The Anarchists

Trust and optimism are those considered virtues,
Belief and dedication those believed qualities,
That all adorn their deeds.

Doubt and pessimism are those vilified vices,
Thoughts and protests those disgraced scandals,
That all scorn in others'.

With the former, the fabler harvests;
And the latter, the zealot ploughs.

Without the scandals and vices,
Little will thrive virtues and qualities.

Do we have good harvests
As with little ploughed lands?

Would we have unfeigned beliefs,
With little doubting thoughts?

Dedication merely eludes,
The painful journey of reforms.

Would we bear worthwhile fruits
Will little upheld causes?

A political oration, to save itself

Political Oration as a skill, and an art finds its root to the Greeks, where experiments in a Republic required appealing speeches to be delivered to shape public opinions among masses. It found its greatest influence during the era of the Roman republic, where the orators in the senate shaped the future of the western civilized world, influencing the senators, as well as the masses, changing the history of three continents.

The roman model of the senate was replicated worldwide as parliaments and legislative buildings in democracies, where elected representatives, continued the tradition of collective decision making, through building opinion and shaping policies.

Around two decades and a half back, I was also to be enthralled by the art of political oration, by one of the most gifted natural speakers of modern politics, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Listening to his debates and speeches and the odd humors, public oration did what it was meant to do, develop a political allegiance and shape a political philosophy in my young mind. It was also a period, where technology was taking over our lives. The reach of televisions and news papers were expanding, often bringing us in touch with local politics across the states.

Being from a heavily multicultural state, some of the early political philosophies of the party were at variance with my own values, which prompted my mind to develop a future course of trail that the party needed to reform through, again with the moderate face of the party symbolized by Vajpayee spurring hope of a reform in the political philosophy of the only party that promised to give a political alternative at the center.

Half way through the journey of my political affiliations, my own ideals were irritated by the abundant number of political garbage that seems to stem from fanatic ideologies still thriving in the party. Thus the expansive reach of television delivered before me a speech from a local leader of the party. I was filled with revulsion. I asked myself, why do the party fill themselves with such uncultured filth? Technology was moving to a stage that I view as the "calculator phase" of social influence, where media technology made it more efficient for our political exposure to be widened across the nation. However, this was still an era where our mind had, still to form the ideals and philosophies, making judgments and opinions on our won, merely using technology to enhance the efficiency and pace with which we form our ideologies.

A decade and few years have passed since witnessing that piece of dirty talk that they call as oration. I witness today that we move to a phase of social life called the "artificial intelligence phase" or the "micro processor phase", where the role of our minds seems to have been taken over by media technology. Opinions are already processed, and formed and manipulated and fed to us. We shall choose not to deviate, our brains are of little significance is forming ideologies, they are merely pre-processed and available as inputs to us. Those who control the inputs control us, and our ideologies. Our minds and its application is architectured out of the ideology formation process. Mass media replaces political oration. The masses now get controlled rather than influenced.

I witness today, the same speaker I loathed over a decade back for his filthy style, the center of attraction of this mass media, delivering his average speeches across the border, the evaluation of the speeches as masterpieces already manipulated by technology and fed to the masses to gobble up, the target, educated or not ever so willing to oblige. There is an attempt to keep out the natural savagery of his earlier speeches with careful choice of words. But a lack of focus and substance, and a motive rather than inspiration as the base of the speeches, make even these carefully crafted speeches as mere average work by professional public relations and marketing strategists.

Today we live in an era, where the sound of a trained parrot is hailed as a wonder of nature, a world moved far apart from that which immersed themselves in the creative imagination of the lines that romanticized the song of the cuckoo. So it is of little surprise, that I find among us, even among the most educated of the masses, a lot of people, endorsing average speeches as masterpieces, surrendering themselves and their opinions to that fed by the mass media, reluctant, or unable to form their own opinions, living in a spoon fed world where technology has taken over our thoughts, unable to form their own ideologies.

Today I crave for the birth of our own Cicero, to reinvent the art of political oration. To overpower the grip of mass media, and to spark to life the dead corpses that our minds have become, from the simple machinery that our ideology have become to the evolving life that once our political landscape was.

Looking into the mirror

We witnessed the spread of the dark ages through the Middle East and Asia Minor. An average thought of a common man is drenched in theological dogma in those lands, and the intellectual liberals find themselves in a minority, intimidated by the religious leaders, wielding the power of having organized the masses under the influence of the dogmas they feed. Hope hinges on a period of enlightenment, that the human race has displayed with regularity, to emerge out of such hopeless cycle of polarization and hatred, a fake feeling of unity cemented by the unreal bondage of religion and nationalism.

Little did we imagine that dangers of the Arab spring, would spread to lands beyond those under the influence of the three Abrahamic religions. For religions without dogmas, were not known to organize into tyranny, and not being organized remained the hinge on which, their seeming tolerance hung on to. The fire of protest that is lit, is for reasons noble, to end inequality and injustice and oppression, but the powder that is burnt, unfortunately only promises more of these. To move from Monarchs and Oligarchs to religious and nationalist tyranny does not represent progress. It represents the dangers that humanity breeds, those dangers that arise when the iron is hot, to beat humanity into new shapes of oppression, to sink them deeper into the world of chains. In the blind and furious pursuit for change, we may have taken a route, even less noble, than the one we were already traversing.

Slowly over the last decade, I witnessed the slow degradation of the civilized values in our society. These values, prominently characterized by co existence, pluralism, and a general dismissal of intolerance, were either built by design into our culture by our learned sages, or by accident by the inability of the same sages, to built into our culture, the dimension of intolerance. I would rather stick to the earlier view of design by sages, from what I have learned about our history and culture, rather than the later theory, of our failed sages, which is made to look what it is, by the efforts to rewrite the history of our nation and the composition of our culture on the basis of new dogmas.

Little could we imagine a fate like this to dawn upon our proud civilization, for we assumed that the lack of dogmas would protect us. Little did we foresee that one day such dogmas would be engineered into our culture, fed on by the fire of the incompetence of the last decade, that allowed religion and nationalism to burn the powder, that would destroy texture of our tolerant society.

I watch helplessly, as the same society, that disapproved of intolerant rhetoric a decade or two back, which forced all leaders to adorn the costume of a moderate, to be considered competent to rule, started nodding in silent approval, or maybe even whisper along, or shout joyously at the rabid rhetoric of hatred and intolerance. The same society in the name of liberation and liberty and progress, wants to crown a monarch through democracy. I would be less bothered about the coronation, but deeply concerned about the degradation, that makes them repeat the same rhetoric as acceptable thoughts of a civilized society. The degradation has set into our culture, and the dogmas are being written down as rules, and norms acceptable to our society. There is nothing lower that humanity can sink into.

Oh founder of the new Hindu thought, who sought to revitalize into our society the wisdom of our spiritual past, who dreamed about establishing a universal religion, taking in the nurturing values of all religions, and breaking the dogmas, and the organizations that spread them, who wished to elevate the masses without injuring their religions, who sought to replace obedience to dogmas with thoughts on philosophy, has your grand project been hijacked and defeated, has your proud proclamation of civilization gone to the dogs?

Much against your vision, we see today the metamorphosis of our religious thoughts into dogmas, where the Vedas, will turn from thoughts of wise sages, to words of Gods, where philosophies that they contain, will require obedience, rather than critical thinking. The organization of masses on the basis of nationalism and religion will do exactly what you intended them not to, that is to stop seeking their own fate, leaving that to those who control them and lead them, and order them using the newly intended dogmas of the modified nationalism and the modified dharma. What we have is a machinery that will control the masses, and a machinery that is defining the laws of crystallization of the chemicals, not one that will lead every man and women to their own fate, not one that will let nature set the rules.

If we as a nation, look into the mirror now, we would see not a great civilization, but a nation no less barbaric than those others, chained to the dark ages by the dogmas of their respective theologies. Our new age nationalism, spiritual and religious realization started with a learned man, whose words below, describe his vision.

"My whole ambition in life is to set in motion machinery which will bring noble ideas to the door of everybody, and then let men and women settle their own fate.Let them know what our forefathers as well as other nations have thought on the most momentous questions of life. We are to put the chemicals together; the crystallization will be done by nature according to her laws. Keep the motto before you "ELEVATION OF THE MASSES WITHOUT INJURING THEIR RELIGION” - SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

All we need is a deep introspection, a long unwavering look into the mirror, to realize how we have failed his vision.