Humans and Other Animals: A Modern Heretic's View

During my year at the London School of Economics in 2004-05, I heard the British philosopher John Gray offer one of the most provocative and compelling arguments of our times. He argued that human beings were merely one among many animals on the planet, but "secular" Western philosophers, historians and scientists, particularly those since the 18th century, had inherited the anthropocentric prejudices of their Christian predecessors and had thus exaggerated modern ideological notions of human progress, development, and mastery over nature. Gray, ever the maverick philosopher, saw his task as demystifying (and occasionally demolishing) these modern myths, especially secularism and progress, in order to posit a more harmonious balance between humans and other animals. Let me point out here that Gray is not your regular postmodern professor in the United States: for most of his career, he positioned himself as a liberal theorist, writing erudite tomes on John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin, but has grown increasingly disillusioned with contemporary liberalism, particularly after his involvement in Lady Thatcher's neoliberal project in the 1980s. At the very least, Gray's views ought to be considered carefully.

The Argument Against Anthropocentrism

I shall leave aside my views on John Gray's understanding of liberalism for another post. My focus here is his "anti-humanist" stance that puts human and non-human animals on par with each other. Some of us may find Gray's stance disagreeable or eccentric, but I take it very seriously. Why? Because it questions our deepest assumptions in the social and natural sciences. It challenges us to question our inherited understanding of politics, society and history. And it urges us to rethink our interactions with nonhuman animals in our personal lives.

The most obvious evidence for putting humans on par with other animals comes from evolutionary theory. (As many of you know, I find no contradiction between being a firm Darwinian and upholding my religious/spiritual commitments). If natural selection, a fundamentally amoral process (as Richard Dawkins keeps reminding us), is the basis of life on earth, then there is a radical equality inherent in the evolutionary process. Some organisms are bigger, others are smaller; some are fat, while others are thin; some look cute, others do not. But the fact remains that the building blocks of life are the common denominator for all organisms. More importantly, if we regard evolution as an amoral process rather than one driven by a benevolent deity, then we cannot attribute human survival or evolution to intelligence, sociability or any "talent" that is unique to the species; these are merely adaptations to the environment, effects rather than causes of evolution. In short, from a purely biological/biochemical perspective, it is fairly simple to put humans in their place, that is, with other animal species on the planet.

But surely, you may argue, language, intelligence and emotions distinguish humans from other animals? I disagree. Linguistic ability is hardly unique to humankind. We know at least since Aristotle that bees, for instance, have complex linguistic systems to communicate. So too do dogs, cats, horses, tigers, elephants, and countless other animal species. It's quite another matter that we may not be horse-whisperers. But that does not give anyone the license to conclude that nonhuman animals do not possess the gift of language. That sort of impertinence is akin to the ignorant Spanish conquistadors labelling the Amerindians "savages" and "barbarians" because they were neither Christians nor speakers of a European language. There is every reason to believe that nonhuman animals express verbally and non-verbally thoughts that humans can express in words alone. Likewise, intelligence is hardly a singularly human trait. Skeptics may argue that there is no Shakespeare or Netwon outside the circle of humanity, but I can easily retort that these intellectual standards are peculiar to humans alone. There are certainly animal geniuses whose olfactory abilities or endurance are well beyond human capabilities just as composing splendid sonnets might be out of reach for most nonhuman animals. Also, it isn't clear to me whether the average human is smarter than the average nonhuman animal. The same mix of dolts, average joes, and geniuses occur among human and nonhuman animals. IQ or some such humanly-designed test doesn't help to settle matters; we are almost certain to struggle on any nonhuman test of intelligence that involves navigation, catching prey or smell. And if you thought only humans could experience or express emotions, think again! Recent research, despite all its limitations, suggests otherwise. Nonhuman animals can, therefore, express regret, happiness and a wide gamut of emotions commonly imagined to be uniquely human.

Some Key Implications

Rejecting anthropocentrism in the natural and social sciences as well as in everyday life has rather profound implications. The entire edifice of Western philosophy and science is built on the Judeo-Christian premise that man (anthropos) is the center of the universe. Why? Because the Scriptures say so in order to posit a sacred covenant between the human species and the Abrahamic God. Any reader of the Torah or the Christian Old Testament can hardly dispute the centrality of human beings in the narrative that unfolds.The doctrine of human exceptionalism on which Western humanism rests historically is a demonstrable fiction of Judeo-Christian origin. Why then should we continue to retain a secularized version of the same demonstrable fiction? At least in my opinion, doing so is about as intellectually unsound as defending creationism.

By rejecting anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism, we open up the possibility of more equitable relations between humans and other animals. Furthermore, we open up the possibility of extending the social contract beyond humans to the animals that coexist with us. In a certain sense, such social contracts already exist for centuries in rural and urban communities in the Orient and Occident alike. There is nothing peculiarly rural or non-Western about social contracts that cover wild animals, farm animals, pets or even animals for slaughter. Yet there is something that is being lost in our cities today, especially among the ruling class everywhere (by contrast, humbler folks happily share their world with nonhuman animals). Intellectuals emerge largely from this same class, and hence, our theories reflect their anthropocentric prejudices. Recognizing the falsity of human exceptionalism paves the way for a new philosophy, science, and history. The obsessive Continental quest for discovering the expressive aspects of our being or our phenomenological selves can perhaps be thwarted in this manner. So too can science regard nonhuman species as intelligent, sentient beings rather than mere instruments for human experimentation and play. And historians can explore and appreciate the dialectics that define human-animal relations in different times and places.

A necessary caveat is in order here. My argument does not imply that relations between humans and other animals are meant to be cuddly or cute. Human animals relate to other animals in much the same way that nonhuman animals relate to each other (though each species obviously has its own "stereotypical" or peculiar ways of doing so). The lion does not lie with the lamb, except in the wildest fancies of utopian theologians. Neither can humans be expected to deviate from their omnivorous ways (except in special circumstances and contexts) to conform to some utopian project designed by a small minority. This is a vital consideration because some human societies today and earlier have tended to attach great cultural capital to abstinence from meat and other animal products. Such elitism, vegan, Buddhist/Jain or otherwise, which I label "Neo-Brahminism" in today's context, is a minority response that ought to be studied sociologically as a peculiar tendency of homo hierarchicus across time and space. It is, however, hardly the default option because the majority of humans everywhere continue to be stubbornly omnivorous. Let's face it: Peter Singer's utilitarian calculus isn't likely to convert most of us to the Neo-Brahminical camp. For the majority of humankind, therefore, veganism, vegetarianism and their cousins will forever remain the domain of a bunch of effete socially-detached ideologues whose idea of human-animal relations is restricted to their expensive lapdogs or some such marker of their superior social status.

For many, my argument might sound paradoxical or even contradictory. How can I argue for treating humans on par with other animals yet defend omnivorous behavior? Just like one can treat all human societies/cultures, past or present, on par in moral terms, without necessarily committing to the utopian/minority project of pacifism that persistently emerges across human history. I see no contradiction in my argument. It is a pragmatic rather than a utopian one. It acknowledges that all relations, human-human or human-animal, involve trade-offs that cannot be simply wished away. It is quite justifiable for us to be concerned about the well-being of horses, tigers or dogs, while consuming beef, pork, lamb, chicken or any other animal meat. In fact, it is quite justifiable for us to be concerned about the treatment of animals in mega-industrial farms and slaughterhouses while consuming animal meat. Recognizing animals as intelligent, sentient beings does, by no means, imply that some of them cannot be eaten. What can be eaten and what cannot is ultimately a culturally-specific question, certainly a worthy subject for anthropologists and historians to study. My detractors may claim that the logic of my argument could justify even cannibalism. I agree that this is a distinct possibility, however limited its scope may be historically or today, but like Herodotus, I am too much of a cultural relativist to denounce even cannibalism in the manner that Spaniards and other Europeans did at the dawn of modernity.

Conclusion

So what might one reasonably be expected to take away from this post? You are, of course, welcome to view it as an eccentric contribution by an oddball. But, by doing so, you would merely be guilty of perpetuating the theological, philosophical and scientific prejudice of anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism that plague our planet. Most of us who call ourselves "modern" live in a manner that is deeply at odds with other animals. I tend to agree with John Gray that such an existence is fundamentally delusional and is responsible for the grossly irresponsible manner in which modern human animals relate to their nonhuman peers. So here are my suggestions: be a bit kinder to the nonhuman animals around you, pay a bit more attention to their needs and interests, and try to coexist a bit more meaningfully with them. Such a change in orientation is hardly a substantial one in the context of our everyday lives, but its implications will be nothing short of revolutionary. Whatever else happens, guard against the false temptation of utopian projects, and try to share the joys, sorrows, or even banal existence of our nonhuman friends. We may or may not succeed in creating a better tomorrow for everyone, but at the very least, there is the tantalizing prospect that we may become more humane, and I dare say, truly liberal souls...

Between the Suffering and the Will

Here's a first look at my upcoming novel "Between the Suffering and the Will."

When Vikram Arora, an eighteen-year old from the north Indian city of Chandigarh manages to gain admission into Neverland College in the American Midwest, he has no idea how his life will change in the next four years. His is not your usual coming-of-age story, but one in which self-discovery, the quest for knowledge, and adventure blend together into an explosive cocktail. Vikram's self-doubt, his intellectual journey and his love affairs may appear familiar to most of us, but his nagging ambition, patriotic fervor, and the love of his life lead this mild-mannered middle-class boy to metamorphose into a cunning Maoist strategist and commander of a liberated zone on the Bengal-Jharkhand border.

Vikram's story is heroic because it represents a Promethean struggle between the human will to combat the slings and arrows of fortune and the suffering that is the necessary consequence of our worldly decisions, perhaps even of our very existence. Hence the title from Byron's Prometheus. Readers are aware from the opening pages that Vikram is dead though his diaries offer vivid glimpses into the last five years of his tortured existence. Juxtaposed with fragments from the diaries are the narratorial interventions of Joe, a Neverland student writing his senior thesis in anthropology and literature. Joe, who shares a charismatic adviser with the ill-fated Vikram, is interested in filling in the gaps left by Vikram's diaries. As he proceeds to interview the people who appear in these diaries, he is drawn into Vikram's story, its darker and unstated aspects, and ultimately, its tragedy. Soon, the lives of the narrator and the protagonist get entangled in ways beyond Joe's wildest fancies. Struggling to find his own feet and to avoid being sucked into the vortex left behind by Vikram, Joe must use the clues hidden in the diaries to regain his own freedom and sanity.

The non-linear narrative structure in the novel enables Joe to parallel Vikram's journey, yet allows him to escape the latter's fate. Non-linearity also demands that readers construct their own meaning from the diary fragments, interviews, and narratorial experiences that feature in the novel. Readers are thus placed in a position somewhat analogous to that in a traditional play or music performance, especially in South Asia, where the audience is expected to participate in the construction of the narrative or performance. The critical reader is, in this sense, a literary critic making sense of the narrative structure, a historian seeking coherence from fragmented textual and oral sources, and an anthropologist flitting back and forth between diverse cultural contexts.

Resisting Political Correctness

Consider these three anecdotes. The first, which I shall christen "PC Unabashed," concerns a link posted recently by a friend on Facebook, arguing for the rights of "introverts" as a special group that is often misunderstood and even discriminated against by the rest of the population. The "science" of psychology has thus constructed a new category of minorities whose "rights" must now be appreciated and defended because the politically-correct Orwellian thought police says so. Needless to add, every response to the FB post was approving in an unqualified sense.

The second, which I shall call "PC Interrupted," occurred during my first year of college in Grinnell, Iowa, a friend of mine spotted a bunch of students drawn exclusively from the US racial majority, camping outside the dining hall and collecting cash to be sent to educate "poor kids in Third World countries." My friend, who hails from postcolonial South Asia, went up to the do-gooders, and asked, only half-jokingly, whether he might not benefit from their fundraising spree. A stunned silence followed.

The third anecdote, which I shall label "PC Intolerance," comes from President Ahmedinejad's visit to Columbia University a couple of years ago. As he began speaking, a gay couple began kissing as a mark of "protest" against what they perceived to be a repressive sexual regime in Iran. Ahmedinejad, no stranger to controversy or hyperbole, muttered that "we do not have this in our country." An Iranian-American friend of mine interpreted his statement to mean that, while homosexual relations between men are commonplace throughout the Middle East, public displays of affection of the kind witnessed at Columbia were usually frowned upon. In other words, contrary to the opinion of the predominantly US liberal audience that evening, homosexuality can be acknowledged and expressed in ways other than their own.

At first glance, it may not be entirely obvious how these three anecdotes are related to each other. Unless, of course, you happen to have personally experienced (suffered?) first-hand the vigorous imposition of politically-correct contemporary liberal dogma in the university, workplace, government, or some other public location. In its milder form, being PC means resorting to euphemisms for those with mental or physical disabilities, "minority" status, and so forth. In more pernicious forms, the beast reveals its true shape by insisting on attitudes that are certified by its thought-policemen as appropriate for us humble souls. For reasons I shall explain below, it's high time that we put an end to this nonsense, and recognized the imposters for what they're worth. In doing so, I shall also point out why naivete or ignorance, those oh-so-popular excuses, do not pardon the novices in the PC brigade since the problem is a systemic rather than an individual one.

The PC moral police is particularly active with respect to two sets of individuals: physical or mental disabilities, and those outside the charmed circle of the US racial majority. Let me start with the first set. In my first anecdote, introverts are identified by a pseudo-science to be a distinct political group possessing special rights as minorities. We are all aware of such individuals. I can even identify myself as one. I don't always enjoy socializing or being in the company of others. Yet I've never sought a special medical and/or political status. Why? Because I don't regard it as a disability at all. Might I be misunderstood by others, as the article assumes? Sure, but so might people who are extroverts or ambiverts. Or for that matter, anyone. Moreover, I'm not even sure introverts are a minority. No one, to my mind, has calculated the numerical strength of this group, butI guess it might actually be rather large. Only the paranoid who believe themselves to be persecuted by the world would insist on minorityism without any clear warrant. PC attitudes merely validate such paranoia. In effect, reclusiveness and asociability get a facelift, the concerned "minority" believing themselves to be particularly special yet perverse in comparison to the wider population for no good reason. It is assumed implicitly here that a "normal" or "mean" personality exists and these are statistical deviations from the mean. But, in fact, no such social-psychological evidence exists for "normality," so each person is special and we must thus engage with each accordingly. Yet contemporary US liberals, acting under the cloak of "science," have manufactured a problem and a political identity based on the erroneous assumption of "normality." Almost certainly, minorityism is a counterproductive strategy that actually worsens rather than improves matters for the shy and introverted.

The second set of individuals, those outside the charmed racial majority in the US, are located both inside and outside that country. I have found that the farther the distance from the United States, the greater the purported sympathy expressed by liberals. It is preferable if those being sympathized with are too far away to be engaged in dialogue, and even better, if they cannot speak at all (think animal rights!). US liberals can then simply "represent" these silent or mute voices. In my second anecdote, someone irreverent, much like me, talked back to the do-gooders trying to save the planet. Once again, a group (defined racially here) is assumed to be "normal" while deviations from the norm are deemed to be somehow inadequate and in need of representation by the normal folks. We irreverent souls from abroad, however, refuse to be patronized in this manner, as I'm sure many racial "minorities" in the States do too. The pretence of speaking passionately on our behalf doesn't quite work because only a miniscule minority in the States possess a genuine appreciation and understanding of minority or foreign communities, their culture and history, and participate in the everyday lived experiences of those communities. I'm sick of the hordes of US undergraduates who, say, spend a summer in Latin America among "indigenous" communities so that they can pad their CVs for the benefit future non-profit jobs or gradate programs. Their politics is cynical in the extreme, and, sadly, all too common. PC attitudes put a halo around the heads of these characters, and let them believe their own fake messianic proclamations. And what the hell is "Third World" anyway? Jaded Cold War terminology is now being legitimized by the PC brigade as somehow progressive, but is, in fact, reactionary and highly offensive. If you're really keen to educate kids in some postcolonial country, here's my advice: try to find out more about the country, its people and their problems; live among them and share their joys and sorrows; see the world from their perspective as well as your own; and only then try to figure out how their problems might be solved. Stop this PC crap about abstract Third World kids, and stop trying to pretend you care about people you have no clue about!

My third anecdote shows how the two sets of populations patronized by US liberals have much in common. The typical strategy, to recap briefly, is to define what is medically or culturally "normal" in the most arbitary ways, preferably using "science," and then characterize deviations from the normal as political identities and groups that require representation by so-called liberal voices of privilege. The incident that marred Ahmedinejad's Columbia address combines the notions of medical and cultural normality. It is assumed, without evidence, that homosexuality is somehow "deviant," a peculiar American fantasy shared by liberals and conservatives alike, and that only the US normal defines the "correct" attitude towards homosexuals. There's no good reason to assume that heterosexual monogamy is normal in any time or place. Likewise, there's no good reason to assume that the US liberal attitude is necessarily the only one, let alone the best one, that exists today. Making these assumptions serves to worsen the discrimination faced by those who do not meet the homosexual-monogamous norm in the US, apart from widening the vast cultural gulf between the US and the rest of the world. Since both these outcomes are widely considered undesirable or unfortunate, it should be obvious how in-your-face PC attitudes push us into the abyss.

So far, I have used the tone of an anthropologist describing an exotic culture after spending plenty of time amidst the natives. For obvious reasons, I can do so because I fit the bill. But my concerns are global, and frankly, much close to home. Unfortunately, whatever the PC brigade in North America sanctions is automatically lapped up by its lackeys in every other continent. Today, in countries as different as India, South Africa and France, there is a ready clique of flatterers who jump at anything in vogue in the US. Such is the nature of cultural imperialism today. In India today, I am constantly bombarded with silly PC phrases and comments that make a complete mockery of the actual struggles of lower-caste groups, "tribals," religious, gender and sexual "minorities," and so forth. Someone or the other is always preaching to me about the cause of "minorities," completely oblivious that I can carry the minority card on almost every commonly-used criteria used in India. In this manner, I have grown tired of being patronized by US liberals and their lackeys elsewhere, even at home. But whenever possible, I refuse to let the PC thought police from speaking on my behalf and representing my interests; I refuse to let fake sympathy override genuine political struggles for dignity and recognition; I refuse to let some false notion of normality prevent me from regarding each individual as unique, with peculiar gifts and flaws; lastly, I refuse to let the pseudo-cosmopolitan PC alliance set the terms of moral-political discourse. I can't promise much, but I can guarantee that I'll be a feisty opponent that fights to the finish...

Three Myths of Metropolitan India

Now that the Indian electoral saga has ended along with the mindless TV coverage, we can now take stock of things as they stand today. More importantly, we must now refute some false opinions currently popular among the chattering classes of metropolitan India. These opinions are disseminated not only in living rooms, bars and cafes, but also through the English-speaking national media. I shall focus here on three such false opinions. 

First of all, many in metropolitan circles have been proclaiming, for unknown reasons, the death of coalition politics and the politics of region, both of which they take to be "anti-national." As such, Ramachandra Guha appeared on CNN-IBN on counting day (May 16) to inform us hyperbolically that the latest election verdict in favor of national parties is the most significant electoral result since Mrs. Gandhi's ouster in 1977. Since no arguments were offered by either Mr. Guha or the newspersons who parotted his line, his opinion was apparently taken as self-evident. Allow me now to unsettle this settled notion that regional and coalition politics have just died in India today, and therefore, the recent election results are, by no means, as significant as those in 1977. The Congress and its allies won in different states such as West Bengal, UP, and Andhra Pradesh because 1) it made clever pre-poll alliances with regional parties such as the Trinamool Congress and the NCP, and 2) it picked up seats due to its state-level opponents losing out on account of anti-incumbency in non-Congress states (e.g West Bengal), pro-incumbency in Congress-ruled states (e.g. Andhra), and/or opponents cutting into each other's vote share (e.g. UP). Only lunatics and fools would contend that voters in West Bengal suddenly chose national over regional politics. Or that YSR's victory in Andhra Pradesh reflects the new national agendas of voters. Or that the four-way battle in UP that led to a roughly even share of seats for the four main parties reflects some latent yearning for national politics. It would be even more ludicrous to extend the popular metropolitan hypothesis to states such as Orissa or Tamil Nadu, where the victories of the BJD and the DMK obviously reflect the regional aspirations of voters. These regional tendencies, affirmed over and over since 1989, suggest that the states ultimately decide who will be crowned the rulers of Delhi. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it has always been so in Indian elections. The bargaining between the states and Delhi was a feature of electoral politics even as early as 1951-52, much to Nehru's dismay, though in the first three decades or so, such bargaining came to be restricted largely within the Congress party organization. Most of the regional parties in existence today are either offshoots of the Congress (e.g. NCP, TMC, TDP) or formations directly opposed to it from their inception (DMK, BSP, Left Front). The former group of parties have only recently begun to articulate their regional claims independent of the Congress, while the raison d'etre of the latter group is precisely their historical opposition to the Congress at the state level. As such, it is quite reasonable to say that the states (or the much-derided politics of region) ultimately make or break a national election in India. There is simply no tendency away from this established political reality. Regarding 1977, I shall simply say that it marked the end of Mrs. Gandhi's tyrannical regime, and represented the first alteration of power in Delhi since Independence. I cannot see how 2009 can be discussed in the same breath, least of all by a self-proclaimed historian who has recently authored a bestselling book on postcolonial India. In sum, the results in 2009 seem no more significant than those in 2004 or 1999, and certainly do not reflect any new trend towards national politics in India. 

A second false opinion currently in vogue concerns the fate of the Left parties. It is routinely assumed by all and sundry that the Left lost in West Bengal and Kerala because their ideology is outmoded today and/or contemporary India has left the Left behind while it has rushed headlong into the embrace of neoliberal globalization. I strongly disagree even though I have never been a great fan of the parliamentary Left in India. In Kerala, we are witnessing merely the latest round of a long bout between the LDF and the UDF, who usually take turns to sit on the throne. Ideology is certainly not a factor. In Bengal, the CPM and its allies have taken a beating because their anti-people politics has been exposed after the conflagrations in Singur and Nandigram. Far from defending farmers' and workers' rights, Buddhadeb & Co. have gotten cosy with big business, the World Bank, and so forth. I cannot see how Left ideology mandates these cosy alliances at the expense of the people. Some have pointed to Deng's reforms in China or the capitalist accommodations sought by even Lenin immedaitely after the Bolshevik Revolution. I am afraid none of those examples were met with the kind of popular resistance that we witnessed in West Bengal since 2005. The Left lost simply because it could no longer use statist violence to control the rural masses asit had for over three decades. Its ideology in practice has been reactionary in the extreme. Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury may gloat over their role in drafting and pushing the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), but West Bengal government has been one of the worst implementors of the Act. The likes of Mamata Bannerjee are now back in business primarily because the CPM and its allies have abandoned rural Bengal to its fate and have jumped onto the neoliberal bandwagon. The opposition to the US-India nuclear deal was not so much an ideological move as a poorly-devised scheme to topple the Manmohan government and set up a meangingful Third Front government in its stead. Obviously, the electorate in Bengal and elsewhere did not think much of this scheme. But we should remember that the Left scheme failed due to poor political strategy rather than some ideological shortcoming. In fact, it is shameful for the Indian Left that it could not win popular support during the worst global economic crisis since WWII. If anything, the CPM and its cronies would do well to go back to first principles, rethink their strategy, and re-build their grassroots organizations. Like any other country, India too needs a healthy Left to counter the dominant Center and Right. There is much to be gained by parties that offer a development package that caters to the interests of the majority, including those below the poverty line, rather than merely pandering to metropolitan Indian tastes. 

The third myth that needs to be shattered concerns secularism, that holy cow of Indian politics. Some wise souls have declared a victory for secularism after the UPA won. I wonder why. The Congress is a party that has routinely orchestrated riots in the name of religion, and employed brazen majoritarian rhetoric for electoral gain. It still refuses to admit its role in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms, especially in the national capital, and nearly awarded two leading riot-specialists with election tickets (withdrawn only after popular protests). For the Congress to point fingers at Modi and Advani is like the pot calling the kettle black. It simply doesn't work. I cannot think of a single party in India that does not expoit religion cynically via vote-bank politics. Even the Left in Kerala and Bengal do so routinely. Secularism is the collective farce of South Asian politics, underwritten no doubt by ideologically-bankrupt intellectuals who are completely disconnected from popular religion and politics. For these so-called secularists, religion equals fanaticism, fundamentalism, and the like. It is inconceivable for these alienated intellectuals that religion may also be a source of ethical values, pluralism, and good personal habits. Mani Shanker Aiyar, who lost this time on a Congress ticket, has confessed to being a "secular fundamentalist." I do not see how such intolerant ideologies help. Secular or not, fundamentalism needs to be fought back in the realm of popular politics, and at least to my mind, it is clear that the Congress is no more reliable than the BJP in this fight, which can be fought best by everyday practitioners of the diverse faiths of the subcontinent and those sympathetic to these pluralist traditions. 

The Age of Heroes

For a while now, I have thought of putting down my thoughts on the generation of cricketers who I grew up watching and who are now hanging up their boots. My excuse for not doing so is that I live a wanderer's life in which Internet access is an occasional luxury with which I indulge myself. But there is more to it: this note means letting go a cherished part of me. I have tried often to be prosaic about the changing times ("the old order changeth, yielding place to new" in Tennyson's words), but the soul does not accede to what the mind demands so insistently. Last month, I watched Tendulkar and Warne pit mind and body against each other for a few fleeting moments, and a million memories flashed before me. I knew then that I simply had to arrest these fleeting memories in the fixity of words.

My predicament is hardly new. That doyen of cricket scribes Neville Cardus assured us in the 1930s that every generation experiences it when their boyhood heroes pass into oblivion. It is almost as if the joy of cricket may itself pass into oblivion, says Cardus. Think of the magic of Lara's blade, rising high above his head and swishing past his body, depositing the restless ball to the cover boundary. Or the genius of Wasim Akram bowling six different balls in an over to many a confused batsman. Think of the brothers Waugh, grace and grit being the hallmark of their contrasting styles. Or Ambrose and Walsh, brothers in arms, frightening batsmen and mesmerizing spectators in equal measure with their deadly cocktail of brain and brawn. We shall never see them again. Nor shall we ever experience again that pure unalloyed joy of youth that these men gifted us. Read on only if you know what I mean. For only you can seek pursue that timeless question posed by the great Caribbean writer C.L.R. James, "What do they know of cricket who only know?"

I am biased sans any pretence of objectivity. Let me admit so at the outset. Writing about the cricketers of my generation is impossible without penning a paean to my hero Shane Warne. I never watched Bradman or Sobers play, but whenever I saw Warne practice his craft, I experienced a thrill that only genius can induce. I can shut my eyes now and imagine those wrists imparting a million revolutions on the ball, watched expectantly by the ill-fated batsman, who believes innocently that he's grasped the trick. Lulled into the illusion of confidence, he decides to play forward based on some coach's silly theory, but he finds to his dismay that the ball that's drifting into him falls just short of his naive bat. He hurriedly shifts to the backfoot, hoping fervently to correct his earlier mistake, but in his anxiety, he fails to spot the wicked spin that causes the ball to deviate from leg to off stump. Defending leg and middle, the batsman feels no obligation to defend off stump, and that folly of his ultimately leads to lead Warne's legbreak to crash into offstump. The bewildered batsman stares briefly in disbelief before trudging off the turf as the jubilant master of spin beams a smile from ear to ear. So often have I watched this sequence of events over the past fifteen years that it has come to be etched in my mind's eye. But the mind never tires of greatness, as Warne continues to demonstrate in the current IPL, and our hearts gladden just once more. Critics, those sour grapes, may wish to talk of Tendulkar & Co. unpacking the master's bag of tricks in '98, but they should be told that great men, like Roman generals, need someone to whisper into their ears that they are mortal after all. I know that some prefer that quiet plodder Kumble or the crooked flight of Murali, both great spinners without a doubt, but for me, the errant genius of my hero surpasses all. Three generations of cricketers from Mike Gatting through Daryl Cullinan to M.S. Dhoni will surely testify in my favor. Remember the World Cups in '96 and '99? Or the series against South Africa in '97 and the Ashes in '05? Could we ever forget? I think not.

It is nearly the same with the others who held sway in the Age of Heroes. They did not simply seek to entertain, as cheap bar dancers and Twenty20 players do. They ruled our hearts and minds. To appreciate their art was as much a cerebral task as it was a physical and emotional experience. Nowhere perhaps can this principle of artistic appreciation illustrated better than in the high-stakes contests between India and Pakistan. In the Age of Heroes, Pakistan almost always won. Let us recall the three men who hurt Indians the most after the imperialists departed the subcontinent. There was Saeed Anwar, my secret hero, who never missed an opportunity to upset the Indian applecart with his splendid mix of bloodymindedness and wristy strokeplay. For years, I secretly admired Anwar, supposedly the enemy, for his delightful flicks to square-leg and his rasping cover drives, all undertaken with no more than a subtle flicker of his wrists. Never have I witnessed such brutality been inflicted on a nation by so gentle an individual whose actions looked gentler still. That is the nature of great art, I tell myself, rising beyond the sweaty, mundane world of everyday into those ethereal heights that we can aspire to yet never attain. Even as twilight crept towards darkness, Anwar offered a masterful display of his art against India in the '03 World Cup, but it wasn't enough to defeat the old enemy, albeit for no fault of his. The Age of Heroes was drawing rapidly to its inevitable end, and our heroes were thus destined to fade away into cricket's Valhalla. And so did Anwar. My other two Pakistani heroes, Inzamam and Wasim, did so too, but not without leaving us an album of memories. Inzamam blithely flouted the unwritten norms of the age: his physical fitness reminded us rather more of Pavarotti than an athlete, his brutal bottom-hand shots were cloaked by silken elegance instead of resembling the routine violence of the present lot, and his calmness belied the pressures of modern professional sport. T.S Elliot once wrote, criticizing the modern tendency to see people as products of their age, that it is often ignored how much men must fight against their age to accomplish great deeds. If ever Elliot’s words applied to a cricketer, it would be for Inzy, who, much like Anwar, reserved his best for India. Even the most partisan Indian supporter must surely have felt that sense of awe and wonder that this man evoked in me. And finally, there was the greatest of them all, Wasim Akram. Now, when he chases money and women off the field for a living and Pakistan’s fast bowlers toil in pedestrian fashion, do we realize the true worth of his genius. Fast bowling has traditionally been dismissed by cricket’s elitists as a brawny affair, a working-class pursuit to be disparaged by gentlemen. Spinners have been regarded, however, as the possessors of wit and guile. Akram possessed a sharper wit than any bowler I have observed, barring Warne of course, but he was also a marvelous athlete capable of producing astounding bursts of speed from his short run-up. No sane person, least of all Indians, could afford to dismiss Wasim bhai as just another bowler: he tormented them, alongside Imran and Waqar, in ’89, and reached glorious heights ten years later in the cauldron of Chennai. I am quite certain that he helped fix many a match, but that only reminds us that genius too can be flawed. What would Pakistan not give up today to regain cricketers of the caliber of Anwar, Inzy and Wasim? But alas, time is cruel, and pray though we might, we shall never again witness the art and passion of these heroes. Their reign nonetheless continues unabated in the kingdom of our hearts.

Some may wonder why Indian players do not feature prominently in my list of heroes. Perhaps it is because most of them have made little impression on me. I cannot abide to watch the workmanlike efficiency of a Dravid or the stoicism of Sachin. To watch Dravid bat is like watching a carpenter saw wood day in and day out. Sachin's problem is different: he bears the heavy burden of greatness, and no matter how great his achievements, they always seem to be expected from someone as gifted as him. Nor did I ever feel thrilled watching Anil Kumble or Javagal Srinath. The latter took the better part of a decade to learn that pitching the ball up is the way to get wickets, but nonetheless continued until the end to dish out short-pitched deliveries for batsmen to feast on. Kumble is another matter: statistics and perseverance are only two aspects of greatness, but genius requires exceptional skill that Jumbo never possessed. Are there no heroes, in my view, from India then? That would be blasphemous, for which reason I have inducted Azhar, my favorite Indian cricketer, into my personal hall of fame. It is not so much Azhar’s captaincy on doctored home pitches that interests me, but his dazzling wristwork. Words are futile in describing the magic of his wrists and the elan that he brought to the crease every time he took stance with his drooping amulet. I recall an afternoon at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta, when Azza, against the run of play, stroked a whirlwind hundred of sixty-odd balls in the company of the No. 9 batsman. In the next match at Kanpur, he scored an even bigger hundred and helped India win for the first (and to date only) time against the mighty South Africans. As I watched Azhar bat, I felt that his art exceeded the grasp of us mere mortals: a ball outside off could be laced through cover for four, we knew, but Azhar taught us that the same ball could also be flicked with elastic wrists to the midwicket or long-on boundaries. And there was more. He was arguably the greatest catcher, especially at first slip, India ever had. His raised collar and unbuttoned shirt became the style of many a young cricketer growing up in India during the '90s. That he fell prey to the lure of money should not count against his inimitable style of play. For his life demonstrates vividly the lesson of Shakespeare’s Macbeth that even the best of men are drawn ever so often to evil and succumb occasionally too. That is the nature of tragedy. We may ponder if we wish what-might-have-been for Azhar, had he not fixed matches or been caught doing so, but doing so would prevent us from appreciating the tragic character of his art, by which I shall always remember him.

Aren’t we forgetting another gentleman whose exploits have captivated and inspired spectators in India and abroad like no other, that princely imposter Sourav Ganguly a.k.a. Dada? Both his bravado and his silken cover drives often made one forget that this rogue of a cricketer hailed from India. In a country where right-handness, batting with a dominant bottom-hand grip, and a preference for the legside are the norms, Dada stood out as an exception. His debut hundred at Lord’s in ’96 marked the start of a spectacular career of arguably India’s greatest one-day opener and most successful captain in all forms of the game. Again, at Lord’s, six years later, he would lead India to a thrilling victory with boisterous, bare-bodied celebrations that had the purists squirming. Yet Ganguly was no show-pony in the Sreesanth mold. He was among those rarest of Indians who thrives in adversity, be it on debut at Lord’s or on his comeback after being ousted controversially in ’05. Undoubtedly, his finest Test knock in ’03 came in Brisbane, where he outshone his famed peers on a fast, bouncy track and set the tone for a breathtaking assault on Steve Waugh’s Aussie fortress. Never a man to be kept down, Dada believed in taking the fight to the opposition. He cared little for those sweet nothings in which middle-class Indians specialize, and lost no opportunity to stick his fingers into the eyes of his opponents. Yet there was always an aura of greatness that prevented his actions from acquiring any cheap connotation. Boycott’s princely epithet did make sense, but it neglected the streetfighter named Dada. Perhaps the greatest compliment we can pay him is to acknowledge that, without Ganguly the batsman and the captain, Indian cricket would have continued to wallow in the mire of mediocrity it had generally chosen for itself. He made us believe we could be world-beaters after all.

Whenever we talk of world-beaters, we are compelled to mention the team of heroes that scaled peaks higher than any before them, surpassing even Bradman’s Invincibles of ’48 or Clive Lloyd’s Caribbean Conquerors. The Australian era of world domination under Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting has now ended, but can one ignore the superb brand of attacking cricket they pioneered? Hayden and Langer bullied opening bowlers around the world, their star-studded middle order comprising the likes of the Waugh twins, Ponting, Martyn, and Lehmann consolidated with clinical efficiency before the swashbuckling Gilchrist smashed the opposition to bits and the dynamic duo of Warne and McGrath made rivals regret they played cricket for a living. It is pointless talking of any one of these great men for each ought to be seen as part of a coherent whole that took Australian cricket to lofty heights around the turn of the millennium. The Australians strung together a record sequence of 16 successive Test wins on two separate occasions, and won an unprecedented three successive world cups. But there is much more than merely statistical records. No team failed to suffer at their hands. If Bangladesh took the game to newer lows every time they played, the Australians continuously raised the standards of the modern game. Superb athletic fielding, safe slip catching, running between the wickets, power-hitting, fast yet accurate bowling, and fiendish spin bowling: in short, a complete package of greatness. But now the package has been unraveled, and lesser mortals have entered the fray, reminding us that change in cricket, as in life, is inevitable even if the present struggles in vain to match the glorious past.

And can we forget the swashbuckling Sri Lankans of the ‘90s? Led astutely by the rotund Ranatunga, the side boasted a galaxy of batting stars who tormented bowlers across the world. Aravinda da Silva, nicknamed Mad Max by his teammates, cut and pulled with the same mix of élan and disdain with which he dispatched spinners across the fence. Little Kalu humbled many a Goliath with his adventurous brand of batting that reinvented the one-day game in the mid-nineties. Ranatunga himself could be more than a useful batter in his day, sealing many a Sri Lankan win with his calm manner. But my favorite was, of course, the Marauder from Matara, Sanath Jayasuriya. Although he put the Indian attack to sword on many an occasion, my last memory of Jayasuriya will be his assault on Manoj Prabhakar in the ’96 World Cup. Poor Prabhakar felt compelled to bowl off-spin, which wasn’t enough to keep his place in the side. Mediocres such as Venky Prasad, Dominic Cork, Mervyn Dillon, and Pommie Mbangwa suffered at his hands. So too did stalwarts such as Akram, McGrath, and Ambrose. In addition to his batting, Sanath dazzled us with his electric fielding and choked opposition batsmen with his fast left-arm spin bowling. At 40 today, he remains a pale shadow of his former self, but still remains the best opener in Sri Lanka by some stretch. Heroes are called so because their brilliant feats cannot be matched by us ordinary folks. By that token, Jayasuriya stands comfortably at the top of the pile, always a swashbuckler, always a genius.

You may wonder why we should remember men, however heroic, who have departed from the playing fields, and whether we should instead look forward to the young guns of today. In India, at least, there is much support for this presentist perspective. But I beg to differ. I do so partly out of that naïve blend of affection and admiration that teenagers reserve for their idols, but also from an awareness that the deeds of our heroes will not be surpassed quite so easily by others. There may never be another Lara or Akram. There never has been nor will there ever be a team as dominant as Steve Waugh’s all-conquering Australians. We are drawn too much by such pseudo-philosophical writers as Milan Kundera to believe that we must resign ourselves to live with an unbearable lightness of being in the present because there is no possibility of a Nietzschean return to the past. I wish to express my dissent forcefully to this line of thinking. We may not physically return to the past nor may we be forever young, but in keeping alive the vivid memories of our teenage heroes, we can certainly ensure a measure of immortality for them. In this spirit, I happily bear the Sisyphean burden of memories left behind by bygone heroes. Just as cricket, the colonial sport par excellence, has been transformed by postcolonials, the “natives” of yore, imposing their own stamp of identity upon it, we too can transform the unbearable lightness of our being into a delightful bundle of joyous memories to be savored forever.