Apolitical

 

Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/168246/

Date: 7-Jul-2022

 

Dear J,

Someone had posted this in Facebook.

Personalities in Tamil Nadu, who did a great job in preventing people like me, who were born in the 80s and had reached the mid-life stage, from getting ensnared in any party based politics are: Rajinikanth et al in Cinema, Jaggi Vasudev et al in Spirituality, Nammalvar et al in agriculture, Sundara Ramaswamy then and Jeyamohan now in literature... This is my assertion, people with different opinion - move on.

What's your perspective?

Anonymous

 

Dear friend,

If its asked as to what really is my job, I would like to cite this sentence. I wouldn't place myself in the list. Still, I am certainly trying to create a circle of thinkers who are apolitical.

My communication is not with the general community per se. I do not have any correspondence with them. They cannot get through to my writings. Nor do I have the inclination to reach through to them. So, I am not aiming at converting the entire Tamil community as apolitical nor at dissolving all the political parties existing here. I do not have that capacity.

I am aiming at creating a small circle which would stand free of all political leanings prevailing in general Tamil society and such a group must be grown for generations. It would be an energy center and a driving force for any community. 

A conversation can progress only via such an apolitical group. That group alone can generate new thoughts and make possible new visions. Not only arts, literature or philosophy, but even in politics new possibilities shall arise only from such an apolitical group that is free from all contemporary political authority.

We need to understand that the world has never ever been so political previously. This situation was created within the past century. This is a result of confluence of three disparate happenings - One is democracy, another is communication media, third is public education.

The concept of democracy was formed only in the past century. Therefore, the stage was set for people to get involved in politics directly, to decide on the political authority and for them to play a role in politics. Democracy is the authority of the public. The concept of democratic government means that it is a collective authoritative center with a tiny contribution from every common man. In principle, that is. As the democracy matures, so does the authority of the public. Therefore, the more a commoner is politicized, the stronger the democracy becomes.

Democratic principles were introduced here only during the Independence movement. We got a minuscule tryst with democracy only after 1923. Elections and voting were its politics. Post 1947, we got the opportunity to elect our government ourselves.

As soon as democracy was formed, propagandism, a politics of the masses, was developed. Propagandism is a way of oversimplifying the political principles and philosophies to form an overarching singular statements for the sake of drawing in the masses. And all these would be expressed with exaggerated emotions, while exploiting the feelings, suspicions and fears of the populace.

Wherever democratic politics develop, populism and propagandism gets formed simultaneously. Because, the simplest way to attain authority is propagandism. The most successful formula to rally people is to inflate the existing hatred, fears and suspicions within them, provide a facade of principle to it and to gather them around.

But rallying the masses for a higher goal is possible only for greater people. But, they won't have fascination towards authority. One having such a fascination would not profess higher ideals in reality. Because his goal is the authority itself. The path of people with authoritative outlook is propagandism. It is easier to rally people around a symbolic enemy than around a positive goal. That symbol can be outsiders or it may be a group within his own country. But propagandists will always express politics directing it towards an enemy.

If a political camp points to a specific enemy as the reason for all destruction and cruelty, it is professing propagandism only. Propagandism would never demand people to reform themselves, to rectify their mistakes or to become better uplifted. People would never accept such leaders. The one who projects himself as immaculate beyond doubt and that his enemies are the sole reason for all his defeats and failures is a propagandist politician. He is the one who succeeds mostly.

Democracy presented propagandism as its tool world over. Proliferation of communication media became the weapon of propagandism. We seem to have forgotten the fact that the media was formed only in the last one hundred years. Prior to this century, it would take months for a news to traverse ten kilometres. Today, news gets proliferated throughout the world every single moment, thereby making this world a single information field. Media proliferates propagandism. Propagandism exploits media.

The world got connected via telecommunication and print. Post that, news became a business in itself. Telecommunication became an industry with huge investments. Today's political parties were formed with the powerful combination of democracy, propagandism and telecommunications. They are not idealistic organizations nor are they ideological constructs. They are not even a political wing. They are just a gathering of some people who have come together to progress towards political authority. There is nobody who do not know about this. And with those novices who really are not aware, I have nothing to communicate.

In any environment, there will be one, two or even three political sides only. They will have the involvement of majority of the population. They have a great power purely because of this participation. That power is not due to ideological beliefs or depth, nor on the holistic reasoning or the integrity via on-field realities. Rather, these propagandist parties possess us beyond imagination due to the beliefs of the thousands, due to it being heard several hundred times every day, due to it being heard around us right from our adulthood. We have been sculpted by them. 

Our soul has been sculpted by the voices from this atmosphere. Instead of thinking ourselves by discarding those voices easily, we end up owning one among those loud perceptions. We boast of it as our uniqueness. We have been trained like that. One who says that he has a political leaning is akin to a dead leaf being carried away by the gale. He is someone who is attracted to and being carried away by the voice that he hears right from his adulthood days and he isn't someone who had thought, read on his own and then decided on his path.  

One who is possessing a voice that he hears in his environment can never be an original thinker. He cannot achieve anything in arts, literature, ideology or even in political ideology. A thinker is someone with his own vision. With his own quest. With the wherewithal to find his own answers. Only he can become a writer, artist, ideologist, philosopher or a political ideologist.

The primary quality for that is whether he can stand apart from the atmosphere's huge factionalizing. But it is not that easy. Because the atmosphere specifies that either you be this side or that side. It prototypes like, "If you are not on my side then you are on the other side". It would think of someone who is on neither side as useless. It would try to destroy him. 

The state where the entire society has become disparate authoritarian sides and has been facing off among themselves has not existed prior to democracy. In a war between Pandyas and Cholas, the citizens didn't have any role. The atmosphere where two different factions fighting for supremacy grabbing the entire conversational space within a society didn't exist before the advent of social media.

In such circumstances, an independent thinker would happen to be squeezed between 2 gigantic machines. He would be prone to calumny and abuse. He won't have friends. He would be isolated in any group. His views wouldn't have any audience in public. He might not be able meet anyone who accepts his arguments and agrees with him, sometimes even for his entire lifetime.

In spite of all such pressures, if someone can feel his individuality, can comprehend his intuition, can present his arguments as his perspective, he is the ideologist. He is artist. Ibsen said, 'The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone'. My pursuit is to create such individuals only.

This isn't a new concept. This is a prevalent thought in the domains of arts, literature and philosophy throughout the world. This is also today's reality within the realms of scientific and cultural research. Even in commerce, any business owner would know that there is no place for politics. Quite contrary to the beliefs of some idle Facebook parasites, all of humanity doesn't linger in politics always.

All the political wings here advocate only populist politics. No one can accomplish anything new by standing as a tiny drop within them. If someone is trapped within the treachery, the resultant alertness, the consequential enmity and bitterness of this politics, except for serving what they cook, what can he think originally? What can he accomplish?

In Tamil milieu, writers are becoming the voice of authoritarian politics. They pride themselves in that. It hasn't been this way ever. This is a downfall of intelligentsia. A writer portraying a party symbol is a disgrace to the literary world. Modern literary sphere will always look down upon someone who sings the praise of the party chief. In today's scenario, when the wind is carrying away all the dry leaves, I am trying to create some rocks.

Every political party has its own justifications. They cannot be rejected easily, because they weren't created by a single member. Rather by thousands and even lakhs of people. Any party's political ideology would exist as a principle prepared over a century. There would thus be a response for all the kinds of queries in any party's principles. No one except for a strong intellectual can therefore converse with the entire reasoning created by a party. Because it is equivalent to one person fighting against a lakh. Only the person who stands ahead of his times can conduct that conversation for at least a while.

Every political party will have its own detailed justifications. Historical justifications, practical justifications, emotional justification, individual justifications. Among these, historical justifications would've been written in quite a detail, because many scholars would've written about it for quite long. This is true of any party, be it Hindutva faction or Dravidian faction or Marxist faction. That is the reason for post modernism to view historical arguments with suspicion. If someone starts mentioning that 'history was created this way', it states that that person is influencing our way of thinking. 

The basic quality of today's modern intellectual is to stand against dominance. Domination isn't exclusive to organizational or governmental or societal authority. All kinds of dominances that influence our way of thinking and force us to take a stand are ought to be condemned. All ideologies that force us to take a side makes us incapable. One who fights against such domination takes the first step in thinking. One who tries to tackle one dominance by befriending another subordinates himself to domination with double the force. Dominance beckons, and he directs himself towards it.

In this century, the ideological dominance of factions that are vying for governmental authority is dividing people into two or three large groups in every country and community. It forces one to speak in support of only one such faction. It converts everyone into becoming incapable of seeing any justifications or rationale other than that of his own faction. If it is America, then one's identity is derived by a simple question of whether he is a liberal or conservative. In India, it is done by asking whether you are a Hindutva or an anti-Hindutva. I firmly believe that one, who has the courage and the quest to stand apart from these identifications, has the singular capability of original thinking.

Therefore, I am striving to create people who are sort of apolitical, though it doesn't mean that they are devoid of any politics. It just means that they haven't pledged allegiance to any of the contemporary populist politics. They may voice out a kind of politics that haven't been viewed till now. Or they may be imagining politics that's necessary for the future. They may be expressing alternate politics.

People who have read my articles would know that for the past three decades, I have always accepted those who have shunned populist politics and have presented an alternate politics. I have never ignored anyone who speaks 'alternate politics'. I have also not shied away from recording my mistrust on those who project populist and factionalist politics.

The presence of such an apolitical group within a society is equivalent to the presence of a thinking group remaining there. It is equivalent to a section remaining without being taken over by any influence or being carried away easily. Equivalent to a center which supervises and analyses all the happenings. Protesting against authority is the contemporary politics. If there is a voice which doesn't belong to any political side, only that will have any kind of worth in our thinking. I am striving to create that voice only.

 

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajinikanth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadhguru

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Nammalvar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundara_Ramaswamy 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandya_dynasty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chola_dynasty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Ibsen

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/289920-you-see-the-point-is-that-the-strongest-man-in