Speaking Tree - The Hellishness of other people:
Hell is other people-Jean Paul Sartre
I don’t know if defence minister Manohar Parrikar has read Sartre. But his remark that sending people to Pakistan was the same as sending them to hell has undertones of the French existential philosopher. Sartre posited the ‘Other’ as one who endowed us with what he called ‘unauthentic existence’, a form of being which negated its own being; I identify myself only by my otherness to the Other.
Actor and former Congress MP, Ramya, took exception to Parrikar’s remark. Having visited Pakistan, she felt that the place and the people, for all their internal problems such as terrorism, were not all that bad after all.
For her pains, Ramya has had a case of sedition filed against her by a complainant who is the president of an organisation called the Kodagu Praja Ranga.
The episode is one of an increasing number of instances highlighting the climate of what might be called ultra-patriotism that is sweeping the country. The ultra-patriot is someone who seeks to establish a nationalist identity largely based on the demonization of a targeted Other.
The ultimate ultra-patriot was Hitler who sought to give the German people, demoralised by the oppressive terms of the Treaty of Versailles which followed World War I, a resurgent identity based on a fabricated Other, a satanic notional enemy responsible for all Germany’s ills: the Jew.
I don’t know if defence minister Manohar Parrikar has read Sartre. But his remark that sending people to Pakistan was the same as sending them to hell has undertones of the French existential philosopher. Sartre posited the ‘Other’ as one who endowed us with what he called ‘unauthentic existence’, a form of being which negated its own being; I identify myself only by my otherness to the Other.
Actor and former Congress MP, Ramya, took exception to Parrikar’s remark. Having visited Pakistan, she felt that the place and the people, for all their internal problems such as terrorism, were not all that bad after all.
For her pains, Ramya has had a case of sedition filed against her by a complainant who is the president of an organisation called the Kodagu Praja Ranga.
The episode is one of an increasing number of instances highlighting the climate of what might be called ultra-patriotism that is sweeping the country. The ultra-patriot is someone who seeks to establish a nationalist identity largely based on the demonization of a targeted Other.
The ultimate ultra-patriot was Hitler who sought to give the German people, demoralised by the oppressive terms of the Treaty of Versailles which followed World War I, a resurgent identity based on a fabricated Other, a satanic notional enemy responsible for all Germany’s ills: the Jew.
Hitler’s form of ultra-patriotism, or super-nationalism, led to the unthinkable horror of the Holocaust.
Today, India is witnessing a rise in its own form of ultra-patriotism, a super-nationalism largely derived from identifying oneself through the negative principle of being one who is ‘not-the-Other’. Who is this real or mythical Other we use to distinguish ourselves from in order to validate our own being, who and what we are?
It could be a number of entities or groupings. Very commonly, as in the case of Manohar Parrikar and the many others who feel the way he appears to do, the hated and hellish Other is the state of Pakistan, which is often accused – not without a measure of justification – of waging a proxy war against us through the export of terrorism.
Pakistan apart, we find other Others to affirm our own identity as ‘not-the-Other’. The Other could be a person who eats beef, and who creates an antipodal ‘not-the-Other’ in the self-styled gau raksha, or cow vigilante.
The Other could be someone of a different community, or different caste, or different gender.
Any and all of such real or manufactured differences are used to help ourselves to establish the negative mode of being of the ‘not-the-Other’.
The true opposite of the hated Other is not the ‘not-the-Other’, which is only the mirror image of the Other. The true opposite of the Other is the collective We, the bridge that joins us opposed to the chasm that divides. ‘How can I transcend into Thee?’ asked Martin Buber.
The question provides its own answer: my wish to transcend my own ego and become one with another being is nothing more, or less, than the capacity for empathy, which is what makes us human, and humane.
Empathy – the affirmation of the commonality of being – is the true opposite of the negativism of the Other.
If we define hell as other people, and vice versa, where should we hope to find the roots of heaven? Not in ultra-patriotism, but in its obverse: a planetarianism that includes all of us in a commonness of being, the We who inhabit Planet Earth.
Today, India is witnessing a rise in its own form of ultra-patriotism, a super-nationalism largely derived from identifying oneself through the negative principle of being one who is ‘not-the-Other’. Who is this real or mythical Other we use to distinguish ourselves from in order to validate our own being, who and what we are?
It could be a number of entities or groupings. Very commonly, as in the case of Manohar Parrikar and the many others who feel the way he appears to do, the hated and hellish Other is the state of Pakistan, which is often accused – not without a measure of justification – of waging a proxy war against us through the export of terrorism.
Pakistan apart, we find other Others to affirm our own identity as ‘not-the-Other’. The Other could be a person who eats beef, and who creates an antipodal ‘not-the-Other’ in the self-styled gau raksha, or cow vigilante.
The Other could be someone of a different community, or different caste, or different gender.
Any and all of such real or manufactured differences are used to help ourselves to establish the negative mode of being of the ‘not-the-Other’.
The true opposite of the hated Other is not the ‘not-the-Other’, which is only the mirror image of the Other. The true opposite of the Other is the collective We, the bridge that joins us opposed to the chasm that divides. ‘How can I transcend into Thee?’ asked Martin Buber.
The question provides its own answer: my wish to transcend my own ego and become one with another being is nothing more, or less, than the capacity for empathy, which is what makes us human, and humane.
Empathy – the affirmation of the commonality of being – is the true opposite of the negativism of the Other.
If we define hell as other people, and vice versa, where should we hope to find the roots of heaven? Not in ultra-patriotism, but in its obverse: a planetarianism that includes all of us in a commonness of being, the We who inhabit Planet Earth.
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