Celebrating Differences
By Ghulam Mohammad Khan
26 August, 2015
Countercurrrents.org
“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Given the humanity’s socio-political and cultural revolution in the complex course of post-enlightenment ideological pessimism and techno-economic logic, it is time to be ready to unanimously discard all those accepted malevolent thought-patterns, which have had only divided and disadvantaged humanity. The modern global society does not comprise of a single culture, a single political governance mechanism, or a single epistemological structure rather, it consists of a number of heterogeneous thought-patterns, some of them contradicting radically. To ensure peace and harmony on the global level, there has to be equability among the disparate ideological, cultural, political, and epistemological differences. And to ensure this equability, which is a must requirement in the world of technology and weaponry, we just need to celebrate these differences rather than essentializing them as conflicting discourses. If we think with just a dash of extra cerebration, we can realize that all the existing conflicts across the globe, some of which have taken a murderous course, are the consequences of the level of toxicity among different thought-patterns. Though there is not the possibility of a complete homogenous architecture of human cognition, there is the possibility of incorporating all the differences and specificities into a larger system where chances of collusion and contradiction can be evaded.
The fact is that (philosophers have also proved it) no single system of thought can be a substantial basis on which the whole hierarchy of ultimate meaning or authentic narrative can be built. Every single epistemological structure has a right to exist, because it may not be inauthentic to the people of all cultures. Basically, it is the very difference among all these patterns of human cognition that creates the possibility of understating everything around. For example the idea of orientalism is always understood in comparison to the idea of Eurocentrism. Both ideas are not essentially true or false, but what creates the possibility of understanding the two ideas is the element of difference between the two. W can’t imagine the existence of one in total absence of the other. But, the problem starts when one idea is socially internalized or interpellated as authentic or superior and the other as indeterminate or inferior. When mixed with human contempt, these ideas (as the tragic developments in Middle East reflect) can regress whole humanity into dirt, barbarism and murder. As long as the differences are not celebrated and continue to be used as the weapons of discord, peace is totally impossible. By entertaining or living by a specific thought pattern doesn’t mean the other pattern is unfounded or subjacent. As long as both the patterns are celebrated without the involvement of human hatred, human society is safe. We as human beings must know that in the inferential network of human cognition, meaning is ever the result of a practical process of division and sub-division of ideas that receive their identity by reference to the entire network of ideas. The clash of civilizations, as was predicted by the American conservative political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, is not the clash of weapons or clash of swords on the battlefield, but it is the clash of conflicting patterns of thought spiced with deep human animosity. The clash between the Muslim and Christian civilizations is basically a historical battle of differing ideologies. Given the modern high-tech nuclear arsenal, there is an immense need of celebrating differences. The Mexican writer and Poet-diplomat Octavio Paz’s words deserve a mention here, “What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different cultures and civilizations, progress weakens life and favors death.”
Coming to our country India, the idea of celebrating differences and diversities is the most relevant. India, the second largest country by population, is the richest country in the world when it comes to the diversities like racial diversity, religious diversity, caste diversity, and linguistic diversity. Each community has a specific ‘disciplinary mechanism’ of its own. Adherence to one’s own interpellated thought-pattern is strictly followed. The problems (like riots and xenophobic tendencies) only arise when one community’s disciplinary mechanism, or to use a term by French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser ‘ideological interpellation’ dangerously conflicts with that of the other community. If such clashes among varied thought structures are not avoided, every second there is the possibility of deadly conflicts around India. In India there is a greater need for the development of a collectivist understanding or what the American sociologist Charles Wright Mills calls ‘sociological imagination’ where toleration of all the racial, ethnic, caste, religious or linguistic differences or diversities should be the fundamental criteria for existence. There is a need to deconstruct the unwarranted claims to knowledge or precedence of one ideology over the other, artificial barriers, and illegitimate usurpations of power. RSS ideology may be a reliable process of thinking for those who practice it, but once it illegitimately seeks domination over other modes of thinking, it becomes intolerant, and in this way differences are not celebrated rather they are pitched against each other’s annihilation. The fact is that there is no definite single narrative where the complexity of whole human understanding from across continents can coalesce. To say there is a single view point about the reality of the world would be nothing more than a theoretically unfounded or untenable preposition. The world just comprises of differences and to keep it going evenly, there is an immense need to celebrate these differences.
Ghulam Mohammad Khan is a PhD Research Scholar at Central University of Haryana
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