Are countries raped by their history?

In Edward Said’s December 1992 Harper’s article ‘Palestine, Then and Now’, he explains that after 46 years he visited Jerusalem. In an interesting manner he mentions how he could not go back to his own house. If he wanted, he could. But he chose not to. His words were, ‘I pointed out the window of the room I was born, which you could see from outside the house and I said to my children, that there was where I was born.

They said, ‘Daddy. Don’t you want to go in and look at it?

I said, No. I did not. It was as if there was a part of my past which was really over and associated with the fall of Palestine which I could not re investigate. I could not visit once again. It was enough to see it from the outside, somehow. That sort of made the point for me.’

This brief narration makes me wonder if the history of people, or the history of the country, eventually rapes them. Depends totally on how you define rape as. Years of domination and hegemony sometimes creates a burden too difficult for both, the coloniser and the colonised to carry.

Simple yet thought provoking instance is how to universally relate and understand texts, critics and the world. As Said stated, English itself is a foreign language. When the hegemony embarked, it was the weapon of the foreigner, the white man.

In protest, Stephen Daedalus states, ‘My soul frets in the shadow of his language’.

Edward Said also gives another platform to the ‘Question of Palestine’. He does not call it a torn country like Samuel Huntington has used it for several nations like Mexico, Russia and Congo in the ‘Clashes of the Civilisation.’ Nor, does he adopt the opportunistic ideal of V.S. Naipaul in blaming the religion for the outcome.

Rather, Said talks about the history that lives in people, layer after layer, unconsciously delving into their perception and behaviour.

This history which still exists on the faces on the people in Gaza, perhaps the largest political prison in the world.

After a while, it does not matter whether it is right or wrong. Because judgment is for objective relations.

Gianbattista Vico, an Italian philosopher states ‘Human history is made of human beings‘. Quite naturally. But then, History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

Great intellectuals of all time have tried to link the history with the present of oppression to come down to something, a solution. But very often, the history which they relate to, is raped and shattered, emotionally marginalizing them from their accurate predictions.

25th January Anniversary of Egypt: No room for shame in politics

‘Shame is a revolutionary sentiment’ said Karl Marx.

As 25th January approaches again and an Islamic majority Lower House runs in Egyptian Parliament, few protesters feel ashamed at the outcomes of year long spectacle.

Adopting the subtle yet concrete orientalist point of view, the New York Times has stated how the majority of Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists would harm Israel. Though, I am still awaiting the opinion piece from Thomas Friedman who has been called even more closer friend of Israel.

Gone are the days of Anwar Sadat and Mubarak when the 6-Day-War and domination for Sinai Peninsula and Suez Canal were the mere aims for the patriotic Egyptians.The fights of today are based of simple yet difficult to render, demands. Its employment, medical aid, standard of living, tourism, sanity of mind.

Max Rodenbeck called Cairo -‘the Victorious city’ which always rises from it ashes.

But then what amuses me is the involvement of ‘Shame’.

Is it because the concept of western imported bureaucracy and democracy is not being implemented in Egypt or is it because of Islamophobia?

Alex de Tocqueville states ‘It is not always when things go from bad to worse that a revolution breaks out. It often happens that when people who have out up with an oppressive rule over a long period without revolt suddenly find the government relaxing the pressure, they takes up arms against it. Thus, the social order overthrown by a revolution is always better than the one preceding it.

He also states, ” A grievance comes to appear intolerable once the possibility of removing it crosses the men’s minds.”

One can easily see the words of Frantz Fanon, the author of Wretched of the Earth coming true in the case of Egypt.

He states how when a colonial power implants its colonies and domination in the so-called-uncivilized nations of the world, a very interesting dynamics takes place. When the consciousness and revolution strikes the natives, they revolt. Most often, they start by fighting against themselves. Because, in each, they see the imprint of their colonial master and his ruthlessness. Facing this fact is having the courage of embracing one’s own reflection in the mirror.

The Egyptian Presidential elections would take place in late June. El Baradei has already withdrawn. The dramatic nuisance was more to show how he disliked SCAF and did not think that real democracy is working out.

Well, this is something similar to the case of Pakistan, too. Perhaps, we might find Imran Khan or Gilani trying  to complain with the same words by next year.

But one needs to understand that the results of the elections would not be reflected immediately. It would take time. Long time.

Let liberal and secular Islamists rule their country for sometime. Though, I have been quite critical of Muslim Brotherhood for sometime, its high time we do give them a chance.

And perhaps, obliterate the word ‘shame’ from the dictionary. No human spirit deserves it and especially after a revolution like this, the results would not let the country down.

Hollow ideologies in today’s world of revolutions and conflicts

‘The human tragedy reaches its climax in the fact that after all exertions and sacrifices of the hundreds of millions of people and the victories of the Righteous cause, we have still not found peace and security, and that we lie in the grip of even worse perils that those we have surmounted, ‘ said Winston Churchill.

The man died in 1965.

I wonder how he would have artistically penned down the Arab uprisings and their outcome. Churchill was no doubt, an inspiring writer for many.

He left behind him, several more reasons for ‘unnecessary wars’ which the world was yet to see.Wars which do not have ideologies. Or perhaps, have limited frameworks of integrity.

Its often said, ‘The very steps which you take to avoid a political disaster, eventually become the same steps that take you towards it.’

With the entire Arab Uprising taking a very horrendous turn, often lost anonymously into the perils of stigma and orientalism, I wonder why it is so difficult to have a strong political opinion to stick to. To fight for. To die for.

Ideologies do not work these days. For example. Communism failed, miserably. In party of India like Kerala, Bengal or even Andhra Pradesh. We do not need to even mention about Russia and other Eastern European countries. Though, China is struggling. But in short, the ideology in 1848 which the 29-year-old Karl Marx created in years of isolation has been ruined because it lacked the intellectual honesty of the creator. Stalin, Lenin or for that matter, Bela Kun perhaps would not have been termed as ‘communists’ by Marx.

Perhaps, the nearest any one could get to communism (through the strand of socialiam) was Ayn Rand in her novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’ through the dynamic and audacious personality of John Galt. She fought the concept of ‘to each according to our needs’ and established the functioning of ‘to each according to our deeds’.

Alexis de Tocqueville reflects on the French revolution and states ‘In the long process of molding men’s minds to their ideal pattern their task was all easier since the French had no training in the fields of politics.Thus, they had a clear field.’

Unfortunately, the repercussions of globalisation and technology has created further more avenues for human mind. The more it grasps, the more is the confusion and eventually, the larger is the execution of the appropriate action. In this case, the formation of an ideology.

Coming to mind, Pierre Joseph Proudhoun writes in his book ‘What is property’, that ‘ we reason by eternal and absolute laws of our mind. Sometimes, the bias resulting from the prejudices is so strong that often, even when we are fighting against a principle which our mind thinks is false, which is repugnant to our reason, and which our conscience disapproves, we defend it without knowing it. We reason in accordance with it, and obey it while attacking it. Enclosed within a circle, our mind revolves about itself, until a new observation, creating within us new ideas, brings to the view an external principle which delivers us from the phantom by which our ideology is possessed.’

Sometimes, also termed as the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’. Not many know how Egyptians actually cried when Mubarak resigned. But we do know how the North Korean’s made a spectacle of Kim Jong Il death, often turning to be quite comical to the outside world which expects this nuclear state to be another ruthless instance of dictatorship and massive domination, poverty and impoverished.

Here comes the main battle. The battle of mind over matter. Of one person’s own ideology and his creation being imitated in the name of oppression.