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)

HOW TO KILL GANDHI

It would have been unimaginable a few years ago that 150th anniversary of the man considered Father of the Nation will also be almost the last nail in his coffin.

By 1947, Gandhi was the biggest symbol of communal harmony. On question of caste his position was contested, but he was the undisputed leader of Hindu–Muslim unity.

When a bullet from a misguided fanatic’s gun felled the frail mahatma, the nation consoled itself by saying that his ideas would outlive him and would be a “kindly light” for the newly formed country.

However, in 2014, the “government of Hindus was made after 800 years”. We stopped talking about Hindu–Muslim unity. But what do we do with Gandhi?

We emptied him out of any meaning he may have had for our times. Non-violence and Truth were outdated ideas in the era of mob lynching and fake news.

The only way to keep the Gandhi brand available for political gain was to make him a mascot of a national cleanliness drive—Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign)!

Gandhi for cleanliness drive? Sure!
Gandhi for communal harmony? No way!

Gandhian ideal of Hindu–Muslim unity was made irrelevant because we want to build a Hindu Rashtra. Gandhian idea of non-violence was abandoned because it was drawn from the Christian Bible (Sermon on the Mount). Gandhian idea of Truth was given up because power must be grabbed at any cost, even falsehood.

All that was left of Gandhi was photo ops for politicians sweeping the already swept streets. Or killing little children relieving themselves in the open.

A great man dies not when he stops breathing but when his memory is manipulated to suit our convenience. This is what is being done to Gandhi. Our current generation is growing up with Gandhi being a man who inspires us to pick up the broom—and not as someone who urges us to arm ourselves with weapons like truth and non-violence.

Gandhi has been like a proverbial snake that was killed while the stick remained intact.

Godse did not kill Gandhi. The current dispensation has killed him!

Chowkidar for the Caste-Corrupted Empire

A bullet train is no match for the speed with which our great political orators spit out catchwords to capture the nation’s imagination. The latest comes from our Prime Minister Sri Narendra Modi. He had earlier tried to convince the electorate that he was the only Übermensch who could protect their borders, their bank balance and their dharma. But after nearly five years—in which he coined innumerable new terms and renamed old schemes—he realized that he had not delivered as the chowkidar, the prime watchman of the nation. Lo and behold, he decided to share his failure with his entire constituency. Hence you have #MainBhiChowkidar trending on the social media. From cabinet ministers to former cow vigilantes, all have prefixed their social-media identities with the word, Chowkidar.

An incendiary Hindutva ideologue from his party, Sri Subramanian Swamy, refused to follow the fad. A former Harvard faculty member, he had sound reasons. In an interview given to a Tamil TV channel he said that being a Brahmin, he could not be a chowkidar. Brahmins, in the orthodox social hierarchy, are the priests and teachers. They instruct others and do not take orders a la doormatly doormen. In ancient times they had absolute control over knowledge, the classical language, and the sacred texts, while the rest of the populace was practically illiterate. Sri Swamy has made it clear to the prime minister that it is fine for an OBC (a Shudra, in the traditional hierarchy) like him to be the chowkidar, who would take orders from the citadel of Brahmanism in Nagpur. But Sri Swamy would not exchange his role as intellectual commander of the bahujans (majority-people, the so-called backward castes) for such sentimental reasons. 

After the 2014 general election, when Sri Narendra Modi was chosen to occupy the highest political office of the country as a democratically elected parliamentarian, there were many among even the so-called liberal-left anti-caste intellectuals who were filled with awe and praise for the RSS. They began to argue that unlike the secular parties, RSS seems to have given an OBC the chance to scale the political ladder and become the prime minister in a democratic manner. They believed it to be the sign that under RSS, the traditional caste system is being dismantled and a unitary and unified identity of a casteless Hindu is emerging, or, in fact, has emerged.  

But as the seemingly off-the-cuff remark by Sri Swamy shows, Brahmanism continues to pull the strings of even this stage-managed show of the casteless Hindu. The India that Sri Narendra Modi is a prime minister of is not the India of RSS’s dreams. This sovereign, socialist, secular democracy—this India that is Bharat, which is governed by a constitution guided by Western liberal and Christian principles, and has been drafted by a Dalit—is something they loathe. They are extremely uncomfortable with the Indian Tricolour, which they never hoist in their gatherings. Their ideal is a vast Hindu empire that holds almost the entire South Asia within ancient hierarchies of caste under a saffron flag. Until that happens, they must let a Shudra pawn consolidate India’s “backward” castes behind, ultimately, the Brahmin leadership. Accommodating one Modi is a small price to pay to win the allegiance of the entire backward communities of India. In a dark dystopian fashion, Sri Narendra Modi is a harbinger who will  do the dirty job of destroying democratic institutions and structure of India, till the “rightful owners” are back in power with all their Hindutva glory. 

Between Sri Modi’s call of letting the world know that we are fellow chowkidars with him and Sri Swami’s smug rejection of the same, a shocking news came out. It was in Sri Modi’s home state Gujarat. A 17-year-old Dalit student was allegedly tied to a tree, beaten up and was prevented to appear in the all-important board exams. The two attackers had apparently told him that since he was an untouchable “he should not study and take his exams but do labour work”. Later, it was also alleged that the boy was attacked because he was in a relationship with an upper-caste girl. In either case, the assaulters were trying to guard their caste status. After all, ye bhi chowkidar hain! (They too are watchmen). 

People are being deluded into thinking that by calling themselves chowkidar they are somehow fighting economic corruption. But can any of these swords-wielding sentinels do anything to prevent the kind of crimes committed by the likes of Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi and Vijay Mallya? Most of them won’t even challenge the corruption in their gram sabhas if the sarpanch is from their religion or caste. The chowkidars, like their previous cow-vigilante avatar, would target the Dalits and religious minorities. In this election season chowkidars will use the morally charged language to unleash terror among the political opponents. That’s where the whole chowkidar movement is leading to. Didn’t Sri Swamy once say that elections are not won on the basis of soundness of your economics, but how well you emotionally manipulate your cadre and the electorate? That seemingly off-the-cuff remark by him has deep roots in Hindutva ideology of brahmanical supremacy. And the foot soldiers, with the new name of chowkidars, would very willingly give their all to revive and protect the caste-ridden structure of the society. 

This is where the chowkidars will become their own gravediggers.