Thank you dear subscribers, we are overwhelmed with your response.
Your Turn is a unique section from ThePrint featuring points of view from its subscribers. If you are a subscriber, have a point of view, please send it to us. If not, do subscribe here: https://theprint.in/subscribe/
Imagine multiple creators come up with systems to solve a problem. They get their hands dirty, work with the nitty gritty and messy process of building a system. Then some people come up with a metric to rate the system’s stability. They find that no system gets a high score, so they suggest that all systems are equally bad, and must be discarded. They disregard the variability in quality of these systems and instead put them all in a common bucket. This analogy in a nutshell is the problem with the Left, which dominates scholarly discourse today.
Left correctly points out that larger the number of people who feel oppressed, lower the stability of a socio-economic system, and that no system gets a perfect score on this. But they don’t show a practical example of building an alternative system which scores higher. They ignore that community building is a messy process. They ignore the human psychological need of aspiration, inspiration and spirituality that traditional forms of community building cater to. Further, it’s not like that they themselves don’t create the “other” group, ones they designate as oppressors. Left humanizes what they designate to be the oppressed group, but don’t apply the same humanization to the other category.
But with all its problems, Left does provide a framework that is global and general in nature. It can be adapted to various scenarios and cultures, making it useful for producing scholarly work. Right lacks in doing the same.
Human motivation and needs are multi-dimensional. Oppressor-oppressed framework of the Left deals only with limited aspects of that. It makes it easier to study, but does a disservice to the study of the range of human motivations and their effect on how humans organize. This is a gap in the scholarly discourse in humanities that can be filled by Right.
We need scholarly work which studies what motivates some humans to build big stuff – communities, religion, empires, great pieces of art, etc. Such works require superhuman efforts. What makes people put in this effort is not some rational analysis of the situation, but probably a drive channeled by a belief in something larger. While it is true that large aspects of our world are not in our control, this “irrational” belief that one can still make a dent, allows people to have confidence to attempt big things. What role does divine stories play in this belief in something larger? Getting lost in their historicity or doing “rational” analysis of their beliefs, misses the understanding of the motivational purpose of why they exist.
We need frameworks which allow study of what keeps religion or community formations, once created to keep thriving. Ancient India did wrestle with some of these questions, related to long term societal and ecological sustainability, under the umbrella of Dharma. Indian Right can produce scholarly work asking and exploring similar questions for our current era. We should ask such questions not just for systems in India, but also for systems outside, leading to a general framework. World has changed significantly since we last had such scholarly discourse in ancient India. World is now much more populated, polluted, connected and technologically advanced but time poor. There are Abrahamic religions in the picture with conflicting worldviews compared to Indic religions. Nature of jobs is no longer largely family based. These explorations can result in new insights and even solutions.
We can research questions like: How does religion X take care of human aspirational and spiritual needs? In what ways can a person manifest their individuality in a given society? How cohesive is a community building effort? Can the community take in new people while maintaining its core? How compatible are the community forming processes and the societal philosophical bent? Will one’s growth mean the decline of the other? How can a given system maintain societal and ecological sustainability? Does the system have a tendency of over extending itself, leading to instability in future? How can we channel the divine stories for motivating positive changes in society? How does lack of communities affect society?
I wish to see a poverty free & clean India and enjoy the fullest expression of its cuisines, art, cultural creations & aesthetics. And I believe we won’t get there without a deeper look at the interplay of realities of the current world, human psychology and mechanisms to form cohesive aspirational communities.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.