I recently came to know of a contemporary Tamil writer through his work in a recent Tamil movie - Naan Kadavul.
Then, started reading his blog.
Consequent to my political 'atheism' - after both the Right and Left readily demonstrated their inability to present anything convincing after the economic depression and the ever ongoing drama in Indian politics - I started loving Jeyamohan's unclassifiable views towards politics, religion and art.
May his tribe increase!
Posts
5 years ago
3 comments:
On economic lines, I don't think we could classify any major Indian political party as anything but left of center, right?
Any major Indian political party (or in any other country that I have read about) has nothing to do with left, right or center truly. They hold on to 'ideologies' and shed them as and when convenient - as is evident from the recent recession and in innumerable elections of the past.
In this light, have been thinking lately of ashrams (in ancient India, Gandhi's ashram or Buddhist ones in China or Japan, or European ones like Tolstoy's or Gurdjieff's).
They are truly unique institutions -
1) They are truly Left since they live in communes where there is no 'private' property and they live as Marx said 'from each man according to his ability and to each according to his need.'
2) They are truly Right wing since they live the essence of their respective religions and spirituality (Zen Buddhism / Shaivism / etc. etc.)
3) They are truly center of the political spectrum since they live in a truly secular spirit.
4) They represent the heights of rationality far more than any political movement based on Rationality (e.g. French revolution or in south India) - since such Ashrams are lead by people who had the keenest insights into human behavior.
Interesting observations, just to add, the counter examples you cited were 'reactionary' movements to existing unacceptable conditions, while the institutions were from scratch efforts to live harmoniously. Even the use of the term 'wing' is disparaging the latter. ;) And by your own argument, its the latter that its not useful to categorize as they seem to be beyond these categories. Their representing the heights of rationality, I don't know much about that to comment. It will be interesting if you share more thoughts on the same.
As for left-right-center, I think we can talk about agreeable relative categorization instead of the absolute categories that you use to reject VK's classification. I think VK was pointing to the absence of the economic right as in 'advanced' economies - clamoring for the business class, low taxes, unreigned markets and minimal govt! :)) I guess we will come around to that when the 'political market' is right.
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