Month: September 2015

It is often argued that socialism has something called dogma. What’s dogma? A set of rules and ideas that you HAVE to believe in. Just ask anyone in 1934 USSR, or 1953 PRC or today’s PRK (People’s Republic of Korea). Those who argue this argue correctly – blood has been spilt over it, much more blood than should have been over what Buddha would have called needless hair-splitting. Just ask anyone in modern Russia, China or South Korea (you wouldn’t have access to those in the North unfortunately).

There are – and were – various aspects of this dogma. It is not my intention to fill my blog with a study of socialism – there are a good number of studies on that, none of which I can recall right now because it has been such a long time since I studied that topic in detail. Anyways….

What I wish to talk about today is a certain aspect of this dogma that defined what man should be. You could not be just anyone in USSR. If you were, you could be branded a capitalist, a kulak, a petty trader or randomly anyone who was against the revolution. So how do you avoid being called any of these derogatory and dangerous names? You try and pretend – or indeed become – someone whom the Party believes is the “ideal” man.

And how do you define the ideal man ? An ideal man does this, doesn’t do that, looks like this and above all, thinks this. What’s this ? “This” varies in space and time but because we’re speaking of socialists, it generally means something that has been eulogized as ideal to socialist doctrine. So if you’re living in any of these countries, you behave in a certain manner, buy certain goods and do certain things, spend your free time in a certain manner, send your children to certain schools and heck, perhaps even have sex with your wife (socialist regimes typically didn’t tolerate live-ins for some strange reason!) in a certain position. Okay, maybe you had the freedom to have sex any which way you liked as long as the children born of such acts grew up to be ideal citizens who, again, believed in whatever was haute in the ideology books of the time.

(Did you notice I’ve used three words – doctrine, dogma and ideology? What’s the difference between them mate? Tell me?)

To sum up, you became a living breathing mannequin of the party’s ideals.

And if you didn’t want to be that way ? You could protest and be shot (or sent to a gulag) or escape to the West. What did you get in the West ? Freedom to think, freedom to do as you like and freedom, above all, to pursue your ambitions and become, as Mirandola had said, whatever you want to be.

If you did, you were probably soon convinced that you were right. There was no state to tell you what you should do in the minutest detail, inspection squads did not look for minute details and it was fine to protest about anything and everything in the world. Including your dear old country.

But what of the capitalism that you’ve embraced? Does it not create its own dogma? Let’s look at the question in very practical terms.

Say you go to a shop. You’re immediately bombarded with ideas of what you should buy and why you should buy them. Why? Because all the media you’ve been consuming over the past year has told you that to have social status and “be” the person people admire and look up to, you must have a certain set of products. The advertisements and the salespersons only reinforce it.

But haven’t you escaped from a society where such things were enforced? Here it can’t be enforced so you willingly, self-consciously and deliberately reject this idea. You refuse to buy what you are told you should buy. Take that socialism!

Okay, so you come out of the store. Now you’re in the street and you see people wearing and doing just what has been advertised all along. But you have rejected this path right ? Very good, so you are different. But are you? You must get new clothes as the old ones wear off, new food as the older stocks run out and new implements with which to do whatever you wish to do. SO you must buy. And you must buy in a manner that sustains your individuality and your rebellion against coerced or persuaded homogeneity.

You go to a store. It’s not the one that has been advertised the most and it isn’t the one that has what you said you wouldn’t buy. What does it have? Clothes, food, implements. Yes, all that you need. You buy happily, ignoring the calls of the salespersons to check out this or that product that is currently selling like hot cakes (or supposedly selling like hot cakes).

You come out of the store. You come out and realize that what you’ve bought is indeed different, because

1. It is made by smaller brands who may sometimes produce inferior goods.
2. It is part of last year’s stock (not food though, here you don’t have so much leeway).

You get the distinct feeling that whatever you’re using is of poorer quality or worse, outdated. Mind you, we don’t mean that it’s out of fashion. We mean that you feel that it is not as advanced as the products you could have bought.

Now say you go to your workplace. You’re immediately made aware of the fact that what you’re wearing or using is outdated and out of fashion. Does it suggest that you’re in hard financial straits ? Back in the socialist economy, there was no such problem. Everybody earned the same (supposedly) for the same work and got the same tools because the state produced only one or two variants.

SO now you’re acutely aware that what you use not only expresses your taste, but also your status. And in capitalistic society, because you can rise as high as you can (supposedly), status means a lot. It defines where you are on the ladder, how far you have to go, how fast are you moving? And when you come home, your wife, who’s been going around to the homes of all the other wives, reinforces this idea.

But wait, there’s more. Aren’t you that guy who came from that socialist country? Are you trying to tinker with the cherished ideals of the nation, trying to corrupt them? Why else would you want to do what you just did – something nobody else did (apparently). In defence, you fall back on the first justification – you’re probably poor. But you know, inside, that you aren’t. You need to get out of this poor or traitor problem, and fast!

Now you’re in a dilemma. You’ve spent the money you had allocated for the goods and find yourself stuck with stuff that nobody appreciates. What do you do? You do aspire for social respect right? Would you like to live out a whole year or even longer in such a socially depressed status ? Nope. Would your wife be happy if you took money meant for something else just so you could get the “right” stuff ? Nope.

You look for a cheap deal. Something that you can bring home and say – “Honey, I got it at 80% off so I didn’t need to withdraw any money from the bank”. The good news is, there is always a deal.

Not just one, many in fact. They’re advertised in stores, in TV shows, everywhere. In fact, you’d probably found a deal when you decided not to buy what everybody else was buying. Now you need a deal that’s even better than those deals.

Problem is, the deal that’s better than those deals has two pitfalls –

1. It sells goods that are defective or are “Refurbished” ie essentially second-hand
2. It sells goods of only a particular size and type.

You’d think that the second category would include products that are of rare or unusual types and so if you have a larger shoe size, a bigger waistline or something similar, you could avail yourself of it.

The bad news is, though the sale may deal with products that are a little less than popular (in terms of size, design, etc.) they still fall within a median that eliminates the other sizes and designs as outlier points. Why ? Because the manufacturer probably knew that those special types wouldn’t sell well and didn’t produce them in the first place.

What do you do? Simple – you adjust your body and your tastes to fit that median. A median, probably, that is narrower than the median which you were initially offered when you rejected those very goods because you’re now looking for a better price. You have little choice now – you buy the goods, adjust yourself and become the mean of the median of society. The conformist….

….you’d sworn you wouldn’t be.

So you see, capitalism has its own way of creating the “perfect” man, one who fits into everything and in doing so, can save the maximum amount of money. The farther away you are from this median, the more you spend and the more you stick out in society. And when you stick out, you appear to be falling behind in the race to achieve the perfect status and position in society.

In other words, what socialism makes you do through state fiat, capitalism forces you to do by manipulating your ambitions and dreams.

The word alternative means that there is something that’s “mainstream”, something that’s expected and anticipated. Something that’s assumed to be there by default. Something that has the stamp of history.

I use the word history with caution, having chosen to enter the field of professional past-analysers whose task is to tell you who you are at this instant, just as the weatherman tells you what the utility of your umbrella is today.

But have you asked yourself, who you are? What is your history? A history that is not defined and codified like so much programming by a set of professionals? What is the history that is truly yours?

You do have a history, and this history is composed of things no one else could have known, seen, felt, experienced or remembered in a way you have. It’s a history that moves out of the general and into the particular, into your own personal space – the space of your own heart and its emotions. It is an emotional history.

But where did the emotions come from? Facts, events, circumstances? What were those events? Why did you feel the way you did about them? And what could you have felt instead? What could have happened instead? Happening and feeling combined, what would have been your alternative emotional history? And what sort of person would it have made of you?

And would that different person, with that different history, be writing at this time on this topic at all?

These thoughts, like every other stream of thoughts, have context. You see, a few months ago I was an offer holder for the PhD course in History at SOAS. The application process had been a long one, but I’d found some very understanding and friendly people along the way. People who were willing to forego the frostiness of intellectual snobbery and name-dropping to truly look into my topic. People who were willing to provide me the intellectual support I needed for applying to my first university abroad.

Such people live in the UK you see. In India, there are narrow minded people. People who believe they know a lot when they’ve only read a few books. And heard of a few others. I met such people at my Felix interview and three days later, I was, de facto, out of contention for a seat at SOAS.

Move forward three months, yes, just three. I receive an email from a certain Mr. Ross. It’s a welcome letter for those joining SOAS this year. It talks about welcome programs and orientation and various formalities. Formalities I was supposed to go through.

Formalities I’m supervising, sort of! You see I’d joined the BESC as a lecturer and had gradually taken up the responsibilities of a teacher. Part of this included taking the new students to a tour of the library, asking them to head to various orientation programs and being in the front row on the Teacher’s Day.

All this made me a teacher. I am leading a teacher’s life and am likely to do so in the near future as well. But what if I’d been selected for Felix? I’d never have applied for BESC, never would have thought of joining another class as a teacher so soon (again!) and…I’d have been flying to the UK – as a student.

That’s the point isn’t it ? I’d have been a student, and my eyes would probably have been filled with the same wonder I saw in the eyes of undergrad students – my students – whom I led through the college. I’d be making new friends, forming new bonds in a new environment. Did I not ? Of course I did, but as a teacher. There, I’d have been a student. Just like the students who now attend my lectures.

But there’d be one clear difference. My students attend college with their parents’ money. I’d have been attending SOAS off the funds of some donor who must not be named (hell, I don’t even know his name). These kids are close to their homes, to the families who pay and pray for them. I’d be far away from my family and living off the purse of someone whom I didn’t even know.

So how would I have felt as a student of SOAS ? Happy ? Of course. A bit scared, wondering if my manners were up to scratch, if my clothing was proper, if my academic records were in order and above all, wondering if I’d fit in. My students probably thought the same. Eventually they fit in. I’d have fitted into SOAS too.

What if, under such circumstances, I’d received Mr. Ross’ letter ? It’d have been one of many letters coming from various people regarding various affairs. I remember being offered a place to stay by Sanctuary Students. They’d have some correspondence. I remember discussing the future studies in UK with my supervisor. There’d be mails from her. Perhaps from my course coordinator, from the finances office, the Immigration office of the UK….the list could be endless.

The information given inside would be a sneak peek, wouldn’t it ? Building on what I already knew about SOAS and telling me what to do and what I should search for. Actionable intelligence.

But actionable intelligence it is not. Not for me. When I received this email, I was in the staff room, discussing a range of trivial matters with other teachers. Teachers who are today my friends and mentors, who count me as one of them.

So I read it with bemusement, a slight smile playing on my lips that no one noticed. Good thing, because it is never easy to explain these emotions unless it’s past midnight on a Friday (and you’re in front of a monitor instead of at the proverbial party).

So I read it with a slight tinge of pain. It felt as if you had a broken leg and someone passed you racing skates. A mistake no doubt, even suggested (as a self-effacing measure) in the first line of the text. But no amount of mistake could deprive me of the realization that I could have….and then, what could I have done ?

But I would never have thought of a “could have” with bemusement I I had been in the UK. I’d have been filled with dread, excitement and wonderment. I’m not, that history is not mine, that emotional history is not mine : that is not me.

Instead of being in the student’s shoes, I am in those of a person guiding them. Instead of marvelling at the presentations and orientations, I’m in staff rooms discussing the nitty gritty. Instead of being the audience, I’m the operator.

I could have been a student, I am a teacher.

So teacher I am, and that is my history. My existence is defined by what followed through, what fructified and provided me with a place to rest my head and raise it in pride. I did not raise it with pride when leaving the Biotechnology Centre of JNU where the interview was held. I did when I became a full-time faculty and BESC. And when direction removes stagnation, happiness supersedes pain, victory supersedes defeat and the wave of life drowns the islands of what-never-happened, history is written in my heart and mind, I am given identity.

But identities do not destroy memory, bitter or sweet. I can never forget what I went through to get to SOAS, and how its doors were closed to me. I would not forget this mail which rubbed the wounds raw. I will not forget.

But neither will I be able to live in these. They do not define me you see, they aren’t what I am or what I would be. They will become discordant memories, and in this way, shall remain till something brings them to the fore again! Discordant with the joy of my lectureship, discordant with the challenges of teaching and discordant with the identity that I now have – as a teacher.

So my history of SOAS and the letter would become a discordant history, unable to be my identity but too precious to be let go of. I think we all live with such discordant histories – histories created with facts and emotion in equal measure – that challenge our notions of our path in life by telling us that which we never can be.