What Bhartrihari can Teach Professors of International Relations Theory

I suspect that Spivak asked the wrong question. It is not, can the subaltern speak. It is which language will the subaltern speak in?

In the March issue of Millennium - Journal of International Studies (one of the few brave journals in the world of International Relations theory, brave enough to utter 'Pablo Neruda' and 'Raina Maria Rilke' during serious and solemn investigations of the international) there two articles which discussed the possibility and implausibility of 'Non western International Relations Theory'. The discussion was between Amitav Acharya, whose naivete is almost charming, and Kimberly Hutchings. Both appear to agree that one must 'look' for non Western IR theory. Acharya's essay is therefore aptly named, Dialogue and Discovey: in Search of International Relations Theory Beyond the Rest.

The urgency in their tone is unmistakable: there has been a WW (white and western) war waged in International Relations theory. Like all other world wars, this started off in Europe and Great Britain and then later, involved the United States. And like the previous two world wars, the exodus to the United States has led a shift in power, money and intellect to that state. Now weary of waltzing in the same continent, theorists look elsewhere for stimulating, richer and denser theories to explain the mess this world is in.

How arrogant is that? This quest and petition to broaden the epistomological, ontological, methodological theoretical horizons is based, again, on the assumption that such a theory exists, and that it can be captured. That irrespective of the fact that academia today, is structured in in codes and rules which debilitate the growth of 'indegenious knowledge'? More importantly, what is the 'non west?

The Phd was invented by the Germans, along with chemical weapons and the Holocaust (btw, the source of this information is the incredibly dazzling work by Peter Watson 'A Terrible Beauty'. Watson fills his work which is like a dense, rich and dark forest with a multitude of shiny facts. Such as: the fabric for Freud's clothes were picked by his wife. Now, THAT is important.) Getting back to the PhD, the world is intellectually structured in a manner designed, engineered and controlled by the West. Citations, publications, PhD's, presentations, seminars are all, all, all forms of generation of knowledge, in the West. Anonymity and agnosticism may have been familiar to scholars and pundits in pre-globalized and non-western worlds, but the reduction of the planet to 'one world' means, that thoughts and intellect are modelled uniformly. This uniformity in expectation of the 'intellectual' (Ivy league university professor, German/French/American origin, Holocaust hater, and yes, WW) blocks, very effectively, the acknowledgement of a intellectual who does not possess these traits.

Like Bhartrihari. So even while scholars like Onuf, discuss the works of Wittgenstein the study of language, even when Hutchings speaks dialogue and then, discusses the ancient Greeks and Habermas, there is a rich dense work which exists behind a door, which is never knocked at. The Jain philosophy, for instance, speaks in a language which is completely post-modern. The Jains argue that there are multiple ways of looking at the same object and difference does not mean hierarchy. There can be multiple truths. But is the Jain philosophy drawn into the main discourse with the same conviction and confidence, Bourdieu is? No. Because Bourdieu is published, French and white. Another example: Bhartrihari's vakyapada should be made mandatory reading for all WW's. The Sanskrit linguist and scholar fundamentally differentiates between that which can be expressed, and that which cannot. That which can be is shabda and that which cannot is sphota. Bhartrihari's beauty lies in the assumption that there are limits to the expressions of language, and that which is unexpressed and indescribable is luminous only because it is unexpressed, inexpressable and indescribable.

It is therefore a pity, that while scholars yawn with boredom with 'Western IR Theory', there is a great deal of reluctance to open the world to scholars, who may not have done a PhD or thoughts which have not been 'peer reviewed'.

The Metro As Metaphor

In 2010, I forget which month, the Delhi government designated the first bogie of every metro train as an exclusive feminine space. DTC buses have reserved seats on the left hand side of the bus for a long time, but passengers have been looking ahead, not at each other. The seating arrangement of the metro places passengers in a conversational/confrontational mode, brings about a different dynamics. And this is what this poem is about.

Futile pink lines
Cannot leash these beasts
Who watch wistfully
This mobile zenanakhana
And on the other side
Eyes lined with mascaraed anxieties
Are grateful
For this temporary sarkari relief
From the beast
within

And,
men and women
man and woman
biologically bound
but categorically seperated
Silently and sullenly
are hurtled into
The darkness of togetherness

Men and women
chained and channeled
Wheeled, woven, weft
and warped

Watch each other
Like suspicious
and strange animals
Tied to the same pole
And are hurled
in the darkness of togetherness

Potted Love

I potted my love
In this pot
This pot is mine

I potted my plant;
Tore it by the roots
Yanked the clinging tendrils
From the jungle
And placed it in this pot.
My pot.

And so I thought
Foolishly.
This potted plant.
This love.
Is mine.
I pulled it out
And now,
It is here.
And mine.

Upheaval and possession.
Destruction and possession.
Violence and love.
Inseparable, no?

The possessed potted plant,
however.
Succumbed not
To the watery pleasures I offered.

And chose instead
to gaze at the sun
the stars
and sun

And when the stars too
fell asleep
My potted and bottled love
Secretly dug its roots
deep into the very soul of this earth

Where it could gently nudge
Kiss and embrace
The roots
of its jungli loves and lovers

The Politics of Colours?

paint/pānt/
Verb: Cover the surface of (something) with paint, as decoration or protection.
Noun: A colored substance that is spread over a surface and dries to leave a thin decorative or protective coating.

The Ministry of Environment and Forest is predictably painted a pale shade of green. There are few explanations for its peculiar name: aren't the forests a part of the environment? The same way the tiger is part of the forests, but the Indian government believes that it can 'save the tiger', but destroy its habitat.But eventually, I suspect, everything will end up in the museum, like the Red Indians.

Confounding indeed. The common citizen is constantly confounded by these injunctions: save water, save the crocodile, plant trees, save paper, save the girl child (what is a 'girl child'? Either one is a boy or a girl, or a child or an adult, but 'girl child'?), save electricity. Save the planet too. The Ministry however, cannot be saved. This July, Jairam Ramesh handed the reins over to Jayanthi Natarajan. Ramesh is now in the Rural Development Ministry. With the likelihood of the Land Acquisition Bill being passed, Ramesh is in the right Ministry to ably handle the media and the spotlight. What is of graver concern is that the new Minister, Jayanthi Natarjan is not really known for her concern for the environment, or ahem, forests.

But that is the real point, or as the CSE would put it, the real 'dirt'. Climate change politics is not about climate or change. Scholars and academics and journalists are almost unanimous on this point that climate change is distinctly threatening to life, as we know it. Michael Grubb, editor of Climate Policy, argues 'tackling climate change is technically and economically entirely possible...it is politics that stands in the way'. I might as well state, 'world peace is possible, but states stand in the way'. Elsewhere, Lavanya Rajamani, states that India's policy of not undertaking commitments is 'unsagacious'. An incredible scholar, true. But sagacity has seldom been an element in formulating foreign policy.

The ethics of green politics is limited to painting buildings green: its easy, visible and symbolic. But meaningless.

On Colonialism

(yes, this poem was thought of while writing an essay on India's foreign policy. Crazy? Yes.)


Nations unaligned, but bound
Different, but lying with the same language
Each night
That seductress


Language
The teacher of 'how to open mouths'
That when the words spill out
They taste similar
Familiar
Even intimate
But are licked
By a foreign tongue

Blindness

How can one believe
That it takes blindness
to see

To be blinded
to believe

And that all ways of seeing
need a bit of blinding

Moss

This poem was written after a weekend in Shimla, after I had walked around the Viceregal Lodge.

The moss
crept over the rocks quietly
murmuring to itself
wrapping secrets within that green density

Moss
that verdant lining
which lies with the pavement
licks the tree trunks
with its furry tongue

and it watched
quietly, wistfully, watchfully

The maps and the geographers
The globes and the kings
the chandeliers and the dresses

Till,
Lady Edwina cried out
"a dress, a dress...the colour of green velvet"
and whispered to the tailor hoarsely, 'mossy'

And that evening
the pins shone in her hair
her skin glistened with a strange light
and the green...mossy...dress

clung, clung, clung

and Lady Edwina whirled, whirled, whirled
Into the dark secretive night

But when she climbed into bed
and cried for the maids to
Pull out the pins, the stars. the dress
the dress clung on.
and licked harder.
and whispered to itself:

cling.