Gandhi & Tagore were contemporaries. Though they openly admired each other, their views on many issues differed dramatically.
Gandhi was an arch conservative and a nationalist. He believed that India’s progress lay in going back to our traditions and rejecting most Western mores and practices.
Tagore was a liberal and an internationalist. He believed that the essence of India and its progress lay in its assimilative nature that incorporated and harmonized influences from all quarters of the world.
Gandhi was a man of action.
Tagore was an artist who created out of thoughts, words, music and paint.
Tagore gained quick recognition and admiration in the West and then as quickly became a figure of derision and is internationally almost forgotten today.
Gandhi gained international recognition slowly but remains a much admired and cited world figure.
Paradoxically Tagore endures in the culture and daily life of Bengal and Bengalis while Gandhi’s influence in modern India’s culture and its daily life has faded away almost completely.
Tagore and Gandhi. The contrast, I believe, is multi-dimensional, fascinating and archetypical of the essential duality of life, nature and civilization.
Showing posts with label Indira Gandhi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indira Gandhi. Show all posts
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
The Death of Macho
Once in a while comes a take on the world that is breathtakingly simple as well as breathtakingly deep..
“The Death of Macho” by Reihan Salam published on the Foreign Policy website on 22tn June is one such event.
Reihan take is that “for years the world has been witnessing a shift of power from men to women. Today, the Great Recession has turned what was an evolutionary shift into a revolutionary one”
Foreign Policy (FP) magazine and now website has a track record for publishing seminal pieces of work. I would put Reihan’s work at par with Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations” first published in FP many years before 9/11.
Reihan besides being deep is witty. For example, in support of his central contention he calls the current recession he-cession.
One of the trends Reihan spots in support of his thesis is the increasing emergence across the world of women as the leaders of their country. A corollary occurs to my mind: Did India, as in so many seminal shifts in history, take the lead in this one too? Did macho in India begin to die when Indira Gandhi became the ‘only man in the Cabinet’?
Humor aside, has Reihan unearthed something that heralds the coming of a world very, very different from the one we live in?
In Hindu mythology and even in Jungian consciousness, the female principle is of nurture. If nurture become the operative word in the world (it is certainly has not been for all of mankind’s history) will it produce a golden age or will global civilization wither and die in the absence of man’s aggressive quest for dominance?
To some the answer to the above question may be obvious. Others might dismiss it because it is based on what one of my erstwhile colleague used to call a “critical assumption”. Either way you would do well to spend some time reading Reihan’s magnificent article.
“The Death of Macho” by Reihan Salam published on the Foreign Policy website on 22tn June is one such event.
Reihan take is that “for years the world has been witnessing a shift of power from men to women. Today, the Great Recession has turned what was an evolutionary shift into a revolutionary one”
Foreign Policy (FP) magazine and now website has a track record for publishing seminal pieces of work. I would put Reihan’s work at par with Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations” first published in FP many years before 9/11.
Reihan besides being deep is witty. For example, in support of his central contention he calls the current recession he-cession.
One of the trends Reihan spots in support of his thesis is the increasing emergence across the world of women as the leaders of their country. A corollary occurs to my mind: Did India, as in so many seminal shifts in history, take the lead in this one too? Did macho in India begin to die when Indira Gandhi became the ‘only man in the Cabinet’?
Humor aside, has Reihan unearthed something that heralds the coming of a world very, very different from the one we live in?
In Hindu mythology and even in Jungian consciousness, the female principle is of nurture. If nurture become the operative word in the world (it is certainly has not been for all of mankind’s history) will it produce a golden age or will global civilization wither and die in the absence of man’s aggressive quest for dominance?
To some the answer to the above question may be obvious. Others might dismiss it because it is based on what one of my erstwhile colleague used to call a “critical assumption”. Either way you would do well to spend some time reading Reihan’s magnificent article.
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