If you bother to look closely at how Western society or computer programming thinks and functions, the innate similarities between their philosophies will dawn quicker on you than a sunrise fiesta. The quickness of it might even give you a head rush because you are sure not to be following their principles in your life. The head rush will convert into a full-blown blackout when you further realize that the three main-man philosophies popped on us even as we emerged out of our Neanderthal skin (by which I mean 2nd century BC onwards) -- Greek, Chinese and Indian-- had underpinnings in and propagated these ideas. Not that I’ve ever dissected philosophy or gone through it without repeatedly dozing off, but I find it an uncouth system pushed into human lives and minds. It is a classic recipe for confusion and moronism- this, this system of LOGIC.
The ‘system of logic’ itself is not so much a point of discomfort here as is a particular point within its multiple theories. But let me come to that after this story I’ve been dying to tell: I tried to learn some computer programming language (C++, in case you really need to know, but I still ain’t sure about the logic behind the two pluses after the C as opposed to calling it C(I) or C(II). No wonder, I guess, that I didn’t learn a thing) last month and was repeatedly told that to produce even the simplest of programs I had to turn to logic. Um, whose logic? Turns out that was the wrong question to ask if I wanted to make my computer throw up numbers in a loop or stars in an inverted pyramid. Yes, utterly useless skills if you’re a normal human being, but apparently make software engineers fall in love. Anyway, step by painful step I realized that logic had left me a long time back and trying to get married to it now, after having been a political muddler/scientist, was an exercise in lost fruition and a sore one at that. Having shaken off the ghost of logic (as in, failed C++ miserably), I was free to return to my relatively free world of politics and contradictions.
Ah, contradiction! Brings me back to the ‘system of logic’. That crazy fellow Aristotle, whose ‘laws of thought’ continue (!) to influence some thinking in Western societies, made a law that goes something like “you cannot ‘be and not be’ at the same time”. This is called the principle of contradiction or the law of non-contradiction, depending on where you are or not are. Har har. This law, as well as opposition to it, can be traced back to pre-Socratic philosophers like Parmenides who first formulated the idea in the 5th century BC in an even more confusing line, “Never will this prevail, that what is not is.” It basically says that an identity cannot have two opposing/contradictory characteristics at the same time in the same space. These were philosophers who were on the lookout for knowledge that would be fixed and certain, and which couldn’t possibly rely on experience and such subjectivity to shed wisdom on the world we live in. In direct opposition was Heraclitus, another pre-Socratic Greek fellow (they were all called philosophers back then) round about the same century who stated more simply, “the path up and down are one and the same”. He was pro change, pro duality and was pretty convinced that only contradiction could account for change; that the evidence of experience suggests that identity cannot exist without contradictions.
Nagaland is a good case in the Heraclitan point, opposing Aristotle and his comrades. The first thing I noticed coming into Nagaland, and out of Dimapur rail station, was a small white board near Hotel Nei-Li that says something like “please do not throw garbage here” or “disposal of garbage here is an offence”. Treat it like a request or threat; irrespective to it lies a heap of garbage right behind the board in a state of advanced rot. If you dare to peep out further, you will notice the drain (it is actually a stream, I am told) cluttered with, yes, garbage. The white board with its request/threat is just an artifice. Why not put a beautiful installation in its place? This is a tiny example compared to the contradictions that made themselves increasingly visible over the next 3 weeks of my stay in Dimapur.
To start with the obvious: there are big fancy cars here plying on screaming potholes punctuated with roads. People might not have enough to eat, jobs or the access to protest but they have cars. Naga boys, so known for their massive drinking capability outside Nagaland, can continue to maintain their repute in a dry State. In the more or less complete lack of pedestrian infrastructure, when sidewalks are made, they are immediately torn down by mobs. There is a city centre that flaunts a ‘clock tower’ which neither signifies time nor anything Naga—its clock stopped working when it was made and the tower is more reflective, as a Naga friend put it, of Parisian sensibilities gone wrong than what should have been in its place, perhaps a morung. People I meet will consistently ask about my pre conceived (and eventually picked up) notions on Nagahood, but will be consistently elusive or incoherent when I ask them about the same.
There are other more bizarre and serious examples. The State government here is seen as a foreign entity, yet youngsters are encouraged and pushed to get a ‘stable’ government job as opposed to, say, being a journalist. While some members of the family will liaise with the State government, there will be others from the same family joining the ‘other’ governments. Citizens are exempt from paying income tax to the State, but land up paying abysmal tax through indirect means to the non-State minus any benefits. When State machinery refuses to function, none of the other federal set-ups meant to make this State a more functional and independent State than others will function either (this probably fits more into Murphy’s law than pre-Socratic ones. Choose what you may). There are dozens of issues of justice, rights, accountability, development, politics, crime and corruption to be explored that genuinely hinder communal growth but the community itself will deter the press from investigating independently.
Nagaland itself is marginalized, but a district in its East that was integrated into it in 1963 demands to be re-disintegrated and re-sovereignized on the accusation of being marginalized. The talk of unity and separation survives in the same space at the same time, instead of plurality and resource distribution.
Another essay needs to be written on the disparity between tribal workings, a so-claimed populist religion’s takeover of the cultural and spiritual space, demand for democratic structures and the contradictions of thought these factors unleash; what discomfort it creates for society and individuals.
Working under the baggage of years of conflict, these contradictions might not be at par with ‘logical’ thinking but they are a wealth of knowledge on current Naga society. Going by the writings of contemporary scholars like Joan Scott, much can be said about an identity if we look at this ‘evidence of experience’ where contradictory narratives inhabit the same space, and breaking the silence around it would only bring about better ways to work effectively for a coherent identity, society and polity.
The ‘system of logic’ itself is not so much a point of discomfort here as is a particular point within its multiple theories. But let me come to that after this story I’ve been dying to tell: I tried to learn some computer programming language (C++, in case you really need to know, but I still ain’t sure about the logic behind the two pluses after the C as opposed to calling it C(I) or C(II). No wonder, I guess, that I didn’t learn a thing) last month and was repeatedly told that to produce even the simplest of programs I had to turn to logic. Um, whose logic? Turns out that was the wrong question to ask if I wanted to make my computer throw up numbers in a loop or stars in an inverted pyramid. Yes, utterly useless skills if you’re a normal human being, but apparently make software engineers fall in love. Anyway, step by painful step I realized that logic had left me a long time back and trying to get married to it now, after having been a political muddler/scientist, was an exercise in lost fruition and a sore one at that. Having shaken off the ghost of logic (as in, failed C++ miserably), I was free to return to my relatively free world of politics and contradictions.
Ah, contradiction! Brings me back to the ‘system of logic’. That crazy fellow Aristotle, whose ‘laws of thought’ continue (!) to influence some thinking in Western societies, made a law that goes something like “you cannot ‘be and not be’ at the same time”. This is called the principle of contradiction or the law of non-contradiction, depending on where you are or not are. Har har. This law, as well as opposition to it, can be traced back to pre-Socratic philosophers like Parmenides who first formulated the idea in the 5th century BC in an even more confusing line, “Never will this prevail, that what is not is.” It basically says that an identity cannot have two opposing/contradictory characteristics at the same time in the same space. These were philosophers who were on the lookout for knowledge that would be fixed and certain, and which couldn’t possibly rely on experience and such subjectivity to shed wisdom on the world we live in. In direct opposition was Heraclitus, another pre-Socratic Greek fellow (they were all called philosophers back then) round about the same century who stated more simply, “the path up and down are one and the same”. He was pro change, pro duality and was pretty convinced that only contradiction could account for change; that the evidence of experience suggests that identity cannot exist without contradictions.
Nagaland is a good case in the Heraclitan point, opposing Aristotle and his comrades. The first thing I noticed coming into Nagaland, and out of Dimapur rail station, was a small white board near Hotel Nei-Li that says something like “please do not throw garbage here” or “disposal of garbage here is an offence”. Treat it like a request or threat; irrespective to it lies a heap of garbage right behind the board in a state of advanced rot. If you dare to peep out further, you will notice the drain (it is actually a stream, I am told) cluttered with, yes, garbage. The white board with its request/threat is just an artifice. Why not put a beautiful installation in its place? This is a tiny example compared to the contradictions that made themselves increasingly visible over the next 3 weeks of my stay in Dimapur.
To start with the obvious: there are big fancy cars here plying on screaming potholes punctuated with roads. People might not have enough to eat, jobs or the access to protest but they have cars. Naga boys, so known for their massive drinking capability outside Nagaland, can continue to maintain their repute in a dry State. In the more or less complete lack of pedestrian infrastructure, when sidewalks are made, they are immediately torn down by mobs. There is a city centre that flaunts a ‘clock tower’ which neither signifies time nor anything Naga—its clock stopped working when it was made and the tower is more reflective, as a Naga friend put it, of Parisian sensibilities gone wrong than what should have been in its place, perhaps a morung. People I meet will consistently ask about my pre conceived (and eventually picked up) notions on Nagahood, but will be consistently elusive or incoherent when I ask them about the same.
There are other more bizarre and serious examples. The State government here is seen as a foreign entity, yet youngsters are encouraged and pushed to get a ‘stable’ government job as opposed to, say, being a journalist. While some members of the family will liaise with the State government, there will be others from the same family joining the ‘other’ governments. Citizens are exempt from paying income tax to the State, but land up paying abysmal tax through indirect means to the non-State minus any benefits. When State machinery refuses to function, none of the other federal set-ups meant to make this State a more functional and independent State than others will function either (this probably fits more into Murphy’s law than pre-Socratic ones. Choose what you may). There are dozens of issues of justice, rights, accountability, development, politics, crime and corruption to be explored that genuinely hinder communal growth but the community itself will deter the press from investigating independently.
Nagaland itself is marginalized, but a district in its East that was integrated into it in 1963 demands to be re-disintegrated and re-sovereignized on the accusation of being marginalized. The talk of unity and separation survives in the same space at the same time, instead of plurality and resource distribution.
Another essay needs to be written on the disparity between tribal workings, a so-claimed populist religion’s takeover of the cultural and spiritual space, demand for democratic structures and the contradictions of thought these factors unleash; what discomfort it creates for society and individuals.
Working under the baggage of years of conflict, these contradictions might not be at par with ‘logical’ thinking but they are a wealth of knowledge on current Naga society. Going by the writings of contemporary scholars like Joan Scott, much can be said about an identity if we look at this ‘evidence of experience’ where contradictory narratives inhabit the same space, and breaking the silence around it would only bring about better ways to work effectively for a coherent identity, society and polity.
