Noble savage and Swatimutyam

In 1755 On the Origin and the Basis of Inequality among Men' also fondly called - in short hand - 'The Second Discourse' was published. This tore the intelligentsia in France and in Europe apart. In fact it compelled the greatest philosopher of the day, Voltaire to say scathingly that reading the work, "one is seized by the desire to walk on all fours." A later work by the same author would make Voltaire call it "silly, philistine, shameless, boring." The author of The Second Discourse was Jean Jacques Rousseau.

230 years after the discourse, Swatimutyam directed by K Viswanath was released in Telugu. This film which dealt with the life of an autistic orphan later went on to become the first Telugu film to be India's official Academy award submission. Why do I place this hugely popular next to the French political treatise? Because, I believe, that there is something in common between the two, more than we might believe.

I would like to caution the reader in advance that this is a mere reflection and not an analysis. I am not a philosopher, not even a formal student of philosophy. My engagement with Rousseau has been by way of some literature written on him and some more by him. Also it is quite crucial while reading Rousseau to be aware of the blatant contradictions in his writing. He praises kindness and compassion but views Sparta as the ideal state not minding the murder of weak infants by the war-loving Spartans. He proclaims openly his love for children yet justifies his act of giving away his own children to an orphanage. Perhaps it is the contradictory philosophy too of Rousseau that prevents me from taking up the task of analysis.

I place Swatimutyam alongside Rousseau based on one central premise. All the others branch out from that. There is a general sense that this premise also lies at the heart of Rousseau's own philosophy: the understanding of human nature. My work will largely deal with this and so Rousseauian political thought will be in the dark.

Now why was Voltaire criticising  Rousseau and so were so many philosophers? Because they believed that Rousseau was going against the dominant school of thought in 18th century Europe. While the others - philosophes - expressed strong faith in reason over other human faculties, Rousseau said in The Second discourse that reason "breeds pride" and makes man turn inward and divorces him from fellow human beings. If enlightenment philosophers thought that with reason man could acquire law, justice, morality, freedom, and democracy, Rousseau insisted that emotion and human nature should be given a chance. There clearly was a big difference between the rationalists' thought and the philosophy of Rousseau (which is why some note that Rousseau was the inspiration to many romantics). These differences tempted some of these philosophers including Voltaire - as you can see in the introduction - to draw dichotomies too crude than actually existed. According to these philosophers, they represented culture and reason while Rousseau represented nature and emotion.

I shall not buy into that view of Rousseauian philosophy but I surely admit the break from the popular school, however subtle it may be. Although Rousseau did not coin the term or use 'noble savage' (as against the popular misconception), there was surely something noble according to him in the earlier stages of human development. In human nature while there was the need for self-preservation (which sometimes may urge the tribal to kill the other) there was also compassion. The same human being could kill to live and love to let live. Rousseau says that this compassion was disturbed by the need to claim ownership and the birth of individual property. With culture man (yes, man only) lost the need to care for the other. With culture man pursued self-interest and not mere self-preservation.

All that he attempted after that - Social Contract, General will, free births and chains, everything was an attempt to reconcile the individualistic present and the communistic past, the compassionate and self-preserving selves. All that he attempted was to maintain both the freedom of the individual man and the equality in the society; and strike a balance between corrupt culture and primeval nature.
Now what about Swatimutyam? Sivaiah (Kamal Hasan) is an orphan and he is what the title says he is - a Swatimutyam, a white pearl owing to his autism. The question that should strike is: why does an autistic man need to be a Swatimutyam, a white pearl? Because he is innocent? What then is innocence? Is it lack of knowledge? What knowledge? In trying to answer these questions we realise that the filmmaker is exerting his understanding of human nature which is positive. Sivaiah is kind, compassionate, innocent and nearly the representative of the absolute good because he does not interact the same way everyone else does with society and culture. He does not learn what the average man does and the community is unable to teach him. In other words he is not tainted by society, its conditioning, and its institutions.

Instead he is driven by what Rousseau sees as an alternative to social constructs like law and morality: compassion and kindness. Like Rousseau Sivaiah is also puzzled by human notions of morality. Why is it that one is taught to speak the truth always as a child but later taught to lie when needed? Why is it that the community ostracises a woman who has lost her spouse? These are unfathomable to Sivaiah who only knows the language of love. It is out of instinct and solicitude that he goes to wed Lalitha (Radhika). It is that instinct that some Scottish and French liberals vilified and others looked at with suspicion. Again, it is that instinct which makes him bash up the landlord (Gollapudi) and walk on embers. He does not view hitting the landlord as an act of violence or fire walking as 'superstition' because these are rooted in the educated mind. To Sivaiah society is full of contradictions. Perhaps, even to Rousseau.

From this natural sensitivity, emerges Sivaiah's religion. While it is true that the priest for all his innocence and goodness calls Sivaiah, God, to Sivaiah however man is God. He does not see any contradiction in uttering Amen in the church or singing in the Harikatha during Ramanavami celebrations. To Sivaiah singing Sita's plight is perfectly compatible with fire-walking near the Muslim Baba. His relationship with organised religion seems to echo Rousseau's own relation with religion and his views on the role of religion in the ideal situation. Rousseau shifted in his lifetime between Calvinism and Catholicism for reasons of ideology, citizenship, acceptance, and politics. He maintained throughout that the relationship with God had to be purely personal and in fact got himself into trouble by calling Christianity a religion 'that takes away the love for life'. Sivaiah's religion is similar to Rousseau's because it ties God and man together but Rousseau's does differ in a very pivotal way because he brings in state into this affair. Hence I admit that I would be stretching it too far if I said they were identical.

While Sivaiah lives by his instinct, Rousseau did not. To the latter instinct was distinct from thought and ideology from action. Love made the former father many and raise them with affection. Rousseau too fathered four or so children but left them at an orphanage. This, many liberals took as an opportunity to criticise Rousseau and even maybe jeer at him. By the end of his life, Rousseau himself was an abandoned man but he believed that he had left civilisation by his own will. Swatimutyam meanwhile has a family and an heir willing to write his story down. Rousseau died with a contested heritage. Every word written by Rousseau today is contested. History has been fair to Sivaiah and Swatimutyam.

Nagareshu Kanchi

Kalidasa, affectionately called by some passionate admirer as the Shakespeare of India - himself passionately lauded the South Indian city Kanchipuram (which I find amusingly surprising) when he said:
"Pushpeshu Jati. Purusheshu Vishnu. Nareeshu Rambha. Nagareshu Kanchi"
which means that Jati, Vishnu, Rambha, and Kanchi are the greatest flower, man, woman, and city respectively. What we find here is Kalidasa demonstrating the greatness of Kanchi while at that time doing the same to his own rhetoric. In this what I find 'surprising' is the fact that we have nearly no traces of Kalidasa having been to the city of Kanchipuram (kalidasa was a poet at the Gupta court in Pataliputra/Patna).

Reasons for his saying that are not hard to conjecture. Kanchipuram in his days must have been a fabulous city and a fabled city. It must have been what the Great Khan's Beijing would have been to the Middle-Age Europeans after Marco Polo. Another piece of information can make it even more convincing. Kanchi finds itself in the list of seven Mokshapuris (therefore, also called Saptapuris). It is said that a devotee's soul gets liberated directly when he visits a Mokshapuri.  Now we know what Kalidasa was looking at when he adulated the city.
Beyond doubt, Kanchipuram was more-or-less the city of dreams, hence all the praise from unexpected corners of the Indian map. Well, there are chronicles of Kanchi from even appalling parts of the map, like.... outside it!

Only a traveler like Hiuen Tsang would have the endurance to withstand the haphazard landscapes and the often-hazardous climates of India; the inquisitiveness to explore and observe the unknown; and the devotion towards treasure, goal, and duty; in order to get to Kanchipuram (Kin-chi-pu-lo, as he calls it) from East China. In his Si-yu-ki, like so many places, Kanchi also gets documented. Kanchi is described as a fertile land inhabited by honest, self-esteemed, and particularly courageous people. However what attracts Hiuen Tsang is not the abundance of food or the remarkable characteristics of the community there (the climate is described unfavourably but reasonably fairly - that it is hot) but the fact that this was a major Buddhist site and an educational hub.

Tripitaka, as Hiuen Tsang is widely known, mentions that this was home to a Bodhisattva even. Archaeological evidence shows that Buddhism was if not the most popular, one of the most prominent religions in the region. Why, even Bodhidharma who is said to have founded Zen Buddhism in China was from Kanchipuram. Well, what do we have here?

Kanchi is one of the holiest cities for Hindus in India while simultaneously sitting in Hiuen Tsang's itinerary. If that were syncretic, archaeologists have traced Jain shrines too in and around Kanchi. Pancha Kanchi is the term used today to describe the quarters of the ancient city that were home to five religious practices (Buddhism, Jainism, Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and Shaktism).
Unfortunately, Buddhism has almost completely been replaced by Brahminism in this area. Excavations reveal that Buddhist civil structures were seized by Hindu groups to be used as shrines for their respective deities. Jainism is scattered and small but some sites have survived. The three Hindu strands are extremely active, also thanks to the temples built by the Pallavas (whose capital this was) and expanded by Vijayanagara kings (I hope I get to talk about these two dynasties sometime in my blog). Varadaraja and Ekambareswara temples are one of the most important for South Indian Vaishnavites and Shaivites respectively. Nevertheless Kamakshi shrine is the most noted attraction here - so much so that Shankara, the great Vedantic theologian established his Peetham (a religious order) here (and this continues today - with undiminished authority).

If Hiuen Tsang is one foreigner (Kalidasa is one too in his own way) who set his gaze upon Nagareshu Kanchi, the temples that have hitherto  been described become the cause for the other. At an age when imperialism was pride, but also awe; was snobbery but also passion; was xenophobia, but also exploration and discovery; young James Fergusson was also drawing sketches of Indian structures like fellow 'orientalists'. Fergusson with the help of his sketches managed to illustrate a broad picture of world architecture and classify styles.
Looking at the temples of Kanchi and Mahabalipuram, Fergusson noticed for the first time that South Indian temples had a distinct style - which he called Dravidian. In describing the temples of Kanchipuram aka Conjeevaram in his book, 'History of Indian and Eastern Architecture' published in 1876, he says:

"..the two towns, Great and Little Conjeevaram, possess groups of temples as picturesque and nearly as vast as any to be found elsewhere."

Nagareshu Kanchi 

  

Why I am a Hindu

To be certain, I was born a Hindu. By sheer accident of birth, I am a Hindu but that's not all. Lately, I've come to believe that I am a Hindu by choice. This has compelled me to ask the most obvious question, "Why? Why am I a Hindu?" This blog post is an attempt to weave the thin strands of thoughts that burst open on asking that question.


To answer this question I naturally began by asking what Hinduism was in the first place. Many Hindus answer, "It is not a religion but a way of life. It is a Dharma." To all those Hindus out there who believe and say this as a motif, you are not wrong but you are not helpful either. Most religions in the world call themselves a 'way of life'. Their adherents believe the same. So Hinduism is no different from other religions, isn't it? Hinduism as an idea can only be uncovered through learning and analysis of its history.
Was it in 1893 when Vivekananda introduced Hinduism to the world?






Was it during the 1820's when Raja Rammohan Roy denounced idolatry and Avataras and called Brahmoism the true Hinduism or later when Dayanand Saraswati gave a call to fellow Indians to go "back to the Vedas" claiming that Vedic knowledge alone was Hinduism?

When was Hinduism born?

Was it when Veer Savarkar coined the term Hindutva meaning 'Hindu cultural nationalism'?



Was it on the arrival of the Europeans and with them, the arrival of orientalists and western scholars studying eastern cultures? Was it founded by Shivaji who built a Hindu force against the Mohammedan Moghuls?Or was it during Kabir? Or Guru Nanak? Or Tulsidas? Or Tansen? Who taught that devotion and love were the only way towards realizing God.
Much before….. Was it during Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabho?
Did Ramanuja found Hinduism? Or was it Madhvacharya whose words that God and Man were distinct countered all radical ideas?

Better… Was Adisankara the founder? Wasn’t he the man who wrote odes to the million Gods and brought millions of people into one fold?Where did Hinduism originate from? The Manusmriti? The Puranas? The Prabandhas? The Brahamanas?Were the Upanishads the root of the religion? Or were the Vedas? 

What about the mendicant on the Harappan seal who is called “Pashupathy”?

When was Hinduism born? There is clearly no answer to this question. This is because Hinduism has no single founder or sacred text. It is a loose amalgamation of a galaxy of cultures and civilizations. Does this mean that Hinduism does not exist? As an institutionalized religion, no. As a concept, yes and no. 

Now that I've come to this point let me dwell a little on what I mean when I say that I am a Hindu. What is the central idea of Hinduism? For that we need to look into its prime religious texts. The Bhagavad Gita? Not really. Following history shows us that the Gita was not in fact the chief text of this large culture. It emerged to earn its current status only about 200 years ago. This was a result of the activities of reformers, spiritualists, and saints who sought to project a certain image of the Hindus to the west: An image of a spiritual nation which tolerated to its best but protested and fought like a lion on molestation and torture. The Gita is only the chief text due to the context both in terms of time and place. If we were to ask a different pool of people from a different time period, they would probably identify a different text or a different canon. All this makes Hinduism a very complicated religion to study. To many the Vedas are the holy scriptures, to others: the Upanishads. Agama Shastras, Prabandhas, Puranas, and Vedangas are all holy scriptures to different people. Gita Govindam for quite sometime enjoyed the status that Bhagavad Gita does today. What about the Tulsidas' Ram Charit Manas? Even to this day, to many, it is the primary literary monument that gives access to the divine.

Where do we find the absolute philosophy? Most Hindus seek to unite with the Brahman. Tantric sects, however reject the idea of Brahman. Are they not Hindus? They are. Karma is a recurring concept too and escaping it can be considered an idea. Can Buddhism and Jainism be considered sects of Hinduism then? Yes and no. Again, we cannot say what the basic idea of Hinduism is. This is what I consider the essence of my religion. Diversity.

Being a Hindu, one can believe all that he/she wants. He may believe that man and God are the same (Advaita) or that they may become the same (Visishtadvaita), or that they are not and cannot (Dvaita). One can believe in a form-less God and an almighty devoid of any qualities (Nirguna). One can believe in a powerful God with supreme qualities (Saguna). Polytheism and Monotheism are both entertained. Any means and any number of means to realisation of God are entertained. Sacrifice, Fire, devotion, song and dance, penance, bodily activities, and surrender have all been preached in different sections of this religion. God and divine experience can take any gender. They can be purely masculine or feminine or be independent of Gender. Nothing is sinful in true Hinduism. This is what inspired me in this religion. Ultimately one can even be any atheist (under the Charvaka school) being a Hindu.

Diversity, heterogeneity, and freedom are truly the core principles of Hinduism. If Hinduism has evolved into a religion it is only because of its tolerance. It has learned a lot from other external religions. Therefore, a real Hindu is one who respects other doctrines, cults, cultures, faiths, and religions. Conversely, one cannot call oneself a Hindu when he despises, detests, and disrespects other faiths.

Going back a few steps, heterogeneity is the soul of Hinduism and the biggest threat to it is homogeneity. This brings me to a controversial subject of today: Hindutva. True, it is a threat to India's secularism but I argue that it is a threat to the religion that it claims to uphold. What destroys the soul of Hinduism is minimizing it to particular clothing, temple, food, colour, idea, symbols, and objects. What destroys the whole of Hinduism is bringing it down to one fundamental world view. What destroys Hinduism is Hindu fundamentalism and hostility. What destroys Hinduism is Hindutva itself. Hinduism is much more than all that. It is much more than a cliche phrase. It is not a way of life. It is a multitude of ways of life.

Hinduism like India is a place of uncertainties, contradictions. inconsistencies, and complexity. Let it be that.