Sunday Posts

I have been reading Mark Lilla's The Reckless Mind (New York Review of Books, 2016), which is an insightful portrait of six intellectuals in Politics. Lilla's broad point is that seeking the purity of ideas in the messy practicum of the political world is a hazardous enterprise. This has led - whether inspired by enlightenment reason or by religious passions for a new beginning - to tyranny, or philosophies in the service of tyranny, which Lilla calls 'philotyranny'. In Lilla's vision, the love of ideas, the pure passion, more often than not, turn to ideologies, sacrificing freedom in the quest of a perfection that is both unknowable and unattainable. In this, his ideas are not too far from those of the American pragmatists, John Dewey in particular, for whom ideas turning into ideologies was the cardinal sin of our time. I came away, however, with another thought: That tyranny is somewhat our original condition, basis of our moral thought. Whether we think in...

I see this interesting debate in India that one may have had too much of freedom. The public, by that I mean of the urban middle class, attitude is that freedom to do anything and to obstruct is coming in the way of order and development. The model is indeed China, whose growth rates, wide roads and fast trains are seen with envy, and the attitude is not unlike the one Dambisa Moyo recommend for Africa - a Chinese model that prioritise development over liberties, even human rights. To be more specific, one can talk about the land acquisition bill that is pending at the Indian parliament, which will make it easier to acquire land - by evicting people - for infrastructure projects, industries and mining operations. It is important for India to build infrastructure fast and cheap, and tenancy rights are often coming in the way. As someone told me, for an underdeveloped country, freedom is a luxury one can ill-afford - we can get freedom once we have got the roads. We all know th...

I wrote about the contrast between John Dewey's concept of Learning from Experience and the conventional ideas of Experiential Learning ( See here ) and the limitation the latter may have, despite its popularity, as we climb into a future with smart machines and pervasive globalisation. I see Dewey's concept of creating engaged individuals to be central to the system of education we ought to build - and indeed see that the modern education system, with its focus on creating humanoid workers, is precisely its anti-thesis - and believe that we need to promote the concept of experience not as isolated special events but as an opportunity to interact with one's world.  The key difference that this different approach to experience makes is in the idea of inquiry. Learning from Experience depends on the emotional engagement with the world and asking questions: This much everyone agrees upon. But it matters what kind of questions we are asking, because they shape our abiliti...

India is a proud democratic country, even more so after the magic of a clear majority has been achieved by the new administration in Delhi after quarter of a century of coalition politics. Everywhere one goes, democratic pride is in display: If some people started doubting if a democratic system will only produce politics of division, they have now been thoroughly convinced that Indian democracy is a system that works. In this rather triumphalist environment, it is rather blasphemous to question whether democracy is enough in itself. Indeed, blogging with a contrarian opinion is quite hazardous in India, where people are commonly arrested for political opinions using colonial era gagging laws. Besides, even if there is no legal ground to arrest someone, smashing up people's houses by agitated supporters of one party or the other is quite common. TV channels are routinely silenced, either by political mandate or by corporate takeovers, with the objective of squashing any criti...

As it happens, during the course of last few days, I came across two very specific instances of questioning the value of freedom. One was specifically about academic freedom, and the other about freedom in general. Set in context of the rhetoric that freedom is central to progress, these are rather surprising points of views, hence demand further exploration. In the first instance, I am referring to John Morgan's China on Fast Track in Times Higher Education of 19th December. One of the central issues this article grapples with is whether the lack of academic freedom will stall the progress of Chinese universities in the global league tables. Indeed, academic freedom is sacrosanct in the Western academic circles, and that one can conduct meaningful research and teaching without the freedom to explore anything that inspires curiousity and without the freedom to express one's opinion sounds deeply anachronistic.  Various interviews presented in this article tell of a d...

The frontiers of civilization keeps shifting: Now it is in Dhaka. Unlike the American formulation, however, this is not about one kind of civilization up against another. It is a different, but known, variety of struggle - of a modern nation of aspirations against the old structures of repression and fear. The Islamists in Bangladesh, powerful as they always were, have finally come out of woodwork and trying to claim the country: In a rematch of the country's liberation war fought forty years ago, they are, in fact, more ideologically formidable, and may be more numerous. However, they are up against a modern young aspirational nation, no less determined than their forefathers a few generation ago, no less able than the military commanders of the earlier generation. This time, the battle is fought in proxies. Most powers will sit out on the fence; they ought to: This is a dangerous battle, mostly fought in ideas. While battling against the government, the reactionary forces ma...

This morning will bring unfurling of flags, marching troops, speeches, families sitting around television, Facebook messages announcing unending love for India by Indians living all over the world, special issues and new pledges: This is India's 65th Independence Day. Our relatively new country has now come of age, the freedom's generation has truly passed: The country has now been handed over to a generation who never had to toil to earn the freedom. For most of them, as for me, 15th August is a holiday, a day to celebrate and cheer for, but mostly to sit at home and do nothing, a reminder may be of great events but something I did not have to work for. This generation, therefore, will have to invent India all over again, one on their own image and imagination, as the nation we knew in the past is slowly fading away with the liberation generation. It is our turn, a responsibility - to define the country anew. To start with, we may have to recognise that India is an experi...

So, shutters down at the News of The World, and welcome, probably, to Sun on Sunday. It is not just the saddest moment of British journalism, a trade that sustained the world's oldest surviving democracy and helped, I shall argue, to make the case for free speech all over the world. It is an epiphany about what happens when a trade, a profession loses its purpose, and becomes a tool of production of profit and power. Lessons have to be learned, not just by the Murdoch mafia and their cronies, but by the man on the street perhaps: That the freedoms we take for granted are hard-earned and must be protected every day, and such. But, first the bad news. News of the World paints an astonishing picture of a business at its worst, when responsibility was thrown out of the window in pursuit of profit and power, and little people, sadly and cynically engaged in keeping their jobs, carried out heinous crimes, no less serious and offensive than sex abuses and murders they reported, at the be...

I just read about Galerianki , the Polish documentary on the phenomenon of mall girls, on today's International Herald Tribune . For the uninitiated, the mall girls are those teenagers, often in school, who hang around in shopping malls and try to spot wealthy individuals, draw their attention and perform sex acts in return to gifts, often in the form of expensive branded clothing, mobile phones and other accessories. Deviod of parental attention, as their parents struggle to keep pace with the demands of post-socialist Poland, these girls do not think they are prostitutes, and call their clients 'sponsors' or 'boyfriends', and sometimes 'frajer' ['loser]. This story attracts my interest because of a coincidence. I spotted the story on IHT only after having a discussion with someone in the Philippines about those girls in Philippines, young and full of girlie charm, who perform sex acts for money to pay for their exams. Yes, it is as...

Adding a fresh twist to the Sensitivity versus Freedom of Speech debate, the Danish newspaper Politiken , which published the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad with bomb-shaped turban and the like, apologised for any offences it may have caused. In fact, the apology comes after it has reprinted one of the cartoons, originally published in 2006 by another newspaper, after an attempt was made on the life of Kurt Westergaard , the cartoonist. The newspaper which originally printed the cartoons, Jyllands - Posten , criticized Politiken's apology, calling it a 'pathetic prostrating in front of a Saudi Lawyer' which deserves 'the first prize in stupidity'. Kurt Westergaard called it 'a setback for the freedom of speech' and the Danish Union of Journalists called the move 'kneeling before the opponents of the freedom of speech'. Such criticism comes despite the fact that Jyllands - Posten itself apologised for printing the cartoons back in 2006, and the oppo...