Thursday, January 22, 2004
The wretched of the earth
The outstretched little hand pleaded with him; with his conscience. It was a scene that touched the very fibre of his being on occasions too numerous for him to recollect from the past. It was still the very image of India. Despite the liberalizations. Despite the globalizations. Despite the privatizations. Despite the economic restructuring that almost always only restructured and refurbished the haves of this country; that always forgot the pangs of the have nots; that always forgot the soul of India; that did not see the outsretched little hand that now confronted Max. The little hand of a skinny, dishevelled child in tattered clothes that pleaded with him yet again.
Little hands and eyes that now begged him to offer a meal for an empty little stomach and...for its mother whose body lay curled and wrapped up on the pavement by the road in the agony of some disease that he would never know. These were, indeed, the true inhabitants of this country, Max knew: its majority, as it were. Denizens of the coutless slums and alleyways that littered and criss-crossed the vast stretches of this wounded nation. In its villages, in its towns, in its great cities, in its metros - they were always there, without identity and without esteem. To live and to exist in their own. To see the light of another day. To eat of the table crumbs thrown to the dogs.
Max emptied the change in his wallet onto those pleading little hands, knowing that that would never be enough, knowing very well that it was the system that had to be caught by its very roots. To end this misery. To end this injustice. To end the blighted childhoods.
'How do you expect people to understand higher truths when you can't give them the lowest truth of all: one square meal a day?' Max thought, even as he turned his face, with great effort, away from the glowing innocence of those little eyes when it saw the money. How those eyes sparkled as if it had just got the world itself! The innocence was unbearable as Max closed his own eyes with a bitterness that still haunted him whenever he chose to think of such realities that infested the world in which he lived.
'How can you expect people to realize and act upon higher truths when they can ill afford a paltry little meal a day?' Max questioned himself as he crossed the street that led to Frazer Town.
'Yes.' The voice was expected. Imminent. The Wayfarer was here. Max raised his head. 'But poverty is only one side of this evil, Max. Sin is the other.'
'Sin, Wayfarer?' Max heard himself pick up the point.
'Of course. Want and suffering exist in this world not because of a lack of resources, Max.'
Max was beginning to get it now. 'There is no dearth of provisions in this world because of which people are made poor and destitute. It is the evil in man himself that is the cause of this suffering. That is the sin, Max. Man's lack of feeling and compassion for his own kind. The bane of pure, unadulterated Materialism: agent of the Demon.'
'Right' said Max. 'How else can you have two thirds of mankind existing below the poverty line at this, the twenty first century after the disappearance of Christ; at a time when medical and material progress has advanced like in no other time in human history.'
His country had opened up its economy: or so he was told, day in and day out, at the newsroom. So today, this country even had atleast one tech-savvy chief minister to boast about: a chief minister who, despite his love for the laptop and foreign IT corporations, had not a clue to the reason why many of the farmers in his countryside where committing group suicide along with their debt-ridden families! Back at Max's workplace, his desk was always full of the latest on globalization: the same phenomemon about which UN-Habitat had put forward its latest study. A study which concluded that Globalizaion has partly caused and greatly exacerbated the perilous social and physical conditions of the slum dwellers. It went on to say that while the liberalization of all economies may have offered opportunities for a group of select enterpreneurs and for cities to act in their own right, new insecurities created by globalization are aplenty, with hardly any benefits going to the poor.
Max had his own convictions on what the United Nations stood for, but here he thought it had produced a report worth considering simply because it struck a resonant chord within him. He had suspected ulterior motives behind the whole project of globalization from the start and now in the context of the Wayfarer's simple analysis of the problem, he was sure. The UN-Habitat report even went to the extent of pointing out that in the past decade - the period of the greatest wealth creation in history, and the largest growth in cities ever recorded - the rich have gained and the poor have lost. Some developing countries would have done better to stay out of the globalization process altogether if they had the interests of their own people in mind.
Max had now reached the main crossroad at Frazer Town, a few minutes walk away from his apartment near the park across the railway overbridge that he now saw beyond the junction. This crossroad was, of course, unmistakable for its famous landmark that bathed the whole area in the resplendent glow of its lights in the evening: the Sir Ismail Sait Mosque. Built during the years of the British rule, the Mosque, with its elegant Islamic architecture and spacious, well laid-out lawn, had become the pre-eminent showpiece of this particular part of Bangalore.
'That, Max' said the Wayfarer as Max cast perhaps his millionth glance at the Mosque, 'is the symbol of a legacy that can rid us of this curse of want and poverty.'
The statement was still very general, and Max waited patiently for the precise point that he knew was coming. 'The legacy of the unlettered messenger. The one foretold by the prophet Isaiah in the scripture revealed to Moses and Jesus.' Max knew the Wayfarer was referring to the twelfth verse of the twenty ninth chapter of the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament. He had checked it out so many times in the past where it was said: 'And the Book is given to him who is not learned, saying: Read. And he says: I'm not learned.' No other person in history lived to be the fulfilment of this prophecy as did Muhammad, the illiterate prophet of Arabia.
'But, Wayfarer, charity has always gone hand in hand with religion since time immemorial.' Max interjected. 'That has not solved the problem down the centuries. Much less can Muhammad's message claim the sole right over such a solution like charity, if that's what you mean.'
The Wayfarer's voice seemed as if from a distance now as Max climbed the overbridge past the Mosque, 'Max, you are so hasty in your opinions. Yes, charity has gone along with religion in history, but where, other than in the message and legacy of Muhammad, has it been so revolutionized by making it an institution of the state; the message wherein it was declared to be the right of the poor and the needy which the state was supposed to extract from the 'haves' of society by force of arms, if necessary?'
Point.
'The war of apostasy, Max. That war which created such schism within the first, ideal, Muslim community, just after Muhammad's death. What was that all about? Was it not for the rights of the underprivileged?'
Point.
'Was it not for the permanence of Zakaat, even if that was at the cost of the priceless solidarity of the nascent Muslim nation?'
Point.
Max stood now next to Richard's park, his six-feet-one-inch frame bowed down in contemplation over the Wayfarer's words. A light breeze picked its way up and caressed the raven black hair, etched now in the darker silhoutte of a man groping through a mental maze as he moved towards his apartment building.
'What was to be done for an existence in such a world as that, Wayfarer? A world wherein one could live to see such a law come into force; where there are no wretched of the earth to bear the burden with.' Max heard himself whimper.
'Is it the fate of the true intellectual, then, to be miserably trapped between two worlds: one to which he is dead and the other into which he is powerless to be born?'
'No, Max. Such a world is possible still,' the Wayfarer's voice was fading into the night. 'I have been there, Max. I have seen it happen before. Over and over, down the centuries. You just have to work the dream with your love for that world.' His voice blended away into the evening breeze.
'Yea,' Max despondently said to himself as he climbed slowly the stairs to his apartment. 'Victor Hugo might have been pleased to hear that.'
'And so might Jean Val Jean of Les Miserables.'
'But not me, Wayfarer.'
'Not just yet.'
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