Reading Mahmoud Darwish's "In the Presence of Absence" (one of those incredibly dense, delicious books that I recommend to everyone even though I know most won't like it), I came across the following excerpt:
"When I master writing, you will tell me, or tell no one, how on that night you found antennae ready to receive distant messages. How you trained yourself to reside in adventure, how you were burned by the embers of dualities, and how you struggled to endure opposites. You avoided defining a thing by its opposite, because the opposite of wrong is not always right. Homeland is not always daylight and exile is not night..."
Every so often something you read - particularly philosophy - will seem to have been written specifically for you at the time that you read it. This section reminded me strongly of the fundamental philosophical challenge I've faced in adjusting to life in India: ie, the death of certain illusions I once held dear.
In America, you can by and large live an excellent and full life believing that the opposite of right is wrong. And to a certain extent that is true, at least in the grand scheme of things.
In India, no such illusions are possible. Here are things that I occasionally do to make my life easier:
1. Tell people I'm a member of the news media (I try to avoid this, I promise)
2. Emphasize my American accent (I do this often, particularly in long lines at nightclubs)
3. Generally disregard certain rules, signs and obstacles
4. Pay bribes (never directly, but I'm pretty sure my previous landlord paid extensive bribes to keep his building up, and that is not the reason I moved out)
I have very little compunctions about doing any of these things, but they are all ways in which I ignore the fundamenatal injustices of Indian society, or turn those injustices to my advantage. To be fair, I don't wander around demanding things that I don't "deserve" but I get things that I deserve that other Indians don't, and I get them for the wrong reasons. In other words, I accept that the world I live in is corrupt and I sometimes take advantage of that. As far as Indian corruption goes, my level of corruption is negligible. Another Indian would laugh me out of town for suffering moral qualms about the way I live. To an American, on the other hand, this is massive.
It's easy to say that Indians tolerate a higher level of corruption than Americans do because they're more used to it (??) or whatever the prevailing argument may be, and it's true that history plays a large part in what we accept as normal. But there's also the argument that corruption may be the result of a particular way of looking at the world, in which the opposite of wrong is not always right, or at least not in the traditional American sense.
I'm NOT trying to say that large-scale political corruption is excusable or good. I'm just saying that in a sense, it's a logical extension of a way of looking at the world that is, perhaps, not so torn between opposites.
AND/OR
Darwish suggests that moral compromise is the result of expatriation (violent expatriation, since he's talking about Palestine) and maybe he's not entirely off-base. It's unfashionable and passe to talk about the colonial legacy in a time when India has shrugged off that identity (or seems to have) but 300 years of foreign rule - and the inferior treatment meted out to Indians in their own country - can be compared to violent expatriation in its effects on the psyche. Indians learned to compromise thanks to colonialism, the compromises of people who were forced to adapt to seeing themselves as powerless. If that's the case, then the current agitation against corruption is a natural response to Indians learning to see themselves as powerful.
To a certain extent, the dual argument that prevails in the West is the doctrine of power. In order for actions to be either good or bad, the actor has to have the ability to act fully. In the constrained world of India, however, since actors were not able to act fully, they were also not able to be fully good or fully bad. Of course, this is just a theory.
"When I master writing, you will tell me, or tell no one, how on that night you found antennae ready to receive distant messages. How you trained yourself to reside in adventure, how you were burned by the embers of dualities, and how you struggled to endure opposites. You avoided defining a thing by its opposite, because the opposite of wrong is not always right. Homeland is not always daylight and exile is not night..."
Every so often something you read - particularly philosophy - will seem to have been written specifically for you at the time that you read it. This section reminded me strongly of the fundamental philosophical challenge I've faced in adjusting to life in India: ie, the death of certain illusions I once held dear.
In America, you can by and large live an excellent and full life believing that the opposite of right is wrong. And to a certain extent that is true, at least in the grand scheme of things.
In India, no such illusions are possible. Here are things that I occasionally do to make my life easier:
1. Tell people I'm a member of the news media (I try to avoid this, I promise)
2. Emphasize my American accent (I do this often, particularly in long lines at nightclubs)
3. Generally disregard certain rules, signs and obstacles
4. Pay bribes (never directly, but I'm pretty sure my previous landlord paid extensive bribes to keep his building up, and that is not the reason I moved out)
I have very little compunctions about doing any of these things, but they are all ways in which I ignore the fundamenatal injustices of Indian society, or turn those injustices to my advantage. To be fair, I don't wander around demanding things that I don't "deserve" but I get things that I deserve that other Indians don't, and I get them for the wrong reasons. In other words, I accept that the world I live in is corrupt and I sometimes take advantage of that. As far as Indian corruption goes, my level of corruption is negligible. Another Indian would laugh me out of town for suffering moral qualms about the way I live. To an American, on the other hand, this is massive.
It's easy to say that Indians tolerate a higher level of corruption than Americans do because they're more used to it (??) or whatever the prevailing argument may be, and it's true that history plays a large part in what we accept as normal. But there's also the argument that corruption may be the result of a particular way of looking at the world, in which the opposite of wrong is not always right, or at least not in the traditional American sense.
I'm NOT trying to say that large-scale political corruption is excusable or good. I'm just saying that in a sense, it's a logical extension of a way of looking at the world that is, perhaps, not so torn between opposites.
AND/OR
Darwish suggests that moral compromise is the result of expatriation (violent expatriation, since he's talking about Palestine) and maybe he's not entirely off-base. It's unfashionable and passe to talk about the colonial legacy in a time when India has shrugged off that identity (or seems to have) but 300 years of foreign rule - and the inferior treatment meted out to Indians in their own country - can be compared to violent expatriation in its effects on the psyche. Indians learned to compromise thanks to colonialism, the compromises of people who were forced to adapt to seeing themselves as powerless. If that's the case, then the current agitation against corruption is a natural response to Indians learning to see themselves as powerful.
To a certain extent, the dual argument that prevails in the West is the doctrine of power. In order for actions to be either good or bad, the actor has to have the ability to act fully. In the constrained world of India, however, since actors were not able to act fully, they were also not able to be fully good or fully bad. Of course, this is just a theory.
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