SACH 53 2019.pmd - ISD

SACHComposite Heritage:Building Peace in South Asia

South Asian Composite HeritageISSUE NO. 53 JANUARY-MARCH, 2019

South Asia is one of the most complex regions in the world in terms of ethnic, religious, linguistic andcultural diversity and divisions. The region is characterized by both cross-border cultural and ethniccontiguity, and intraborder diversity. The shared history and culture of the region represent the multiplicityor multiculturalism inherent in the South Asian states which emerged after a long drawn battle against thecolonial rule. Conflict is an inevitable feature of societies, but may be more common within communitiesthat encompass diverse cultural identities and economic disparities. In the case of South Asia, conflictshave evolved differently. According to experts on South Asian affairs, conflicts in the region are oftenprecipitated and nurtured by the internal political turbulence, socio-cultural fault-lines and developmentaldistortions. Many of these have their roots in the region’s colonial past, and in the manner in whichindependence was attained. In the contemporary times, there has been an increasing trend to use historyhighly selectively to legitimize social discrimination, social hegemony and political supremacy by vestedinterests contending for power. The past or history is transformed into a weapon to target those consideredas “Others”. For instance, in India Babri Masjid (Mosque) is one such example of contradicted meaning ofpast legitimizing its destruction. The falsification of history with imagined identities have subsequently ledto the development of exclusionist nationalism and issues like caste, religion, language, gender and racebecame the very basis of any political discourse. Ethno-cultural and ethno-religious ethos in the post-colonial era led to a slow but sure erosion of democratic and liberal value systems. The process ofmarginalization, underdevelopment, poverty and discrimination in the socio-economic spheres haveincreasingly emerged as a factors behind much of the internal and external conflicts in the South Asiaregion which in turn impacted the prospects for peace and security. It is against this backdrop, compositeheritage of South Asia assumes immense significance from the view point of building peace and evolvingmeans to resolve conflict in the region. Composite heritage approach relies on innovative people orientedtraining methods and knowledge base on local perspectives to popularize social and cultural resources forthe purpose of reconciliation and build secular and democratic values underlying the shared traditionsintrinsic to the South Asian society and culture. Besides preparing a knowledge base, the approach alsofocuses on children, women or socially or economically poor and other groups affected by a conflict tryingto seek justice and rebuilding their lives. The approach helps to present the past from multiple perspectiveswhich can be used to challenge the so-called national narratives to make it more inclusive instead ofexclusive. Composite heritage approach works both on a geographical as well as a social and cultural levelto find “other voices” that might have been silenced within the national narrative with the passage ofhistory. Existing flexible social and cultural identities specific to South Asian society can help in bridgingthe distances between people across the region instead of increasing them. Composite heritage as apeace building tool helps in promoting the idea or the philosophy that despite religious, ethnic and culturaldifferences, there are more aspects that unites human beings and helps in building a culture of acceptancea sense of shared human identity.

2 SACH JANUARY—MARCH 2019

queer meshift metransgress metell my students i’m gaytell chick fila i’m queertell the new york times i’m straighttell the mail man i’m a lesbiantell american airlinesi don’t know what my gender islike meliking youlike summer blockbuster armrest datesarmrest cinematic loveelbow to forearm in the darkhumor me queerlyfill me with laughtermake me high with queer gasdecompress me from centuries of spanish inquisition& self-righteous judgmentlike the blood my bloodthat has mixed with the colonizer& the colonizedin the extinct & instinct to lovebust memories of water & heat& hot & breathbeating skin on skin flutteringbruise me into vaporsbleed me into airfly me over sub-saharan africa & asia & antarcticaexplode me from the closet of my fearsgraffiti me out of doubtbend me like bamboopropose to medivorce medivide me into your spirit 2 spirit half spirit& shadow me with fluttering tongues

& caresses beyond headheart chakrasfist smashing djembesbetween my hesitationshaiku me into 17 bursts of blossoms & cold sakide-ethnicize mede-clothe mede-gender me in brassieres& prosthetic genitaliasburn me on a brazierwearing a brassierein bitch braggadocio soprano bassmagnificat me in vespersof hallelujah & amenlibate me in halosheal me in halls of femmy troubadorsannouncing my hiv statusor your statusi am not afraid to love youimplant dialects as if they were lilacsin my earmedicate me with a lick & a likei am not afraid to love youso demand mereclaim mequeerify me

Regie Cabico’s is the Youth Program Coordinatorfor Split this Rock Poetry.

courtesy : https://m.poets.org/poetsorg

A Queerification

By REGIE CABICO, REGIE CABICO, REGIE CABICO, REGIE CABICO, REGIE CABICO, UNITED STATES of AMERICA

JANUARY-MARCH 2019 SACH 3

India and Pakistan : WhyPeace Building is Difficult?

By BABITA NEGI, , , , , ISD, INDIA

THE historical relationshipbetween India andPakistan of now can betraced long back whenthese boundaries andidentities were not even inexistence. But actual visibleevents which describes

their relationship and struggles with eachother has always been discussed from theera when India and the new state ofPakistan granted Independence in 1947. Forthe last seventy years, India and Pakistanhave been locked into various conflicts butterritorial conflict over Kashmir betweenthese two countries is intractable. Till date,due to all the regional and religioustensions, both countries have maintained abickering relationship that doesn’t allowthem to build up a passage for peace.Though after the attack on Parliament in2001, with certain areas of interests,countries have made various attempts toreach on an agreement and make progressin having peace but nothing has beenmaterialized. One of the recent effortswhich India and Pakistan have made toreduce the distance of boundaries andcountries is Kartarpur Corridor.KARTARPUR CORRIDOR

During the Partition, it was not onlyjust Hindu or Muslims who were strugglingbut followers of Sikhism were also introuble. When Sikh chose their sides of thecountry they got isolated from their holy

shrines. Gurudwara Darbar Sahib atKartarpur which is some 140 km fromLahore in Pakistan’s is one of them, amemorial to Guru Nanak the founder ofthe Sikh faith. Kartarpur Corridor is apassage which will allow the Sikhcommunity of India to visit this shrine.

India and Pakistan already have aprotocol on a visit to religious shrine 1974that allows their citizens to visit religiousshrines with certain conditions but most ofthe time whenever there is a tension, boththe countries become reluctant to issueVisas to pilgrimage creating furtherbitterness and mistrust. Therefore therecent initiative of building KartarpurCorridor kindled massive hope for Indianpeople in general and Sikh community inparticular. It represented a great exampleof co-operation between two countries.After a huge political row, India andPakistan agreed to construct the corridoron their respective sides and it is likely tobuild in time for Guru Nanak’s 550thbirth anniversary in 2019.

This initiative had shown that citizensand the government are looking for apathway towards peace. This proposal hasalso raised hope for bilateral relation, whichwas on halt since 2001. However, Pakistan’sremarks on sensitive internal issues,terrorism and Kashmir conflict and suspicionby the intelligence bureau over the proposaldoesn’t allow them to see this initiative interms of making dialogues.


The initiative was already very fragileon top of that it got junked by the recentPulwama attack in Kashmir followed bythe surgical strike 2 and retaliation ofPakistan. Every effort made by thegovernment of both countries went intodrain due terrorist attack said to be madeby Jaish-E-Mohammad of Pakistan. Therecent attacks and the war-like situationhave shown that it is very difficult tomake peace without a strong political willbetween these two countries. The series ofincidents that has happened in Indiaespecially in the last five years has shownthat despite making efforts for peacebuilding nothing has been resolved andboth India and Pakistan have developedmore conflicts.OTHER EFFORTS FOR PEACENEGOTIATIONS AFTER 2001

It was January 2004, when formerPrime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visitedIslamabad for the SAARC Summit. It wasthe first ever channel where both countriesmet for the dialogue process after the 2001Parliament. In this meeting, PresidentMusharraf reassured Prime MinisterVajpayee that he will not permit anyterritory under Pakistan’s control to beused to support terrorism in any manner.But after July 2006 local train bombings inMumbai, the dialogue phase got freeze. InSeptember 2006, in Cuba NAM (Non-Alignment Summit), India and Pakistancome up with the new innovative ideacalled a Joint Anti-Terrorism Mechanism(JATM). But they started blaming eachother for existing situation, reachingnowhere close to what the idea intendedfor. The peace dialogue picked up steamagain during November 2008 when afterMumbai attack for the first time theinvolvement and evidence of Pakistan-basedLashkar-e-Taiba were exposed but againthe two sides remain conflicted, unable to

resume dialogue.INVITATIONS FOR DIALOGUES2014-15

After 7 years in 2014, Prime MinisterNarendra Modi invited Prime MinisterNawaz Sharif to his swearing and hehimself visited Sharif in Lahore inDecember 2015 for comprehensive dialoguebut the proposal and effort became useless.The attack on military bases in Pathankotand Uri and the subsequent surgical strikesby India strained the already unstablerelationship. Therefore it is very difficult tosay whether any of the strategies canassist these countries in seeking solutionsfor decade-old dispute.CONCLUSION

Kartarpur corridor initiated with smallgoodwill was supposed to ease the pressureon both the countries; it was anopportunity for peace and bilateraldialogues but recent incidents again hasshown that despite all efforts the initiativehas been derailed. There are evidenceswhich shows that how and in whichcircumstance this incidence happened butnone of the countries took the responsibilityof violence and conflict and blamed eachother. It’s not just terrorism and religious orregional conflict which led to suchincidence but according to political analyst,it was one of the political gimmicks playedby both the countries. It was an attempt toachieve success for the upcoming electionand somehow they managed to attractwhat they were seeking. Now looking atthe current situation it is difficult to sayhow tides will turn and how much time itwill take for building peace in countries.The only hope is that while keeping asideall political delusions countries should lookinto their shared cultural histories andcreate an opportunity for cooperation thatcould help in achieving some tangibleresults.


Dzongkha is More Than a Language

By DORJI WANGCHUK,,,,, BHUTAN

LANGUAGE is not only a medium ofcommunication – in that you don’t learn alanguage just to be able to communicate withsomeone. Language is a bearer of culture andcultural values, it is a conveyor of feelingsand belief systems. And language provides thekey to unlock the social world around us.Simply put, if you don’t speak the languageor speak well, you cannot fully appreciate theintrinsic aspects of society. Yourunderstanding remains shallow at best – andculturally alienated at worst.

Above all, to draw from the famousSapir-Whorf Hypothesis, language shapes ourthoughts. And thoughts eventually dictate ouractions. What this means is that the way anative English speaker thinks is different fromsomeone who speaks Italian as mother tongue,who in turn will think differently than theones who grow up with Dzongkha. In otherwords, the mind-sets of different nativespeakers differ – as per this theory.

Therefore, it is quite worrisome thatBhutanese children – our children are deprivedof a good grounding in Dzongkha because ofthe “shortage” of trained Dzongkha teachersin primary schools (Refer Kuensel article,December 25, 2018). This is perhaps thetragedy facing our national language –whereby an issue such this doesn’t raise anysense of alarm or uneasiness. I am a nativeSharchopkha speaker and I learnt to speakDzongkha in school. The role of schools inlanguage education, therefore cannot beoverstated.

In my current position as acommunication scholar, one of the areas thatI specialise in is sociolinguistics – a branch of

communication that looks at how languagedoes too, and shapes, a society. My concern,therefore, grows out of a deeperunderstanding of the role that a nationallanguage plays in the process of nation-building and the sense of nationhood.

Our goal of national unity andsovereignty will be severely compromised ifthe national language is accorded the second-language status – or if Bhutanese people donot speak well enough or take pride – toappreciate the richness of our culture, theimportance of the social traditions or the tastefor age-old folktales, stories and timelesswisdom. Both nation-building and sovereigntyare a work in progress or a dynamic process– or both.

So, what can we do? What are thepossible solutions? The following are whatcomes to my mind. Other social thinkers andcommentators may have more or are free toadd or diverge from mine.

First, this is not an issue to be left to theEducation Ministry or the DzongkhaDevelopment Commission – although theseagencies are at the forefront and can do morethan what they are doing now. To start with,we need to move beyond the problems,mediocrities or blame-game and get down tosome serious business. The issue warrantsnothing less than a Parliamentary deliberationand perhaps an Act to protect and promotethe national language – if there isn’t onealready. The Act should, above all, requirethe Government to pour resources to this area– and not limit to mere tokenism such asrequiring Dzongkha on vehicle number-platesor shop signboards. Rather, workable plans,


programs and strategies to strengthen itshould be formulated whereby we get to apoint where Dzongkha is used widely withpride and pleasure. Only then we will bemoving beyond the current state of affairs.

Second, the promotion of the nationallanguage could expand to a certificationsystem whereby anyone with the requiredskills and knowledge could become a certifiedDzongkha language teacher. Everyone knowsabout the TESOL and IELTS certifications. TheDzongkha Development Commission coulddevelop basic, intermediate and advancedDzongkha Language Teacher’s Certification(DLTC) courses, which could be delivered bypublic and private institutions. Anyonethereafter who is certified can teachDzongkha in schools or anywhere in theworld. Similarly, a basic DLTC certificationcould be a requirement for certain jobsrequiring a public interface.

Such a system could open an industryof its own, which will then go a long wayinto popularising the language. Privatelanguage centres will mushroom and somepeople might even venture into foreign soilsto teach Dzongkha to the Bhutanese diaspora.English, which is one of the most difficultlanguages with complex syntax, grammar andeven pronunciation has become the mostpopular language in the world – thanksmainly to such aggressive campaigns. It didn’thappen just like that – or out of the blues.

Third, systematic research needs to bedone in earnest to further develop differentpedagogical approaches to teachingDzongkha. The existing rote-memorization-and-reprimand method may work within themonastic walls but not in a liberal educationsystem. Besides, different native speakers havedifferent ways to comprehend a new languageand Dzongkha-teaching should factor thesecognitive and linguistic realities.

Fourth, the two agencies that havecontributed immensely to popularisingDzongkha (besides the school educationsystem) are the Bhutanese film industry andthe Bhutanese Broadcasting Service. Could we

inject more resources and recognition to thesetwo institutions? Could we take a leaf out ofthe Korean wave, where over US$ 200 millionis injected annually into the K-pop industryby their government? Why don’t we pushwhat works instead of lamenting what is notworking?

Lastly, Dzongkha should be seen asmore than a subject. It should be viewed asan education in itself – by integrating andexpanding to other skills and aspects of societysuch as art, music, history, culture, folktalesand values education. Some of these areimparted as extra-curricular already, whichis not enough. It is high time we developfurther and move them into the mainstream.

In conclusion, let me also point out thatin the past any public discourse on thepromotion of Dzongkha has been counteredwith the argument to do it at the expense ofEnglish – our current medium of instructionin schools. To me, these arguments are lameexcuses or non-starters. The Dzongkha-Englishdebate is not an either-or case. I know manyfriends and colleagues who are perfect in both.Some are perfect in three or even fourlanguages (Dzongkha, English, Sharchopkhaand Bumtap) Swiss people are, for example,three official languages – German, French andItalian and some even in English. Some of thebest Dzongkha speakers of my generation arefrom Mongar, Lhuentse, Bumthang orTrongsa. English is the language that we needto engage with the World – and engagementwith the world, at the political level as wellas through participation in a globalisedeconomy and travels, is necessary to enhanceand sustain our very sovereignty.

The call for protection and promotionof Dzongkha, therefore, should not be equatedto cosmetic jingoism or ultra-nationalism butas a genuine concern to retain an importantelement of national unity, identity andstability. For, Dzongkha is more than alanguage. It is our national language – one ofthe binding forces that will ultimately defineour destiny as a nation.

courtesy : http://www.kuenselonline.com


The NRC Process and theSpectre of Statelessness in India

By RANABIR SAMADDAR INDIA

Citizenship and statelessness are inseparable twins. The division betweencitizens and the stateless is of critical importance in the production ofthe national space.

AS the game of citizenship acquires alarger hold over the power dynamic, thegrowth of statelessness in South Asia alsobecomes more pronounced. BharatiyaJanata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah hasthreatened the nation that each and every‘infiltrator’ – by which he probably meansillegal immigrant (or a person considered

legal for many years now being viewed asillegal) – would be expelled from thecountry.

At the time the Calcutta ResearchGroup conducted a study on the state ofRohingya in South Asia, we had realised –though somewhat inadequately – that wewere scripting a narrative of statelessness


not in neighbouring Myanmar but in ourown country. We were reluctant tocompare the genesis of the Rohingyaquestion in Myanmar with the currentcitizenship registration drive in Assam inthe wake of preparing a National Registerof Citizens (NRC). The exercise rendered amassive number of ‘illegal immigrants’ –about four million – stateless

While the statelessness of Rohingyais now known, the possibility ofstatelessness in the Indian northeastthrough disqualification via NRC is littleknown outside the country. The final NRCdraft, a court-sanctioned process, waspublished on July 30 this year. Theupdating process was marred bycontroversies over what was consideredarbitrary verification procedures and theenforcement of extremely rigorous standardsfor the Bengali speaking population, inparticular Bengali-speaking Muslims. Manyof them, immigrants from East Pakistan/Bangladesh, had settled there for severaldecades. Disowned by India and withoutties to any other country, a significantnumber of those excluded from the NRCare thus likely to be rendered stateless.

This has created a precarious situationinvolving protracted detention of thosebranded as ‘foreigners’. Detention facilitiesare being expanded for a large number ofmarginalised and disenfranchised peoplewith no access to effective legal aid andconstitutional guarantees. Biometricidentification is being energetically pursuedto detect ‘suspect’ foreigners, as wasevident in the recent repatriation of agroup of Rohingyas and sharing of thedata with the Myanmar government. WhileIndia has not signed the two keyinstruments on statelessness – the 1954 UNConvention on the Status of StatelessPersons and the 1961 Convention on theReduction of Statelessness, the NRCprocess has serious implications in terms ofinternational human right laws.

The idea of comparing the two

contexts to see if there is a pattern in thespread of statelessness in postcolonialregions emerges from the contemporaryemphasis on citizenship policies in thesecountries. Some citizenship markers inmany postcolonial countries, includingIndia, are: ethnicity, immigration, shift inemphasis from jus soli to jus sanguinis,growth of a regional informal labourmarket characterised by immigrant laboureconomies, borderland populations and theno-where people, historically structuredpopulation flows across postcolonial borderformations and boundary delimitations, andfinally the desire of rulers to achieve aperfect fit between the ‘right’ kind ofpopulation and the ‘right size’ of territory.These markers are considered ‘necessary’ tomake a nation-state.

Citizenship and statelessness havenever been so linked as they are today.Add to that, protracted displacementleading to statelessness. Once again, SouthAsia bears witness to such a situation; forinstance, consider the case of protracteddisplacement of the South BhutaneseNepali-speaking population now in Nepal,or the Chins in northeast India.

The international legal understandingof statelessness, even while taking intoaccount de facto statelessness, is inadequatein theorising this growing phenomenon. Itmay be argued that the Geneva-basedwisdom has been dominated by Westernexperience. We now have several accounts– of the Rohingya or the growing statelesspopulation in the Northeast – to drawattention to a postcolonial perspective ofstatelessness.

Statelessness in India today also has abroader perspective: The accounts ofstatelessness of minor, ignored, subjugatedhistories of discriminated populationgroups, borders, and informal labourmarkets across borderlands, and the untoldorigins of post-colonial citizenship. If thepreceding century was a century ofpartitions, this century may well become


known as the century of stateless people.THE ELUSIVE SEARCH FOR ORIGINALDOCUMENTS

The original documents needed toprove citizenship under the NRC areironically called the ‘legacy papers’ (relatedto 1951). The logic is circular, theassumption being that you can claimcitizenship only if you have legacy papers.The absence of one document or another,therefore, casts a shadow on the legitimacyof the person’s claim. Even if the samedocuments pertaining to the period fromthe 1951 NRC to the electoral rolls ofMarch 1971 are re-submitted, they must beinvestigated to establish‘genuine’ citizenship.

In the legal game ofcitizenship, the onus toprove citizenship is on theresidents or the state. Thus,Prateek Hajela, state NRCco-ordinator, blithely saysthat those who do not findtheir names in the finaldraft can approach theirrespective NRC SevaKendras (NSK), and get toknow the reason/s forexclusion, and obtain anapplication form to fileclaims. Those left out can approach theNSK claiming that a proper examination oftheir documents was not done, and canbring fresh evidence, either documentary orfrom other members of the family. Yet, forwomen, it is difficult to catch this lifeline– if it can be considered so – becausemany of the excluded who are women areprimarily married women who hadsubmitted gaon panchayat certificates as alink document to prove their legacy totheir original village, and those wererejected. The women have nothing now tocorroborate those certificates since thevillage headmen did not have properrecords and registers. Many more in thewatery lands of Assam do not have any

record of land holding and residence. Thenet result is that a huge number of peoplebelonging to four categories – (a) D(doubtful)-voters, (b) descendants of Dvoters, (c) people whose reference cases arepending at the Foreigners’ Tribunals, and(d) descendants of these persons – are kepton ‘hold’. The circularity of the logic isclear: if you are a doubtful voter, you arenot a citizen, and you are not a citizenbecause you are a doubtful voter.

Yet, this is not a novel situation.Even when the Indian constitution wasbeing drafted, the search for ‘original’documents was an exasperating one. The

Constituent Assembly Secretariat (CAS) wasasked how to treat pavement dwellers,vagrants from other areas, and others withno papers of residence or land ownershipor settlement certificate. From Assam itself,we only know one side of history, andthat is the side of landed proprietors. Theirviews were documented in the letters ofenquiry and desperate messages seekingassurance of protection that reached theCAS. There were letters of enquiry aboutresidents coming from other states andsettled elsewhere, as in the Travancorestate, or about foreign-returned soldiers –those without proper paperwork. TheAssam Citizens’ Association, Dhubri, hadreferred then, as the West Bengal


government despairingly says now, thatpeople had the freedom to reside andsettle anywhere in the country and thefreedom to hold or dispose of property. Atthat time, too, papers were not alwaysfound in order while states were in actualcharge of enrolling citizens, and theydemanded ‘proofs’. Citizens struggled to getplace in the roll (primarily the electoralroll), while not having a place there meantthey were not citizens. Typical of suchstruggles was the efforts by the AssamCitizens’ Association, Dhubri, forcitizenship and voting rights of therefugees. The genealogy of Article 13 ofthe Indian constitution still remains hiddenfrom the public eye; a thoroughexamination of that genealogy is essentialto make sense of the game of citizenshiptoday.A HOUSE FOR CITIZENS?

The division between citizens and thestateless is thus of critical importance inthe production of the national space. Thenational space emerges always as one oftwo kinds – either that of an inside, whichis to say a house for citizens, or anoutside, which is to say an anomalousspace of outsiders. The game thus eitherinteriorises or exteriorises the nationalspace. This association of interiority withnation, life, security and developmentpermeates not just classical theories ofcitizenship but our political life as awhole.

As I indicated through somereferences to the CAS debates, anarchaeology of the intimate, that is “we thenation, we the citizens”, will requireexcavating the origins and forms, both realand imaginary, of citizenship. In thishistorical time of citizenship in post-Independent India, leading up to thismoment when biometric details of refugeeswill be handed over to other governments,we are ‘ensuring’ our security in theworld.

An equally critical division of imagesof the inside and the outside accompaniesthe critical division of the national space.The imagination of the Rohingya as aterrorist, or of a landless Muslim peasantliving on the chars of Assam as afundamentalist, or of a Bihari or a Bengaliliving in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, or Jaipur asa suspect criminal, always seizes the spaceof the nation, producing this division. Thisdelineates the difference between theinterior and the exterior. The deploymentof images, as evident from the utterancesof a variety of figures ranging from AmitShah, Tarun Gogoi, Prafulla Mahanta, thecurrent Assam chief minister SarbanandaSonowal, to a Left-regional nationalist likeHiren Gohain, arises from a revulsiontowards an imagination of a mixed life.Thus, doing away with the absolute binaryof citizenship and statelessness requiresdoing away with our dependence on theimage of a delineated interior space for itssecurity and growth.

It seems that the East, with Bengaland Bihar, hated, ridiculed and deprecatedby the so-called mainstream nation forhaving no sense of order, discipline, andnational loyalty, along with the ideationaland political struggles in Assam, will nowbe at the forefront of this struggle forpractising the imagination of ‘other spaces’by fighting images of a revanchist space. Itis in its trait of creating the image of ananarchic space for all, partly by populistimagination of an ‘other space’, which willgive this part of the nation its symbolicvalue. Remember, the madman aboard theship of fools was placed on the inside ofan outside as much as he was on theoutside of an inside. Bengal, Bihar, andslowly the Northeast – yes, the Northeast– will for quite some years to come beoccupying the liminal space.

courtesy : https://thewire.in/rights/the-spectre-of-statelessness-in-india


Afghanistan Peace Process

By SUNIL KUKSAL, INDIA

AFTER almost 40 years ofuninterrupted civil war inAfghanistan, today progresstowards a peace process isincreasingly seen as centralto securing a just and stablefuture. Ever since theSoviets marched into

Afghanistan in 1979, toppling HafizullahAmin, the people of Afghanistan have notknown peace. It seems that history isrepeating itself. The international communityis once again abandoning war-ravagedAfghanistan at a very crucial point just as itdid three decades ago following Sovietwithdrawal from the country. The prospectof a negotiated end to the war inAfghanistan involving talks with Talibancurrently, faces the challenges posed bycompeting agendas. Long-time rivals Russiaand the United States have backed separatenegotiations with different Afghanstakeholders which seems to be muddling thecomplex process of peace. Taliban held talkswith the Americans in Qatar in January 2019before meeting a delegation of powerfulAfghan power brokers in Moscow for “intra-Afghan” talks in February 2019. Accordingto the analysts Russian involvement in thedisputed Afghan peace talks indicates itsdeepening rivalry in an attempt to challengethe U.S. and the peace process backed by it.INTRA-AFGHAN PEACETALKS - MOSCOW

Key Afghan power brokers who opposethe current Afghan President Ashraf Ghaniheld talks with Taliban negotiators in Moscow

on February 5-6, 2019. A delegation of38 members comprising mainly of formerofficials, representatives of political parties andcurrent members of Parliament was headedby Mr. Hamid Karzai, the former president ofAfghanistan. Taliban delegation was led bytheir chief negotiator, Sher Mohammad AbbasStanekzai, who represented the mostsignificant contact between senior Afghanpoliticians and the Taliban since the UnitedStates toppled the hard-line Islamist groupfrom power at the end of 2001. The Moscow-based Council of Afghan Society, anorganisation of the Afghan diaspora in Russia,organised the meeting. A range of issues,including a ceasefire, ways to support USSpecial Envoy Mr.Khalilzad’s initiatives anda path to ensure a “powerful and democraticcentral government” in Afghanistan werediscussed during the meeting. The peaceconference in Moscow came some days afterpeace negotiations between the United Statesand the Taliban in Qatar. A joint statementissued on behalf of the Afghan delegationdescribed the meeting in Russia as “the firststep towards intra-Afghan peace talks” in thepeace process.DOHA TALKS UNDER U.S.PEACE ENVOY ZALMAYKHALILZAD

The United States government underPresident Donald Trump seems to be inclined,or even desperate, to negotiate a deal withthe Taliban. It has been 18 years since USand allied troops first deployed to Afghanistanto over throw the Taliban and support ademocratically elected government. DonaldTrump’s administration appointed former US


ambassador Zalmay Khalilzadas special envoyon Afghanistan in September 2018, 17 yearsafter he helped plan the invasion of a countrythat the US now is increasingly desperate toextricate itself from Mr. Khalilzadhas beengiven the responsibility to clear the way fortalks between Afghanistan President AshrafGhani’s government and Taliban leaders tocome to a reconciliation. U.S. peace envoyZalmay Khalilzad has held a series of directtalks with Taliban negotiators in the Qataricapital, Doha, from January 21-26, 2019culminating in the basic framework of apossible peace deal. Although thosediscussions have not included the Western-backed Kabul government led by AfghanPresident Ashraf Ghani. The Dohanegotiations with Taliban in January 2019ended with signs of progress towards thewithdrawal of thousands of foreign troopsfrom Afghanistan and an end to more than18 years of war. At the end of their six daysof uninterrupted talks in the Qatari capital,Khalilzad and chief Taliban negotiatorStanekzai, in separate statements announcedthey are close to a deal on a U.S. troopwithdrawal from Afghanistan in exchange forassurances from the Taliban they will notallow terrorists to use Afghan soil for futureattacks against America and its allies. The UShas some 14,000 troops in Afghanistan as partof the NATO-led Resolute Support missionand a separate counterterrorism effort largelydirected at groups such as al-Qaeda and theIslamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL orISIS). Some 8,000 troops from 38 othercountries are also involved in ResoluteSupport. During six days of talks in Qatar,Taliban and U.S. representatives outlined butdid not formally agree on a broad plan. TheTaliban has yet to make concessions on twokey U.S. demands — implementing a cease-fire and agreeing to negotiate directly withAfghan government representatives as partof an Afghan-led, intra-Afghan peace process.EXCLUSION OF AFGHANGOVERNMENT

Both processes did not include the

democratically elected Afghangovernmentled by President Ashraf Ghani,which the Taliban has refused to meet. Thishas been a long-standing Taliban positioneven before Ghani entered the presidentialpalace. The Taliban looks at the UnitedStates and sees the real power in charge ofAfghanistan; it looks at the Afghangovernment and sees puppets and usurpersdoing the bidding of the American occupiers.President Ghani, like many Afghans, wantspeace in his country. Mr. Ghani hasrepeatedly called on the Taliban to begintalks with his government. In February, 2018he extended an offer to the Taliban grantingthem formal legitimacy as a political party,prisoner releases, and a constitutional reviewif the movement entered into peacenegotiations with the government,recognized the legitimacy of the government,and respected the rule of law and the rightsof women. Analysts say by keeping theKabul government out of the U.S - andRussia-backed talks the Taliban wants to“reduce the legitimacy of the Afghangovernment to a minimum and thus furtherstrengthen its bargaining position vis-a-visthe United States and extract maximumadvantage.”

The Afghan government has beenangered and frustrated that it has been leftout of the talks. Ghani planned to convene aconsultative Loya Jirga, a traditional assemblyof tribal, ethnic, and religious leaders, toreach a national consensus on peace talkswith the Taliban. The Afghan governmentprotested against the decision of Taliban tohold talks with U.S. and Pakistani officialsin Islamabad on February 18, 2019. Finally,the talks were cancelled after the Afghangovernment protested to the United NationsSecurity Council that leaders of the insurgentgroup were violating travel restrictions underinternational sanctions. A letter submitted tothe United Nations by Nazifullah Salarzai,Afghanistan’s deputy representative to the

Continued to page 16


Mr Khan & Minorities

By PRAFUL GORADIA INDIA

PAKISTAN’s Prime Minister, Imran Khan,has offered to teach India how to treat itsminorities. Is it not likely that when he saidthis, he was experiencing a flashback to hiscricketing days, when our fast bowlers werenot comparable to his country’s pace attack?

Traditionally, in undivided India, it wasthe Punjab that produced pacemen. The oneoutstanding name that comes to mind isMohammad Nissar, the fastest opening bowlerthat the subcontinent had produced in hisday. Certainly, even now, the pack of speedmerchants may have something to teach ourplayers.

An Oxonian had once said: “Imran iscricket and cricket is Imran.” Similarly, ZubinMehta is music and cannot be imagined interms of cricket. So too, it is difficult toreconcile the Imran image with primeministership.

It is not impossible that while he wastalking of minorities, his mind was on how toteach India to play cricket and to play cricketin India at the Eden Gardens. It goes withoutsaying that he has not seen the holocaust ofHindus and Sikhs starting with Rawalpindiin 1947, nor would he know how hisChristian compatriots had rejoiced at the birthof Pakistan only to subsequently regret it, plusbeing frequently accused of blasphemy. TheCommunist Party had wholeheartedlysponsored Partition, later to beat its breast; itwas simply eliminated by the torrent of Islam.As late as 2012-13, 37 murderous attacksagainst the people of Christ were reportedlyperpetrated. The same year saw 16 Hindusand three Sikhs bear the brunt of attacks by

the zealots of the ‘peaceful’ religion, who ofcourse, are committed to cleaning their landof all impurities.

The Ahmediyas, whose hero SirMohammad Zafarullah Khan had drafted thePakistan Resolution of March 1940, also havetheir taste of the glory of Pakistan. Imran Khanwas certainly not born then to witness themagnificent work done by Sir Zafarullah. Norperhaps in 1953, when the latter’s house inLahore was set on fire, which induced him toflee Pakistan and not return until his dyingdays. The rest of the years he spent at TheHague in the Netherlands to bring majesty tothe glittering benches of the InternationalCourt of Justice. In the meantime, thecharismatic Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhuttoexpelled the Ahmediyas from the sanctifiedgarden of Islam.

Another Ahmediya hero who broughtglory to Imran’s country was Dr. AbdulQadeer Khan, whose thuggish doings in theNetherlands enabled him to obtain the secretsof the atomic bomb, all of course in the causeof Khidmate-Allah, the first Islamic nuclearbomb. He too was rewarded by his faith beingexpelled.

Well known scholar Farahnaz Ispahaniin her book Purifying the Land of the Pure(HarperCollins Publishers, India) states thereality of Ahmediyas being the target ofPakistan’s rulers. As late as 2012-13, accordingto her book, 54 lethal attacks againstAhmediyas were carried out. The writer waseducated by two men. The first was hisgrandfather, one of whose friends was AhmedAli Jinnah, younger brother of M.A. Jinnah.


He relished Parsi humour and claimed to beculturally a Parsi. Although he was not apractising Muslim, he acquainted hisgrandfather with his insights into Islam. Thatwhen a Muslim wishes to convert someone, itis with the best intention of opening a possiblechance of the convert entering jannat. Noother god can enable a non-believer to crossthe gateway of heaven.

The second gentleman who taught thewriter was his spoken Urdu teacher, who didnot overtly suggest a conversion but did saythat the future lay with Islam.

Just extrapolate the progress of anumber of religions. The Yehudis (Jews) havereduced in number and shrunk to a fractionof what they were. The Christians havescattered into many denominations. Many aworshipper in Europe has given up worship.

Christianity’s priests have come to Asia,where according to the late Pope John PaulII, there are innumerable souls to harvest.Contrast these performances with the progressof Islam, whose tide is continually rising.

However, this was an enthusiasticopinion; all is not that well in the new Medina.Once the Ahmediyas were expelled from Islamin 1974, it was the turn of the Shias for similarpersecution. While they have been the targetof the regime’s hostility for years, violenceagainst them began rising after the 1970s.During 2012-13 alone, they were subjected to77 attacks, including suicide terrorist bombingsduring Shia religious occasions. Not to talk ofShias, the Barelvi school considered theDeobandis and Wahhabis outside the pole ofIslam and were liable to the death penalty ifthey fell within the definition of murtad orapostate. On the other hand, the Justice Munirequality report of 1954 had revealed that afatwa of the Deobandis had called all Asna-Ashari Shias kafirs and murtaad for believingin the sahabiyyat of Hazrat Siddiqi-Akbar andQazif or deniers of the status of Hazrat AishaSiddiqa.

In its 2013 annual report, the UnitedStates Commission on International Religious

Freedom (USCIRF) described Pakistan’s failureto protect its minorities as having reached‘crisis proportions’. According to the report,“The government of Pakistan continues toengage in and tolerate systematic, ongoing,and egregious violations of freedom of religionor belief.’ Violations reached unprecedentedlevels, it said, because of growing incidents ofsectarian violence against Shia Muslims.” Thegovernment also failed to protect Christians,Ahmadis and Hindus, it said.

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws haveexacerbated attacks on minorities by fosteringreligious frenzy, violence and persecution.

Police frequently fail to record andinvestigate complaints, and justice is impededby the biased attitude of some judges againstreligious minorities. Pakistan’s nationaldiscourse, aided by its school curriculum,generates religious prejudice againstminorities.

In Pakistan, there are Lashkars who areanti-Shia, but the single-minded enemy of theShias is the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) whoseavowed objective is to cleanse Pakistan ofthem, who, incidentally comprise about 20 percent of the country’s population. Balochistan,which has many Shias, is a popular theatreof genocide. The head of the LeJ has gone tothe extent of issuing a public letter declaringthe Shias to be wajib-ul-qatl (ideally suitablefor elimination). Despite this large-scalegenocide, Pakistan’s government has admittedthat only 2,000 Shias were killed over a five-year period. The Shia-Sunni conflict has adimension much bigger and beyond theborders of Pakistan.

Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran arearraigned against each other. Iraq comprisestwo-thirds Shias, while the civil war in Syriawas fought between the Shia sympatheticgovernment and the Caliphate-aspiring ISIS.

However, the concern for India, are the25 million Shias in our neighbouring country.If the terrorism becomes collectivelyunbearable, where do they seek refuge?

Courtesy : https://www.thestatesman.com


MUSIC should respect no borders of nation,region, religion or language. It should soaracross the world and captivate all humanity.I am aghast that a Delhi concert, sponsoredby Spic Macay and the Airports Authority ofIndia (AAI), had to be “postponed” afterHindu fanatics warned against theparticipation of Carnatic music maestro T MKrishna.

His sin is that he has often includedChristian and Muslim themes in his music.That is actually the sort of inclusiveness thathas always marked Indian music, and indeedall Indian culture. Alas, the fanatics had somuch clout with the ruling BJP that thesponsors had to back down. This was culturalbarbarism.

Jawaharlal Nehru would have beenoutraged by such barbarism. But no outrageflowed from Rahul Gandhi and his gutlessCongress cohorts, who have abandonedNehruvian secularism for a soft Hindutva thatsmells like the leftovers of a BJP meal.Fortunately, the Aam Aadmi Party, whichrules Delhi state, came to the rescue byproviding an alternative concert platform forKrishna.

Hindu fanatics have cowed many artists.But not Krishna. He says, “The troll army hasthe underlying patronage of people in power.I have been trolled for a long time for mysocial position, my perspectives on politics,and my disagreements with the BJP regime. Ibelieve in every art form. Allah, Jesus andRam make no difference. It is a multilingual

and multi-religious country.” Bravo!After the latest ruckus, he tweeted,

“Considering the vile comments and threatsissued by many on social media regardingCarnatic compositions on Jesus, I announcehere that I will be releasing one Carnatic songevery month on Jesus or Allah.” All musiciansand artists need to applaud this stance, incontrast to the pathetic BJP whitewashattempted by dancer Sonal Mansingh (who,not entirely coincidentally, was earliernominated to the Rajya Sabha by the BJPgovernment).

Hindustani music has many gloriousroots, many sources of inspiration. The sitaris a modern version of the Persian setar (athree-stringed instrument), the sarodoriginated in the Afghan rubab, and theharmonium came from the Europeanaccordion. That does not make them Muslimor Christian or foreign. They are part andparcel of Hindustani music. Bismillah Khanand Amjad Ali Khan are as essential toHindustani music as Ravi Shankar or HariPrasad Chaurasia: their religions areirrelevant.

North Indians may not be aware of theremarkable absorptive capacity of southernCarnatic music. Classical music is often viewedas traditional and resistant to change. But theviolin, introduced during the British Raj, hasbecome so integral to Carnatic music that itsfollowers would be outraged at the suggestionthat it is alien.

Far from objecting, South Indian

Let’s Not Dance to The Tune ofHindu Martial Music

By S A AIYAR, INDIA


audiences cheered when Uppalapu Srinivasbegan using the mandolin to play Carnaticmusic. Indeed, he attained fame with thenickname Mandolin Srinivas. Today, KadriGopalnath is the foremost exponent ofCarnatic music on the saxophone. UnlikeHindutva barbarians, these musicians knowthat music and musical instruments have noborders.

The bhajan may be called Hindureligious music. But Muslims have sung manyof the greatest bhajans. Mohammed Rafi wasamong the greatest bhajan singers of all time.Probably the most famous bhajan in filmhistory is O Duniya ke Rakhwale from BaijuBawra. The music was composed by NaushadAli, the lyrics were penned by ShakeelBadayuni and the song sung by Rafi. Thesethree Muslims created a bhajan dearly belovedby Hindus, because music knows noboundaries.

My favourite bhajan of the 1950s isInsaaf ka Mandir Hai, from the film Amar.

Here again, the music was by Naushad, thelyrics by Shakeel Badayuni and the singingby Rafi. In addition, the film was producedby Mehboob Khan, and its three main actorswere all Muslims — Dilip Kumar (aka YusufKhan), Madhubala (aka Mumtaz JehanDehlavi) and Nimmi (aka Nawab Banoo). Didthis detract in the slightest from the quality ofthe bhajan? No, it was a triumphantdemonstration that music conquers all barriers.

The barbarians want us all to dance tothe tune of Hindu martial music. Well, themost nationalistic musical event featuring thearmed forces bands is the Beating Retreatceremony every year on January 29 at VijayChowk in New Delhi. Every year, the bandsplay Sare Jahan se Achha, penned by Iqbal.They also play Abide with Me, which wasGandhiji’s favourite Christian hymn. Themessage is clear: patriotism and music shouldhave nothing to do with religion.

courtesy : https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/Swaminomics/

Continued from page 12

Afghanistan Peace Processbody, said the Taliban’s trip to Pakistan andparticularly the meeting with Mr. ImranKhan would amount to “the officialrecognition and legitimization of an armedgroup that poses a serious threat to thesecurity and stability of Afghanistan andwhose members are sanctioned by provisionsof the U.N. Security Council.”THE WAY AHEAD

Critics say only talking to the Talibanwill not serve many purposes. For attaininglong term stability and peace, the Afghan peaceprocess has to be comprehensive and shouldinclude the participation of Afghansfrom allwalks of life including political parties, civilsociety,the central government, and tribalchiefs. A hasty American withdrawal will

jeopardize for Afghans the future of hard-won gains such as constitutional rights,freedoms of citizens and democraticinstitutions. The exit strategy must also bealigned with Afghanistan’s developmentpriorities in infrastructure, agriculture,extractive industries, and private sector andhuman capital development, to help generategreater revenue and create long-term jobs. Toarrive at a sustainable peace, the withdrawalof forces, the negotiation process and theimplementation of any potential agreementmust be monitored by a neutral third-partyobserver, such as the United Nations orEuropean Union, which can establish anenforcement mechanism that can ensure allparties deliver on their commitments.


Transcending Boundaries Through Art

By PROMA CHAKRABORTY, INDIA

Eight South Asian artists got together in Kathmandu to create artworkon personal encounters, myths and fables, now exhibited in Delhi.

POLITICAL conflicts,religious tension, socio-economic disputes—theworld is no stranger tothese frictions when itcomes to therelationship ofcountries sharingborders in South Asia.The constant strugglebetween conflict andcooperation hasmanaged to make thelines between thecountries, firm if notstronger. Pushing pastthese boundaries in anattempt to blur thelines of conflict is notsome grand strategy orscheme that comes toplay, but the creativetool of art.

Putting together the work of eightcontemporary artists from India, Pakistan,Bangladesh and Nepal, an exhibition inDelhi is dissolving the boundaries. Theseartists explore themes of immediateconcern to them: the responsibility ofpower, memory and history, and the useand enjoyment of the same in commonspaces. Two artists from each of the fourcountries came together at a residential

programme held atKathmandu in thesummer of 2018 tocreate their works.

“Nepal being avisa-free zone was theperfect location forthe artists," saysBhavna Kakkar,curator of theexhibition. "Althoughwe are neighbours,there are several visahassles. There arethese geographicalhurdles that one hasto keep in mind.Also, the artistswanted to utilise thelocal craftsmanship ofthe country.”

To voice theirconcerns, the artists

collaborated with the traditional Paubhaartists of Nepal. The Paubha paintingsblend seamlessly with myriad etchings,pencil drawings, watercolours and printsand eventually accentuate each of theseartworks. The detailed subtlety anddelicacy of the Paubha traditional motifswere employed to arrive at the final work,serving as an impactful medium to conveythe concerns and emotion of the artists.


“As a traditional art form that is stillvery much in practice, Paubha blendsmodernity as well as tradition,” explainsBhavna.

Evolving overyears of discussion,these eight artistsdecided to mergeand create an entireset of paintingsrepresenting thevarying techniquesof contemporary artforms and thetraditions of Paubhaart. This culminatedin the exhibitiontitled "Nowthere".“The title issymbolic of thetransient state ofthis country. Itsuggests time as well as space. It refers totoday and tomorrow as well as ‘here’ and‘there’, that is, the next-door country,”says Bhavna.

From multiple layers of personalencounters, myths and fables, intrinsicself-observation, to emulation of importantpersonalities—all of these come together toform an interesting set of artworks in theexhibition which bridges the gap betweentime, space, geography and personalidentities. For instance, the work ofWaseem Ahmed, an artist based inLahore, brings the essence of the wholeproject together. The series, titled "Mythand Realities", features gods and goddessesfrom Hindu, Roman and Greek culture,as well as significant religious figures likeGautam Buddha. Using mythology andimages from the past, he narrates a storyof the present times. The sculptures ofwar heroes, mythological gods of pasttimes tend to narrate how the socio-political events of today are similar. “Mywork explores the connection of all thecountries beyond the invisible borders

through mythology. The violence in thesestories is a part of our reality now,” saysWaseem.

D r a w i n ginspiration fromIndian mythology,artist Seema Kohlifeatures a femaleprotagonist who isno longer fetteredby the chains ofeither body ormind. It is aboutyoginis and dakinisand their feminineenergy and variousmanifestations. Sheuses 24-carat goldleaf on paper tocreate mesmerisingart and explores theshared history and

tradition of these countries.Another artist who makes use of these

gold leaf sketches on paper is MahbuburRahman of Bangladesh. He draws hisinspiration from iconic leaders of the world,particularly the South Asian arena. Hiswork features the likes of Mahatma Gandhi,Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah,George W Bush, Kim Jong-un and others,all sketches evocative of Paubha art.

Moving to more contemporary andrecent events, artists Maria Waseem and MPravat’s creations are based on the 2015earthquake in Nepal. Based in India, M Pravatconfesses that he had no knowledge aboutPaubha artists before embarking on thisproject but upon researching on the Internetand speaking to Nepali locals, he discoveredthat they relied heavily on the traditionallyrevered motifs of the five elements of air,water, earth, sky and ether, and believed itwas their faith in Lord Bhairon which helpedthem survive the earthquake. This unfetteredresonance with their religion and its spiritualinfluence on their lives and livelihoods drewPravat to their work, as he believes it to be


countries.” Her sketching features women intheir traditional costumes and shows a highinfluence of nature.

Connecting to these ethnic roots,Prithvi Shreshtha, also from Nepal, uses aprocess of introspection and intrinsicshadow play. His watercolour works are aresult of his reactions to the people ofSouth Asia as well his own shadow.

Shedding light on the issues ofviolence against women—which is relevantto all four countries—Bangladeshi artistBegum Tayeba Lipi uses a veil or themetallic mask as a metaphor to portray thesubjugation of women. Through her penciland gold and silver leaf creations onpaper, she articulates the issue ofsubjugation of women, suppression andmisogyny in her country.

While newsfeeds of cross-borderterrorism and tensions regularly pop up onour screens, it is perhaps projects likeNowthere which are proving to be theproverbial bridges between the countries.The exhibition was on display at GalleryLatitude 28 in New Delhi till February 28.

courtesy : http://thepatriot.in/2019/01/24/transcending-boundaries/

one of the most important connections of thefour countries.

“This aspect of faith is highlyemphasised in South Asian countriesespecially when compared to otherEuropean countries,” Pravat explains. Hisworks are marked by a fine blend ofpractical understanding and faith. Havingdigitally photographed architectural imagesfor several years, he chose to depict thedestroyed architectural structures from theearthquake, embedding them with thetransparent pigment of Paubha art.Similarly, Maria Waseem deftly capturesboth the old and new parts of thelandscape—the juxtaposition of Paubhatechnique augments them with ametaphoric blend of traditional art withmodern photography techniques.

Apart from exploring the connection offaith, another artist explores the notion ofcultural attachment. The works of Nepal’sSauraganga Darshandhari is laden withdetails that are particular to the culture ofher country. “Attachment to our culture isvery prevalent among our countries. Be itarchitecture of our homes and temples toeveryday rituals, the attachment to these arevery strongly present in these four


Chapter IX

The Psyche and Phantasy

By CHRISTOPHER CAUDWELL

...Continued from previous issue

NO satisfactory classificationof mentation has yet beenproposed. We are concernedwith the flow of images (notnecessarily visual) to which Igive the name phantasy, to

distinguish them from clear perception ormemory. We will use the following classificationof these: (a) Dream; (b) Day-Dream or Reverie;(c) Free Association; (d) Directed Thinking; (e)Directed Feeling.

Until the psycho-analysts, nopsychologist seriously studied the dream.Thanks to Freud, we now see the absurdityof that omission. Because of its primitivecharacter and strange features, the dreamthrows light on the nature of phantasy andthe rôle of thought.

The dream has certain characteristicswhich distinguish it from other kinds ofthought. By far the most important is the factthat in it thoughts – the memory-images ofpercepts condensed, displaced and modified– take the place of the real environment. Thisis the specific feature of dream. In all otherforms of phantasy the thinker is still vaguelyconscious of his environment and does notsite himself in the products of his fancy; hedoes not give them the status of immediatesurroundings. The dreamer does. Hence theyacquire a vividness and rounded actualitysuch as always belongs to the immediateenvironment when it is the object of attention.

This “materialising” of thoughts is theresult of introversion, of a withdrawing of

sensory attention from the environment. Thisintroversion is what constitutes sleep.Sufferers from anaesthesia of the skin haveonly to dose their eyes – providing the roomis quiet – to fall into slumber. All the aids tosleep— darkness, quiet, mental blankness –are devices for reducing external sensorystimuli.

The materiality and vividness ofdream-thoughts are thus only relative. If onerecalls dream faces, forms, words andscenes, they are all vague, blurred,colourless, full of holes, indefinite andincomplete. But because no external sensoryreality existed to quarrel with them, theyassumed the status and vividness of theenvironment. It is this concentration ofattention which gives the dream material itsreality and vividness and not its owninternal coherence. On the contrary, thematerial of dream is confused and patchy.

Jung investigated ordinary “freeassociation” – waking associations of oneimage to another formed by the mind freely,without conscious attention to reality.Dream is an elaborate form of continuousfree association, in which the free flow ofphantasy acquires the material reality of anenvironment. Freud laid bare the mechanismof this more elaborate free association ofdream.

Surréalisme bases its technique on thisfree association. It hopes thus to realise aspontaneous artistic production. Here it onlydisplays the classic bourgeois illusion thatfreedom is the ignorance of necessity.Freud’s and Jung’s experiments have clearly


proved that so far from dream or freeassociation really being free, they are subjectto the iron determinism of unconsciousnecessity. Distortions of instinctive drivescalled complexes inexorably force phantasyto follow a mean and narrow groove.

MacCurdy’s researches on theproductions of maniacs revealed the sameiron law hidden beneath apparentspontaneity. The seemingly effortless andbewilderingly profuse flow of manic ravingproved, on the careful analysis ofstenographic reports over a long period, tobe in fact all determined by some wish of aninfantile simplicity. Once the unconsciouslaw was revealed, the raving was seen to besimply a few thoughts which oscillatedwithin the bounds of the crudest symbols.

What is the function of dream? Freudand Rivers agree that it is physiologically“the guardian of sleep.” Stimuli that mightrouse the sleeper to action – that is, wakehim – are switched into non-motor channelsunless they become imperative. Such stimuliinclude not merely external stimuli, such asbells whose sound is woven into the dream,but also internal stimuli – pains, hunger,sexual wishes, all the nascent stirrings ofinstinctive desire which make even a dogexecute running movements in his sleep.

Freud also saw that this explanation byno means ended the matter. Granted thatdreams enable one to sleep on in spite ofdisturbing stimuli, why do they take theparticular form they do? Freud showed thatthey must take the form of a phantasticresponse to the external stimuli. It is a pityhe gave this general quality of dreams theparticular description of “wish-fulfilment,”as it has misled his followers and has tendedto separate psycho-analysis from other fieldsof psychology, such as behaviourism andgestalt psychology.

Suppose a sleeper has been called. Theknock penetrates his dream; the activeresponse to this would normally take theform of his getting up. His phantasticresponse therefore takes the form of

dreaming that he gets up – an experiencemost of us have had. In the same way, if asleeper is disturbed by hunger pangs, hiswaking response would be to feed, andtherefore starving explorers dreamperpetually of food.

Of course this is “wish-fulfilment,”inasmuch as in phantasy one fulfils one’swish to get up or to feed. But wish-fulfilment is misleading as a generaldescription, because “wish” is a termusually used of a consciously formulatedaim, and its use here hides the close kinshipof the phantastic response of dream to theactive response of waking life. All thecountless stimuli that move us in daily lifeto action – a command, an incentive,something seen, curiosity, a memorandum, aletter, a burning sexual desire – may becalled wishes, since plainly we wouldperform no action unless we had someinstinctive dynamism inside us to make usdo so. But to use the term “wish-fulfilment”of such actions, or of their phantasticequivalent in dream, gives them a queer andfreakish appearance and leads Freud intodifficulties to explain “unpleasant” dreamsand “unsatisfying,” dreams. It is a reflectionof his idealist subjective approach to thesubject-object relations of concrete life.

Dreams are conscious. Now we havealready seen that the data of consciousnessare socially given, that man by language,education and social contacts finds hisinstinctive responses conditioned by thecommon world and the common ego andgiven the status of consciousness. Thereforesociety is still with man in dream. Even indream the social ego phantastically fulfilsman’s desires in the social world.

In the social world man may get up oreat in immediate response to the appropriatestimuli. But the conditions of associationdemand that an instinctive desire to strike acertain man or kiss a certain woman be notgratified. In the social world therefore suchillegal desire can meet with one of twoalternative fates, to which Freud has given


the names of “repression” and “sublimation.”If we “repress” the desire, we dismiss

it from the conscious field by an effort ofwill. Now we already saw thatconsciousness corresponded to the“socialisation” or adaptation to civilisation ofinstinctive responses. Consequently a desirethat has a conscious dress already has itsbarbaric nudity clothed; it is already half-civilised. If such a desire is so strong that itis not dismissed by other interests (i.e. otherinstinctive drives) but requires to be forciblyrepressed into the unconscious by an act ofwill, then it is plain that this very repressionstrips the wish of its veneer of educationand makes it barbaric and savage. Hence theevils of repression, which Freud’s school haspointed out, are due to the very act whichstrips them of their social adaptation andmakes them savage prisoners. From thisbarbarising of conscious wishes springs theterrible ferocity of the saint, the bitterness ofthe puritan and the unspeakable cruelties ofa Holy Inquisition.

In sublimation the instincts are given asocial adaptation which permits them tosatisfy themselves in consciousness. To writea “strong” letter, to indulge in violent sportor economic competition, are ways in whichsociety permits us to give our instinctivewish a conscious dress. To wrestle withnature, to give our hate a creative materialoutlet, are still higher forms of sublimation.To dance, to write love poetry, to pay thewoman we love the compliments of serviceor speech are the ways in which we civiliseour sex. Thus these instincts, whose blindstrength might make us their blind slaves,acknowledge us as their masters andincrease our spontaneity, because they aregiven a conscious and therefore socialadaptation. Here too freedom is seen to bethe consciousness of necessity.

But the range of possibility ofsublimation, the width of consciousness andtherefore of spontaneity, is not settled in theideal world. It is part of the social productand like all the freedom of society is

generated by labour. In the past the majorityof consciousness and therefore the greatestrange of sublimation has gone to the classwhich has appropriated the major share ofthe social product; and for the other class,the sublimation of its socially-thwarteddesires for leisure and food have taken thecrude form of religion and the phantasticstructure of a dream paradise.

The “I” of dream is still the socialised“I,” the instinctive, unconscious, genotypicalego modified by contact with the commonego. The world of dream is still the worldof instinctive response to environmentmodified by the common perceptual world.It is for this reason that as in real life so indream the hunger and getting-up urges aregratified by direct phantasy – we dream ofeating or dressing – whereas instincts to killor rape other human beings are sublimatedor, as Freud puts it, “distorted by thecensor.” Of course as instincts they areneither to kill nor to rape – since killing andraping are social conceptions, unknown tothe unconscious instincts of sex and self-preservation. However, these words must beused in discussing the unconscious in theterms of the conscious.

The idea of a separate endo-psychiccensor is obviously an abstraction. In factthis censor and the distortion “he” producesare not the work of a special department ofthe psyche but are given in the nature ofconsciousness itself. Any neural “engram”whose activity forms a part of a dreamconsciousness must necessarily respect certainsocial laws, because that very consciousnessis like a suit of clothes and a shave – a signthat it has been civilised.

Why in that case do we in dreampermit ourselves to do things we should beashamed to do in real life? Two factorscombine to produce this moral looseness ofdream. It has already been remarked thatthe genotype is born not merely a savage buta brute, and hence the development ofconsciousness is a shaping of the outside, acarving of the intact trunk. Consciousness


begins as self-consciousness, as a detachmentof the self from the environment, but thisalone does not secure consciousness; it is ina sense opposed to it and merely instinctive.It is only when self-consciousness returns onthe environment and by experience impressesthe environment on itself that it becomesconscious of reality, of “otherness.” This isa social process. The baby grows consciousby becoming interested in its surroundingsand learning about them by activeexperience. Because it does so by means oflanguage and social activity, its experience ofreality is an experience of the rich complexreality of the common perceptual world. Inthe introversion of sleep the environmentsinks away and with it therefore vanishesmuch of the social world of reality. We tendto return to the introversion of childhoodand the dawning self-consciousness ofinfancy, in which the “I” is everything andexternal reality as yet a vague chaos. Thisexplains not merely the archaic and infantilecharacter of dreams, but also the extent towhich their analysis reveals the influence ofinfantile experience. When we sleep the facegrows childish. For the same reason indream the Mother, the return to the womb,incest, and all the other familiar infantileFreudian motives play an important part.The “I” of dream, though so important, isa petty ego, for social life is the means of itsrealisation. The “I” of dream is like theworld of dream, only partly socialised. Thusdream is doubly detached from reality –external and internal. It is not completelysevered on either side but it is loosened.

It would be wrong to deduce fromdream to life without allowing for thedifference. This difference is the more activerôle in life of the environment which in itsconsciously perceived form is a socialconstruct. We are born a genotype – merelyinstinctive. We become self-conscious and,by interaction with the environment, receivean adaptation of the instincts whichdetermines our infantile consciousness andour infantile hopes, aspirations and aims.

Our growth to manhood is accompanied byan enrichment of consciousness – that is, bya still more far-reaching adaptation of ourchildish desires to the environment. Ouradult consciousness is not determined by ourinfantile, any more than our infantileconsciousness is determined by ourinstinctive genotype. There is a differencewhich consists in the difference inexperience, and this experience rests on adeeper penetration of the environment as aresult of living in society. We have lived andtherefore are altered. Freudism, by takingthe dream at its own valuation, constantlydismisses the adaptations of consciousness asfetters or inhibitions on the instincts, withoutseeing the vital fact that these adaptationsare generated by the struggle of the instinctswith the environment. Robbed of theseadaptations the instincts would be so muchthe less free. To strip the tortoise or the crabof its shell would not free it but wouldexpose it to the necessity of the environment.This does not of course exclude thepossibility of these adaptations becomingrelatively cramping – relative to the freedomof other adaptations already made possibleby a change in the material conditions. Forexample, the horny integument of the cactussecures its free development in desertregions, but if it should grow moist, thisintegument would cramp its developmentand the skin would either be discarded orthe cactus would be crowded out by morethin-fleshed plants. This applies still morepowerfully to man whose social organisationsecures a continuous and rapid change inhis productive forces.

Thus the loose character of the dreamis partly explained by its infantilism. Oursocial conditioning is closely associated withthe environment, for reasons alreadyexplained. Any weakening in environmentalstrength tends to lessen our adaptation. Weall know how we act differently away fromthe home circle, or with friends, or in aforeign country. We know that theinstinctive outburst of rage or the non-social


Your support and contribution will help ISD spread its message of Peace.For queries regarding donation and support write to us at [email protected]

Your stories are valuable to us. Share them so that others can also read.Mail us at [email protected]

INSTITUTE for SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, New Delhi, IndiaE-MAIL : [email protected] / WEBSITE www.sach.org.in / www.isd.net.in

behaviour of drunkenness are accompaniedby a weakening of the reality of theenvironment; “we forgot where we were.”In sleep introversion robs the environment ofabsolute reality; hence a correspondingloosening of social coherence, which,however, cannot vanish as long as thedream remains conscious; yet conscious itmust be to have value, for the instincts,owing to their long conditioning, cannot actexcept upon socially accepted reality, and allsuch reality is conscious.

Because of its archaic and instinctivenature, the reality which makes up theconscious material of dream is crude andlimited as compared with the reality ofwaking consciousness. This applies notmerely to the external reality which figuresin a dream as “dream thoughts,” but tointernal reality, the “I” which experiencesthem. It is a mean, petty and selfish “I.” Weare not conscious of any nobility or heroicquality in this “I”; on the contrary, it neverdoes anything we can really be proud of.Even its achievements are gained too easily.After waking from dream we are only tooglad we are not “really like that.” And infact we are not, for it is the process ofassociation which makes men noble andheroic which gives their character morebeauty and worth. Hence the “I” of dream,stripped of so much of its social adaptation,is stripped of its largeness and human value.

Yet we see phantasy even in the formof dream reaching out towards anameliorative role. In dream the egoexperiments in action upon reality, but it isnow a plastic reality without the stiffness of

material things. In the space of a night it ispossible to combine and recombine, free fromthe immediate tension of a direct contactwith reality and the limitations ofmanipulating real stuff.

It is possible to experiment with newforms of reality more appropriate to ourinstincts and to experience in a provisionalway what these forms would feel like andhow our instincts would react to theirachievement. Thus the illusion of dream hasthis biological value, that by experimentingideally with possible realities and attitudestowards them it paves the way for suchchanges in reality. Dream prepares the wayfor action; man must first dream the possiblebefore he can do it. It is true that therealisation of our dream is never the sameas the dream; it looks different and it feelsdifferent. Yet it also has something incommon with our desire, and its realisationwas only possible because dream went beforeand lured us on, as the harvest festival madepossible the harvest. Of course dream is tooarchaic and too phantastically isolated fromsocial reality to be of much value in theconcrete living of civilised man.

The “remedy” for the illusory characterof dream is not to abolish dream but to soenlarge and extend it that it becomesincreasingly dose to the realisation it ismade to anticipate; to fill it more full of lifeand reality and vivid content. Once againfreedom is extended by an extension of theconsciousness of necessity. This programmecalls for the socialisation of dream.

to be continued...Courtesy—Illusion and Reality

SACH 53 2019.pmd - ISD

Documents

Transcript of SACH 53 2019.pmd - ISD