The individual and the collective

Abheek Barman writes-

Over the years, Mumbai managed to redevelop its mill areas into bustling centres of trade, manufacturing and commerce. Bengal’s Left prefers to wait for decades before hawking off bits and pieces of the rust belt to property speculators and then go looking for farmland to set up industries, losing both worker and farmer along the way.

In 1930, the Soviet Union invited a unusually perceptive observer over for a guided tour. Instead of being impressed by what he saw, the visitor wrote: “It’s not clear to me whether they’ve understood the differences between individual and collective needs. In that respect they’re similar to fascists. They smother individual needs for the good of the collective. They forget that you can’t strengthen the collective by weakening the individual.” The visitor was Rabindranath Tagore. Bengal’s Left should listen.

Eyes Wide Shut

Adults, more than children, play this game – they convince themselves that shutting their eyes to incidents means that they aren’t really occurring. So when Churumuri asks, in connection with the criminalization of politics, if “the people’s court stand[s] above the law court”, the assumption is that the “Rule of Law” exists in India and that it is somehow different from mob justice. But these assumptions are hardly based on facts. After all, in India, “Law” is what people say it is, and has nothing to do with Natural Justice. That is the essence of democracy – majoritarianism.

The other day, on a television news program, Congress spokesman Manish Tiwari cracked a joke. When someone from the Hindu right wing raised the issue of minority appeasement, he said that the test of a democracy lies in how well it treats its minorities. So there is nothing wrong in appeasing them, “bringing them into the mainstream.” The assumption here is that a “minority” always refers to some group, mostly religious, and as far as the Congress is concerned, always Muslims. Since political correctness in India has not descended to the ridiculous depths seen in British society, he can conveniently ignore homosexuals when referring to minorities, have laws on the books designed to persecute them, and then claim that democracy has to pass a “minority test”. And because of his party’s socialist ideology, he can simply brush away the entity Ayn Rand referred to as “the smallest minority on earth” – the individual.

wgreen compares the increasing State control over the US economy to Marx’s Communist Manifesto. He sees the parallels. So do most of us who are not wearing socialist blinkers and, who are not blinded by Obama-love. But while the US may not turn into the USSR the day-after-tomorrow, the fact that the US parliament and its president are pissing all over their constitution is lost on a majority of the people. Some people are starting to see it, but its too little, and too late. Lest this be construed as a specific attack on Obama, the same was true of his predecessor Bush, and the gold robber Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

But then, “Eyes Wide Shut” is a temporary cure for cognitive dissonance.

Anti-heroes

I watched a couple of films – not in their entirety – around Republic Day. One was Shahenshah – a bad film whichever way you look at it; the other was Prahaar – a good one, and a masterpiece compared to Shahenshah. Both films tackle a topic that is a staple of Indian films – corruption in society. And both films feature an anti-hero.

The COED, and even the Wikipedia, defines the anti-hero as someone who “lacks conventional heroic attributes.” But such a definition doesn’t do justice to the phenomenon. My definition is quite simple – he is a person who is forced by circumstances to embrace “his dark side.” He no longer behaves in a manner which society or the law considers to be right; his ends are the same as that of most people, but not his means of achieving them. For this reason alone, barring a few who understand him, he is condemned to a life of misanthropy.

Shahenshah
The only reason Shahenshah deserves a mention, a short one, is – Amitabh Bachchan; he owned the genre as the “angry young man” throughout the ’70s and Deewaar won’t be forgotten for a long time.

Shahenshah is a crime-fighting superhero wearing, as an IMDb commentator describes it, “the worst outfit in movie history.” The story cannot be more clichéd – a boy sees his cop father, accused of taking a bribe, hang himself in shame, and he becomes a seemingly corrupt cop (Vijay, for the thousandth time) when he grows up, but turns into a nightmare for criminals during the night. Fast forward to the climax, the villain (Amrish Puri, “in what may be his 1,000,000th villain role – a role he could do in his sleep with his face.”) is brought before (dragged into) the court (by Shahenshah) so that justice can be done. Shahenshah, who hasn’t bothered with niceties like the law till now, lectures the judge on why justice in important; he also reveals his identity. The case against Puri is proved (thanks to a taped conversation, or a newspaper on which Puri has wiped his bloody hands, or both). But rarely do Indian villains learn their lessons. Puri takes a hostage. And Shahenshah delivers justice by hanging him from the courtroom ceiling – tit for tat.

The only point in the whole film that struck me as odd was Shahenshah’s “lecture” to the court. Our anti-hero evidently suffers from a bi-polar disorder – he fights crime because the justice system is broken; yet he pleads before the court. Other than that this is a regular but bad film with an anti-hero protagonist.

Prahaar
Prahaar is spine-chilling, ultra-violent, and a must-see. Written and directed by Nana Patekar, who is also the protagonist, the first hour and a half sets the foundation for the last hour. The first part of the film can be summarized in one phrase – military boot-camp. A young-man, Peter D’Souza, opts for commando training leaving behind his fiancée, and widower father who runs a bakery; the trainer, Major Chouhan (Patekar) is a hard task master. Peter completes his training, but loses his legs in an operation against a terrorist group that had hijacked a school bus. He leaves the army, and a few days later, invites Chouhan for his wedding.

Chouhan lands in Bombay, and discovers that Peter is dead; he had refused to pay the protection money demanded by local goons. Chouhan visits the police station and demands action on the matter. But he finds out that no witnesses are willing to come forward. He then visits a newspaper office. The editor tells him that people dying at the hands of goons is not news. Then the phone rings – “The Home Minister has a cold? I will print it. He’s going to London? I’ll print that too. On the front page.” And a disgusted Chouhan leaves. Chouhan has a past – his mother was a courtesan who was sold into prostitution before his very eyes – and he hasn’t forgotten the helplessness that he felt. He finds the same feeling among the people he meets while dealing with Peter’s death – sheer helplessness, shattered spirits, people who have lost all hope for justice.

The next time the goons visit the locality, they run into, and get bashed by, Chouhan. And this is where he is left flabbergasted. Instead of applauding him, the people of the locality blame him for Peter’s death, throw stones at him, and even register a police complaint against him. A man who is wound up tight now loses it – the respect for human life. He kills a man who tries to hold him at knife-point; and then he butchers the local goons – kills them all – when they show up and create a ruckus in the locality. The climax is a speech in a court – I haven’t done anything wrong, he says. The judge passes an order declaring that society’s injustices have impacted his mental balance, and that he be kept under psychiatric care till he is cured.

This film delivers the same message that Scholl did-

The real damage is done by those millions who want to “survive.” The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.

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If these were the “good” anti-heroes – the crime-fighter kind, there are also “bad” anti-heroes – criminals who are not “villains”. I will quote from Lutgendorf’s review of Maqbool-

Films with criminal protagonists permit directors and audiences to vicariously experience lifestyles involving extraordinary levels of danger, violence, and ill-gotten luxury, secure in the expectation that they will (normally) be atoned for in the end. Although detective and crime dramas in Bombay cinema began appearing in the silent films of the 1920s, a criminal antihero was relatively rare (with the exception of occasional films featuring noble dacoits or rural bandits; cf. GUNGA JAMUNA, 1961) until the 1970s, when such a role, usually explained as the result of childhood trauma or deprivation, became associated with the emerging “superstar” persona of Amitabh Bachchan (cf. DEEWAR, DON). The backdrop to such films was generally the “black” economy of smuggled goods and untaxed wealth that flourished on the underside of the Congress government’s bureaucratic “license Raj.” With the gradual eclipse of the latter, during the 1980s and early 1990s, by “free market” ideology favoring large capital and the consumer appetites of the middle and upper classes, and with the cross-pollination of gritty crime dramas by American and Hong Kong directors, there appeared a number of notable films (especially from directors Ram Gopal Verma and Vishal Bhardwaj) that depicted life in the Mumbai underworld with a new level of naturalism in both mise-en-scene and dialog. Although the trajectory of the protagonists of these films still generally ended in violent death, the plots now assumed an encompassing amorality in which criminal activity paralleled or was barely distinguished from politics, big business, and police work. Identification with gangster heroes, who continued to display such traditional Hindi cinematic ideals as dosti (male friendship) and clan loyalty (here transferred to the surrogate “family” of the mob), permitted filmmakers to explore the fascinating psychology of characters, such as Satya and Bhikhu Mhatre in Verma’s SATYA (1998), whose evident humanity and even charming bonhomie coexisted with a shocking and repellent brutality.

Nayagan
Nayagan is a must-see for Kamal Haasan’s powerhouse performance. It is a great story, but is somewhat similar to The Godfather – no gangster film made after Coppola’s masterpiece will ever escape the comparison – and Haasan plays the brooding Michael for the first half of the film, and the patriarchal, grieving Vito during the second.

Velu’s father, a trade union leader, is killed by cops. The boy kills a cop in revenge, and escapes to Bombay. He’s taken care of by a good-natured Muslim man who smuggles goods through the sea. Velu learns from this man that nothing that is helpful to someone can ever be wrong. He has a tiff with a policeman who beats the crap out of him. Velu doesn’t fight back. Naa adicha nee sethuduvai, he says – if I hit you, you will die. Then onwards its the story of Velu’s meteoric rise to power and transformation into the Godfather, murder and vendetta; he doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong. After all, “nothing that is helpful to someone can ever be wrong.” The film, however, pays more attention to family dynamics and the “good” that Velu does rather than his mafia operation. But as is the tradition, a “bad” anti-hero cannot live till the end – he has to pay for his crimes. And that happens to Velu as well.

Satya
As I have said, and written about, many times, this is one of my favorite films. Satya should definitely make it to the list of anti-heroes. But Ramgopal Varma doesn’t think so (Outlook; free registration required). in the interview, he says that Satya is an attempt at finishing off the anti-hero-

Satya’s foray into the underworld happens casually—it’s not the usual forced-by-circumstances-vendetta story. Unlike Deewar or Shiva, where the audience looks up to the violent hero, nobody wants to be Satya. In fact, Satya is an attempt to finish the angry young man once and for all.

Outlook did a story on the film. And it said-

Satya is a moving elegy to men who live under the shadow of death in a big, bad city which, as a voiceover tells us at the outset, never sleeps and yet never stops dreaming. The fitful dreams of one’s waking hours often tend to turn into unnerving nightmares. As they do for the film’s eponymous ‘hero’ (Chakravarthy). The mysterious misfit, like the hundreds of faceless hopefuls who arrive in Mumbai every day in search of material nirvana, lands in the city of dreams. Even before he can find his feet, he is sucked into the underworld. The consequences are tragic.

But Satya is no masala movie mannequin who attains martyrdom. He is the ultimate Nowhere Man: he’s come from nowhere, he’s headed nowhere. It is his nonchalant nihilism that sets him apart from all other anti-heroes. Satya is an end-of-the-century avatar of the ’70s angry young man pared down to his very bones.

The persona that megastar Bachchan made his own had certain moorings: he had a mother, he also had God. But Verma’s anti-hero is an atheist and an orphan. He has no past, no future, no clear raison d’etre except the need to stay afloat in a hostile environment. Even the girl he loves cannot save him: when Satya’s real identity is sprung upon her, she can only recoil in horror and deny him the redemption he craves.

In an era when feel-good romances are all the rage, Satya is a close-to-the-bones chiller that holds out absolutely no flicker of hope. Sad, pensive, it is a film that delves deep into the heart of darkness. Each of the film’s characters is a victim of a system gone haywire. It’s a world where cops are indistinguishable from criminals. For both, it’s a struggle to save what is precious: for the former it is their jobs, for the latter, their lives.

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The conventional hero is boring to say the least. In nearly every case, he lives and dies for others, doesn’t question authority, and barring a romantic interlude or two, has nothing that he can live for or call his own. The anti-hero allows the filmmaker or author to break the shackles. He can indulge in behavior that society doesn’t approve of, and therefore which a conventional hero cannot attempt; he can be extremely individualistic in a society where individualism is frowned upon; he can brood, smolder, hate. And he can commit “crimes” and disregard authority. If a hero does that, he will be called selfish, greedy, a thief and what not. That’s why the anti-hero’s actions need a justification – a sad past so that all his “vices” can be justified. As an aside, Bollywood will see the father of all anti-heroes if Anurag Kashyap manages to make this film.

In someways, the anti-hero is the refuge of the individual, and the last stand against conformity while still being “good.” Cross the line, and he becomes a “villain.”

Russell on individuality

In 1948, the English philosopher-mathematician Bertrand Russell gave a series of lectures – the “Reith Lectures” – on BBC Radio on the topic “Authority and the Individual,” and the series was later published as a book with the same title. The first lecture of the series – “Social Cohesion and Human Nature” – is also available in audio form from the Russell Audio Archive (mp3), or the BBC Radio page (real media). Russell actually sums up the whole series in the very first sentence of the very first lecture-

The fundamental problem I propose to consider in these lectures is this: how can we combine that degree of individual initiative which is necessary for progress with the degree of social cohesion that is necessary for survival?

In the lecture on “The Role of Individuality” (also published in “A New World”), Russell starts of by saying that individuals who don’t conform to what society identifies as “normal” behavior are critical for the very progress and survival of society-

In this lecture I propose to consider the importance, both for good and evil, of impulses and desires that belong to some members of a community but not to all. In a very primitive community such impulses and desires play very little part. Hunting and war are activities in which one man may be more successful than another, but in which all share a common purpose. So long as a man’s spontaneous activities are such as all the tribe approves of and shares in, his initiative is very little curbed by others within the tribe, and even his most spontaneous actions conform to the recognized pattern of behaviour. But as men grow more civilized there comes to be an increasing difference between one man’s activities and another’s, and a community needs, if it is to prosper, a certain number of individuals who do not wholly conform to the general type. Practically all progress, artistic, moral, and intellectual, has depended upon such individuals, who have been a decisive factor in the transition from barbarism to civilization. If a community is to make progress, it needs exceptional individuals whose activities, though useful, are not of a sort that ought to be general. There is always a tendency in highly organized society for the activities of such individuals to be unduly hampered, but on the other hand, if the community exercises no control, the same kind of individual initiative which may produce a valuable innovator may also produce a criminal. The problem, like all those with which we are concerned, is one of balance; too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.

Then, he writes about what differentiates the innovators from “normal” people, laments that artists no longer enjoy the exalted position they did in the past, because in the industrialized world, people are unable to enjoy art – they are unable to “let themselves be absorbed in the moment,” and describes innovators in the spheres of religion and morality. And writes-

In our own day an individual of exceptional powers can hardly hope to have so great a career or so great a social influence as in former times, if he devotes himself to art or to religious and moral reform. There are, however, still four careers which are open to him; he may become a great political leader, like Lenin; he may acquire vast industrial power, like Rockefeller; he may transform the world by scientific discoveries, as is being done by the atomic physicists; or, finally, if he has not the necessary capacities for any of these careers, or if opportunity is lacking, his energy in default of other outlet may drive him into a life of crime. Criminals, in the legal sense, seldom have much influence upon the course of history, and therefore a man of overweening ambition will choose some other career if it is open to him.

The rise of men of science to great eminence in the State is a modem phenomenon. Scientists, like other innovators, had to fight for recognition: some were banished; some were burnt; some were kept in dungeons; others merely had their books burnt. But gradually it came to be realized that they could put power into the hands of the State. The French revolutionaries, after mistakenly guillotining Lavoisier, employed his surviving colleagues in the manufacture of explosives. In modem war the scientists are recognized by all civilized governments as the most useful citizens , provided they can be tamed and induced to place their services at the disposal of a single government rather than of mankind.

He then debates the pros and cons of science (the subject matter of numerous essays in school and college) and comes to the conclusion that science is neutral (science is not evil, people are). Then comes the question who is more powerful, the politician or the scientist-

The men of science, in spite of their profound influence upon modern life, are in some ways less powerful than the politicians. Politicians in our day are far more influential than they were at any former period in human history. Their relation to the men of science is like that of a magician in the Arabian Nights to a djinn who obeys his orders. The djinn does astounding things which the magician, without his help, could not do, but he does them only because he is told to do them, not because of any impulse in himself.

Russell had a minor fling with communism in the ’20s. But totalitarianism was not his cup of tea. Neither was Lenin. So he takes a pot shot at the dictator-

The most astounding career of our times was that of Lenin. After his brother had been put to death by the Czarist Government, he spent years in poverty and exile, and then rose within a few months to command of one of the greatest of States. And this command was not like that of Xerxes or Caesar, merely the power to enjoy luxury and adulation, which but for him some other man would have been enjoying. It was the power to mould a vast country according to a pattern conceived in his own mind, to alter the life of every worker, every peasant, and every middle-class person; to introduce a totally new kind of organization, and to become throughout the world the symbol of a new order, admired by some, execrated by many, but ignored by none. No megalomaniac’s dream could have been more terrific. Napoleon had asserted that you can do everything with bayonets except sit upon them; Lenin disproved the exception.

But what would society be without individualism. So-

I cannot think of anything that mankind has gained by the existence of Jenghis Khan. I do not know what good came of Robespierre, and, for my part, I see no reason to be grateful to Lenin. But all these men, good and bad alike, had a quality which I should not wish to see disappear from the world—a quality of energy and personal initiative, of independence of mind, and of imaginative vision. A man who possesses these qualities is capable of doing much good, or of doing great harm, and if mankind is not to sink into dullness such exceptional men must find scope, though one could wish that the scope they find should be for the benefit of mankind.

Russell ends with a lament – modern society is too homogeneous with too little space for the individual. The scientist cannot, like his predecessors, hope to make great discoveries while working on his own, the artist cannot hope to be satisfied with being the best in town, a man cannot simply let go unless he wants to be seen as some kind of vagabond – there simply is no space for spontaneity and initiative.

If life is to be saved from boredom relieved only by disaster, means must be found of restoring individual initiative, not only in things that are trivial, but in the things that really matter. I do not mean that we should destroy those parts of modern organization upon which the very existence of large populations depends, but I do mean that organization should be much more flexible, more relieved by local autonomy, and less oppressive to the human spirit through its impersonal vastness, than it has become through its unbearably rapid growth and centralization, with which our ways of thought and feeling have been unable to keep pace.

Though the last part sounds too much like “alienation” in communist literature, including the reference to capitalists (in the scientist’s case), nowhere does Russell advocate any role for government – government as a solution. In that case, he’s not too far off the mark as far as his views on modern society and the individual is concerned.

Socialism and Communism

This post is a plug for Henry Hazlitt’s book – The Freeman’s Library (pdf), a “descriptive and critical bibliography of works on the philosophy of individualism”. Two quotes Hazlitt refers to in the introduction to the book.

“In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation: The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”

—Leon Trotsky ?

“A communist is nothing but a socialist with the courage of his convictions.”

—George Bernard Shaw