Why India needs its stories...

I have been reading a very interesting book on the psychology of romantic love recently. It’s a brilliant analysis of the story of “Tristan and Iseutl” and how that narrative of romantic love has influenced modern man’s (and woman) view of personal relationships.

In short, the author talks about how in reality there are two loves that people seek. One is a heavenly, divine love and an earthly love. The search for the divine love is a search within, into our own hearts while the earthly love is one that we find in our relationship with others. Both are special and necessary in their own right but it is when these two loves are mixed and confused that love and suffering become entangled.

In romantic love, each person ends up having a relationship not with the other person for who he/she is, but with the projection of this divine being that resides within him. Since the lover can never fit this divine image and since he is looking for divine love where it doesn’t exist, it inevitably leads to disappointment and suffering.

This story and others like Romeo and Juliet end up creating a subconscious image of what love is supposed to be like. If it isn’t a passionate attraction to someone then it just isn’t worth it. With passing of time, the initial passion dies, and the persons involved feel that they owe it to themselves or that they have a right to look for that passion elsewhere. Many times their projection jumps to some other person resulting in them “falling in love” with another leading to a break up or divorce and a repeat of the suffering with the new person. In western societies or asian societies which have westernized (Christianized) such as Japan or Korea, these stories have become very popular and are now the standard by which all love relationships are measured. It is not that these literary pieces have a major influence on the public psyche but it is the mass media which takes inspiration from these kinds of stories that impacts malleable minds. Most movies that are made in these societies and now in India, deal with passionate love affairs, romance, infidelity, excitement, etc. There are very few if any which deal with loyalty, integrity, patience or any other positive virtue. Romantic, passionate, exciting relationships are how it is supposed to be and stable, loving, caring relationships are seen as “boring”. It should therefore come as no surprise that these societies also see a huge percentage of divorces and break ups between couples. What people strive for and expect in life is largely influenced by the popular narrative in those societies.

This relationship between popular love stories and human behavior in relationships made me think about the effect our historical stories have had on the Indian psyche. My cousin who did his MBA in Hyderabad mentioned about how most of his colleagues had no second thoughts when it came to cheating in their exams while he never entertained any such thoughts. He is not religious at all but he mentioned that he feels that his decision to be honest was largely influenced by the stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata that his mother used to tell him as a child. The heroes of our epics served as good role models for my cousin and I am sure many other people who love our history.

With the secularization of India and its education, Indian citizens are denied their right to their stories. We have forgotten our role models. The Congress in their goal to monopolize the polity have made gods out of their leaders. To fulfill their need to look up to someone, to serve that divine in them which people tend to project outside, Indians have succumbed and started making gods out of mortals like M. K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar. One can no longer question their idiocies, blunders and mistakes without being accused of blasphemy. One only has to look at the fanatical following of Rajnikanth in Tamil Nadu, Dr. Raj Kumar in Karnataka, Chiranjeevi in AP to see the corruption that has set in the Indian peoples search for the divine. It is imperative for the survival of India that we re-introduce our stories, our history back into the minds of its people, lest we make Gods even out of people like A. Raja and Sonia Gandhi!

False Victimhood

Off late, there have been rants from a wide variety of people from the "secular" tribe that Muslims are finding it difficult to find houses for rent. The controversy was started by one secular fundamentalist Shabana Azmi, later other publicity hogging tinseltown starlets from the Maulana bhatt family and others followed suit. I happened to come across this blog, A muslim female complaining about difficulty in finding houses for rent.
Before even going into why such rants are useless, Its important to understand certain realities about cosmopolitan set ups and how societies function. Take a look at the ethnic and racial mapping profiles of the cosmopolitan haven New York here. The very fact that you have segregated ghettos for Asians, whites and blacks speaks volumes on how societies function. A similar mapping if performed on Indian Metros will not provide any surprising result different from New York. A quick survey on how many Muslim households would rent their houses to other communities will also throw up similar results. More on this read Professor Thomas Sowell on the Multicultural Cult I and II.
Now coming to the rants by some of these people. Sample this

"I don't see it as a failure for the Muslims, I see it as a failure of a country that refuses to grow up and accept its own people"

Such sweeping statements are utterly misleading and uncalled for. The country has come a long way from Yusuf Khan, Mahjabeen Bano, Mumtaz Jahan had to masquerade under Hindu names to get wider acceptance in Bollywood.

If my memory serves me right, even Shabana Azmi had made a similar statement that blogger female tends to make.

"I have never been the idealistic or the religious Muslim but I am definitely a proud Muslim who has never been guilty of being born one. I am not starting now"

Now this brings to the central question that the Islamic community has not been able to answer beyond rhetoric. What does it mean to be a proud Muslim? How does a proud Muslim view non-believers? What is a proud Muslim really proud of? Whom does a proud Muslim look up to?

Until and unless these questions are answered coherently by the Muslim intelligentsia and elsewhere societies are well within their limits to be protective.

Last words from Professor Sowell's piece.

"There was a reason why employers in the middle of the 19th century had signs that said, "No Irish need apply" -- and why employers in the middle of the 20th century no longer had such signs. It was not that employers had changed. The Irish had changed"