Rajneeti: Is it fact or fiction?

Everybody is acknowledging the fact that 'Rajneeti' (Prakash Jha's latest movie) is a modern-day adaptation of Mahabharta, which goes on to imply that much has not changed since those days. However the film lags quite behind Mahabharta in its execution and at the same time it has its very strong points also but the first thing that comes to my mind is the debate on the historicity of our epics. There are people who have placed the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharta in the category of historical accounts and there are others who just call them our 'religious' scriptures (the holy books of Hindus). I think now the first step towards categorising and classifying these epics would be to try to classify this modern-day adaptation. My guess is that these epics have followed a similar route as this film. So how are we going to classify this movie – fact or fiction; a true representation or just a story? Well it is definitely a story. But what kind of? Is it the real life kept as it is or just inspired by some real-life incidents? To me it is both. For a story to be true, it need not be the case that each and every incident has to be kept and told as it has happened (that is probably history and not a work of art like cinema or novel or story). A true story is one which gives the crux of the historical incidents, historical meaning anything which has happened till just now, as it is. The soul of the story remains the same, the body may be completely different (this is what we call adaptation). This is what is being done in Rajneeti; and this is where it tells the same story as the biggest story of Mahabharta. And so we should be able to guess the extent to which Mahabharta is a historical account and the extent to which it is fiction. There need not be Kauravas and Pandavas; there need not be Kuntis and Draupadis; in fact, there is no question of even good versus evil; these all are just symbols to suggest the fact that the tact, strategy, planning and politics always wins over the biggest and the strongest of the armies. The very fact that Krishna, even without fighting in the war, was the single-most biggest reason for the outcome of the war suggests something which we have witnessed throughout the history of the world. When we today talk about diplomatic negotiations (and not armed wars) against our most bitter enemies, when we talk about talks with the maoists and the terrorists and abstain from military action, aren't we following in the footsteps of Krishna, where more than the strength it is the tact which plays a significant role? And it is what we miss when we talk about Mahabharta as a book of war; it is not; it is a book of peace, of love and, above all, of politics. And then what about the war? War fulfills several functions at several levels – a) wars were a norm in those days; so it lends credence to the whole story by acting as an accurate incident which happens all the time; b) it gives the poetry the required drama and thrill, thereby, fulfilling the basic criteria of any work of art i.e., it should entertain, c) and the most important of all it is a symbolic war fought within all of us to act in a certain way; none of the ways is perfect or good in all respects and so there is a fight or conflict to follow one way (the fight between Rama and Ravana in Ramayana is a similar war; and the ultimate renunciation of Rama by Sita goes on to show that there is no absolute good or absolute evil). And it is really sad that today, even without a basic reading and understanding of the original (even in the translated form) text, it is being labelled as anti-Dalit, casteist, Manuvadi and what not. It is being propagated as the holy text of Hindus and a text of the high-class Brahmins, which have no merits in it whatsoever. We probably forget that it questions and demolishes the whole caste system the moment Karna steps in the story. By birth he is not a low-caste chariot's son; but ultimately he becomes so. And again a chariot's son is made into a king. A complete upheaval and crumbling of the whole concept of caste and caste system. What about the story of Eklavya? A low caste child possessing skills far superior to the other high caste people! And what about Drona's behaviour with him? Doesn't it expose the cunning and ruthless way in which caste system is being maintained and perpetuated in the society? And what about the love affair of Hidimbi (a rakshasi) and Bhima (and the ultimate killing of Hidimba, who did not support this love affair)? The movie has done a wonderful job in understanding one half of the Mahabharta; the fact that there is no good, there is no evil. There is an evil part and a good part in all of us, which is indeed a big achievement considering the unrealistic, flat good (represented by one-dimensional thoroughly pious and good hero) vs. evil (represented by the laughing, treacherous, cruel one-dimensional villain) movies that we encounter everyday. But it falters in the final step. It fails to understand the war. It fails to understand that in 'rajneeti' the death should not necessarily mean DEATH; it is rather the political death (to which there is a passing reference in the movie). The war worked in Mahabharta because that was how the whole story was planned (and that was how the times were then). But it doesn't work in the modern context. A more nuanced and balanced climax would have brought the movie almost parallel to what Mahabharta has achieved and managed to do. P.S.- Just a funny but significant aspect of the movie is Ranbir Kapoor's character. It should be noted that he is not an engineer or IAS or for that matter an MBA; rather he is a PhD scholar and that too in English literature. For all my friends in JNU doing PhD, this means that a PhD scholar is not a good-for-nothing chap but actually a brilliant mind capable of overtaking and defeating the masters of such wily games as Rajneeti. Just a postscript!

Interdisciplinarity Doesn't Exist :-)

A few days ago (17th May, 2010, to be precise), there was a lecture by Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharya on 'Indo WordNet'. Nothing extraordinary.................Unless we consider the fact that Prof. Bhattacharya is a professor at IIT-Bombay in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, whose broader research interests include NLP, particulalrly in relation to wordnet and semantics. Where would we expect someone with such background to deliver a lecture at? Lot of places. But is there anyone (who is not working in the area) who would expect someone like him to deliver a lecture at a 'Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies' at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi? If anyone has any doubt about this conclusion, just rewind a few years of your life. Come to the time when you had just passed out of boards and imagine telling your parents that you want to study Sanskrit........eeeeeeeeeeee.........Don't wait for long. Before you are thrown out of the house tell them that you were joking and you want to study PCM so that you could become computer engineer at IIT-Bombay. Now that is normal. The point is that did anyone, including you, ever thought that there could be any kind of link between Computer Engineering and Sanskrit at that point of time? Try telling that to someone even now. And this is not just one isolated instance. I could cite several other instances. A retired professor of Human Physiology at Lady Hardinge Medical College in New Delhi used to give several special lectures to the M.A. students at 'Centre for Linguistics'. A professor of Linguistics presented a paper on the mapping of human brain and genomics at a life science conference in the School of Life Sciences. Another professor of Linguistics was called at an archaeology conference to present her findings. A group of cartographers, computer scientists and linguists worked together to produce an Atlas of Endangered Languages of the World. The list goes on........ This whole issue is also somewhere related to this mad rush of becoming an Engineer or Doctor. And in case someone decides to do a simple graduation, then definitely do an MBA or UPSC. These are respectively the two groups of super-duper-hallowed and super-hallowed career choices available to the Indian students. Think beyond these and you are doomed! Your career is finished and your life is going to be a waste. You cannot do or achieve anything in life (of course, achievement is measured by how much money you earn, just as you your talent and merit is measured by how much marks you get in the stupid exams; it is always the numbers!). This very assumption is based on a very naive and narrow concept of 'discipline', 'area', 'line' or 'subject' of study. There are very clear-cut demarcation of subjects right from our school days. Without understanding the reason, rationale and concept behind all the different subjects they are being taught at the school level like completely discrete and isolated entities. It is a place where an English teacher has no knowledge about Maths and a Botany teacher has no idea what Hindi literature is all about. And this continues till the time we complete our education. In fact if anything at all happens, it is the further divisions and isolation. What was previously taken to be one, later on, they are perceived as completely different areas of study. Based on this concept of strict disciplinarity our whole career and whole life is chalked out. In recent times, however, there have been some attempts to counter this at the level of higher education with the help of things like interdisciplinarity and cross-disciplinarity. I have serious objections to this conception also mainly because, at some level, it also assumes the existence of separate disciplines and there should be and there are some points of areas of overlap across disciplines. This has helped in breaking the barriers of discipline to some extent but still the boundaries remain. Well these boundaries are probably necessary to lend some order to all this chaos. But these boundaries should not be constraining or limiting; they should be like the sky which encompasses all; which is all around you but still you are free to fly anywhere; no one is really aware of where one sky ends and other begins; or where one horizon ends and other begins. What I am proposing here is the concept of non-disciplinarity. There does not exist any discipline (as it is made out to be); there does not exist any interdiscipline (since there is no discipline as such). Nothing is complete in itself, even though it looks so. It is only when we take a look at the whole that we will be able to make sense of the little part that we are looking at (just the way the six blind men were trying to make a sense of the elephant by looking at its individual parts in that famous story). Let us try to understand this whole concept of non-discipline in this way. Everyone of us try to understand the phenomena, events, incidents etc around us in our own way. And we try to understand different aspects of the same thing. And it is these different ways and aspects that has led to the formation of different disciplines. And all these different ways and aspects contribute to our overall understanding and knowledge about this whole world in nature. Lets take an example to understand this simple fact. Lets take the study of brain and mind. Psychologists study mind from one point of view, neuroscientists and neurosurgeons from another, philosophers from yet another point of vies and even linguists, to some extent, are interested in this stupid brain. Now the understanding about the brain is increased by input from all these (and more) and this understanding can become complete and whole only when all these continue to contribute to this knowledge base. Add to this the fact that brain is just one part of the human body; there are other parts of the body which need to be understood so that the human body could be understood in totality. Moreover to understand it in better way we need to understand other organisms as well. Thus we understand human body. We also need to understand how do we survive; we need to undestand the land and the vegetaion around. But is human body and human survival the whole of human being? Being a human consists a lot of other things like human society, language, culture, etc. We need to understand all these to understand the human behaviour and humans in general. And then is it complete? We also need to understand how we have evolved and how we have become what we are today. We even need to understand what we are today. What are the things that influence us and how do they influence us? What are the things that make us happy and efficient? By understanding all this we try to create a better world for ourselves, where everyone is happy, content and satisfied. This is the goal of the whole of our educational effort. And only by understanding each and everything about ourselves and those related to us can we become stronger, sharper and healthier. And if any of these is not properly understood then we are doomed; the life of the whole of human race is endangered. This is what needs to be urgently understood when we start studying. We need to understand that all these are intricately intertwined and connected to each other by a bond, just the way everything in 'Avatar' was bonded with each other. If we lose any of these then we lose all. Let us take the analogy of the way computer functions. The speed and performance of the computer depends on a lot of things including its processor, RAM and the operating system. If all of these are perfect and the best then our system gives optimum performance. If any component of the system is affected then the whole of performance is affected. And what happens of any of these components break down and stop working? This whole pursuit of knowledge is a similar system, where we need to keep every component working and in the best of the health. Thus this non-discipline defines any discipline as just one part of the super-discipline called Knowledge (just as pragmatics is a sub-part of Linguistics). In order to understand any one these we need to have a basic understandng of everything else (can we understand pragmatics completely in Linguistics without having a basic knowledge of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and everything else). And I guess this was the reason why students were supposed to know (and not learn) so many subjects in the school. It was assumed that a basic knowledge of everything would help them in looking at the same thing in different ways and deciding which way and which aspect do they like most and pursue that way to futher the human knowledge. But of course they will also be aware of the other ways which would help them take insights and inspirations from everywhere else and also use all that knowledge in their point of view. This is the most efficient and effective way of development as this will check redundancy and consequent wastage of effort and time to a large extent. Now interdisciplinarity also does not exist once we begin to take in the concept of non-disciplinarity since then it all becomes part of only one super-discipline. Do we call a discussion on Morphosyntax in Linguistics an interdisciplinary discussion (even though it covers two aspects of studying the same phenomenon)? Or do we call a conference of doctors where cardiologists, ophthalmologists, paediatrician, gynaecologists and everyone else is presenting their paper an interdisciplinary conference (even though they belong to different areas of medical science)? Or what about an International Relations seminar where everyone is discussing relationships among different sets of countires? If these are not interdisciplinary because they belong to the same umbrella discipline then why should the interaction among different non-disciplines be called interdisciplinary if they also belong to the same umbrella discipline? They should not be called so simply because they are not. Because of the lack of this understanding of non-disciplines and super-discipline of Knowledge we are witnessing a very sad and skewed scenario today. Everyone is moving towards these hallowed non-disciplines leaving behind everything else in lurches. Interest and aptitiude do not matter anymore. It is just the pseudo-lucrativeness of the field that matters. We do not understand the simple fact that all these non-disciplines are not separate entities with some being great and others being poor. They are all equally important part of the same machinery; they are all essential and great in their own ways. And this understanding is never going to descend upon us unless we are told that these non-disciplines are not discrete, clean-cut separate areas; rather they are just meant to look at the same thing from different directions; we could get a multi-dimensional, complete and comprehensive picture only when we merge these visions from all around. Then what about the numbers? What about the money? What about the success? Come on baby.........you want me to answer all that............Just look around you. A post-graduate in some exotic arts subject like 'Linguistics' is going to build her own house (one of the supreme examples of success) a few years after she completed her stupid PhD. In the same city an engineer from a fairly reputed college commits suicide for the lack of money. And these are not the isolated instances...............Wake up girl! Its high time you go beyond cliches and stereotypes. The world is moving ahead. If we do not want India to be lagging behind then shun that prejudice. Take my word.........If you work as hard in any discipline as people do in completing their Engineering and Medical courses then you are going to earn as much as they do, if not more (and not just money). And I know that for sure.