"One of the thoughts that crossed my mind when I
started thinking about the launch of Dharampal.Net website…how have we understood
the relevance of Dharampalji’s work today?
I wanted to answer for
myself. Where have I found that Dharampalji’s insights and knowledge most
useful in the current day context?
I realize that Dharampalji questions
some of the foundations of our contemporary understanding and hence discourse
in different functional areas of society. Be it medicine, education, science and
technology, development, arts or religion, he had a view point on these areas
of life that came as a fresh air bringing along with it a fragrance of an ancient
recipe that did not diminish with times. He had a view when asked for, otherwise
was willing to indulge others’ in their view points and even listen with
rapt attention and later coming up with insightful comments on the status of society
and how he saw the changes, out of such conversations often on very mundane issues.
He built the foundations of many of his most profound arguments from such
encounters of what he called the ‘ordinary people’. His argument on
the perception in people’s minds to that of the post-Independence or that
of the new urban centres were rooted in his encounter on a train journey with
a group of pilgrims. Similarly, his encounter with the bis-biswa panchayats provided
with insights that resulted in his theory on the differences between the state
manchinary vs. the people institutions. His encounters with the pundits of Srirangam,
with some intelligent youth group in Chennai, with IITians, with the dhobi, the
barber in sevagram, with modern thinkers, people leaders, the maid who worked
for him in Chennai, with Members of Parliament, former Prime Ministers…all
of them were not mere day to day experiences, but, instances of a larger scheme
of things that could be strengthening or weakening, but, certainly deserving to
be seen in such light.
His interest in history or his work on the archives
has been according to him, only an incidental outcome of his quest for understanding
the reasons why the nation was in the state he found it in. Perhaps that is why
he never sought company among ‘historians’ and always seemed to befriend
politicians, activists and such kind. His quest for understanding why things were
so was obviously attached with the corollary why can’t things change from
this situation. Towards this he spent much of his energy, promoting people, ideas
and initiatives. He liked to spend time with those people whom he saw as ‘doing’
things.
Where does the lack of the kind of knowledge produced by him
become a handicap? Largely among the people who are ‘doing’ things.
When I share with friends who are heading institutions / initiatives in the NGO
sector some of the insights that Dharampalji has brought to light, they are stuck.
It challenges their formulation and understanding of social issues and often funding
agency driven approach to ‘development’.
Similarly with doctors,
engineers, entrepreneurs, people who are actively engaging with the society often
find that there is an unexpected view point of this society that they think they
have figured out well. This bothers them and once at the end of one of my lectures
drawn from some of Dharampal’s works, a 75 year old head of a series of colleges
came to me and said, ‘this is so much refreshing and new, I have been around
for so long, why haven’t I known so much before, it could have helped me
to do so much more’.
This feeling of ‘stuckness’ among
the functional sections of society seems to be all prevalent, whether it be technocrat
who is frustrated by why people don’t ‘understand’ how to use the
technology or the doctor who cannot figure out why people prefer self-medication
till they cannot do without a doctor or a policy maker as to why it is so easy
to formulate a policy and so difficult to implement it, the development worker
as to why the communities don’t cooperate or ‘learn’, the teachers
who try to understand why the students are no longer manageable, the professors
who cannot find meaning for their work in society, the farmer leaders who are
stuck as to why they cannot get across their view points to the government and
vice versa, the entrepreneur who is stuck with ‘unwilling’ employees
and the employees who cannot figure out their bosses. Today many ‘developments’
of this country are not more than an attempt to utilize one tool or another by
the ordinary people to over come the sense of stuckness in their life. The nation
‘on the roll’ as seen by many is stuck in a million bottlenecks and
Dharampalji’s kind of understanding provides them with one method of interpreting
the stuckness from which a method to address the same can emerge. However, often
the learning of Dharampal inevitably ends in being either treated as a lesson
in history or a political analysis, and many cannot immediately see the connection
to their own state of stuckness. Escaping such traps and trying to utilize his
insights in their area of work is the best tribute that one can pay to him.
Ram
19th February 2007 - Dharampalji’s birthday
.