Being Less or More Human

By Braj Ranjan Mani

09 December, 2015
Countercurrents.org

Darkness or illumination?
Ambition or contentment?
Mere contemplation or action?
Long haul or shortcut jugaad?
Exhibition or inner resolve?
A single pearl or garland of potatoes?
Mind’s freedom or banal platitudes?
Holy humbug or distressing truth?
Open confusion or blind clarity?
Safe distance or risky connection?
Charming chatter or deep dialogue?
Moral gloss or ethical core?
Alluring beauty or austere virtue?
Narrow identity or whole humanity?
Beaten path or the road not taken?
Easy convention or gritty reinvention?

You say how easy are these questions!
Yet I often mess up on these questions,
And you too mess up on these questions,
We have yet to overcome these questions.

Our inner selves, like the social chaos surrounding us,
Remain a combat zone between ugly and acceptable:
A fierce battle rages between many partial truths,
While good and bad stand clearly apart on vital issues!

Yet we see many, far too many plumping for the dark choices:
We see the revival of medieval lynch mob in the social media;
We see the brutal demagogues assuming supreme power;
We see the moneybags taking over the procedural democracy;
We see the everyday travesty of justice, equity and liberty;
We see the frauds flourishing and the sincere floundering;
And we see the rascals making mincemeat of the innocent.

So what is so great about humanity?

Yes, humanity often falters and fails, but hope arises:
When you accept your private and social failures;
When you know your sly, cunning self-deception;
When you recognize and fight your inner demons;
When you attack and thwart the mighty rascals;
When you reject the lure to sell your soul;
When you arise to give hope to the hopeless.

Hope arises when a child—a soul—is born anywhere:
And the mother kisses and caresses the crying child!

Braj Ranjan Mani is the author, most recently, of Knowledge and Power: A Discourse for Transformation (2014). His earlier and challenging work Debrahmanising History (2005) has undergone several reprints, and is available now in a thoroughly revised edition (2015).