hate and social work

who can be in social work, what is the driving force behind people who engage in social work, is it love, or anger. for me it is anger most of the time. it helps keeping my mind sober, and relate with people stronger. but does it make me better person, because social worker is suppose to be one isnt he. well certainly not but then does it matter, if i am usefull to many.

Gandhi and me

I think for all who have read Gandhi with some amount of seriousness, with out the compulsion of certificate exams, he would have been a greater influence in them. We would be fortunate if we get a chance to read him when we start to understand the world and form opinions about its good, bad and ugly faces.

But as a word of caution, reading him at this stage would also restrict our understanding of him. We would by that time have lost faith (God!!!), developed scientific temperament?? Tutored in the possible salvation through Technology etc. Unless we see shortcoming of our lives Gandhi would not make much sense for us. But any way he would start disturbing our soul, (if there is one). The initial years is mostly unlearning what we have learnt or what we think we have learnt, this I think will be the period that would probably be spent in intellectual gymnastics trying to comprehend him with our contemporary civilisational understanding and bring him to the fore of our daily problems. Probably we may conclude the world we live today is different, so Gandhi may not be as relevant, but still we would be drawn to him because we are confused, bewildered, aghast by the injustice, violence, and because we see in him the love that talks to us, his faith in humanity that springs hope in us, and his sane and fragile voice we hear amidst of gun powders. And we hope, he could be relevant. But how. The Indian he was referring is not I, I can no longer have faith, I have lost the tradition which I felt was suffocating my ideas of morality, how do I understand the distant dreamland culture or civilisation when it is buried in the pigments of books.

Gandhi can make sense to me when I can access him with out the barriers of culture and traditions, to which I am alien and vice versa. I am the westernised Indian he loathed and try to transform through religion, history and morality, sorry I can understand him only when I don’t carry any luggage of history, for that doesn’t answer my problem today. So the knowledge of our past tradition or wisdom only adds to confusion and because the tradition I Inherit scaffolds the culture. And I am certainly not interested in mopping up the dirt in the traditions.

But I think Gandhi can answer me personally, as a man as an individual who suffered a lot better than I have. And I think his is the gospel that belongs to every civilisation. The guilt he raises in me is universal.

The dharma he endorsed is not the dharma of many in my land today, never mind whether we have regressed through the times of slavery, the truth is we are not what we were or what we believe we were. And my swadharma is the collage of many ideas and philosophies. So I need to understand Gandhi through what I am, not with what I ought to be or with the idea of my ancestor. I don’t care whether his ideas are Christian or Hindu or Islam or mixture of all. All I need to know is how can he help me to understand and relate with the world I live today and help me to remain sane. And in this he would always be the man I would look forward to be my conscience keeper.

I don’t think I have the faculty to understand and recommend solutions to the problems we have, and I also don’t think Gandhi can provide either. Still there are many questions about technology, development, science that cannot be answered and it is debatable, but he can answer your struggle with his own struggle, I might not able to understand whether globalisation is good or bad, about what MNCs are doing, I might not understand what is good and bad for the society, but I we can understand to learn virtues of simplicity, about love and compassion, not out of sentiment but because it make sense, and perhaps it leads to a better life.
From this understanding of what Gandhi means to me let me illustrate how this course has changed or added value. I must confess that I am still elusive, non committal on many issues, it has not fundamentally changed my ideas, may be old habits are hard to go, As I have mentioned earlier I feel suffocated by the traditions, though I can clearly understand the greatness of some of our values, its contemporary form is disturbingly alienating. Let me take the first module:

Civilisation:

It is astonishing to note that Gandhi had such clarity on industrialisation and its forms. It seems to me that he had much better understanding than most of his contemporaries across the world. But juxtaposing west and east and glorifying the eastern way of living may not give right understanding of his ideas. I think if we move him across time and space he would have said the same. He would have had the same objections towards, wheels and chariots as he had with the trains. He is fundamentally opposed to excessive wants and exploitation. So the question is certainly not whether western model suits India or not the real question is what should we follow that is non exploitative. He is as relevant to the west as he is to the east. He is against industrialisation not its suitability in India.

And we should always remember that when he refers to the Indian culture or Indian way of life he refers to the ordinary Indians not of the kings and princes, so he would have lot to say about temples and palaces of India which we are proud of!!!!

I would like to elaborate my understanding on civilisation and culture. My understanding of culture: It is the set of code of conducts practiced by the locals in relation to each other and to the environment. From this I would like to classify the civilisation into 4:
1. Hunters and gathers
2. Agrarian
3. Industrialisation
4. Information age. The age of discontinuity.

I think broadly we can assume the cultures of these eras would be same regardless of time and space. The culture, religion, and social functions like family, community will be similar. If one can look closely at this, classification has been made on the way people create and distribute wealth. It is not to conclude that the culture is a direct product of economics, it is just to say that it is the sustaining force. And we would also find that the dependence on nature also decreases at each level, so the problems and challenges are new and different and the change is discontinuous from the past.

So the west had natural progression through these stages, because the last two have been the products of west. But we are in the midst of three eras, agrarian, industrialisation, and IT, majority at the first stage. So we are a confused mass. Our culture is highly agrarian, our livelihood is influenced either industrialised or IT (at least for English educated, urban Indian), which has its own cultural baggage. We are in the midst of cultural and identity crisis or transformation.

Let us come to the moral part of it. Industrialisation I don’t think it has done any great thing for the human kind, just as there are millions and millions of happy humans unaffected by the IT revolution we would not have been less better off with out industrialisation. Since it was not the case, what we could have atleast be were a bit intelligent in choosing it, like Japan and China or even like America. It is just a common sense that you do an environment study before you launch.

Swaraj:

Probably the best session on what exactly is swaraj. Your Swadharma. Problem starts here what is my swadharma, as mentioned earlier; my self is the collage of many traditions and ideas. Believe me there are not many things that I can relate with this nation. For many I am unindian un Hindu, may be it is possible that they got the whole idea of Hinduism wrong but it doesn’t change my state.

Let me take the contentious science:

Lecture today was highly informative and exhaustive. Nevertheless I have some observation. But before I proceed I want to say I don’t have any scientific background, I am just a student of management. I want to proceed with what I see as scientific.
1. Rigorous analysis of cause and effect
2. Replicability
3. Free from human interventions

From this if we proceed to understand the process of acquiring knowledge and validity of that we may have to limit our selves and say science has its boundaries and beyond that it would be unscientific, again it is to be asked whether it is possible to have knowledge that is unscientific, I guess it is very much possible. So it is largely our discretion to ask right question to science. If you ask science whether there is a soul, it is a wrong question to ask. I think we should know what science can answer and what it cant.

Coming to the experiment and observation part of science. I believe observation plays a very important role in forming hypothesis and experiment in validating that hypothesis. Two are very important in trying to get closer to truth. Because in observation there is much “Noise”.
It seems that traditional knowledge and its efficiency
1. Depends on individual and practitioner’s knowledge as well as life style, which makes difficult to determine the cause of cure and medicinal property of herbs, etc.
2. Though the utility of the medicine is understood and practiced its property is not understood or not explained. It makes even more difficult to accept its validity
3. And if the property is not understood how can it help further research
4. There also seems to be mystical element to these medicines. Original teachers of all these medicine are sages who are believed to have received this knowledge through spiritual discipline or insights.

Since some of these goes against the modern way of understanding, which I presume to be less “Noisy”, I think it would be difficult to call traditional science scientific. But again it is our decision to subject traditional knowledge to be validated by science, which I think is not necessary.

The cooperation between the two systems I think will happen at the utility level experiments, forced by the market demands, and not at the scholarly level, though very much desirable, because of very nature of incompatible knowledge process.

I think the problem is with the popular misconception of the science among people. The non-existence of proof for something is taken as proof against it. I believe scientific methodology is by far the best tool available for acquiring knowledge and understand its limitation as well.

We would be able to appreciate better the different knowledge systems including traditional, if we are scientific.

Soul force:

With this I agree a lot, more than anything else it the soul force of Gandhi that attracts me more. I think self-cultivation is the key.

Gandhi Today:

Gandhi today as yesterday would make a personal appeal. The changes we make to our self and through our soul force may have influences on the policies of government and its structure.

Can Gandhi be pertinent today? The answer to this question depends upon the kind society we want to create and how that society be receptive to Gandhi. We are used expect an avatar to come and save us and take us to heaven. It should be borne in mind that it is the society that creates Gandhi or Buddha no person can make a giant leap from the average person of the society. Gandhis are creation of collective social consciousness not an effort of an individual. Is our society ready for such person, it is big question mark that looms before us. Values and life styles have changed we are no longer the same society that existed some fifty years ago, we no longer bother about corruption, personal integrity, tolerance, and we have accepted immorality as a means to survive in the world of competition. Gluttonous lifestyle has alienated us from our roots and made us intellectually sterile to find the meaning of Gandhi. This is the mentality that felt Gandhi as ideal person to worship and worst role model to follow. Godse was an expression of this mindset.

Surely we want peaceful world but not ready to reduce our wants, to sacrifice, to share our comforts with others. It didn’t take much time for Einstein’s word to come true we don’t believe such person like Gandhi walked on this earth. He has faded in the memory of Indian people, he is an icon overshadowed by our failures. For the congress he was a spent force, his economics was primitive that could be applied only in troglodyte society, for the nationalists his nonviolence would cowardice Indian (read Hindu) society and put them in perpetuatual subjugation, for politicians and historians he was inconsistent, unpredictable and gave no ten commandments to the Gandhians to follow. He refused to fit into any image; he was not a Hindu, Indian, saint, politician, intellectual, conservative, or modern. He was everything yet nothing; in effect he was a true human being. Many disagreed, felt him unbearable but none hated him including Godse. They could not even go against him that is why Godse killed him; he didn’t have the courage and strength to fight Gandhi directly. He was a scar in the moral vacuum ness of his people; he was the remnants of decimated conscience of his men. They loved him so much yet they felt him unbearable and too much. He had to be restrained for normal functioning of the government. This is a paradox; no body hated Gandhi, nobody wanted him either. He was too good for their inability.

Today we talk about non-violent society, worried about communalism and terrorism, carry placards against war, and cry for universal love how we are going to achieve when we least know our neighbors, send our children to the trenches of global competition, curse our selves for not having the killer instinct, and augment our insatiable wants. Perhaps it could be argued that never in the history of man kind there has been a collective protest against oppression, perhaps for the first time we hear the voice of the oppressed perhaps for the first time we hear the war cry of the marginalized for their right, with this all it could be argued that we are more tolerant than our ancestors on many issues. But these have not shaken the fundamental belief on which this society is built; the fight is more for the share than for the change. We can’t have a nonviolent society and work towards consumer society. There can be no genuine struggle of Indian society if elite does not incorporate in its daily conduct the values which Gandhi stood upon. Today the main instrument of elite community in India is great emphasis on consumption oriented policies and plans and elite who are not austere in its living can’t have legitimacy. That part of our understanding which was designed to satisfy consumption demands of elite and middle class go against which Gandhi has warned on numerous occasions. No social reformers or revolutionaries or gentians can hope to make any heading unless political ideas and action are continued with personal integrity. Reviving Gandhi from Nasik prints depends on how much space we give him in schoolbooks, media and other public spaces. First step towards this is to demystify him and see him as an ordinary person, he was not a son of god, not a born genius, his success was his life, and his experiment with it. If we can’t appreciate him forget following avatars, they were gifted. It requires tremendous courage to see him as a person and discuss him. If we cant just make him a brand ambassador for pepsi.