Tag Archives: IDEA

THE EXCELLENCE AND FEAR- A TALE OF MUTUAL INCOMPATIBILTY BY Subhendu Bikash

ABOUT THE AUTHOR- The author of this article Subhendu Bikash Tahal, is a Gold medalist in BA(POL.SC) and is currently pursuing Post-graduation in Political science at Utkal University, and has also qualified for Junior Research Fellowship(JRF) and eligibility for Assistant Professor in the National Eligibility Test(UGC-NET).

Since the inception the guiding idea that propels the humanity to move is ‘fear’. From dawn to dusk in the lap of nature man had been working ceaselessly to arrange some food for Self, sleeping where the darkness approached; but the fear of being attacked by the animals, powerful than him had always haunted him. The wheel of human ingenuity unfolded as spring after spring rolled on, as the time with its soft touch ravaged the ignorance and showered knowledge. But even after being civilized, in the midst of opulence, the same primordial fear that had been in  existence in the ancient man still exist within us; along with the fear of death, of destruction, of wealth being looted, now we have been surrounded by some new fears, fear of dignity being lost, of emotion being hurt.

And the fear is clearly evident today, roads are wearing a deserted look, bustling cities have been dipped in the deep silence, everyone has been put into the dungeon, touching the person beside seems to be the biggest mistake that no one dares to commit; there is a fear of the capitalist economic ecosystem being collapsed-pushing the millions into poverty, starvation and death; there is a fear that lest the government would acquire more power in the name of containing the virus and stick to it to achieve it’s narrow end, there is a fear of destruction and devastation, we have been surrounded by perpetual and restless fears that won’t even cease with our death.

The pandemic has exposed the human fragility, ‘the collective fear’ that we thought had been buried under the veil of science, under the blanket of reason and under the exuberance of materialism, is clearly  visible today in everyone’s eyes and actions. There is no escape from it. For the self preservation and to ward off the fear of death, shaking off the Hobbesian state of nature, we had mounted on a journey for creating a socio-political order where the human could thrive to achieve excellence, but what does excellence mean? How does one measure it? Have we achieved it? Or are we  in a process to achieve it? The definition of excellence may vary, but excellence is all about staying away from fear, within and outside. But what is fear? Fear is a manacle that puts the potent man in the confinement of self-skepticism, weakens him to the extent possible, making him the handicap of his own thought. Fear stays in the society and flows into the human being through the process of socialization. The fear and excellence share a mutually exclusive relationship; they are incompatible with each other.

But look at the world, to bring excellence within a student we have been infusing fear in him, without showing the rosy dream that the excellence holds the potential to bring, we are busy reflecting the nightmares of  shoddy life-style before him, forgetting that the ‘fear’ and ‘excellence’ can’t coexist.

Whether it’s an individual or collectivity, both are afflicted and affected, individually and collectively by the single element that inhibits growth and prevents excellence, the fear. Our dream to create a better society, to create a milieu where we all can flourish unhindered can only be possible by driving out the element of fear, and infusing positivity; fear is a coercive force, a negative one, and coercion can never bring out the excellence, the positivity.

DEMOCRACY, THE HUNTING GROUND OF IDEAS BY SUBHENDU BIKASH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR- The author of this article Subhendu Bikash Tahal, is a Gold medalist in BA(POL.SC) and is currently pursuing Post-graduation in Political science at Utkal University, and has also qualified for Junior Research Fellowship(JRF) and eligibility for Assistant Professor in the National Eligibility Test(UGC-NET).

Universities are bastions of free speech and expression, the beautiful environment of a university allows the competing views  to flourish together for collective progress. It’s a battle ground not of goons, face covered, but of ideas, wide open. To quench the thirst of intellectual curiosity, students search for the ocean of ideas, and after getting exposed to the  wide variety of ideas, an inclination develops for a set of ideas, to which a student embraces as his/her own and follows it until another set of ideas challenge and shake his notion.

We are prisoners of ideas, ideas shape, reshape and mould an individual. Idea gives solace and create anguish,  it pushes as well as pre-empts. However decrepit an idea may be, it has the potential to create a hurricane and tornado within an individual, and impels an individual to act.

 Universities are the hunting ground of ideas, old and new, ancient and modern, left and right, radical and moderate. Each set of idea is touted and warranted as  superior or the best by its followers, but it is always wise to allow the ideas to compete with each other in a sound and insulated framework of democracy devoid of violence and without reducing  to personal attack and character assassination, which will ultimately result in the triumph not of idea but of humanity, because the consensus that will evolve for the best set of idea, will help to shape the future of a nation.

Some intellectuals of high stature, earlier reticent now expressive, plead that universities are synagogue of learning and the petty politics shouldn’t be allowed to vitiate its atmosphere. Although it seems logical but the narrowness and the logic behind this logic baffles me. Democracy requires sound leaders characterised by faith on its core principles of free speech and freedom of expression, and a university nurture and mould an individual into a tolerant being, who in future will be the flag-bearer of democracy. The survival of democracy is contingent on the present system of education where individual brains are allowed to use their cognitive ability of choosing and standing for a set of idea which fascinate them, creating a system which doesn’t allow the students to take side of ideas will produce mass robots without the ability to think and the colourful future of democracy will turn bleak.

Antonio Gramsci, the illustrious Italian Marxist propounded the concept of hegemony, which also stands for the battle of idea and the ability of bourgeois idea to displace all other ideas. An in depth analysis from the prism of theoretical framework lands me in a conclusion that now in India a situation akin to what Gramsci propounded years ago, is prevalent, a set of idea is in a continuous and ceaseless effort to wipe out all other ideas from the intellectual firmament. The beauty of India lies in its plurality of ideas, we are the progenies of argumentative Indian, respecting every shades of opinion is in our DNA, but the way  efforts are on to destroy some sets of idea stands contrary to the Indian ethos which begets and nurture the diversity of opinions.

Peace eludes from the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University for the last few years, and some even has gone to the extent of arguing to shut down this institution as it has become a safe heaven for anti-nationals, but some questions remain unanswered i.e. who defines the anti-nationals, what is its definition?  Does speaking against the government amounts to speaking against the country? Or is it a systematic attempt to stifle the expression of one set of views identifying with a particular ideology?

Party will come and go, but Democracy as a system of government will last for long, may not for eternal as the inquisitive individual will certainly find a best system superior to democracy, in order to sustain the democracy until a superior system of governance has emerged, the soft touch of the party in power towards all shades of opinion is  sine qua non, and any attempt in strengthening one set of ideas at the cost of other set of idea will definitely have a debilitating effect on the democracy itself.