thought must not be bounded...

When we take bath, one thing comes to our mind that bathroom is the place where a person unconsciously or subconsciously discovers herself/himself as a singer, thinker, explorer, inventor or discoverer. Archimedes, for instance, came to know the power of buoyancy when he was taking bath. So bathroom is the place of free thought because it lacks, to some how, cultural repression and hegemony of haves.

“First matter and then thought”, everyone is to accept this dialectics. In the process of development of an epoch (forces and relations of production as well) everyone contributes in accordance with her/his capability. As the epoch developed, it insists for new thought. The ideas did not come to the mind of the people of a prior epoch, came into the mind of the people of latter epoch and accordingly; because of the material development. Material development is the modification and exploitation of nature only.

Wright brothers got the inspiration from birds to invent a flying vehicle. Here is to mention that birds had/has been flying in ancient stage and so forth. Did the idea to fly in the sky come to the mind of human being? Answer would be yes; but the conundrum is that idea remained only in mind and did not come into being because of the undeveloped material epoch.

In the name of immediate cure, we kill the Ayurvedic practices and passed patent act. It is a process of private ownership-isation of the thought coming out of the epoch developed by the sweaty and bloody contributions of the whole section of human society. It is noteworthy to mention that in this regard some rambaba, shambaba, raviguru and saiguru are coming to give a saffron colour to Ayurvedic practices and to propagate as religious purview. In reality (in a deep play) they are involved in profiteering pursuit and joining those beneficiaries of patent practice.

In the world of technology, virus and anti-virus are produced and reproduced by same enterprises. Thought is employed in both; but one is free whereas other is to be paid because former one is a means to exploit the clients of technology. In this world there is more or less a harmonious division of the task of exploitation. In detail, the virus produced by Norton can not be removed or resolved by MacAfee or AVG or Panda or Avast and the vice versa. So they have distributed (informally) among themselves the proportion of accumulation of the flowing capital in the arena of virus production and anti-virus reproduction.

Let us come to the field of academics. A topic studied by two different (established) scholars reaches two different conclusions because of two different kind of ownership making. Prof. Dipankar Gupta states, in the light of the study conducted by himself that dalits are responsible for their despised conditions as they explain their misdeeds committed by themselves in their prior incarnation in such a manner that attempts to justify their present status. Whereas Dr. Vivek Kumar critiques DG vehemently and brings into light the extent of oppression that cycloned upon the dalit section and also demarcates a line to define dalit.

When we write an exam, we must not forget to mention the name of that scholar whom we quote. All ideas are ownership-ised and new academicians are to modify those established ideas in order to give the colour of her/his ownership.

“thought must not be bounded”; come and join the pen revolution for free thought, free ideas and free technocratic notions and practices.

THE TRUTH SHALL NOT SET US FREE!

[The main points in this post are drawn from Vinay Lal's 'Modern Knowledge and its Categories'.]

Modern academic knowledge thrives on overspecialization, and has become the pursuit of an expert few- this explains why it is rarely subject to public criticism. Such a situation, however, has meant that modern knowledge has increasingly and dangerously assumed the form of prescriptive truths (regarding development, democracy and technological progress, to name a few) that encourages uncritical acceptance from the students.

Take the example of the distinction between developed, developing and underdeveloped nations that is common parlance in the academic world. Implicit in such a classification is the acceptance of the development paradigm- indeed it legitimizes the emulation of advanced countries by so-called backward nations, and makes development and the opening up of markets appear as the inevitable way ahead for these countries. If anything, the modern project of development has resulted in large-scale environmental destruction, loss of traditional livelihoods, and displacement from ancient homelands.

Another category of modern knowledge that has enjoyed uncritical acceptance is that of the nation-state. People’s movements and agitations at the local level against injustice are thus easily labeled illegitimate and state repression justified. We need to remember that the nation state as a collectivity is of recent origin, and just one of the multiple identities that people cherish. Yet another sacred cow has been the idea of democracy, that has been accepted as an unconditional good, alongwith the universalist discourse on human rights.

But if not for any other reason, we need to be wary because it is with these same categories of academic knowledge that we view and form opinions regarding the world. Our uncritical acceptance of them would only restrict our faculties of imagination and narrow our options for resistance. Perhaps it is because of a primary education system based on the rigorous enforcement of discipline, that even in our later years we fail to question the prescriptive knowledge contained in our textbooks. But even the ‘truth’ in the Bible, when preached in an authoritarian manner by the clergy, we must remember, intimidates more than lighting the way.

It is about time we realized that the neo-imperial order is maintained not only by advanced weaponry and trade monopolies, but also by the categories of modern knowledge. The truth shall not set us free. It may not be enough to be critical about the events that happen around us; we need to be critical about the very knowledge that we assume to be the natural and infallible way of thinking about the world. So be brave. Arise. And slaughter the sacred cows that intimidate you.

coming soon