No big deal. We never met the guy who actually coded. Never in the last 15 years when you solved our problems.

And we paid big $$$ for that. After all, you were just a line in our balance sheet. But we are grateful for the headaches that you took away from us.

We never cared about your code. We chuckled when you talked about bugs. We came back nagging you when the features we desired, and drew business value wouldn’t work as expected.

While handing over an enterprise contracts to software consulting companies, we did draft technical contracts that talked about code.

But we didn’t really care.

More than your tech stack, we were worried about your history of delivering, and what our peers were talking about you. Some were raving, and we were eager to sign you.

So yes, AI is not going to take away your jobs - provided you keep solving problems and delivering solutions.

Look at your leadership. If they are panicking at the AI wave, find a new organisation to work for.

If that is difficult, try to build one. For real problem solvers and value creators, things were never so easy. Never in the history of humankind. Grab it!

LLMs are like the steam engines of our times. On top of their direct utility, they will spawn technologies that will fundamentally alter the nature of our civilisation.

But that will take time. And the equation will always have humans in the driving seat. Not necessarily good humans, but always humans.

Predicting future is a risky business. But estimating it based on human nature is easy game.

Permanent displacement of knowledge workers is a dream; and lot more is to be done towards that end.

In the end, they won’t be displaced - they will end up using these tools to do more work.

Their work will expand to touch and reshape more avenues of the human condition.

Nature of work is more philosophical than economists would like it to be. There is a reason why the romantic in Kahlil Gibran would write, “Work is love made visible.”

And that work will continue.

These AI companies build tools to be used by other companies to create products (and services) for humans (who will need jobs and hence $$$s to pay for it).

UBI was discarded long before the times of King Solomon (a enterprising prophet too, so PBUH).

If the most altruistic of religions couldn’t work it out at times when they controlled political and human psychological systems absolutely, chances are that it is never going to come.

But relax, we were anyways not paying for your code.

But our problems are not going away.

If you are still around solving them for us, we are going to keep paying you.

Your job is safe*.

*not sure if it would still be your job, but yeah.

What captivates me is the way love for Mohammed is created and transmitted across the globe. In that sense, it should be treated as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity ². Preservation, celebration and time to time blooming of the love towards the Prophet is an art in itself. So powerful is this intensely human phenomenon that, even my sceptic’s fingers move on the keyboard as if on a Tabla, waxing and waning as an unpredictable stream of music flows through me. My mind is swaying to Mast Qalandar, rendered by Sami Yusuf; as if I am stepping into Light. I was always captivated by the hundred thousand ways one could be Muslim. And it is not the theoretical possibilities that excite me. But what captures my imagination is the the lived realities - the similarities and differences different communities bring to the same identity.

And in all those realities, you see Mohammed being loved. Perhaps his detractors are most perplexed by this. The facts surrounding his life has little to do with the way his followers or others feel about him. And it is exactly the point that most frustrates those who don’t know enough about him - and that includes not just historical facts around Mohammed. To know Mohammed, one should also know about how his story has grown over and above historical Mohammed. The way it has been interpreted and taken into the pantheon of beliefs that dot various landscapes across the world.

The Mohammed of Persia, Abyssinia, Mongols, Ottomans, Mughals, and the people that came after them. All are different. And he keeps evolving as time changes, cultures change. The way he is loved changes too. He is loved in various languages; traditions of music, the way he is described in poems, miniatures, geometrical tributes - and architectural marvels. Almost all avenues of human excellence have been dedicated to expressing the love for Mohammed.

Categorically, it is forbidden to worship Mohammed. And hence, this devotion of his followers falls squarely in the territory of love. However, one could argue that this distinction could be lost on the people who throws themselves into this mighty sea of love. It is no secret that the various strands of Islam treats his learnings, as well as the core constitution of the man differently. Stories about the life of the Prophet is aplenty, but there is scarce agreement in the way they have to be understood in the context of the present. Practically, the most fraught point of religious debate is when a religious doctrine meets the present. There, it leaves the domain of hermeneutics and touches the socio-political reality of a people. Once material interests are at stake, spiritual argument alone cannot settle anything. There, the legend of the prophet as understood by the community comes handy. Perhaps the biggest irony of the Muslim world is this internecine fight that fails to see the shared love for the prophet, amongst other things that they share.

I am talking about this love now, because its stratospheric proportions bare a few things about the promise of humanity. For one, it shows the amount of love that human beings are capable of. If a religion with such diverse set of cultures and communities that live within it can celebrate this kind of love, it demonstrates a radical possibility. A possibility tha whole of humanity can emulate. The kind of love commanded by Jesus Christ ³, Mohammed and the like shouldn’t be just objects of curiosity. They should also teach us about the possibilities of love. In a world that is captivated only by emotions opposite to love, and the polities require mechanisms to divide to just survive, they function as great tools to exposit the virtues that bind human beings of varied qualities together.

The scope of this article is not to study what fuels this unending love towards Mohammed. I am just standing here, appreciating its scale, and what it means to the whole of humanity. Of course, I have tried tearing it down to basics and understand how it operates, but I will keep the inferences for another day.

At this stage, it is almost impossible for me to just explain away the beauty with science. This is not because science is inadequate. Rather, it stems from a desire to develop frameworks that would help us explain most — if not all — people we come across us in our lives. Their love is no less than ours and their experiences are valid. To write them is to understand them and to satiate this perverse desire to write people with love, one needs to explore this facet of the human condition.

One of the biggest allures of love is the spectre of losing it fully. If there is no uncertainty, love fails to captivate. Even in the most mundane of domestic settings, if a cascade of events pushes things to a precarious precipice, love is suddenly back in action! It is almost as if being on tenterhooks could save any relationship from turning stale.

After all, what is love if we don’t fear losing it?

Modern discourse could perhaps scoff at this obsession with uncertainty and dub it toxic (perhaps rightly so). But it is almost impossible to celebrate love without it. The longing, the shadow of loss, the confusion — all of this is necessary to push the human mind into a stupor, which is required to tolerate the absurdities that accompany love.

And hence, the mind should keep asking — Anjaam Hamara, Kya Hoga? [What will be our fate?]

Repeating this desperate, ominous plea exposes the way love shakes the foundations of a stability that the human mind so hopelessly desires. This stability is synonymous with death, much like a thermodynamic equilibrium equates to biological death. Love is an antidote to death not because it shuns mortality, but becuase it is life itself. Love cannot live in the same sentence that sports certainty.

Now listen to this loverboi passionately asking his beloved about their fate. He should know that he won’t feel half the pain if his question is answered. And losing that pain will steal the charm, his beloved, his love, and ultimately himself from him. That would be the end of love.

To be in love is to hopelessly wander across these unsure realms till one is completely lost.

Sufis of all hues will agree. They could never see their shapeless beloved, with a large ocean of light and dark sky preventing them from merging with their beloved. And they chose to seek, and not just believe, eliminating the need to bring any sort of stability into their chaotic lives.

Therefore, they never saw their beloved. The beloved was always a step, a hand, a breath, a dream, a whisper, a sujood, and an ocean of wujud away. And it is impossible to corrupt that kind of love.

Enough for now. I will let this song stir you further away from certainty and towards the shores of love.

Refer to this for an English translation.

Let me be clearer. What I seek to discredit is a myth, which has been endorsed vehemently by those who follow religion as well as oppose it. They want us to think that human minds absorb ideas losslessly. In a class of mathematics, nobody thinks that all children learn and master a subject equally. Even under a master tutor, you will find plenty of people who would flunk spectacularly. The formulae, the concepts, the lessons in logic - they all are absorbed differently by the constituents of a classroom. But when it comes to catechism, the catechumen is assumed to be a master learner who picks up and retains everything they have learnt about the religion.

It is based on this wrong assumption that we debate religion. Debating religion only exists for theatrics and power games for the most part. Much like the newsroom debates that seldom change crystallised political opinions, these debates only appeal to the undecided masses: people who belong to other religions that are not being discussed, or a minority of atheists who concern themselves with discrediting religion for ideological purposes. Apart from that, debating religion doesn’t take us towards Truth. This is because the Truth about God exists independently of what people think about him².

Essentially, we forget everything that is not repeated often in our lives. Consequently, the theology and spiritual arguments are lost as we age. Perhaps one utility of debates and continuous observation of religion is to ensure that the learnings are not lost. Again, the way religion lives over communities is different from how it is internally perceived in the minds of the believers.

How I look at myself as a Muslim (or any other religious identity) can be very different from how the religion actually operates over the laity. And the way I imagine god could be very different from how I am supposed to see him according to the scriptures. Scriptures introduce another layer of abstraction because the very same words evoke different meanings within different people.

So, the sensibilities of the God in their minds are reflective of a complex reality that encompasses their everyday lives. The god is likely to be a conservative bum, if that is what the believer is. On the contrary, the God could be love and all chill about the possibilities of humankind, if that is what the believer in question is. The true nature of God is immaterial. What matters more is what the ethical and temperamental composition of the believer is.

If your mind is as big as the Universe, your God will be too. If it is a narrow room that derives sickly pleasures from proscribing others, your God will be a deranged policeman.

Again, be mindful that many of these restrictions stem from a fallacy that unrestricted human freedom could be a malaise. Such thoughts have political origins rather than spiritual or psychological concerns. A projection of their narrow worldview onto God is an easy thing to do - if what they desire is more and more social and political restrictions over others. One can debate the pros and cons of the so-called sexual liberation, drug culture etc in this context. But the ills associated with them can always be explained away by the lack of informed choice, rather than the fallibility of human condition in the face of unrestricted freedom. But here too, the God and the Truth are held ransom to attain political ends.

Say, you are making a wrong choice. Two alternate scenarios with respect to our context can be considered. One - that you could be prevented from making that choice because you are proscribed. Two - you don’t make the choice because information available convinced you to act likewise. Which one is more sustainable? The ones that has to invest in creating barriers, or the one that seeks to broaden mental horizons?

Of course, one could argue both ways. But the belief that controls will work in regulating human behaviour is a fundamentally political one. It has nothing to do with the nature of God, or his perceived abilities³. This important distinction is lost when people try to club religion with a set of socio-political values. Given the nature of human diversity, it is only natural that the same religion will produce radically different societies. And this is what we see around us. The bigots want us to believe that religious identity could mean something (usually negative), when it comes to describing a people. And the zealots too impose on us such a belief that their religion is fundamentally different (religious exceptionalism), and both arise from material concerns rather than anything spiritual.

Diversity within the same religion is scoffed at by puritans for the very reason that they are intolerant. And their intolerance is reciprocated in kind or harvested by the Fascists around them. These political projects find fertile ground in the minds of people who are not strong enough to hold a God as big as the Universe. For those who struggle with the injection of such a vast humanity within themselves, a ready solution is to shrink the God and accommodate Him in the narrow alleyways of their constrained minds. Fascism thrives on misinformation and a radical obfuscation of truth. To do that, one easy method is to reduce their god to a madman—a rigid moralist incapable of kindness and generosity toward all of humankind.

Likewise, it is a necessary condition that your God is belittled by the march of Fascism within your religion. It cannot contain a god as big as the universe for the simple reason that the bigot/fascist/moron cannot conceive such a god. And the Fascist ends up hurting his own people by robbing them of their own gods.

This simple dictum is true not only because of science. Rather, the faith demands a god that has to be true. Or your brain would relegate that god into an illusion - something that we are evolutionarily trained to avoid.

And hence, don’t let anything make your god appear small within you. Mind you, the God is not made bigger by the size of the crowd that cheers with you for Him ⁴. But by what his presence means to your value system. The size of the God in your mind is dictated by the size of your mind and your ability to think for the whole of humanity and everything animate and inanimate.

Modernity isn’t meant to regress and make you insular; it is supposed to create great men out of the ordinary lot. And that should arise from the random acts of kindness that underpin our persona. And that would make a true believer out of each one of us.

And then, I fell into an abyss.

The last five years were great, but my literary pursuits had to hit a tremendous boulder in the way I got myself involved in the workings of the larger society. As and when I started to get more ferocious about politics and political action, my mind moved too fast - and at times even violent bouts of diffidence wouldn’t calm me down. The speed was unbearable, for the body should also cope with the way dreams keep racing towards ends otherwise difficult to achieve. Lucky are the men¹ who could just let themselves be discouraged by history and the enormities of change. I am still naive enough to pursue the dreams of youth. At a critical juncture, I believe that pausing to read these books will do me good. At 32, at least a third of my life, and a veritable half of my good life is past me. Still, I can feel the young boy kicking within, clamoring endlessly for change; an amelioration of the human condition. Let’s see how far we can go.

Coming back, if the Feast of the Goat took us across the state apparatus and primarily concerned itself with the ways of those who sustain power, The General in His Labyrinth, follows the inner world of a General who is well past his prime. What makes it so terrifying is the way it demystifies a mind that is now deserted by every entanglement of power. The book does not seek to educate us on the equations and theories that underpin the General’s power. Rather, it concerns itself with what such intrigues have done to this man, who is on his final journey towards oblivion. The greatness that is built around him fails to save him from a ravaging pestilence, just like his very many illustrious love affairs fail to quench his unrequited desire for being understood in the truest sense. A great manipulator in the ways of power will be a great manipulator in the ways of love too; but seldom do we explore the way such deceits hollow out the heart of the perpetrator. If men who seek power are to be tamed, they must be shown how this disease ² kills them. In that sense, the General in His Labyrinth is educative as well.

Márquez paints a damning picture of what awaits minds consumed by the ultimate desire for power. They are always in a state of flux, which simply doesn’t make any sense to ordinary people. Just like their minds are different, their reward mechanisms are different too - which makes it all the more difficult for people to understand them. What they don’t understand, they tend to worship. And it is a feed forward system that boosts the odds of success for demagogues over systems that tend to tame them.

The book made me ruminate on the purpose of life and the absurdities of lives that seek ultimate power. In the last article, we obsessively linked the pursuit of power with its tenuous relationship with Truth. Truth tends to be the arbiter of outcomes, irrespective of the way it could flip the nature of reality. However for the General, his primary enemy was mortality that found him through the tuberculosis that destroyed him. The irony of dying before fulfilling a great dream gets more and more petrifying as the achievements towards that end accumulate. It is easy to die when you have achieved naught towards a great dream. But when you have done so much, death is a bitter enemy that you would fight with all of your strength. But what damns you is not the failure in the fight against death, but the loss of dignity that invariably accompanies it.

That hurts.

And that made me cry at many instances in the book. Why should a modern democrat cry at the misfortunes of a military dictator³ who died two hundred years ago? My answer is in the reality that the pursuit of power hasn’t changed much over the course of human history. And it helps us to understand it thoroughly before we set out to understand our leaders.

Perhaps the obscure reasons I have for reading these books wouldn’t find larger currency. But, I am sure that an honest exposition of power benefits all. It makes it more and more difficult for demagogues to keep deploying the same tools that worked a thousand years ago. And some of them work even today (ah, the scourge of communalism!); so we stand to benefit from understanding the workings of a mind that seeks, wins and preserves power.

Another important feature of this book is the way it makes us think about the relationship shared by the men around him. Most of them are brought to him by the chance of life - but also they share a common desire in the way they are wedded to the pursuit of power. All his compatriots are thrown into the intrigues of politics, even when they were content as military leaders chasing glory. Power politics acts as the ultimate leveler, for it robs these men of their glory.

And for this reason, I favor more and more religion in politics. Nothing is more sobering than the pangs of a fanatic who has tested his ideology in battle and has failed. His legacy may be preserved in his martyrdom, but the death of his fanaticism begins at the altar of material pursuits for power. Long live the revolution because it is a furnace of moribund ideals too!

A word about the author! The descriptive beauty of his prose keeps us anchored to the book. It paints a beautiful picture of the landscapes through which the general sails for one last time. The geography, the myths, the people and their aspirations - all meld together into a tragicomic symphony as we slowly meander towards the general’s inevitable demise. The prose humanizes the many opaque chapters in history. It seeks to act as a magical (realism?) potion that bridges the gap between what is known conclusively and what could (or rather should) be the truth. As I argued in the last article, truth has redemptive qualities for all parties involved - including the ones who actively seek to disparage or worse, destroy it.

And hence, this beautiful book covers the journey of a dying Simón Bolívar as he decays into a package of a brittle scaffolding of bones and poisoned flesh held together by a parching leather that was once his plump skin. As we all march towards an obscure destiny, perhaps the sober ones will choose humanity over everything else - including themselves.

It is here that literature becomes prayer. A prayer more powerful than god, because how can we see God if not for the words that describe Him?

This book is one of the most powerful expositions of power and its ways to grace the world of literature. It remedies one of the greatest lacunae of history - the ability to feel and honestly discard objectivity as and when humanity demands it.

Reading The Feast of the Goat, 2000, gave me a sense of déjà vu, for the last very many years of my life is spent understanding power. Throughout my journey, I indeed meet many souls consumed with the desire for power. Even I can’t claim that I am entirely unperturbed by its trappings. Just that I am unsure to commit myself to that enterprise. It is tiring, testing and potentially robs one of his/her own agency. Unsurprisingly, it is something that I utterly despise. Not just that I am devoted to freedom, but my understanding of power tells me that it cannot be won without first sacrificing a set of things I hold dear - unabashed freedom, ruthless self expression (along with a free inquiry into self and its unmet needs) and a genuine contempt for hierarchies that are built into human interactions. But this article is not about my lack of merit in the pursuit for power. Rather, it exemplifies my predilection towards documenting power.

And oh boy, The Feast of the Goat is a wonderful opportunity to see a master at work! It addresses one big lacunae of history - that it should be objective. As a votary of science, I have nothing against objectivity. But, I maintain that so called “objective inquiry” is not the only way towards truth. In fact, it can actively undermine the pursuit for truth if one is to pursue it strictly with an aim of establishing truth via evidence. Now, my words can be greatly misread, but this is a risk worth taking. To understand this, we should take a step back and look at the nature of Truth.

Truth is almost always seen as a “value” or “attribute” to a certain object - which could be a statement or a feeling or an experience - necessarily tied to how humans perceive their existence. But that alone is not the utility of Truth. Truth is a resource too. Its utility doesn’t exhaust when we have conclusively established something as true or false. That exercise merely sets a transient value over truth. From there, truth assumes a pedagogical character. This truth teaches us as to what is the right way to do something. On top of that, it teaches us the cost of doing things wrongly. It acts as a compass that takes our shared humanity towards a better shore. In a nutshell, truth can ameliorate the human condition.

If that is how we understand truth, we start to see the lacunae of objectivity in establishing truth. From this vantage point, truth is no longer a value that need to be assigned. This shouldn’t be confused with the inherent and intrinsic value of truth. I don’t object to that; rather, we are seeking to expand the meaning of truth. Given the immense value of truth to humanity, it only helps to expand its horizons. That truth will improve our material conditions is a promise that holds true even when we try to extend it to designing and running a polity.

Truth, or rather the quest for it is a mirror that polities hold to themselves. It is an inescapable consequence of existence. No matter how far you run, truth will always keep up with you. This is not a metaphysical offshoot to our argument, rather it is the material core of the polities that we see around us. Those who administer shall know the truth - the reality. Without truth, it is impossible to govern; and even the nastiest tyrant would seek it for the simple reason that without truth, he/she shall drift rudderless to the oblivion. And if they have won the power after so much struggle, they are keenly aware of the avenues that squander power. And hence, information is the currency through which power operates. And what defines the value of information? It’s the proximity to the truth! They need truth to sustain their systems of power - which includes, but not limited to, their government.

All these are common place knowledge of course; but what most sane people miss is how powerful is the desire of morons to corrupt truth. This is not because tyrants hate truth; rather they are enticed by it. Still, they are forced to corrupt the truth of others because they cannot govern forever, without seeking to control truth. But forever, demands that the engine of government is intimately tied to the truth of the moment. To the detriment of the tyrant, it is only a matter of time before this truth escapes his/her system and wreaks havoc over the imagination of the larger populace.

Again, it is important to understand how the corruption of a truth by the tyrant hastens his downfall. Cementing control demands that he shall work towards maximizing government; and in the process he can’t avoid the immediate consequence of touching more and more of his subjects. And as the touch points expands, there is a demand for more government from those of his constituents who stands to benefit from the “rule”. They may be an intransigent minority, but they continue to thrive as the dictatorship grows. Here. again the growth of the system only demands that the heart of the government moves closer to the truth, or it risks collapse or being captured by a rival force. This generates more demand for truth, that the government seeks to address through directed inquiries, which it believes that it can control. Call it Glasnost or whatever else, a dictatorial system that is around for long enough develops a fascination for truth and openness and a large portion of its subjects starts seeking truth as a means to solve their otherwise material problems. Even when the elites and their sponsor (oh yes, they are almost extinct - to be replaced by hybrid elites who seek legitimacy through populist demagogues), are terrified of truth, the system as a whole evolves towards a mode that promotes truth seeking behavior.

The perceived corruption of truth creates a suffocating vacuum, which in turn foment more and more inquiries. This, ultimately brings ruin to the dictators. Merely knowing this prognosis can save no dictator. And history brings testimony to that. They are destined to act on their insecurities, believing that more truth will let their intellectual faculties solve a difficult sociopoliticoeconomical problem, only to find that truth only hastens their demise - and it will never aid their scheme for tyranny. Simply because tyranny demands conditions that negate the existence of truth.

How can you conjure up the orgies of violence without falsehoods? How can you convince a human being to oppress other without making him believe in stuff antithetical to the truth? Violence can come only from a place where truth is invisible. And that is the contradiction of dictatorships - a system that so maniacally chase truth can only be sustained by an annihilation of truth. And when you set out to do that, you lose whatever little truth that is keeping the regime afloat. The dictator and his system can never be saintly, for this simple reason - they need truth to thrive, but they also need to fight truth to survive. So they chose fighting truth, and ultimately lose.

But all these contraindications towards a successful dictatorship surfaces only when the system has seen sufficient amount of rote. A smart state machinery, led by an autocratic oligarchy could still find ways to postpone the inevitable. Unlike the grand visions of an autocrat, these systems are surprisingly adept at keeping the gains of their kleptocracies - the reason being their opportune willingness to reject truth. Kleptocracies are seldom brought down by openness. It requires parallel systems that match them in tact and deceit - a vanguard party; Trotskian Red Army; or a khaki clad perpetually complaining lot. They all looks at themselves as revolutionaries for a reason. They set out to create their truths, because they have genuine or perceived grievances against the way the world around them defines Truth. This makes then ready to compromise with the truth. It is only when they are tainted by the machinations of power that they learn about the virtues of truth and are consequently hypnotized by the quest for it. Almost always, the revolutionaries meet the oligarchs at the battlefield. Their success is entirely dependent on the amount of tact and deceit that they can orchestrate against the compulsion for seeking truth.

I would like to juxtapose these systems against the dictator of Marques, Llosa and Fuentes, because I strongly believe that the inheritors of their tinpot dictators are truly worthy successors to the long lists of various categories of tyrants from our shared past. The fantasies of these tyrants sought to control the very nature of truth because of their extremely smart personas, and not because they were wanton idiots. I love reading them for this very reason. And the purpose of this essay is to stray away from history and seek truth from various planes that couldn’t be bothered to get tied with the exacting requirements of objectivity. It is common knowledge that truth (or rather the lack of it) shares a tenuous relationship with politics.

Demanding objectivity when talking about great abusers of power and our shared social milieu is almost a crime for this very reason. This is not to justify lying about them, for that will defeat our objectives too. Rather, this is a clear proclamation that to get to the truth of such people, we will have to abandon objectivity in favor of humanity and the pressing necessity to audit every statement against the highest rigors of history. History is sometimes too important to be left to historians, for we carry the histories within our present selves.

So it is only fair that a writer sets out to exposing the private lives of dictators and icons with a sense of stupendous curiosity. What drives them is a desire to bent whatever literature that is handed over to them - grammar, spelling, formats - whatever it is - to paint a terrifying mental picture of the dictator in question. And that is the sheer joy of reading them.

I am sharing the list of books I am presently reading towards this end.

• The General in his labyrinth.
• Reasons of State
• I, the Supreme
• The Death of Artemio Cruz

The democratic party is not united, of course. Editorial board of the New York Times, just two weeks ago, did not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots”, labelling his experience “too thin” and comparing his campaign platform to “a turbocharged version of Mr. de Blasio’s dismaying mayoralty”. It is understandable that the Democratic Party would take a little while before they turn the corner. The support of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is not too much of a clout when it comes to capturing the large political machine that the Democratic Party is.

That Politics is intertwined with capital is a gross understatement. It is a euphemism invented to comfort people who like to think that their “interest” and “identities” are large enough to influence politics of a nation. For most people, political action is an afterthought. It is something that comes to them, and then they act. A set of parties are presented to them; they pick sides and fight with the clubs handed over to them.

The two major facets of political activity simply fly over their heads. One is to read, research and talk till we have documented a set of problems, which upon solving will make our lives better. The other is to find enough people to endorse your solution and now you are a bloc strong enough to initiate change. It is naive to believe that ballot alone will force change. Ballot simply reflects the prevailing socio-economic equations. That every candidate needs truckloads of money to win even in developing countries is no secret. In many underdeveloped countries, election expenses are touted as a reason to perpetuate authoritarianism.

Coming back, the political organisation of bringing people together and priming them for action is something that needs deeper exploration. Sure, we all would like to have lawful assemblies that deliberate things without falling off the guardrails of a civilised society. When discussing ‘politics’, the de facto mood is that of social tension. What does this policy entail? What can possibly change? Why is this person acting the way he does? Are we condemned to suffer for ever? Or can we do anything at all?

All these questions lead to very different results if we were to close our eyes and meditate on them. Suppose that there is no adversary whom you must defeat in a contest of “debate”. It is just you vs your ‘inner voice’, seeking truth. Can these ideas objectively bring in change? Will they make sense if you factor in the changes that can happen in the next five years? If you were someone who is directly affected by the policy, how would you convince yourself that you deserve to face the consequences? My years observing politics has taught me one thing. Very few people take the trouble of learning the ropes of any business that requires skill. Politics is no exception. Politics requires you to have a set of skills that will place you in a podium where you will be watched and acted upon. Some politicians are too self absorbed to think that it is their destiny or their hard work that has made people (read power) coalesce around them. That they hold certain qualities that make them worthy of power. But the wise ones know that it is the designs of the society that require that power must sit somewhere for the time being, we can only dress ourselves up and expect the rain to fall right over our heads.

But politics is fun, and highly rewarding to those who learn the sleights and aspire to perspire till they turn the curve and find themselves at the vortex of power.

Here, what matters most is the creation and sustenance of huge political machines and the existence of a pathway that will lead to them being captured by the ‘unwashed’ masses. A good political machine, by design is constantly susceptible to be overtaken by a ragtag group of insider ‘revolutionaries’.

In that sense, Democratic Machine (or any political party in India for that matter) is hardly a “good” political machine. From that vantage point, Zohran’s campaign (and just in, his victory!) is a beacon of hope indeed.

But then, the sceptical political observer in me refuses to believe in the brand Zohran. Not because he could be a ‘bad’ actor, but his campaign by default has trained a large political machine on him. This may ultimately benefit him, but it would also make his path forward infinitely more difficult.

But then, it is important to have a coherent socialist political voice in the US. If the most digitally connected country and deeply divided first world country cannot be convinced to take up or at least entertain the idea of socialism, it becomes more and more difficult in the developing world.

An alternate mode of organising the masses is indeed a ray of hope. Just that I refuse to be moved by social media phenomena. Or they would have to endure the weathering of time and show us that they will indeed fight till the last nail to ensure that their promises are kept.

Let me explain.

Culture is ever evolving. It is an entity that is impossible to quantify or even articulate. This is because culture is vast, and it is not amenable to being singularly explained. Culture is also dynamic - it changes at its own pace. Sometimes rapid, sometimes tediously slow. But indeed it changes. And hence, when you explain culture, what exactly will you explain? How do you account for its many versions, changes and perceptions that exist in the minds of people?

For example, when you talk about a place of worship to a foreigner, it is impossible to fully and clearly articulate what the deity stands for, meanings of the rituals - and also explain to them the umpteen ways the visitors perceive the “power” or “influence” of the deity.

You must be familiar with the cultural context in which the deity is placed. Also, the comprehensive survey of rituals. Even if that is done, how do you place the vast differences in the way each devotee perceives and submit herself to the deity?

This is true for artforms, imagined or real histories, monuments etc. Anything that you can pick about the culture is not amenable to summary articulation neither can it be taught by bombarding an outsider with conventional “information”.

Culture has to be imbibed through prolonged exposure and constant interaction with your community. And by nature, this is limited to your immediate surroundings. Whatever national culture you are talking about - is the distilled sum total of a cross section of national life that you have vicariously experienced. More often, national life is too diverse and complex for you to imbibe a reliable cross section of it.

How do you compare between the dietary preferences of Gujarat and Nagaland? Which one gets to represent “Indian Culture”?

So you see, this definition of culture - whatever you make out of it - is a purely subjective choice. And heavily influenced by what you can see - and cannot see.

And there lies its problem with Nationalism.

If culture is so difficult to define, how can it be reconciled with something as concrete as a nation? A nation has a well defined territory, a register of its people and a common set of rules that applies to everyone (at least in theory). How can then be, the amorphous entity that is culture have a central role to play in that project? This line of thought shouldn’t be interpreted as a rejection of culture. Rather, it is an invocation to pursue culture to ferret out its myriad expressions and cultivate a respect towards the diversity of cultures.

This includes a principled understanding that culture is incredibly diverse and it shouldn’t be the sole basis of an identity. For example, people of the same religion will have polar differences in culture. Same caste may mean very different cultural preferences, if they come from geographically distinct regions. Things like migration, modernisation, social media can influence culture. On top of it, culture keeps changing and evolving.

Given the impossibility to accurately retrace life from the past, nostalgic cultural evocations can hardly help us “recreate” a past golden culture. But even this culture would have been subjected to change. Even if we somehow bring it back, what guarantee we possess that it won’t change again?

Here, clearly those who call themselves Cultural Nationalists sadly, possess neither culture nor nationalism. This is because Nations are purely modern concepts. Every nation is unique - and their existence is guaranteed only when they possess polities that are essentially modern. Now, don’t be fooled by “sorry states” that exist in our “modern” world. They are not nations, they are only polities tolerated by geopolitical realities and wanting a national spirit in the people ruled under them.

Whether it be Afghanistan or Sierra Leone, they are hardly nation states. I am not straying into that big debate here.

Anyways, those proponents of “Cultural Nationalism” cannot enact the basics of Nationalism for this simple reason that they will never have a concrete and comprehensive manifesto. This is because culture is amorphous, diverse in reality and has many versions which are tied to ethnicity, period of existence and also documentation, amongst others. Of the many thousand cultures that have existed in India, the ones better documented would have survived more. But then, documentation is also shaped by the language, writers and also replicators. Not to mention the ever changing power equations in the society.

It would be truly agonising for a Cultural Nationalist, if she were to pursue the reality of ‘authentic’ culture. But then, they are blessed with this tool of reductionism. They needn’t explore the real culture. Rather, they would be spoon-fed with a version of culture that is supercharged with pride, appealing to their present day identities and also giving them a sense of purpose.

They hardly understand the nuances of learning and appreciating culture. They will have nothing to do with the music traditions of this country; they hardly understand the inner meanings and ‘plays’ of our paintings and epics. They don’t understand the organic reality of shrines (and also cults) that dot the Indian Sacred Geography - not compliant with their interpretations of religion and culture.

They are immune to the riches that mixing of culture, people and genetics bring to the heart of the nation. Having a perverted view of culture and fundamentally incapable of understanding the lovely, humane aspects of culture, they relegate themselves into brainwashed soldiers of a monotonous view of culture.

How can we classify them as “Cultured”?

They don’t understand that culture is something that gives us the tools to progress beyond a life that was marked by constant blood shed. It helped us realise a life without arbitrary punishments and losses to lead a relatively peaceful life.

Now when they disturb the basics of such a settled, harmonious life by thwarting institutions, sending bull-dozers and filling public life with vitriolic communal diatribe, how can we call them cultured?

They are pseudo-culturists who effectively have no understanding of culture.

They might be happy to call themselves cultured and recite the word “culture” with a thousand political projects they may have. But they don’t grasp that culture is that human quality which helps us progress from brutes to human beings capable of resolving differences, create systems that work for everyone, help every individual develop to their full potential etc.

Cultural Nationalism, quite unsurprisingly, also doesn’t have answers to the following data points (very painful data points), that was highlighted by the National Family Health Survey - 5 and ASER, 2023.

• 5% children below 5 are stunted, 19.3% wasted, 32.1 % underweight
• 1% of children in 6-59 months are anaemic.
• 6-23 months, only 11.3% receive minimal adequate diet. (9.6% in NFHS 4)

In 15-49 years,

• 10 plus year schooling only for 41% women and 50.2% men
• Anaemic - 57% women and 25% men.
• BMI below normal - 18.7% women, 16.2% men.

In 15-24 years,

• 12 years or more education - 34% girls, 35.9% boys
• Anaemic - 59% girls, 31% boys
• Normal BMI only 54.9% girls, 52.6% boys

ASER survey, 2023 -

• Aged 17-18, only 77% could read Class 2 text.
• Only 35% could do division,
• Learning trajectory over 5,6,7,8 classes is relatively flat - little difference in learning levels when a child passes through these classes.

But the “cultural nationalists” are preoccupied with some very predictable themes that merit no mention here. Needless to say, they will not have an answer or plan to solve the above mentioned issues.

Hence, the pseudo-culturists must be called out and exposed. That is one way to reconnect with the better aspects of our culture and discover the truly fantastic bits that would help us negotiate modernity with a grit and enhanced perspective that pseudo-cultarists will never understand. Not in this lifetime.

There is a cottage industry that teaches us how to acquire power and preserve it. They quote from Sun Tsu to Machiavelli as if these men have written something that we don’t already know. The Hoi Polloi is definitely taught to be sceptical and, to some extent, selfish by the larger society. Irrespective of the ardent religious appeal of the propaganda in favour of altruistic morality, most of them grow up to not trust others unless there is a compelling reason to do so. Most enduring systems of power are designed to override this suspicion by abusing the organis gullibilties of the masses.

You can package a war machine with an allegory of their mothers. You may have to camouflage by creating a national image that is seeped in kindness, compassion, and the glory of being old. I would like to write more, but this article is not about creating comprehensive national power. This assumes that such a system is somehow in place (say, like our own constitutional republic) but someone sets sail to capture power within it. And this discussion must be limited to Democratic or quasi-Democratic systems.

We are well aware of the way popular elections could be swayed through the efficient use of propaganda, which is an intuitive application of social psychology. One needn’t be conversant with the theories. The long practice of politics does endow some of us with a knack for messaging that will resonate with the people. But civilised societies do impose restrictions on the quality and manners of public discourse. They can be bypassed with ingenious strategies like dog whistles. But a more practical and sustainable means will be to launch a blitzkrieg of promises (much like Lebensraum) that help you masquerade your real agenda.

The appeal for direct democracy is one such. It is simply not deliverable in complex societies of high order. Especially when you are looking at a population that is barely struggling under the yoke of a punishing economy as well as social systems loaded against them. Also, the power of people is nothing without organised mechanisms that ensure that their will is properly transcribed and coded into machines of power. For example, the government machinery at the tail end works under the instructions of civil servants. And they are not directly answerable to people. If we were to put a microscope on every decision and action taken in government offices, the people would be reduced to subjects who act according to rules. If this system has to act democratically, government alone will not do. There should be citizen operated machines that feed the government as well as the bureaucracy of the day.

The entities that we call political parties are supposed to ensure this. But in practice, it is an extremely difficult thing to do. This is because they are vehicles towards power. There is indeed some element of democracy that exists in them. At least, they pay lip service to them. But then, if they are competing with each other in a social system that is loaded, they cannot be democratic. When you are forced to partake in activities that cannot be public (which to some extent is the staple of public life by virtue of design), you are drawn towards secrecy. And as we know, secrecy cannot breed democratic spirit. There would hardly be any doubt about who distributes the tickets for contestants to Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabh. The average voter is hardly a party. I am not complaining about this, but I am highlighting it because the question of functioning democracy that operates levers of power according to the popular will shall factor in the limits of organisational capacity.

It is here, that the calls for direct democracy falls flat. If there are no mechanisms for people to express their will, it cannot direct policy. Or when whatever mechanisms exist are cleverly dismantled, some demagogue could appear on top (via the games of power) and claim that he/she represents the popular will. The lavish grace of power is enough to manufacture consent, and the fiction of popular will could sustain their bid to stay in power. The citizen is robbed of the opportunity to direct state policy. The most crucial aspect here is the intermediate leadership, which are in direct contact with people. By definition, they are accountable to the community. They are embedded in the community on an organic continuum. From households to the local leader, there are no chasms. They are one and the same.

Here, we are not even assuming that the average voter will direct state policy. But the policy has to be crafted by machines that are modular, with popular control over these modules. Without it, democracy can hardly deliver it to those at the bottom. Here, I strongly argue that complete democratic decentralisation with avenues for people to actively change the course of their lives is the only way to go about democracy. The missing piece in popular discourse is the role of intermediate or lower leadership of a political party (or other vehicles of power in community, caste, or religious domain).

The biggest obstacle to dictatorship is a robust, intermediate leadership that is visionary. It might seem ironic in a discussion on democracy. But, oligarchs (or regional satraps in a quasi-democracy) are the most credible defence against centralised dictatorship, provided they are connected to popular machines of power. It is a different matter if all these satraps, or powerful intermediaries, are tyrants. Then, they become the hallmark of patronage based dictatorships. They bow to the wishes of the dictator, but it can’t be denied that only they have control over resources that could potentially dethrone the dictatorship.

One popular fiction in democratic propaganda is that we only have petulant megalomaniacs as dictators. But in real life, most of them are soft spoken, urbane ‘gentlemen’ with a purpose. They wouldn’t have climed the ladders of power, if they were a pain in the ass for everyone around them. They know how to please and, in turn, get what they want. Oligarchs or satraps are more like “friends” to the dictator. They could be loyal, yes, but they are certainly not servants of the dictator. The dictatorship will do everything possible to make their situation precarious. The “comprador” class would most certainly be popularly hated. It only makes the dictatorship more powerful. They are forced to pledge their resources to the upkeep of the dictatorship - without which they will perish.

We spoke about them in detail only because they command reasonable resources to unseat the dictatorship. The goal of democracy is to create intermediate leaders who hold considerable power - on behalf of the people. All standard laws of democracy - changeability of personnel, accountability, etc - applies to them. But the focus of democracy should be in creating such passionate, ambitious and ever powerful regional satraps. If the supreme leader can unilaterally control all tickets to the Lower House, pick Chief Ministers, and mess with state government machinery, the federal setup we have will crumble. This is true in most constitutional democracies. Not just ours.

The call for direct democracy is very attractive. It is indeed good if it comes from the bottom and limited to decision making in a small, close-knit community. However, when that call comes from the very top, it should be alarming. The ulterior motive is to disarm intermediate leadership, which have familial, kinship and honorary ties to the community. And arguably, they are much more effective tools of mental control than fictions like propriety and constitutional allegiance (of the individual).

tl:dr,

The gist of this article is to look at leaders whom you interact with and choose wisely. And they should have good bosses at the regional level. If not, get into your party of choice and try to effectuate that change. Democracy dies in darkness; in the same bed will lie the lazy citizenry, dying along with it.

Beware.

But things doesn’t work that way. Sooner or later, truth catches up and the stench of rotten flesh - not always the literal human meat - will surface and there would be no place to go. That is also when we realise that the demons that ate our loved ones were hatched by ourselves. By the time we realise, it is almost always too late to do anything.

Great empires create arms industries to sustain their campaigns. But one day, the depradations would prove too less for the kind of trouble the proprietors of these industries take. And then, the guns will be trained to the weakest; so that the ‘costs’ are amortized over a the remaining days of a grappling empire. “Chickens always come home to roost.”

“The colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal.” “And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific reverse shock: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers around the racks invent, refine, discuss. — People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind — it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it.” —Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

However, this cannot be used as a means to blame the victims. They are almost always the “victims of circustances”, who almost always had no say in the way powers that be cultivated the world before them. Of course, they could have voted sensibly. But did voting save them from the vagaries of price rise, poor health and education policies, or did they get a sound economic system? Weren’t they dependent on the intellectuals who lied and a salaried media that appeared to be free?

In any case, the “philosophy of the bomb” applies to another category of people who come from the very lot who live at the heart of these colonies. They are, however, not the ‘weakest’ kind. The weakest are generally marginalised to the extent of irrelevance and disappearence. They are even below the “proletariat”, who could afford to work in the factories run by the colonial as well as comprodor elites. The weakest, are cast aside from the avenues of education, skilling, social participation and are kept there through perpetuating their state of ‘deliberate uselessness’ as designed by the colonial power centres.

The proletariat and the ‘middle class’, are actually the benefactors of colonial state in varying degrees. Indeed, some of their faculties and labour is exploited by the colonial power to reinforce its authority and ensure commercial viability of the empire. However, they are indeed rewarded - from the handsome excess that the ‘middle class’ receives vis-á-vis the meagre living wage that a proletariat member gets albeit being confined to their urban prisons, fondly called ‘chawls’ of the new world.

In modern parlance, the amorphous “Market Economy”, is commanded by a power centre that is coveted by all seekers of power. Irrespective of the social status of these contenders, they all are benefitted from this Market Economy that distributes largesse as a function of your acquired skills. Only caveat being that these skills are a function of your social privilege - something that the Holy Market doesn’t really care. That it aids perpetuation of structural inequalities is a debate for another day. IMO, the long march of democratic traditions will be halted if this fundamental inequity isn’t addressed through the electoral as well as administrative apparatus.

Going back, the philosophy of the bomb (PoB) needs another exposition around the perceptions that religions or identity is the prime motivator of terrorism. The phenomenon of terrorist being linked to religion is a relatively recent one. Rather, PoB is a remarkably secular apparatus. It is a thinking complex, that works as an antidote to the pains inflicted by the structural inequalities. It is a polemic that goes to great lengths to justify violence as the means of political action.

It might be ironic to state that PoB is a lazy political espacism, given the great lengths its proponents go to, inorder to achieve its stated ends. The only problem is that painful political organisation and legitimate politcal expression of the masses is a long, arduous process to which the revolutionary have no patience. The revolutionary is always childish, even when their actions are inspired & conjured up by the elder lot. Here, the revolutionary is pushed into the thick of action even before they achieve a stage of reason. Here, ‘the state of reason’, shouldn’t be confounded with age of the revolutionary. Sometimes, the revolutionary is an older person, having bored themselves to a point where any sociopolitical action, whatever nuisance it is, is a fulfilment of their romantic ideals. Here, the old revolutionary use age as a justification. They argue that they have tried and tested every other method and PoB is now the only way forward. These perverse justifications of violence arises from the fundamental inability to creatively engage with the larger society. But the PoB gives a reliable outlet through which these anxieties (many a times manifestly sexual) could be relieved.

Anyhow, the PoB always comes back to the perpetrators. It gives a figment of legitimacy to the colonial state’s oppressive apparatus. Adherents of PoB is always a small minority, who pose little threat to the multi-billion enterprise that the extractive colonial state is. In fact, the adherants of PoB lives in cavities carefully carved out for them. They preach various flavours of freedom discourses - tuned to suit various affinities. They have a tailor made version for the urban proletariat. Yet another concocted by university professors who don’t really understand how an automatic rifle or IED works, but see them as a “last resort” means to justify PoB. The post revolutionary anti-intellectualism will almost always consume them. But they have little choice. Under a capitalist & colonial apparatus, they feel emasculated and useless; the post revolutionary world is a promise. Their dilemma is something we will deal with later.

The purpose of this particular article is to examine the mechanism through which PoB infiltrates the minds of radicals in stratified societies of today. It may not always manifest as bombs or mass shootings; for social media acts both as a source and sink of radical hatred and discontent that propels them into action. But when they finally choose action, the fountainhead of their philosophies are the “materials of dehumanisation”, actively employed by them and against them as the situation demands.

You cannot bomb someone you see as being similar to you. The whole point of the exercise to clear out “something” (not someone) which (not who) you see as threat to the “larger good”. So the victim has to be dehumanised. Now, it is not always the bomber who would have done this. It could be a rabid political philosophy or ethnic idealism that worked over existing social faultlines. Whatever the case may be, according to the bomber, they are not killing people, they are exterminating a ‘threat’.

This is why PoB is only an expression of the larger malice of philosophies and ideologies that seek to dehumanise. And despite the efficacy and utility of dehumanisation, it has to be actively shunned by sane political actors. Modern democratic discourse must have customary as well as legal mechanisms to counter dehumanisation. Lexical controls, conventions or even curbs on discourse in favour of larger humanity should be the norm. If the school curriculum or the early socialisation doesnt’ include this with a spirit of fraternity, the society is doomed to fail.

Aspirations for a united society alone wouldn’t make to it. There is a dire need to act against social faultines. The fighting devices of dehumanisation of dissenters or rivals is something we cannot do without. Sunset begins at noon - we need to act now.