The Dance of Shiva’s Third Eye: A Lower Class Indian Woman Against the English Law of the Middle Classes in Damini(1993)

07.11.2016 (edited 14.05.2024)

Jai Maata Di! (Hail the Mother Goddess!)

Although it was appreciated in India and won a number of awards, the Hindi film Damini (1993) is largely and unfairly unappreciated in the West. It is one of my favourite films. What you see is an answer to the injustice of the middle classes that masquerades as legal truth. and how to base resistance against it. The resistance to the law is in the form of the image, idolatry and photography. The film is not obviously about vision and photography, although for those that see nothing and will try to stop others seeing, it is emphasised that photography is integral to the medium of film.

Damini is about English law, the remnant of British colonisation in India, and its relationship to vision, particularly the vision of a woman of the lower classes. Damini (‘the lightning’) is a lower-class girl that marries into a rich family and makes friends with the house-maid Urmi. Damini’s brother-in-law Ramesh (‘the ruler of Rama’) rapes Urmi, pinning her down below him with the help of his friends and Damini sees him doing so. Damini finally agrees to say what she saw in the court of law, but every attempt is made to exclude her lower class woman’s truth by the middle class which is fully in control of the western-derived legal apparatus, a truth in which the exploitation of the lower classes forms a continuum with the sexual violation of woman and her forced submission to masculine desire. Damini is indeed confined to the mental asylum because of her truth – the lawyer who goes up against her says that she is mad. Here, Damini is indeed driven insane.

Then, in one of the most powerful scenes in world cinema, Damini sees a procession of Durga Maa (‘the Invincible’, Devi Maa, the Mother Goddess, Mata Rani, The Mother Queen, Maa Shaktishaali, The Powerful Mother) in the streets accompanied by the common people through a window in the asylum and regains her memory. The look of the idolater upon the idol, the Mother and the multiple forms of Hinduism behind her, the last true religion of syncretism and one that is not organised around scripture (whatever its other faults), merges with an intense tandava, perhaps one of the most intense dance sequences on film. Damini (‘the lightning’) flashes and her energy is converted in Shiva’s dance, the dance of creation, preservation and dissolution. Shiva is Durga’s consort – her lover. Damini becomes the lightning because it illuminates the world in a flash – like photography and the writing of light.

The dance begins with the eyes and the eyebrows, as can be seen in the video. For it is the opening of Shiva’s third eye, the eye of power. It is a dance of vision. Damini’s bindi, the red mark on her forehead, represents the third eye. The story of Shiva’s third eye is traditionally associated with anger and the renunciation of desire, the renunciation of the desire for the middle class in the movie, it would appear, and the form of power that they represent. The dance is not a solo performance. It is directed at the enemies of the Indian lower class woman. The dance requires mastery of will and body, improvisation and the knowledge of classical forms. The dance is a fight which pre-empts the moves of its opponents, which enlarges and expands the body, which can suit the circumstances and adjust and adapt, which can bedazzle and confuse its opponents. The dance is a carefully constructed martial arts performance, like kata in karate. It is both exhibition and internal consciousness.

Shiva’s third eye is a vision bestowed from integration with the Mother Goddess. For Shiva, like Damini, is the one that loves the goddess – Shiva is Damini’s consort. The love of the Mother Queen and Damini’s bhakti returns her to herself and her vision and gives her the energy to fight for her truth, the truth and vision of woman and the lower classes. It allows her to fight against the legal system of the middle classes and flee the asylum. It gives her the force to say what she saw and destroy the forces of concealment and reorder the world.

The empowered Damini unites with a good lawyer who submitted himself to the desire of woman, his wife, in order to take up his occupation and she is triumphant. The good lawyer returns Damini to her alienated husband, he returns her to her love: he gives her back her desire. In one scene, the good lawyer calls himself a tiger: the tiger is the vehicle of the Mother Goddess, also known as Maa Sherawali, the Mother with or of the Tiger. The good lawyer’s wife, now dead, is only presented to us as photograph, the image. When one looks at the traditional images of Durga, the connection is clear. In an inversion of the picture of the rape that Damini saw, with woman pinned down by men, the Mother is above the tiger, it is her vehicle which she directs (the tiger itself is the national animal of India and Mother India). Above the law, there is the Mother and the law itself must only be the Mother. Thus, the quote by Mahatma Gandhi at the beginning of the movie which is said to have inspired it: “There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts”.

Damini’s justice is self-serving. It has an identity which it declares and serves, the identity of an Indian lower class woman. It is meant to protect a lower class woman that is her friend. Damini’s justice is based in emotion and empathy. She feels the hurt of another. Damini’s justice invokes a different form of power to the middle class men in power, a power that is feminised and derives its source from the mother and the sphere of the maternal. Damini’s justice is resistance: to serve not those in power, but those that are disenfranchised from power. In India, rapes are concealed by men so that the honour of their household is maintained. Thus, the powerful can prey on the weak. Damini’s justice exposes the act of making the less powerful submit to the powerful via gender in Indian society and calls for the public to claw back their honour. It is a film where justice operates in the honour economy and not the property economy of the West, where the white middle classes not only control the legal apparatus, but are also favoured by it as clients because they have more money.

The Sense of Injustice; Giving my Tour to Schoolkids; What Happens to You When a Woman Says No

24.04.2024

You are wondering. Yes, I thought about Girl 3. Yes, I was sad today. Yes, I thought about Helen. Yes, I was sad about her too. Yes, I thought about Potential Girl. And then, I also thought about the new interest in my life. If you are reading, I think about you. In your mind, you are free. You can think what you want. Nobody can take that away from you. And no one can take love away from you.

What happens to me when a woman says no to me when I ask her out? I stop talking to them. I avoid them. Why would you want to be around them after that? They don’t value you. Even when you try to force yourself to talk to them, you can’t any more. They obviously didn’t care that much about talking to you. They weren’t connected to you when you thought that they were connected to you. You don’t want to bother them with your presence when they are not even interested in you. And? You are disappointed in them and angry with them. Because you thought they liked you. But they didn’t. They don’t see you as a man. Anyone can say anything they want about it. Everyone says to me that you are wrong for not talking to them. People can say what they like. Where is the motivation to talk to them after that? They have just stuck a dagger in your chest. They hurt you. A lot. You have suffered. And then, these people want you to joke around with them and act as if nothing has happened, that you don’t care? This is this culture. A culture of lies and pretences. Where you are not even allowed to mourn in peace without someone destroying your mental composure by being right in front of you and you are never allowed to even touch them or be connected with them in any way.

I read a psychology article recently which argued that if you hold onto a sense of injustice, that it destroys your mental health. Look at the bullshit of this society. You have to hold on to the sense of injustice. Otherwise there would be no justice in this world. There would be no change, no revolution. Look at the sciences and the thinking of this so-called civilised society. They want to keep us down. They want us to spit out our anger. We won’t. It is what we are. Do you think Gandhi let them fuck him over with their injustice? Do you think he forgot about it? That is why there is an India that is not lorded over by the British. He didn’t think about his ‘mental health’ that this article is talking about. He didn’t care about himself. He cared about us. The people. For the people, your life is nothing. Your pain is nothing. Your blood is nothing. Everything is for freedom and justice and truth. And if you can’t sacrifice everything, then you are not a man and you are definitely not The Tiger. And we are The Tiger. That is what Punjabi men are known for. So we hold on to injustice. We hold on to our humiliation and the dishonouring of our mother. This is not Western ‘knowledge’, it is Indian duty. Jai Maa Kaali! Inquilaab zindabaad! Inquilaab sada zindabaad! Hail the Dark Mother Goddess! Long Live the Revolution! May the Revolution Live Forever!

20 schoolchildren. That’s how many I had for my tours that I have written about women, fairness and art history. The first group was amazing. They had this woman teacher that could read my mind. She was fantastically clever. Everything that I was saying, she got straight away because she told me that she has also been trying to shape the children according to feminism. So we worked together as a team shaping the minds of the children. If you want a teacher, that is the kind of teacher that you want in life. Someone that cares about justice and has social commitment. She was so pleased with my tour that she brought me over another group of schoolchildren so that I could deliver the tour to them! That was the proudest and happiest moment of my tours there in that context. And I hope that the seeds have been planted for the future.

The holiday is on. Two days with my friend, then about four days by myself. It is going to be amazing. Friday is just coming. I am excited.

Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway (2023) – My Bedtime Review

Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway (2023) – My Bedtime Review

12.05.2023

‘They think that their culture is the best because their country is rich. And they think that we have no culture because our country is poor.’ – quote from the film.

I haven’t watched a film in about a year. I made a special point of watching this one. It was the true story that the film is based on which appealed to me. Mrs Chatterjee, an otherwise unknown immigrant, had her children taken away from her by the Norwegian state because she raised them with traditional Indian practices. As a result, she was declared unfit by the racist and xenophobic Western authorities that believed only their ways of bringing up children were right. However, this Indian mother fought against an entire country to get her children back, a fight that would escalate into a publicised political clash between Norway and India and her ultimate victory as it was proved that an Indian mother could be a fit mother. This fight was not just for herself. It was for all the immigrant families affected by the welfare law in Norway. It was a fight for diversity and difference.

What was my particular interest in this film? Firstly, in my family, we worship the fighting mother, Mother Durga, the Mother Queen who fights against sin, or Mother Kali. Mrs Chatterjee is a heroine based on this particularly Indian role for the mother. Secondly, I have watched Western people judging me silently or in words whenever I tell them about my family, upbringing or anything personal (because we are different as Indians). This quasi-legal arrogance – based on privilege bought at the expense of imperialism and neo-imperialism and its wealth – is particularly disgusting and it is what this film criticises and destroys. (Incidentally, Indian people are actually the majority in the world spread out over all countries, not Western people. If you believe in democracy (i.e. the rules of the mass), then we are right, not anyone else). Thirdly, my first published academic article on Indian film showed that the Western Oedipal complex (with its construction of the legal subject) is based on separation from the mother. This separation itself is based on xenophobia and misogyny directed at the Asian or Indian mother, something that the film attacks. Article link here:

https://cafedissensus.com/2022/05/30/there-is-no-bad-mother-beta-and-the-indian-mother-law-against-the-wests-asian-mother-phobia/

So, having said all this, now to the review. Hindi films are the only medium which can make me emotional. This one did the job. However, I will not talk about this. What I will talk about is the idea in this film. Mrs Chatterjee – the immigrant, the poor, Indian woman – someone that has a precarious being in a country hostile to her – is denied a voice by Western law. Time after time in the movie she is told to be silent in the courtroom. Her son, who is taken from her, is also forced into silence by the brutality of the Western law which is supposed to put children’s best interests at heart. He stops talking. In contrast, the Indian law lets everyone speak, even when they have no locus or standing. All perspectives are allowed, all can say what they want to express. We cannot criticise the unjust Western law, the prostitute of power. The Western law can criticise us. This is one difference between the law in the film and the law in the West.

In the film, the father of the children abducted by the Western state only wants his citizenship at any cost. He doesn’t care about his children. He cares about money. This is a representation of the type of immigrant kept in precarity that will do anything at any cost to get money from the rich and powerful state. A state that he will not attack no matter how much it will attack him and his family, children and future. This is a real person who I have met many times. The slave that would not accept his emancipation in India’s Independence.

The film is not just about one woman’s fight. You have never watched the children turn into people that cannot speak their own language, know their own culture. That behave like the state loving fascists that spat on us, didn’t give us work, excluded us, turned us down and kept us down. The state has abducted our children in the state schools and we cannot do anything about it. But Mrs Chatterjee did it. She fought this abduction and she won. She was a poor woman without any resources. She was someone who couldn’t even speak the language. She was powerless but she fought the power. Like the Mother Goddess, she became Shakti (power). She defeated the arrogance of the state – like Gandhi. The one with nothing goes against the one with everything and becomes the greater. It is an Indian story. It is our history and who we are.

Against judgement, we protest justice. Against the state, we protest love. Against separation, we protest the union of mother and son. I am named after it. I am named after the actor that played the son of Mother India in the film and married her in real life (Sunil Dutt and Nargis). This is a film that reminds us that we are Indian (and by that, I personally mean the village, not the state. The people, not the politicians). And we will not accept a Western law which is based on separation from the Indian mother, no matter how much it is fed by wealth, power and the delusion of superiority.

Sunday Night Thoughts on the BBC’s ‘Impartiality’

12.03.2022

Throughout my academic career, my work (including drafts first sent elsewhere of published work in top journals and publishing houses) has been criticised for being ‘subjective’, ‘biased’, ‘partial’, etc. Why? Because I write as a British Asian man from a working class background, for my mother (a poor, foreign immigrant from an oppressed community). Because I criticise the racial bias in the law. Because I don’t pretend, like the scholars from the majority background, that my work is ‘objective’. I don’t believe in ‘objectivity’ or ‘abstraction’ when it comes to social comment and analysis. You shouldn’t either. Because your background, culture, childhood, life experience – how people treat you in this society – affects everything you think.

So, it was with great sympathy that I saw how Gary Lineker was treated because he pointed out the xenophobia in the government and the law’s treatment of refugees. Like me, they (the %^#*s, tried to stamp out his valid criticisms of the law because this is not the story that racist (neo-imperialist) power likes to tell itself.

However, let us not blindly support Lineker just because those in power tried to silence him. Is it right that the BBC should be ‘impartial’? Let us consider the following points.

Isn’t it funny that when the BBC pundits criticised Qatar for the World Cup during its sports broadcasts and abandoned its ‘impartiality’ to criticise a Muslim country in this climate of xenophobia and Islamophobia, nobody was kicked off the TV? Hmm. Seems like there is no rational explanation for why that happened except that you don’t have to be ‘impartial’ when it doesn’t involve Western politicians in Western countries. After all, they are just brown people with no ‘objective’ knowledge.

Actually, throughout my whole adult life, I have watched the BBC trash Indian people in practically every news story they run about India. I’m not saying Indians don’t have problems. But you read a story about rape and apparently Indians have a ‘rape culture’, when rape incidents are only marginally higher than in the rest of the world and the statistics are suspect anyway for various reasons, such as families trying to stop teenage relationships outside of arranged marriages and pretending that rape is happening when it isn’t. Description of Indian politics talks about right wing authoritarianism which you would never know existed in Tory culture in the UK. You read a review of a movie and it says it represents the widespread misogyny of Indian males. Really? In my house, we worship the mother goddess on my mum’s side and the women are involved in all the decision making at the highest and lowest level. Hindi films can be a one-actress show unlike films in the West and still draw audiences. Apparently, though, this is all ‘impartial’ reporting and is in no way racist.
Is the BBC saying that when you see the most vulnerable people in need of shelter and safety (ironically, from political oppression) literally being treated like garbage instead of humans, you should stand by and be silent? Is this the meaning of impartiality? Perhaps we should film murders happening and do nothing to prevent them as well? Is that impartiality? To stand by while the government and the law in this country violate the basic tenets of humanity? Even when this is political response to a political problem of asylum from oppressive regimes (as though everything doesn’t involve politics)?

When I was at school, we were taught that all media has bias and we were taught how to analyse news stories so that we could detect this bias. This was when I was twelve years old. Apparently, the argument we are supposed to swallow from the BBC goes against the compulsory government mandated education that I received as a ****&^%$ child…

To reiterate a point above, is it possible to achieve impartiality about news and current affairs? Isn’t everything somehow political? News ‘facts’ aren’t hard facts like science and maths, and even scientists and mathematicians have the humility to acknowledge that numbers and scientific perceptions of the universe around us depend upon our human perspective and limitations. Apparently, though, the BBC is like the Western God that has objective, omniscient, unlimited knowledge.

To conclude, isn’t it funny that every time you criticise the law in this country for being racist and the government for being racists, even when it is patently obvious, suddenly you are ‘partial’, ‘subjective’, ‘wrong’? It’s almost like they want to silence us while their racism remains completely ‘objective’ and ‘impartial’. Almost as though they are always right no matter what they want to do and no one is allowed to offer any alternatives and no one will ever listen to any criticisms. Because They (the media, the government and its law, the powerful) are literally the Western God with an (arrogant) total knowledge… But of course, this comes from a partial man with a limited knowledge and the humility to acknowledge that his is just one perception. So it must be wrong, right? Because it is not ‘impartial’…

Becoming a Woman: Revenge, Ethics, Law and The Wounded in a Hindi Film

13.10.16

Is it wrong to desire revenge? Some people suggest that it is. My own research into the Victorian period has shown that not only is the desire for revenge seen as irrational, being emotional, and unreasonable, but that it is also feminised. The desire for revenge is a transgressive desire which attacks the very foundations of Western rationality, the rationality and reasonableness of (white, middle-class) men. Perhaps the most famous example of this feminisation is Miss Haversham in Great Expectations which I read as a schoolboy, but it is also in other famous novels like Vanity Fair, where Miss Sharp favours revenge too.

It is with some surprise that I noted that revenge was also feminised in my favourite Hindi film, starring my favourite actor, Sunny Deol. The name of the film is Ghayal, which means, literally, “wounded”, although I believe the correct translation into English should be “The Wounded”, which would make a significant difference to the overall meaning of the film. Ghayal is not just a film, it is an entire philosophy, some of which I will try to make clear in this little piece. I return to the film when I begin to forget who I am and where I come from. The film is a revenge story. The villain kills the hero’s brother. He is framed for the murder and then an accusation that he killed his brother because he was having an affair with his sister-in-law leads her to suicide. The hero triumphs and has his revenge outside of the law. The film is divided into a number of sections, but the obvious structuring is to contrast everything that follows with a first happy period.

Female revenge is present even in the first happy period, which is full of comedy. One day, the heroine of the film travels to see the boxer hero at his training camp. Because he is scared that he might get sent home, he says to her that he doesn’t know her and tells her to go away. The hero is the only person in the world that the heroine loves and who loves her back. She has no family as her mother and father are dead. When the hero tells her to go away and pretends that he doesn’t recognise her, he is refuting his love for her and treating her as a non-person with no identity. He is excluding her and returning hate and apathy for her love. He hurts her badly, he wounds her absolute trust in him and herself, in other and self.

The heroine does go away. But then, the hero has to apologise. He finds her in a restaurant and tries to speak the words of love to her. But now, the heroine’s mind is concentrated on revenge. She tries to provoke the other customers in the restaurant by turning all of the hero’s words against him to insult them, saying that he has called people bald or fat, etc. She wants the hero to be beaten by the mob, she opportunistically manipulates them to give the hurt and the satisfaction that she will feel. The customers are equated with India – this is an explicit comparison that is made. But Mahabharat (Great India, or ancient India) is also invoked when the hero actually touches the heroine.

As soon as the woman is touched, she opportunistically uses the status of victim to further manipulate the mob. She pretends that she is a damsel in distress, she mimics completely passivity and helplessness. She calls out that the hero, who she pretends is a stranger, mirroring his refutation of her identity, has touched her and rhetorically questions the crowd: Is there no man among you (to protect me, to have the courage to protect me, to protect not only me but all women, the women that are your sisters and mothers)? Here is when the Mahabharat comes to the rescue in the form of Bhima. Bhima is perhaps most famous in the epic saga because of his relationship to women, law and revenge. Draupadi, the wife of five men, was dishonoured by Dushasana who vowed to keep her hair unkempt and unmanaged until they were washed with the blood of her oppressor. Bhima was one of her husbands and he vows not only to bring his wife the blood, but also to drink it. Their vows and laws are based on their revenge. The beginning of legality is based on revenge, the revenge of a woman.

The heroine only forgives the hero when he falls from an elephant in trying to win her over. It is only when the hero is hurt that the heroine is able to forgive him. He has now shared her hurt. He has felt what it has been like to have been in pain. He has hurt himself for her. This is love.

The main revenge story is also marked by its relationship to the law and feminisation. First of all, the hero is clearly “the wounded”. I was discussing wounds and their relationship to femininity with one of my supervisors – someone had questioned my tying together of the wound with femininity in a poem by Robert Browning at a postgraduate reading session – and she told me that the wound has indeed been historically been associated with women, which a number of commentators have noted. He has been hurt badly. The hurt is that his loved ones have been taken from him. But the hurt is not just the loss of his brother, who is murdered, but also his sister-in-law who is like his mother that commits suicide. She is murdered just as much as his brother because she is dishonoured and shamed by what the world has been led to believe about her and her brother-in-law. However, the main hurt has been from the law. The law rejects the hero’ hunt for his missing brother and then he is subjected to brutal torture when he is framed for his brother’s murder. It is in the courtroom that the accusation of the incestuous relationship with his sister-in-law is made that leads to her suicide and extinction, her non-identity. The entire legal system fails him. What he should have been able to trust does not help him, it takes away his love, what he loved most. It takes away that which gives him his identity – his family, the brother and sister-in-law that are like his father and his mother.

Thus, the hero’s quest for revenge is a quest for revenge against the law. It is explicitly stated that his campaign of revenge is a campaign against the law since it is a direct challenge to law and the rule of the law. Of course, this law is only there to protect the villain, the rich man who plays Western music on his piano. Yet every time the hero pulls the gun against the villain, he is impotent. The crisis of impotence reaches its head towards the end of the film. Yet, in the most beautiful scene of the film, when the hero’s campaign of revenge is about to fail and he is pounded by a group of policemen and the law which forms a tight circle around him, the heroine sees him as the victim. She remembers what it is like to be the victim. She knows its reality. She knows what it is to be the wounded. And it is woman and the wounded that help the wounded. They see the place of woman in the wounded. She gives him the loaded gun and he is no longer impotent. He shoots and he does not miss. He hands himself over to the police with a smile on his face and a child that he rescued from the villain, the child that was separated from his mother by the villain and snatched from her, separated from the one he loves the most, applauds. The crowd of the people applaud too. The hero walks beside the heroine who gave him back his potency, both towards the law.

On ethics and law. There is a structuring of five. Draupadi had five husbands. There are five in the family: the hero, his brother, his sister-in-law, the heroine and the evil uncle who is a lawyer, the one that makes the suggestion of the incestuous affair. The brother, before he dies, says that five fingers of the hand are not all the same. The hero has four associates in his desire for revenge (five in total), each of which fall, leaving only him. This is because in revenge, the only one concerned and interested and self-serving can carry out their revenge for themselves. The hero kills the evil uncle, the lawyer: the identity of lawyer, liar, must be eliminated. Law itself is a prostitute: it is said to sleep on the bed of those such as the villain, the rich man. It is not the sacred prostitute, it is the one that only serves the rich. Law is there to be hated. It destroys love and unity. It is the insertion of law and the lawyer into the family which leads to the dishonour of woman and her extinction. It is law that stops a woman becoming a woman and which threatens her integrity and existence.

There is a lot to learn from “The Wounded”. Hurt is only appeased by hurt. Because when the oppressor is hurt, it is then and only then that they learn what it means to be hurt. It is only then that they learn the disintegration of self and integrity. It is only then that they learn what it is to be a victim, to be woman. And all of the negative stereotypes associated with an angry and revengeful women are the very things that we need to be: touchy, sensitive. When we want to hurt the law, we have to attack the places that hurt most. We must take everything from the law and give nothing. We must be merciless and relentless. For it is only the execution of revenge that teaches empathy. It is there to eliminate the ego. The oppressor must be humiliated in a contest, in a duel. In the film, the hero kills the villain, but the real defeat of the villain is in knowing that the law which protected his vicious self cannot save him because he has hurt others. Either no-one must be hurt or all must hurt. This is the lesson of empathy. Hurt only desires further hurt. Hurt can only be satisfied by further hurt, by being placed in the exact same place and position that you place another through hurt. Revenge is the teaching of empathy and the production of emphatic persons, learning empathy with woman. This is what is law.

Waiting for Justice

03.06.2018 –

Christianity, Islam and Judaism share similar features as religions. In particular, they are all based on similar ideas of justice. In each religion, an all-powerful god occupies the position of a judge and there is a day of final judgement when good actions are rewarded and there is punishment for bad actions. The idea that the god of these religions is a judge is said to derive from the political and cultural context of the time when the bible was first written, where it was the prerogative of royalty to mete out judgement. Since god was likened to a king, it was natural that he should also be seen as a judge. The idea of a final day of judgement that comes in the afterlife is possibly derived from the ancient Egyptian beliefs where there is a similar concept.

Because their god is a judge, justice is therefore considered to be a foundation for Christianity, Islam and Judaism and notions of divine justice inform and influence ways of living for believers. But what is interesting in each religion is the fact that the believer has to wait an entire lifetime in order to receive their just desserts. Justice can only be achieved upon death in another time and space, not in the earthly realm and earthly time and space. It is apparent that waiting for justice is really what informs the believer’s actions and choices. Why is the wait for justice so important to these religions and their philosophies? Why is it necessary for their conceptualisation of justice?

From an atheist’s point of view, the requirement that justice can only be meted out by a god in the afterlife and one has to wait for it forever is a convenient mystification that disguises that fact that god doesn’t actually exist and can’t intervene in earthly affairs. However, let us consider the wait for justice in the believer’s own terms. How can each believer wait their entire existence for justice?

Science tells us that human beings are driven by reward-seeking behaviour. We do something because we get a reward out of it. The reason why we hunt for food is so that we can enjoy eating it. The reason why we have children is because we enjoy the process of making children and derive pleasure from it. The religions mentioned above, however, all defer the concept of reward. There is no immediate reward (or punishment) for action in this world. There is only a divine reward or punishment, not an earthly one. One reason why a believer has to wait for justice is therefore to destroy the reward-seeking motivations and behaviour of the individual. The believer is prevented from following human impulse and the instinctual drives of the body. They sacrifice such impulses and drives for a belief. Hence, the human body is being repressed in each religion in order to foster and support an imaginary belief. The human body is being sacrificed for a thought. One component of the wait for justice is therefore an illusion. My speculation is that this illusion is pleasure-inducing, since the reward system relies on pleasure (the pleasure of food or sex). The pleasure derived from this illusion that there is an absolute and final justice which transcends earthly considerations and the desires of the body occupies a prime place in the reward-seeking and reward-inducing components of the believer’s mind (I believe one can say that this would exist in the dopamine system in the brain).

What kind of a pleasure is induced by a wait? There are two things that one thinks of here, each with a sexual component. First of all, one thinks of frustration. Frustration can be enjoyed if one is a masochist. The pleasure in frustration relies on a simple idea, that the reality of a fantasy will not match the pleasure contained within the fantasy. If justice is considered important and foundational to each religion, it is because the fantasy of justice is considered to be more pleasure inducing than the reality of earthly justice. The second thing that one thinks about is foreplay. The prolonging of the beginning of the act can induce pleasure as a specific type of frustration and inform action. The wait for justice in each religion can therefore be conceptualised as a type of foreplay.

I think there is one further component of the wait for justice. Divine justice is seen as final, absolute and perfect and true in each religion. One can therefore wait for it patiently and hopefully. On the other hand, earthly justice is messy, limited, imperfect and frequently based on falsity and mistake. The ones that wait for justice can therefore be likened to a single person that keeps on waiting for the perfect mate to come along even though he or she knows that perfection does not exist. Such a person will not go on dates or consider any substitute or alternative.

The ideas of divine justice have been interpreted in radically different ways by different groups in each religion. I remember reading a pamphlet from the Jehovah’s Witnesses which stated that the devil owned the world and there was no such thing as earthly justice. What is interesting and perhaps most important about the wait for justice in each religion is the case of the Protestant. In Western countries, those people that are most likely to support the earthly system of justice and the laws of the land are conservative Christians. These people appear to believe that the divine system of justice has been translated into earthly form in the mundane and banal form of the English judge. There is therefore a big strand in Western thought in which divine conceptions of justice still play a big role in the conception of what justice is.

What are my own thoughts about the wait for justice? I believe that one should never wait for justice. I believe that the wait for justice is a mystification that favours the powerful in society. If one keeps on waiting for this justice, then one no longer takes affairs in one’s own hands to change and transform this unjust world of ours. I do not believe in any perfect, absolute and unlimited form of justice that is out there waiting for humankind. The very concept of justice is an illusion. I do not understand how people in this world of ours can believe in this illusion. There is merely the self-interest of the powerful which governs all things in this world of ours, including our laws and conceptions of law. And this self-interest forces those with little power to lose their voices and their will, to forsake their self-interest. There is no justice. Yet, even though there is not justice, there is still self-interest. I do not believe we should wait for justice. I believe that we should fight for our own self-interest and our own truths. That is what the idea of “justice”, to use the outdated and misleading term, means to me.

Internalising Stereotypes: Suggested Identities, Individuality and Free Choice

25.04.2018 –

Abstract: Oppressed groups in our society internalise negative constructions of identity and learned sets of behaviours transmitted in media which override personal responsibility and individuality. They do this because they are required to exhibit such identities and behaviours on the public stage because of the constraints imposed upon them by culture.

Keywords: Stereotypes, Cultural Brainwashing, Free Will, Personal Responsibility, Negative expectations

Elaboration. Clarification. Evidence.

Speculation, even that of the armchair theorist, has to be sustained by the holy trio I have just cited. The last time I wrote, the topic was how the justice of the oppressed has been constructed as inevitably having a violent and bodily conclusion. The argument that I made was that the identity of the violent individual and even the framework of action of this individual have been transmitted across Western culture and time as a model for the behaviour and personhood of oppressed groups in our society. This is a model which they turn to in order to construct ideas of justice and individuality and to deal with injustice in this society since it is conceived of as “their own justice”, a justice that is peculiar to them and in which constructions of personhood and difference are inherent. Another reason why they turn to these models for identity and action is because they have been systematically denied any other form of expression in this society so that they cannot become factors in public thought, politics and in the apportioning of power.

There is a big assumption in the argument that I made. Instead of talking about individual responsibility, consciousness and so on, I cited the phrase “cultural brainwashing” in the key terms at the start of the speculations. I argued that individuals take up the identity and framework of action evident in the plays of Shakespeare and such productions as the recent Black Panther movie because they have been insidiously insinuated to them from the time before they have even been born.

Why have I assumed that the identity of the violent avenger is suggested to oppressed individuals and can override conventional notions of individuality, free will, conscious choice and personhood? Is there any proof of this? Just because something is there in Shakespeare and the Black Panther movie, and a similar thing seems to happen in real life, does that prove that my speculations are correct?

While I was pondering whether fiction can be invoked to prove something that happens in real life, I thought I would make a few notes on the topic of suggested identity and the internalisation of stereotypes and how both relate to free will, choice and conscious thought. To introduce the topic, I want to write about a recent change in advertising standards which you can read about here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40638343

As the BBC writes, the Advertising Standards Authority have set out a mission statement to “crack down on ads that feature stereotypical gender roles.” There were particularly aggravating examples that were cited:

One example was an advert for Aptamil baby milk formula that showed girls growing up to be ballerinas and boys becoming engineers.

Complaints had also been made about adverts for clothing retailer Gap that showed a boy becoming an academic, and a girl becoming a “social butterfly”.

What was the justification for cracking down on such adverts? As the BBC journalist writes:

The review suggested that new standards should consider whether the stereotypes shown would “reinforce assumptions that adversely limit how people see themselves and how others see them.”

“Portrayals which reinforce outdated and stereotypical views on gender roles in society can play their part in driving unfair outcomes for people,” said Guy Parker, chief executive of the ASA.

“While advertising is only one of many factors that contribute to unequal gender outcomes, tougher advertising standards can play an important role in tackling inequalities and improving outcomes for individuals, the economy and society as a whole.”

There is a simple idea at the heart of the justification of the advertising crackdown: media plays a role in constraining individuals to adopt certain identities and schemas of action. Media can determine and limit notions of personhood and action. Media can override ideas about free will and choice to produce certain types of individuals that act in a certain kind of way. Stereotypes in the media can be internalised and magnify and build on societal expectations to influence behaviour and identity. There is a qualification: media is just one factor in contributing to “unequal gender outcomes”.

The question remains, however, whether this justification is valid or not. The ASA suggests that media is just one aspect of an entire societal apparatus which is producing gender and gendered forms of identity and behaviour. They make the same claim about cultural brainwashing that I do, that such cultural brainwashing produces zombies that lack responsibility and free will. How exactly is this process of cultural brainwashing played out?

As I was thinking over this topic, trying to work out how individuals internalise expected identities and learned sets of behaviours, one persistent image kept on coming to mind. I am talking about the case of the athlete with the home crowd advantage. There is no need to focus on a particular example, since everyone knows exactly what I am talking about. Here is the typical scenario. There is a home crowd which is composed of people of the same nationality. The home crowd have one athlete in the final who is of the same nationality as them. If one looks at the past record of this athlete, there seems to be very little chance that they will win anything. The athlete’s ranking is not that good. However, the crowd expects the athlete to bring home a medal. Somehow, amazingly, the athlete performs better than he or she has ever performed in their life. They fulfil the crowd’s expectations and bring home a medal. It is the same with teams as it is with individuals.

Here, then, is the prime illustration of how a society’s expectations can be internalised in order to produce a certain identity, that of medal winner, and an expected set of behaviours, a medal winning performance. But what isn’t remarked on and what is brilliantly weird about this phenomenon is that it actually happens. How can someone whose body hasn’t ever and seemingly can’t perform at that level suddenly do what it does in the final? Why does their body and their behaviour change so radically? It is precisely because of the societal expectation that they act in a certain way and become medallists. And this societal expectation is based in nationalism and ideas of national identity. These athletes are drawing on notions of shared and constructed identities in order to behave in a certain way. All the training that they did in their life never allowed them access to a medal winning performance before. It required an internalisation of shared national identity and a meeting of the expectation and demand of the nationalist crowd in order to achieve that result.

One can see then, that individuals can internalise identities and behaviours which are expected of them by society and which themselves radically transform them and their actions in a way that is nothing short of miraculous. The expectations of a group can change the very fabric of reality. These expectations can override conscious thought – the athletes have always consciously tried to win but were never able to gain the victory, however much they trained and tried. It is the adoption of a shared cultural identity and set of behaviours by athletes which, although they are seemingly unrelated to the task in hand (after all, it is not a requisite qualification of being British that one is a gymnast or fast runner) completely changes performance and result and, indeed, alters the body at a fundamental level.

Well. Let us return to our ideas about how culturally shared negative expectations of oppressed individuals can transform their behaviour and override conscious thought, free will and choice. If the scenario in the athlete example can be seen as analogous to how a culture works, then we can see how and why negative expectations fundamentally change the character of individuals. Such expectations, transmitted though media, are internalised and are too powerful to resist. They do away with ideas about free choice, individual responsibility and individuality. Such ideas crush the very stuff that persons are made out of to reproduce stock types. They are too powerful. The group’s expectations completely overwhelm and defeat the individual. The individual can then only exhibit learned behaviour. The word exhibit is important. I think the athlete situation is analogous to the situation in culture because of one important point. Both the athlete and the oppressed individual are on display. They have to perform as though they were in a play to a society that is watching since their actions take place in public. This is why I think that the justice of the oppressed is a form of communication and perceived as the only way to express ideas about justice and the resistance to injustice.

Well, such are the speculations of the armchair theorist. What is the importance of such idle speculations and this short note on the matter? I think the significance is that in Western media, there are only really negative representations of oppressed peoples. They are always shown as violent, barbaric, backward and criminal. Where are the positive role models? When was the last time you saw a British Asian as a hero in western media? The fact is that it is negative expectations of us that are always channelled in the western imagination. If people then internalise and act on these negative expectations, which are not just in media, but everywhere around us in this society, are these people really to blame? If personal responsibility and individuality are really obliterated by group expectations, can we point the finger at perceived criminals? Surely our ideas about law and justice, which rely on notions of free will, choice and individual responsibility have to change?

Shakespeare and the Justice of the Oppressed

23.04.2018 –

Abstract: Violence and justice are linked. Our culture teaches oppressed groups in our society that violence is the only viable means available to them to resist injustice. These lessons are evident in Shakespeare’s plays in which oppressed characters always demand justice in bodily terms and in horrific acts against the bodies of oppressors. Hamlet is just one example.

Keywords: Violence, Justice, Law, Shakespeare, Hamlet, Nasim Aghdam, Cultural Brainwashing

A recent news item that caught my eye was the case of the YouTube Killer, Nasim Aghdam. The woman in question, now known as a killer, was someone that cared passionately about justice. As the Guardian stated, she “used social media to fight for justice on a planet ‘full of diseases’” (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/04/youtube-shooting-suspect-nasim-aghdam-profile). Nasim had been a gentle person from her childhood. In an interview, her father reflected on how out of character her crime was. He told the Bay Area News Group that “his daughter was a vegan activist and animal lover who as a youngster would not even kill ants in the family home, instead using paper to move them to the back yard” (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/04/youtube-shooting-suspect-nasim-aghdam-profile). What led a gentle woman that was committed to justice to such a violent conclusion?

Violence and justice. Violence and justice. Are these two things intimately connected? Or was Nasim’s final act just a random event? For the armchair theorist, a theorist who moreover has no time to pursue his many and diverse interests, everything has to remain at the level of speculation. My speculation is that Nasim was one of the oppressed. She was an Iranian immigrant in a country that is thoroughly and systematically afflicted with racism. She had seen how the human race treated our animal brothers and sisters who she felt an honest kinship with. What the immigrant suffers, what the lover of nature must suffer in this world of iniquity and injustice. Have you ever stayed up all night wondering where your justice is? Have you ever cried in your heart of hearts for justice, knowing that it will never come? As Nasim wrote, “I live on a planet that is full of injustice”. The justice that she was led to, in the form of violence, was the justice of the oppressed. Already, the reader is enraged. How can one call a random killing an act of justice, like the killer framed it? How can one speak of the justice of the oppressed as a form of justice, hence giving it some sort of validity and legitimacy? What evidence do I base this seemingly bizarre and arbitrary claim upon, that Nasim’s act was an act of the justice of the oppressed? The evidence is in Shakespeare’s plays.

There is a stock type character in the Shakespeare play, a Nasim, one of the oppressed that demands justice in the form of terrible violence. In the Merchant of Venice, the stock type is a Jew called Shylock. Because of the indignities and hate he has to face in a Christian country, Shylock demands his pound of flesh from one of his oppressors. Shylock is not alone. Tamora, the Queen of the Goths, who is captured in war as a trophy, also demands justice and exacts a systematic plan of revenge against her oppressors. Her wrath is terrible indeed and involves murder, rape and mutilation. This stock type, the immigrant, the oppressed that is out for a violent justice exists in the Western imagination even today. I have written at length about one such character in the recent Black Panther movie, who is called “Killmonger’ to emphasise his link with violence. The Killmonger, an immigrant, wishes to arm the oppressed against the oppressors and is therefore treated like a supervillain.

Why does the oppressed victim pursue a campaign of horrific violence against their oppressors? It may seem natural to link violence and revenge in ideas about “instincts” and “natural aggression” but this would be to obscure the cultural link of meaning between them. Moreover, such ideas obscure the fact that the oppressed have had to endure horrific suffering themselves to become what they have become. The reader of this piece has never seen the illusion of justice torn to pieces before their eyes and realized their awful impotency in this world of injustice. That illusion of justice, which gives meaning to the life of those that live in a thoroughly unjust world is what makes life bearable. When it is gone and replaced by harsh and punishing truth, how does one bear life? What illusion can give meaning and value to life again?

What gives meaning and value to the life of the oppressed is to be revenged. The brutal mental wounds that they have to bear are to be resolved in an act against the body of the oppressor. The oppressed know that they cannot attack the mind of the oppressor. The mind of the oppressor is blind to the justice of the oppressed and to their fury. This mind, the mind of the oppressor, is moreover, a mind shared by the entirety of culture and society. It sits there like an all-powerful Christian god at the heart of everything. It is in the so-called laws and justice of the time, the art of the time, in the literature of the time, in the music of the time, in the commercial transactions and economy of the time, in the international relations of the time and in every act and thought in this culture and society. For the oppressed, there is only one method to attack the oppressor. It is the body. And this is why the justice of the oppressed is inextricably tied to the body.

The greatest play of Shakespeare is about this same idea. Hamlet is one of the oppressed. He has to live as subject to someone who has killed his father. Hamlet knows that the only way that he can achieve justice is to kill his oppressor in a violent act. There is no other alternative. Hamlet doesn’t use poison or any subtle method against his oppressor, although he thinks of it. He doesn’t raise a revolution against Claudius, his uncle and usurper. The justice of the oppressed can only be expressed in violent form against the body of the oppressed. This is the ultimate lesson and finale of the play. Shakespeare has taught us that the justice of the oppressed can only take a certain form which allows no exceptions.

When the people judge someone like Nasim then, a woman who loved justice, and write their biased accounts about what led her to her act, when the culture that claims that Shakespeare is some sort of human god, I will always say the same thing. The oppressed have only acted according to the rules which this culture and society has put in place. They have aimed for the only justice which we have accorded them, which is the justice of the oppressed. These people are acting in a framework of thought and action which this culture and society have given them, a framework which is specially intended for them and which has been taught to them even before they were born. As immigrants and oppressed people, they have been taught that they can only express their rage in terms of the body and against bodies. They have not been allowed into the rules that govern thought, only the rules that govern the body and violence. It is this culture and this society that is ultimately at fault. It is Shakespeare that it is at fault. It is the oppressor that is at fault, not the oppressed. A woman that could not hurt an ant can become a cold blooded murderer because of a lifetime of suggestion and brainwashing in Western culture. And then, this victim, this same woman, can be shown as an example of what immigrants are like in this same culture, as just another example of the same thing. Such is the hypocrisy, malice and deviousness of the culture that we live in, and its ultimate injustice.

The Mask of the Superhero and the Nakedness of Kali

08.03.17

On this International Woman’s Day, I, a bad person, will talk about a woman that has inspired me. To me, she is a fictional woman, although Hindus revere her as a real person. I want to contrast her with the masked superhero. I want to show how she is both more valiant and powerful than the masked superhero. I will first set out my ideas about the mask of the superhero. I will then talk about Kali and her wonderful nakedness. I want to contrast two forms of power. The first power is masculine. In this power, identity is concealed. That is the strength of this power. The second power, that of Kali, is feminine. In this power, identity and the body are apparent. That is the strength of this power.

Let us start with the superhero. The superhero is typically male and typically masked. One notes the pattern not just in comics, but also in the recent superhero films which have been made and which have been popular. Why is the superhero masked? The mask conceals the identity of a man and the concealment of identity protects the superhero. The mask allows the superhero to live a “normal” life outside of the battlefield in incognito. The mask of the superhero is also said to protect his loved ones. The mask is therefore related to the making of the normal and normalcy. The mask is said to protect love and loved ones. It is presented as social rather than anti-social. The mask as seen as necessary in the make-up of society and social organisation. The mask separates the field of action from the field of normalcy.

The mask is also associated with law and the separation of the public sphere and the private sphere. The mask allows the superhero to move out of the identity of a single man and fight for a supposedly abstract and universal justice. The mask and the concealment of identity is the way that the individual man can move out of his own limited perspective and life into a field of battle which is much bigger than himself. The mask allows a man to fight as the champion of justice against injustice and evil.

The mask is therefore crucial to the concealment of identity and the fight for justice. It enables the fight for justice as it conceals identity and only as it conceals identity. It is only then that the hero can become an abstract and supposedly universal figure outside the limitations of what is human. If the mask is a symbol of power, it is of a power which attempts to divest itself of identity. If the power of the mask is associated with anything, it is associated with the justice of the West.

The mask of the superhero can be contrasted with the nakedness of Kali. Kali is the supreme Woman and the supreme Warrior. She is the Mother of the whole Universe and the supreme form of power. She is also the destroyer of evil. She is the protector and the liberator. Kali stands for a justice envisioned as female, not male. Her female body is emphasised, as is her nakedness. As Wikipedia states, Kali “is often shown naked or just wearing a skirt made of human arms and a garland of human heads”. Kali wears no disguise when she steps into battle, nor any armour. She is fearless. She assumes no other identity than her own. Indeed, it is not even possible for Kali to be clothed. As Wikipedia states, “[s]he is often depicted naked which symbolizes her being beyond the covering of Maya since she is pure (nirguna) being-consciousness-bliss and far above prakriti.” The explanation of a Hindu is more telling: “She is shown nude because no finite clothes can cover the infinite” (http://hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/why-is-goddess-kali-shown-topless).

If the bloodthirsty and invincible Kali is a fighter for justice, then she never stoops to conceal her identity. She betrays no weakness. She does not fear that others will know her or her loved ones. She does not need a mask to give her power. She is power herself. Her power is naked. Her power derives from her femininity and her association with nature. For where the male superhero needs clothes which are produced by humans, Kali stands at one with nature in her nakedness. She is nature herself and the mother of all. She is the supreme power of femininity and the female form. She is the beauty of the body.

These are the two opposed forms of the fighters for justice. The masked superhero and the naked Kali. The mask of the superhero hides his face, his features, his human expressions and his eyes. He stays in a state of calm repose, as no one can see or feel his emotions. He acts outside of vision and the limits of vision. The nakedness of Kali is an assault on the senses. She is a vision herself. One sees emotion and anger in her face. One feels her through sight as total fury and devastation. As Wikipedia states, “[h]er eyes are described as red with intoxication, and in absolute rage, her hair is shown disheveled, small fangs sometimes protrude out of her mouth, and her tongue is lolling.” Emotion, femininity, animalism, nature. These are all attributes of the vision of Kali. Her body highlights the bodily senses which are attuned to the material world: her eyes which see are red and more evidently visible and her tongue also to be seen, that tongue which tastes food and which is out to taste blood. Kali is beautiful because she is aggression and anger itself. Her hair is disordered and she is outside of any conventional depictions of beauty. Her power is her beauty, the power of fury unleashed.

Such is the mask of the superhero and the nakedness of Kali. This is the character of two fighters for justice. The masked superhero is Western and male. The naked Kali is from an ancient India and she is the supreme embodiment of Woman as the Mother of us all. The masked superhero hides his face and his emotions and expressions. He wears what is really a uniform for one person. Kali wears nothing. She is without shame and supremely confident in herself and her body. The masked superhero has a split personality: the unlimited fighter for a seemingly abstract and universal justice and the limited man. The masked superhero is a recent invention. Kali is beyond splitting. Kali is beyond the contemporary. Kali is beyond the limits of all: she is infinite. She is supreme form. She never dies. She comes in every age. She fights for justice in every historical period. This is why Kali is inspiration and the masked superhero is contemptible.