The blind spot of liberal objectivity !!
In more innocent times, one would call it a "Pseudo"-X occurrence (replace X with - intellectual, secular, patriotic, religious..take your pick)! A pseudo-intellectual was someone pretending to be intellectual, a pseudo-marriage was one that had all the trappings of a marriage, yet never was and both people in the marriage knew it! For a behaviour, pseudo-ism was about desperately projecting a lie as the truth and hoping everyone believes it...
The protests the past month or so have projected a very righteous air (if not downright, taking affront) - a "how could you!!!?" feeling, was the theme, running through all. One would have called them pseudo-protests if it were not for this inexplicable sense of not only being right but also being wronged... personally!! The anti-CAA demonstrations cannot be a pseudo-protest, because it's evident there is a mass of people genuinely and emotionally invested. It's simplistic to say that it is a protest driven entirely by politics of malice and/or the lure of petty lucre. The anger is genuine and the hurt is keenly felt.
So what is it ? but is a conflation of several personal / community gripes expressed differently.
On that great intellectual whetstone of the 21st century - WhatsApp - as arguments flew thick & fast, one of our 'liberal till I die' groupie posited the following --
"..................people like RamChandra Guha are able to call out Rahul Gandhi a lazy fifth generation dynast because he has the advantage of liberal objectivity", (which of course the 'zombies' on the other side don't possess....!!)
The answer from the zombies' was that despite lacking the vaunted liberal objectivity they had managed to arrive at the same conclusion more than a decade ago!
"'Good that the liberals have finally arrived . I was instantly reminded of a tv show (perhaps the Big Fight )before the 2014 general elections where the foreign commentator had said something similar about the dynast and had dramatically enacted the desperate liberals' heart desires --'Rahuuul' 'Rahuuuul' wishing against all hope , goading Rahul Gandhi into a worthy political figure, but alas !!
Ramchandra Guha soon followed up with lengthy explanations as to how his statement was taken out of context blowing up the eloquent argument of liberal objectivity ! But even much before that, several probing questions on our whatsapp group had forced the proponents of liberal objectivity to give it a miss and revert to banter and cricket ! It is indeed a fine art, the extraordinary selectivity with which the objectivity is applied with out it ever weighing on the consciousness.
The recent countrywide protests against the amendment to the Citizenship Amendment Act provided an excellent opportunity for the liberals to showcase their famed objectivity . The televised coverage of the protests have thrown up very glaring questions even to an ordinary discerning eye (or even to zombie eyes) but as expected not just our liberals friends but even the liberals of national fame have somehow managed to avoid even batting an eyelid to it! Either they had the best anti-glare sunglasses on or the glaring issues just managed to fall repeatedly on the scotomas of liberal visibility.
The most glaring truth uncovered was the level of education and the lack of awareness of the protesters and their children (who by some morally bankrupt if not evil design have been deliberately pushed forward in these protests).The men could not prevent the protests from turning overtly religiously motivated and violent , thus the women and children were pushed forward to mitigate the administrative pushback. This misuse of children,in itself was of course never going to be enough to evoke a liberal response but on seeing the appalling state of upbringing of the children one could have expected , but no.
For everyone else it was quite evident that most of these children in the forefront of the protests were out of formal schooling !! They certainly had all the hateful words towards the current national dispensation but were totally bereft of any schooling diction. Let alone the children even the women were totally ignorant of the reason of the protests, yet they possessed all the necessary hurt , victim-hood and pain required for the protests. They were ready to lend their support on the basis of the 'fear' and the age old 'religious prosecution' narrative which had been fed to them by the organisers.
The gullibility of these protesters exhibited a total lack of critical thinking at the individual level making them totally vulnerable to be used by unscrupulous elements of the society. It showed they had no experience of how to acquire and process information by themselves. This is a basic goal of formal secular education which eventually results in critical thinking ability . What the protesters exhibit first hand is not just a generation which hasn't received any such formal secular education - it also shows that it is not even keen to ensure that at least its next generation receives it !! It is but obvious that over 6 lakh madrassas imparting religious education to 50 million (5 crore) impressionable young minds , the development of critical thinking and the attitude towards change is totally dependent on the innate flexibility of the religious doctrine. We all know that the religious doctrine is frozen in time which explains the ignorant bliss of the protesters !
The children of Savita Vihar ended up harassed and worried about their board exams because of the unnecessary and avoidable disturbance to their studies caused by the Shaheen Bagh protests !! An objective liberal question should have been "What about the exams of the children of Shaheen Bagh ? !!" . But perhaps the board exams and the education of the children of Shaheen Bagh is not an objective concern ?
.
A second glaring reality the protests threw up is a total lack of informed, coherent, 'secular' leadership among the protesters ? Why is it so difficult for a 'secular' leader to attract crowds without pandering to the religious sensibilities, especially of the muslims . Conversely, if a muslim leader draws secular crowds the muslim masses in turn desert him for a more 'religious' leader . Is it this fear that makes all 'Secular' leaders pander to the religious insecurities of the minorities to garner their support without caring about the truly secular values . Lack of individual awareness, critical thinking both makes it easy to be overcome by herd mentality -- something which has happened time and again, yet there appears to be a reluctance to emerge out of it !
In fact more religiously violent or communal the slogan more the support from the masses for it - it is not strange then that the horde among leaders is to pose as communal as possible! This protest was thus a tricky one for the leaders as the difficulty was to arouse the religious sentiments of of the muslims and yet appear representative of all religions. The protesters were reluctant to actually explain the reasons or points of disagreement, but wanted to keep stoking the religious passions -- most likely to a point where it was possible to be overtly catering to just the Muslim interests.
A third glaring truth uncovered was the total lack of tolerant, plural ideals or literature among the protesters most of whom here were muslims. They couldn't quote Jinnah, they couldn't quote Iqbal, the tried Faiz he too turned out communal enough , they would not like to rely on Dinkar or Maithili Sharan Gupta, then who ??
The difficulty was to project the individual religious (muslim) identity within the umbrella of a tolerant secular national identity.
How can such ideas or such literary support be found when both the identities have always been at odds with each other!? A really difficult one for our liberals to swallow but that is what is becoming increasingly evident with each passing day of the protests -- exclusive religion identity cannot be fought for, under the garb of pluralism , if the religion itself it at odds with pluralism !!
If the exclusion-ism has for centuries nurtured supremacists ideas and by force prevented any tolerant plural thoughts -- it is not strange that the literature is deprived of wide appealing secular ideas, which could have been used for the protests. The liberal objectivity should have swung into questioning this gaping lacunae, after the initial shock but sadly once again it did'nt.
Yet another truth thrown up for liberal consideration from this conflict of this religious versus the national identity, was about the representative symbols or insignia used. It was made amply evident that exclusive symbols like the hijab and burkha which are practiced with an overwhelming sense of religious identity, cannot be used as a sign representative of people of all religious affiliations ! It would have been perhaps more fruitful for the protests to actually adopt more secular signs but then that would have been easier only when the muslims had accepted and practiced such national insignia nothwithstanding their religious identity. But sadly over the years the muslim community has shunned all such national identity signs as it has found them at odds with their religious identity. This exclusion-ism so fanatically practiced prevents the desired expression of both the national identity and religious identity together.
To sum it up for the liberals the ex-president of Aligarh Muslim University Students Union said - "hum woh Kaum hain, jo koi bhi mulk ko barbaad kar sakte hain " -
' we are that community which can destroy any nation'
Such a bitter and unpalatable truth thankfully came from a member of the kaum itself , but ironically the tragedy of the truth was most likely lost to the speaker and the liberals again managed to dodge acknowledging it !! From the Bamiyan Buddhas to the countless damaged defaced temples and statues all across our country they all throw light to the mindless destruction of civilization carried out, the glaringly truth is however the inablility of a set a people to evolve from destroyers to creators !
Identification and acknowledgement of a problem, however big is always the first step towards a solution. All of us are able to overcome the effects of the physiological blind spot because of the overlapping visual fields of our two eyes. I am though still trying to figure out what's 'amiss' that the liberal objectivity is able move through the glaring lights of unpleasant truths without even bothering to blink !
--Saurabh Agrawal
with valuable contributions from Rahul Joshi .
The protests the past month or so have projected a very righteous air (if not downright, taking affront) - a "how could you!!!?" feeling, was the theme, running through all. One would have called them pseudo-protests if it were not for this inexplicable sense of not only being right but also being wronged... personally!! The anti-CAA demonstrations cannot be a pseudo-protest, because it's evident there is a mass of people genuinely and emotionally invested. It's simplistic to say that it is a protest driven entirely by politics of malice and/or the lure of petty lucre. The anger is genuine and the hurt is keenly felt.
So what is it ? but is a conflation of several personal / community gripes expressed differently.
On that great intellectual whetstone of the 21st century - WhatsApp - as arguments flew thick & fast, one of our 'liberal till I die' groupie posited the following --
"..................people like RamChandra Guha are able to call out Rahul Gandhi a lazy fifth generation dynast because he has the advantage of liberal objectivity", (which of course the 'zombies' on the other side don't possess....!!)
The answer from the zombies' was that despite lacking the vaunted liberal objectivity they had managed to arrive at the same conclusion more than a decade ago!
"'Good that the liberals have finally arrived . I was instantly reminded of a tv show (perhaps the Big Fight )before the 2014 general elections where the foreign commentator had said something similar about the dynast and had dramatically enacted the desperate liberals' heart desires --'Rahuuul' 'Rahuuuul' wishing against all hope , goading Rahul Gandhi into a worthy political figure, but alas !!
Ramchandra Guha soon followed up with lengthy explanations as to how his statement was taken out of context blowing up the eloquent argument of liberal objectivity ! But even much before that, several probing questions on our whatsapp group had forced the proponents of liberal objectivity to give it a miss and revert to banter and cricket ! It is indeed a fine art, the extraordinary selectivity with which the objectivity is applied with out it ever weighing on the consciousness.
The recent countrywide protests against the amendment to the Citizenship Amendment Act provided an excellent opportunity for the liberals to showcase their famed objectivity . The televised coverage of the protests have thrown up very glaring questions even to an ordinary discerning eye (or even to zombie eyes) but as expected not just our liberals friends but even the liberals of national fame have somehow managed to avoid even batting an eyelid to it! Either they had the best anti-glare sunglasses on or the glaring issues just managed to fall repeatedly on the scotomas of liberal visibility.
The most glaring truth uncovered was the level of education and the lack of awareness of the protesters and their children (who by some morally bankrupt if not evil design have been deliberately pushed forward in these protests).The men could not prevent the protests from turning overtly religiously motivated and violent , thus the women and children were pushed forward to mitigate the administrative pushback. This misuse of children,in itself was of course never going to be enough to evoke a liberal response but on seeing the appalling state of upbringing of the children one could have expected , but no.
For everyone else it was quite evident that most of these children in the forefront of the protests were out of formal schooling !! They certainly had all the hateful words towards the current national dispensation but were totally bereft of any schooling diction. Let alone the children even the women were totally ignorant of the reason of the protests, yet they possessed all the necessary hurt , victim-hood and pain required for the protests. They were ready to lend their support on the basis of the 'fear' and the age old 'religious prosecution' narrative which had been fed to them by the organisers.
The gullibility of these protesters exhibited a total lack of critical thinking at the individual level making them totally vulnerable to be used by unscrupulous elements of the society. It showed they had no experience of how to acquire and process information by themselves. This is a basic goal of formal secular education which eventually results in critical thinking ability . What the protesters exhibit first hand is not just a generation which hasn't received any such formal secular education - it also shows that it is not even keen to ensure that at least its next generation receives it !! It is but obvious that over 6 lakh madrassas imparting religious education to 50 million (5 crore) impressionable young minds , the development of critical thinking and the attitude towards change is totally dependent on the innate flexibility of the religious doctrine. We all know that the religious doctrine is frozen in time which explains the ignorant bliss of the protesters !
The children of Savita Vihar ended up harassed and worried about their board exams because of the unnecessary and avoidable disturbance to their studies caused by the Shaheen Bagh protests !! An objective liberal question should have been "What about the exams of the children of Shaheen Bagh ? !!" . But perhaps the board exams and the education of the children of Shaheen Bagh is not an objective concern ?
.
A second glaring reality the protests threw up is a total lack of informed, coherent, 'secular' leadership among the protesters ? Why is it so difficult for a 'secular' leader to attract crowds without pandering to the religious sensibilities, especially of the muslims . Conversely, if a muslim leader draws secular crowds the muslim masses in turn desert him for a more 'religious' leader . Is it this fear that makes all 'Secular' leaders pander to the religious insecurities of the minorities to garner their support without caring about the truly secular values . Lack of individual awareness, critical thinking both makes it easy to be overcome by herd mentality -- something which has happened time and again, yet there appears to be a reluctance to emerge out of it !
In fact more religiously violent or communal the slogan more the support from the masses for it - it is not strange then that the horde among leaders is to pose as communal as possible! This protest was thus a tricky one for the leaders as the difficulty was to arouse the religious sentiments of of the muslims and yet appear representative of all religions. The protesters were reluctant to actually explain the reasons or points of disagreement, but wanted to keep stoking the religious passions -- most likely to a point where it was possible to be overtly catering to just the Muslim interests.
A third glaring truth uncovered was the total lack of tolerant, plural ideals or literature among the protesters most of whom here were muslims. They couldn't quote Jinnah, they couldn't quote Iqbal, the tried Faiz he too turned out communal enough , they would not like to rely on Dinkar or Maithili Sharan Gupta, then who ??
The difficulty was to project the individual religious (muslim) identity within the umbrella of a tolerant secular national identity.
How can such ideas or such literary support be found when both the identities have always been at odds with each other!? A really difficult one for our liberals to swallow but that is what is becoming increasingly evident with each passing day of the protests -- exclusive religion identity cannot be fought for, under the garb of pluralism , if the religion itself it at odds with pluralism !!
If the exclusion-ism has for centuries nurtured supremacists ideas and by force prevented any tolerant plural thoughts -- it is not strange that the literature is deprived of wide appealing secular ideas, which could have been used for the protests. The liberal objectivity should have swung into questioning this gaping lacunae, after the initial shock but sadly once again it did'nt.
Yet another truth thrown up for liberal consideration from this conflict of this religious versus the national identity, was about the representative symbols or insignia used. It was made amply evident that exclusive symbols like the hijab and burkha which are practiced with an overwhelming sense of religious identity, cannot be used as a sign representative of people of all religious affiliations ! It would have been perhaps more fruitful for the protests to actually adopt more secular signs but then that would have been easier only when the muslims had accepted and practiced such national insignia nothwithstanding their religious identity. But sadly over the years the muslim community has shunned all such national identity signs as it has found them at odds with their religious identity. This exclusion-ism so fanatically practiced prevents the desired expression of both the national identity and religious identity together.
To sum it up for the liberals the ex-president of Aligarh Muslim University Students Union said - "hum woh Kaum hain, jo koi bhi mulk ko barbaad kar sakte hain " -
' we are that community which can destroy any nation'
Such a bitter and unpalatable truth thankfully came from a member of the kaum itself , but ironically the tragedy of the truth was most likely lost to the speaker and the liberals again managed to dodge acknowledging it !! From the Bamiyan Buddhas to the countless damaged defaced temples and statues all across our country they all throw light to the mindless destruction of civilization carried out, the glaringly truth is however the inablility of a set a people to evolve from destroyers to creators !
Identification and acknowledgement of a problem, however big is always the first step towards a solution. All of us are able to overcome the effects of the physiological blind spot because of the overlapping visual fields of our two eyes. I am though still trying to figure out what's 'amiss' that the liberal objectivity is able move through the glaring lights of unpleasant truths without even bothering to blink !
--Saurabh Agrawal
with valuable contributions from Rahul Joshi .
Bro. I would love to meet you and discuss the Science and these stuffs with you. Do not ever forget that you are a great soul with a beautiful mind. Your knowledge is a gem.
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