ROBINSON CRUSOE @ 300; Or, an Epic of Freedom of Conscience Out of a Parable

“We all must learn life’s deep lessons by reflecting on our experiences in the light of God’s revelation.”

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe turned 300 in 2019. The book’s pervasive influence on the English-speaking literary world can be seen in various adaptations, movies, references in other literary works. 

Nearly 150 years after its publication, Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins published his detective novel, The Moonstone (1868). In that novel, one character swears by Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe saying that that book taught him almost everything about life. That’s one example of the lasting impact this book has had on other writers and books. 

Robinson Crusoe when it appeared in 1719, was a literary sensation. Nothing like that had ever been written.

The “first novel” in the English novel, however, was an outgrowth of the parable of the Prodigal Son told in the New Testament (Luke 15: 11–32), and the whole book is the retelling of the parable from the prodigal son’s perspective. Just as the younger son the parable told by Jesus rebelled against his father and left home, Robinson Crusoe too disregarded his parents’ advice and went seafaring. Like the prodigal son, he too repents and returns. 

Critics and scholars who love theories, systems and ideologies, said a lot about this book. From Marx to Max Weber, everyone had an opinion on the book, it’s protagonist, it’s setting, etc. For simple readers, it’s quite a riveting piece of writing, where the writer has you in his grip even when he is writing—for the most part—about a single shipwrecked man trying to survive on an uninhabited island. And when he is not working, he is coming to terms with his own past and realigning his inner life with the will and purpose of God, or as the biblical text says, “comes to his senses”.

At one point he says:

“It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy this life I now led was, with all its miserable circumstances, than the wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my days; and now I changed both my sorrows and my joys; my very desires altered, my affections changed their gusts, and my delights were perfectly new from what they were at my first coming, or, indeed, for the two years past.”

A spoilt young brat turns into a hard working artisan; a mason, a potter, a carpenter, a tailor—all rolled into one. 

The gradual conversion of his heart is the heart of the book. Just as the prodigal son was given the liberty to rebel, and was then given the opportunity to repent, Robinson Crusoe learnt a basic lesson about liberty of conscience. You cannot force any man to do your bidding. We all must learn life’s deep lessons by reflecting on our experiences in the light of God’s revelation. Even a prodigal must be given the freedom to disobey. 

Later in the book, when three more people join Crusoe on his island, he, in a moment of vanity, considers himself the monarch of his island and the three people his subjects. But he grants them liberty of conscience—one Protestant, one Roman Catholic and one animist, all living together. 

A lesson, indeed, for our times. 

Defoe has certainly created a modern epic out of a short parable about human condition.

WALT WHITMAN @ 200 ; OR, AMERICA, BIBLICAL INDIVIDUALISM, AND DEMOCRACY

This year we had the 200th birth anniversary of one of America’s greatest poets, Walt Whitman (1819–1892). The poet who sang “of himself” and of democracy, sought to balance  two apparently conflicting ideas—individual freedom and social responsibility. These two inseparable concerns have shaped modern literature. These perennial concerns are, as a matter of fact, common to philosophy, politics as well as religion.

In one of his poems (“As I Ponder’d in Silence”), Whitman says he encountered the spirit of the ancient poets who told him that great poetry is about great wars. Whitman responds by saying, he too, writes about a war; in fact, the greatest of wars, the war that goes on in the human soul. He is echoing what John Bunyan  (1628–1688) had said in his 1682 book THE HOLY WAR, the war for the soul of man. Conventionally, Whitman is seen as a Transcendentalist, but he is basically shaped by biblical conceptions of man and society. 

With Dutch and English ancestry, he embodies the Protestant ethos of individualism and communitarian responsibilities. He is no anarchist, in the usual sense. He moves away from rules and statutes of the society because he looks forward to the day when the divine law will be indelibly written on the human heart and we will instinctively do what is right (Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 10:16). His idea of human camaraderie is straight out of Psalm 133 and reflects the New Testament idea of the church. 

His admiration for Abraham Lincoln (subject of his popular poem, “O Captain! My Captain!”) affirms that democracy doesn’t mean merely the will of the majority but upholding of the principles of justice, and fighting for what is morally right. Personally, Lincoln’s individual greatness was his ability to unite a nation under the banner of justice and righteousness. That was biblical individualism that Whitman admired and promoted. 

He wanted cities, states and nations to “Resist much, obey little” (“To the States”) because institutional and collective liberty is far more important than merely self-centric individual freedom. Ironically, the strength of American democracy is that people do not want to be patronised by the government. Americans don’t consider their government their master, because in their collective unconscious all Americans are subjects of one great authority. 

The implication of this?

Democracy does not mean that everything goes. Whitman sings for the “freest action form’d under the laws divine”. There is no doubt in his mind that there were higher principles that we must recognize, if we want to safeguard our liberties and our democracy. 

He did flirt with Deism, Romanticism, Transcendentalism, Eastern religions, etc., but 127 years after his death we know that Whitman’s fundamental orientation—in fact, the USA’s fundamental orientation—remained firmly tied to the faith of the Pilgrim Fathers. That faith not only refused to sacrifice the individual’s conscience at the altar of tradition and tyranny but also sought to create a new order for communal living based on equality, justice and brotherhood. Whitman scholars often overlook this aspect but perhaps even Whitman wasn’t aware of that invisible bond. However, without first appreciating that, it is not possible to understand American literature, American nation and American democracy—and, of course, Walt Whitman!

READING GHALIB IN THE TIMES OF CAA

Now that our democratically elected government has decided to use perfectly legal ways to destroy the idea of India, we must celebrate that idea in whatever time is left before it is flattened like the Bamiyan Buddha.

Muslims—orthodox, moderate, radical—are an inextricable part of the idea of India. You cannot conceive modern India without Muslims, without their multifarious contributions to the society, their sacrifices for the country, their service to the nation.

Mirza Ghalib (1797–1869), one of our greatest poets, an irreverent Muslim, and a genuine “Indian” (born before India took birth) occupies a central place in the idea of India.

This year we have 150th death anniversary of the great Urdu poet.

And, today, 27 December, is his birth anniversary.

Ghalib, arguably, perfected the Urdu tongue, which, thanks to Bollywood, has become the nation’s lingua franca.

One culturally illiterate MP of the ruling party had suggested that we must wipe out Urdu influences from the Bollywood movies and songs, and replace them with Sanskrit.

This may happen soon.

Reading Ghalib may soon be outlawed. (I hope I’m wrong.)

So while you can, read and enjoy Ghalib, who was born in Agra, and died in Delhi. But since his parents were born before 1987, he may soon be out of NRC. 

(Facebook post on 27.12.2019)