DO I DARE!
Enlightened Togetherness and the Day of Festival
The first light of dawn unveils the shroud of darkness. Soft breeze rolls down the foliage in tender murmur. Birds in rainbow colour flutter and sing. Festival of life begins.
When is it that the human kind joins the celebration of living? Is it everyday? No. Everyday a human person is demobilized, fragmented and lonely - inert, as it were, in utter passivity. This atomization and isolation can only be enlarged through human relatedness and cooperative togetherness. The humanness of the species emerges through inter-subjectivity. The urge is for continuity by coming together, for belonging to a group, a community and even beyond to the human race as a whole.
Friends and the near of kin, the neighbors who are not kin, wayfarers from outside join together in solidarity. In the transcendence of divinity and the glory of human dignity, the humblest and the noblest embrace each-other. They sit down on the same mat as equals and exchange views and opinion in transparent honesty for common good. Faith in divine exultedness is tempered with faith in human nearing by getting together and relating with each-other. That precisely is when the humankind celebrates in gratitude the trust that divine providence has given to them as a responsible tenant and trustee of life - not alone but in egalitarian unity with each-other.
And standing in obeisance to divine mercy we pray together. We pray for deliverance from miserly self-centerdness and egotistic apathy. We pray for emancipation from selfish cowardice, little vanities and unnecessary adornment. We pray for caring for each other, for sharing with each other so that happiness may smile on all of us. Only then the pristine splendor of lives with fulfillment and the glory of humanity bless a community, a group and thus the entire humankind.
That is what the Holy Book has revealed. Our Creator, the Compassionate and the Merciful "commands justice and well-doing and generosity towards one's kinsfolk. He forbids what is shameful and all that flouts right dealing and cupidity too". Furthermore, the Lord reveals, "Deal kindly with your parents and your kinsfolk, with orphans and the poor, as well with the neighbors near your kins and the neighbors not your kin, with the companion beside you, with the wayfarer and those who are in your charge ..
.. Do not let one group set another group to redicule, who may be better folk than they. Do not decry one another or revile one another with name - calling ... Do not spy on one another nor engage in calumny against one another. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his own dead brother. Surely not." Or again: "Do not strut proudly on the earth. You cannot cleave the earth nor match the mountains in stature. (God) has no love for the conceited and the boastful, those who - being themselves niggardly - lay miserliness on other, concealing what God has generously put in their possession ... It is the servants of the all merciful Lord who go about the earth in modesty and who answer: Peace, when accosted by those who talk to them rudely. God's servants are those who do not bear false witness and when they encounter idle talk maintain an honorable demeanor" (Al-Quran).
What better example can there be of an enhanced form of democracy practiced by communities through egalitarian People's Assembly (samity/samaj) or People's Council (Sabha)?
This tradition in the sub-continent is ancient and is true for people of all religion, caste and creed. Referring to an institution called 'Samiti' representing generally the people of a village but sometimes large political entities too a hymn or sloka in the Rg. Veda chants.
May you walk together, speak together, may your minds
together draw their knowledge.
May you build your destinies in knowledge together
like the gods before us.
May your code word be the same, same your assembly
same be your mind, your consciousness.
May your secrets be common, common the spirit of
sacrifice for each other.
May your determination be united, united be ever and
ever your hearts.
May your thinking as well be alike so that prosperity
may together on you smile.
(Rg. Veda X.191 Atharva Veda Vl. 64)
The word Samiti itself, and I quote from Ambassador L L Mehrotra, itself means coming together. Generally, in the olden days, it meant the assembly of the entire village as a deliberative organ. The sessions of the assembly or Samiti reverberated with the idea of building the destinies in knowledge of the people together in search of common prosperity and happiness. The objective was to resolve issues affecting people's lives and well-being through open debate and discussion. Thus through open and free exchange of differing thoughts and perspectives within the Samiti a consensus would emerge and the basis of such consensus would be the two fundamentals of ethics and equity.
A refrain of similar consciousness is in the word 'Sammya' commonly translated as equality. It is that but it meant more for our ancestors coming together for stimulating debates in Samiti. It also meant unanimity among friends in search of common prosperity. In fact it was thus that the village communities "endeavored to reach friendly consensus on issues dividing them through collective debate and discussion in the interest of common weal" (Mehrotra).
And what is the etymological derivation of the word 'Sabha'. The derivation as Jayrama, the ancient scholar of the Vedic lore explains is a follows: "it consists of two word 'Sa' i.e. together and 'bha' which is the verb for shining. Sabha is that which shines through common dharma or presence of good men... The 'Sabha' generally was a People's Council with a lot of moral authority and political clout and often performing judicial functions". Or as the Jatakas in the 6th century B C puts it:
That is not a sabha where no good men are.
One recalls the concept of 'Samaj' in Bengal of the past. It was and historically has been an egalitarian and democratic social formation and community governance, steeped in the ethics of goodness following the precepts of Holy Books for people from different religious followings.
The common thinking that democracy in modern days in our country is a gift from the West may not be entirely true. True, the contributions of the West in enriching the democratic style in the context of nation-states and in the wider context of regional communities are of immense value. But a close study of our heritage reveals that an enhanced form of popular democracy was institutionalized at the community, village or even multi-village level in our country at a much earlier and now forgotten time. True, the old 'samaj', Rabindranath Tagore spoke about is non-existent today. For example, I repeat once again which I quoted from Tagore last week in this very column: "If a community wants the state to perform its jobs, it will surely become idle and inefficient. This was never the case in our society. We have gone through the reins of various alien kings, but the community never stopped to play its role. Never it allowed external interference for conducting its activities, big or small".
Unfortunately the scenario is different today. Autonomy of governance at the community-level is only incipient and that also in a hierarchical and an inequitable social order. There are disparities and distances between the aristocrats and the commoners, the rich and the poor, the upper class or caste and the lower one and most importantly between men and women. It is these inequities and artificial distinctions that to my mind have reinforced certain distortions, like those of fundamentalism, obscurantism or of fatalistic acceptance of such aberrations as pre-ordained. Hence, I believe is the wanton desiccation of fundamental human values, of decadence and backwardness. The conceit and boastfulness of people in an illiberal social order are the biggest obstacles to egalitarian democratic practices. Self-interest and petty jealousies hinder the well-being of the collective. How can we celebrate the joy of living when the humankind in egotistic abandon flout the providential trusteeship on earth to be like "a garden set on a hill, receiving copious rain and yielding double fruitage (Al-Quran)?"
So let us pray together. Let us pray for the comfort of mercy, that only gives and never receives, for all our individual agonies and insignificant hopes.
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