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.
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.
