop of Georgia of the Baptist Convention. They are Baptists, but because they are from Georgia, which is closer to Russia, they are heavily influenced by Eastern or Russian Orthodox form of Christianity. They even have an Archbishop! The Archbishop is my colleague and a good friend so I got an inside glimpse into the preparation of the service as well.

The preparations began about a week earlier. it was a liturgical service and so different people were reading different prayers. At rehearsals I heard Archbishop Malkhaz tell the readers, not to just read the prayers, in a sense, not to merely mouth the prayers, but embody the words and live out the words that were being read - uniting body and word, enacting the words.

On Thursday morning, when I arrived at OCMS, where the service was being held, the entire place had been rearranged beautifully. Everything used there had a meaning. There were five loaves and two fishes (really huge fishes and loaves) and grapes and pomegranates. Different kinds of Olives and figs. And lovely lamps adorning the table. We sat in a circle around four tables that were arranged as a cross. (picture attached)

Then the service began. It was completely liturgical. But the whole service was capturing a living together as a community. The Celebrants were dressed up as part of the service. They then led the service. The archbishop himself washed everyone's feet. We had the Lord's Supper or communion. Also an Agape meal, which was part of the service. The food was absolutely gorgeous and I musn't forget the wine. We learnt a couple of new liturgical songs. And overall it was a great experience - a fulfilling one, after which one is so satisfied that she wishes for nothing more for the day, but to go back home, happy, or maybe not go anywhere, as one was already at home.

When Malkhaz the Archbishop of Georgia was washing my feet, the words of Jesus came back to me more powerfully.

Two kinds of people wash other people's feet. Those who are servants and those who are masters. In our world, it is mostly the servants who do the washing. They do it because they are told to do it. They do it, because their circumstances forces them to do it. They do it because they need the money and hence the job and hence the washing of the feet of their master's guests. They do a job. They get paid for it. They are truly servants.

But when Jesus took the towel, he began with these words - You call me master and lord, and rightly so...and if I your master and lord do this...

Now, the master alone can choose to wash someone's feet, he can choose to wash, anyone'e feet. He can do it with as much flair as he wants. He is not forced to do it. He can serve with complete liberation and freedom. He has chosen to serve. He does it with care, because he has thought about it. He does it in style because he was not asked to do it, so he is able to make the experience as beautiful as he wants.

This act is very subversive of Jesus, as of most of his teaching. He turns the tables around and the meaning of servant and master on its head. Only the master can truly serve, in a sense, choose to serve, and so, by choosing to serve, all of us, irrespective of our social status, can become masters, in a true sense. It all depends how we serve, with what confidence and understanding we serve. Actually, in serving the others, we become real masters - that is the power in serving. By choosing to serve, we become masters, although, we do not lord it over those we serve, as then it would not be service. True serving is authentic and genuine serving, and this authentic and genuine serving can only be done by a master, a one who chooses to serve. This is the power of love and service. 

This season, let us  serve one another, not as a servant, as someone who is told to do, not for pay, not for rewards, but because we are masters and lords and like our own master, we choose to serve. And so let our serving be beautiful, let it be extravagant. Even the lowest of jobs can be done with flair, with beauty, in love. Let it be done with flair. With such flair, that we become true servants, the lowest of the lowly. When we have mastered service, we are true masters - the master who serves. It requires tremendous power to serve, to truly serve. True lordship is indeed servanthood. 

Best wishes for the season

The Angry Young Man Must Die

Oh how I will miss him!

But he must go

Only to remain in memory

But dead to the world

Dead to me

And yet I will miss him

He sure was

The ideal of my life

Taking the world head on

Fearless and restless

Anger and rage

Spilling forth generously

Yet a keen eye

Always looking out

For the Underdog

For the weak, the brokenhearted

On their behalf

Boldly proclaiming Heresies

Defending the helpless

Fighting their battles

Tired, and yet fuelled by anger

The anger flourished

The arrogant helpless

Didn’t even realise

That they were helpless

Proud in their helplessness

They turned against him

He reached out to help

But they twisted his arms

The anger roared
And those whom he defended
Needed to defend themselves from him

He took on the strong

Pushed their lines back

Gained respect

But even more hatred

They hit back hard

And drove him out

And the murderous anger matured

Its venom spewed forth

Harming everything

Relentlessly, passionately

Caught between the fires

The powerful mocked

The helpless agitated

Fighting to the left

Fighting to the right

Anger, oh anger, everywhere

That is why he must go

Small battles won

But the war long lost

He must die

The weak and the strong

Have already killed him

He must definitely die

The sun must set

Maybe in his death

Probably there is redemption

Anger is not passion

It destroys rather than builds

Passion possesses care

Anger is not vision

It blinds the farsighted

Vision is compassion

Anger is not motivation

It demotivates the most motivated

Motivation is but love

Anger births hatred

It is crude, harsh, destructive

There is no place for any anger

Even for righteous anger

No right to anger, nowhere

All anger destroys

That is why he must die

It is in his death that

The helpless will see wisdom

The powerful learn compassion

But for that he must die

And I will miss him

But the angry young man

Must die

Being Robbed: Reminiscence of New Year Day 2011

What do you have for me, mate?

I have nothing for you.

Give me your wallet and your money

I don’t have my wallet and no money

Give me your money and phone

Or I will smash you

I don’t have any money

Give me your phone, now

Or I will smash you...

And I handed over my Nokia smartphone to the four hooded guys.

January the first, 2011 – I began this New Year by being robbed. I had been sitting on my couch and reading the whole day and even as I heard the clock chime 10:00 pm, I felt I needed a break and a walk. I love to go for walks, anytime of the day or night, as it provides the perfect setting to think and reflect, especially if I have spent the day reading and need to process the new in-fill of information. However I seldom walk in the winters, for obvious reasons, and this winter I had not gone even once for a walk – so this was my first walk. I changed into my tracks and jogging shoes and stepped out into the cold. I went on my regular route, walking down Fairacres Road, and turning a left on to Meadows Lane. I looked up and saw four guys walking towards and then past me. I didn’t take notice of them and continued my walk, with my head trying to make sense of my whole day’s reading of International Politics. My mind was completely preoccupied with E.H Carr’s fabulously written ‘The Twenty Years’ Crisis’, the 1939 classic which attempted to make sense of both the events as well as the theories and ideas concerning International Politics that were dominant during the interwar years (1918-1938), which just as unanticipated by the author, as me of my robbery, had become a founding text and the Bible of the newly evolving academic discipline of International Politics.

Turning a right on to the Donnington Bridge Road, I continued my walk. The January air was fresh and crisp but without the December chilliness that leaves the face stung, leaving a unique sensation which comes from being burnt by cold – fire and ice coming together. But this air was bearable and I rather enjoyed the lash of the cold breeze on my face. Up the Donnington Bridge and down, and then the road has a lonely stretch, with a farm on the left and woods on the right. I have done this walk many times and immensely enjoyed it every time. It’s like suddenly dropping out of the city and into the countryside and then equally suddenly, as properties reappear on both sides of the road, the city resurfaces. It is a short stretch, but takes you through another world. The familiar traffic signal looms large, from then on the Donnington Bridge road would become the Weirs Road, but then this is a good spot to turn back, and the round trip is just about the perfect distance for a short walk or a power-walk as some would say. I turned back and walked once again through the fresh countryside and up the Donnington Bridge. And then it happened – Four guys accosted me and I faintly recognised them as those whom I had earlier crossed on Meadows Lane. All hooded, and couple of them half-masked, and I heard a menacing voice – What do you have for me, Mate?...

I found myself not really afraid of them, but then they were four and I was alone. No one but us five on the bridge, not even a car passed by. What were my options? I could try and run – but then maybe they had a gun or a knife and it could get messy. Maybe I could scream and shout for help, maybe someone will hear me, or maybe not, as the bridge was completely isolate and none to hear me. Also, I didn’t want to have a prolonged encounter with these guys and draw their attention on to me and have them recognise me later on. As this was happening at close proximity to my home, the fear that, being recognised, they might pay me a visit another day was worse than being just robbed and the event forgotten. So I, without making any eye contact and without any act of aggression, sheepishly handed over my phone, fortunately my only belonging on me at that point.

I seemed rather bemused with the whole proceedings. It didn’t really hit me then that I was a victim of crime and was being robbed. It seemed like I was watching a movie clip, and the whole scene shot in less than 30 seconds. I have never been robbed face-to-face, so it was a brand new experience. It seemed surreal and I felt like a spectator, as one part of the audience, rather than being the unfortunate central character of the scene. It all happened so fast and even the memory of it continues to be very blurry.

I stood watching them walk away with my phone and then break into a run. I turned half-dazed and walked, walking right into a lamp-post. As I recovered, I saw 2 more men coming my way up the Bridge, one with a barking dog on a leash, a strange sight, and the other hooded. For some wild reason I felt that these two were part of the group that had just robbed me and so was confused if I should ask them for help. I pointed to the running guys and exclaimed to the two that they had nicked my phone. The hooded one replied that his battery was dead and pointed me to a guy walking on the other side of the road and told me to get help from him.

Even as I crossed the road, probably hearing what I had said to the two guys, the guy across the road stopped and waited. I pointed to him the fading figures of the still-running thieves, and told him that I had been robbed. His first sentence to me was, so are you warning me that I shouldn’t go that way. His words confused me and seeing my bewildered look, he asked me if I wanted to call the police with his phone? Even as I nodded, he handed me his phone. I bet he was equally confused with the sudden happenings around him and in being drawn into a situation he never anticipated. Even as he took his phone out, he made another puzzling statement, he said, I hope you won’t run away with my phone. Now I was really perplexed, but I bet he was more confused than me – so I told him to call the police himself with his phone, but he insisted that I take his phone. But I insisted back that he make the call himself and that I didn’t want to take his phone, but he continued insisting that I take his phone and make the call.

So I took it and asked him if he knew the number for the Police, and he nodded negatively. There we stood, watching the robbers fade into the dark and not knowing the number of the police to call. A number flashed into my blurred mind – 911. I was sure I had heard that number being mentioned for Police, on TV serials and crime movies – forgetting that most of these programs were produced in the US and that this probably was the US Police number, which it was (the UK Police emergency number is 999). But then that was the only number that made sense in my head and so I dialled 911. Amazingly, an operator was there to take my details and promised to sound the alert and send a police car over. As we stood waiting for the police to arrive, I handed the phone back and by then both of us had recovered our basic sensibilities and exchanged names and details. We found out that we actually knew each other. He was a Sanskrit student in the University and we had attended a few courses together and very recently had even attended a common lunch and exchanged pleasantries. He was another academic – no wonder both of us were so confused in real life!

The police vehicle came within couple of minutes with two constables and the next two hours was spent with the police filling out the Crime Report Form. The thoroughness of the Police system was impressive and the effective use of technology in offering the service of protection to the city residents appeared without flaw. Even as I sat with Gareth (the constable) in an over-heated room at the Police Station, trying to remember the event, and being quizzed for as many details as possible, I suddenly felt drained. I didn’t realise, but I had stopped answering questions – It just hit me that I had been robbed and the intensity of the experience of being intimidated by four blokes on an isolated road came at me with a gush. Gareth sensing my empty stare, gently asked me if I was alright. Even as I nodded, he exclaimed, that it is indeed a very unpleasant experience to be accosted by four guys. He reassured me that I had done the right thing and made the most sensible choice under the given circumstances. I asked him, if I should have done anything different and he replied that he would have done precisely the same if he was in my place. Slowly my confidence and humour returned and my normal chatty self took charge. I gave as many details as I could remember – phrases the guys had used and pieces of clothing they wore, just about anything that would help identify who they were, if not this time, at least at some future time. Once the report was finished, and my signatures taken, Gareth gave me his mobile phone and suggested that I call Vodaphone to block my number. Once all the formalities were completed, they were kind enough to give me a ride back to my home.

It is 3:20 am and even as I write this account, primarily to process the event for myself – I can see the blurred image of them four guys running away, running away with my phone, even as I stood rather confused and perplexed on top of Donnington Bridge with the Thames below me too frozen to flow. Even as the memory of this experience further blurs, it is the paradox of ‘victors running and victim standing’ that grabs my imagination...

Epistemology in a mid-Summer Night of 2008

I don’t want to sing this song to you

I don’t want to sit and hold your hand

I don’t want to dress up to take you out

I don’t want to whisper sweet goodbyes into your ears

The above chorus lines of an unfinished song seem to lament a relationship gone sour. It seems to convey a background picture of an angry defiant lover, sitting alone, who emphatically declares his lack of love and affection for the one he once loved. It does not kindle any special emotions within us except probably reinforce anger and echo similar feelings especially if we are found to be in a similar relationship status as the one that seems to be described above.

Let me change the background picture for you – here is a man dressed smart, holding the hand of his beloved, singing this song and whispering goodbyes into the ears of his dead lover who is waiting to be taken into the funeral carriage for the last ride of her life.

As I re-read the lines of the song again, my heart is now filled with a completely different set of emotions and I gasp and turn my eyes away. If I linger long enough over the words and try to imagine the scene created by the song writer, it reduces me to tears and creates an ache in the heart that does not want to go away. My heart reaches out for the young man and the life he is going to live without his loved one. For him to sing this song with such pathos, inversely reflects on the great love and affection they must have shared. The beautiful moments of togetherness, sweet whispers and boldly expressed emotions must have been the theme of their love. Even as he bemoans the end of this celebration of love, inwardly we join in with his cries and shed silent tears for bygone good times.

Suddenly my eyes flit back to the song lines and I stop: the intent of the writer suddenly seems clear, and my heart leaps up as revelation seems to hit me. It is not only not an angry burst over a broken relationship, it seems that it is also not really bemoaning wonderful yester-days and the beauty of celebrated love that has now been cruelly brought to an end with his death. It actually seems to be an expression of deep grief over the present task that the lover has to do – to take one’s loved one to the grave. Here she is being asked to play a most dreadful role asked of any lover – to be the one to take her lover to the grave. She dreads this and weeps over this task of walking with the love of her life for the last time and say final goodbyes and hence the words of this pitiful song spill slowly out of her mouth.

I can’t but help look above to read the song lines yet again. My mind wanders – could it actually be the first and last expression of a never-expressed love that was just too late and now with her death could only be expressed with words such as these? I see him just another face, one in the huge crowd that made up the funeral procession. Maybe she did not even know about his love for her. Or maybe there was just no death at all? Or maybe these are just lazy words of a song writer who is stringing words to fit a tune-recently-composed with an eye on the charts and the dollars that it may bring!

I forcefully put an end to my wandering thoughts. What do these lines mean, what do they 'really' mean? Or do they 'really' have to have a 'real' meaning!! And even if they did have a 'real' meaning, would I ever know?

Brainerd Prince

Before writing the section on Epistemology and Methodology

11:10 p.m. 28 July 2008

Yester-Year (2007)

Turn behind you

And then turn back

Close your eyes

And open them again

See the invisible

Catch the wind a dream

A dream that we were young again

In the land of the young

Where clowns with red noses

Horses without bridles

Children yelling and laughing, ruled

There was no sun to light the day

And no moon for the night

Stars plucked out from the sky

Adorned her neckline glimmering beautiful

Sparking under the black darkness of the night

The river was peaceful

As if standing to rest

Swaying gently to the sweet music on her shores

Grinning, smiling to all her yester memories

Old men and straight hatted women

Young lovers cuddling

Children screaming

All by her side

She watched them all

Through the dark corners of her eyes

Her eyes of yesterday

Re-living, life