Gautam Bhan is one of the foremost academics advocating how environments in the Global South need their own theory. Over the last two years, I have had the opportunity of dabbling into a lot of discussion on knowledge production within the Global south, as well as the urge to decolonise education in this region. In my effort to give meaning to what "decolonise" means in academia, and how does one think of performing it, I indulged myself in Bhan's talks, from one of which, I got some very tangible ideas for academic practice. Here they are:
The ability to translate
Academics are not able to translate their language in different scenarios/situations and therefore they feel silenced. Academics speak in largely academic situations/settings because they are almost sure that it is (going to be) the space from where the validation of their language comes from, and thus are trapped in the "seduction of the academia"
Automatic Modernity
Bhan points out how the project of modernism gives an automatic direction to aspiration - and to aspire has to come to mean to be modern. This conceptual relationship between modernity (read modernity coming from the West) and the desire for progress and the engine of aspiration needs to be challenged. That is the culture work academics have to collectively undertake, Bhan suggests.
On Insularity of Academic Voice
Bhan says that no one stops academics from writing, intervening and performing in domains outside of academia. Therefore, academics cannot afford to stay within the bubble of knowledge production of academia and lament that the world outside is not listening to them. The must actively find audiences and write in their language to make their knowledge and findings about the world more accessible.
On Theory from the North
Bhan says that we need to "particularize" Northern theory - meaning, theory coming from the north is not universal theory, and that it must be assigned a status that it is a theory of that place - and therefore, it cannot be "the" way of doing/thinking things everywhere, rather, "a" way in which things happen somewhere, and therefore all ways of doing things hold value and knowledge because they are inherently embedded in certain values of a place.
आत्म-खोज के अंधे पथ पर, हर राहगीर कहीं न कहीं एक सहयात्री - सिद्धार्थ - से मिलता है। बुद्ध की उपलब्धियों से ज़्यादा, मुझे उनका सिद्धार्थत्व ज़्यादा मूल्यवान लगता है। बेशक, उन्होंने ज़्यादा विपत्तियाँ न देखी थीं, न ही झेली थीं, लेकिन बस एक दुःख के अनुभव ने उनके राजसी अस्तित्व को दांव पर लगा दिया था। एकाएक टूटकर, वे सारे दर्द को समेटकर चल पड़े। उन्होंने दुख को ईश्वरीय करुणा के आयामों में ढालने के लिए खुद को पूरी तरह समर्पित कर दिया। उन्होंने मानवता के थोपे हुए दायरे में विपत्ति को शीघ्रता से अनुशासित करने के लिए अपने दुःख के अनुभव को नकारा नहीं। जिसने अपने जीवन में समाज के किसी भी स्थापित मूल्य को नहीं माना और अपने आत्म-विकास की प्रक्रिया में अस्तित्व की संरचना में हस्तक्षेप नहीं किया - वही सिद्धार्थ है। न तो इस प्रक्रिया को मंचित किया जा सकता है, और न ही इसका प्रयास किया जाना चाहिए। सिद्धांत मूलतः आत्म-खोज की उड़ान के दौरान निकले पंखों के वधशाला हैं, जो उस विशुद्ध इच्छाशक्ति का उपहास करते हैं जो व्यक्ति उसमें लगाता है। फ्रांसीसी कवि बौडेलेयर ने अल्बाट्रॉस नामक एक विशाल पक्षी के बारे में एक कविता लिखी है। इस पक्षी के पर पंखहीन और सुडौल होते हैं। आकाश में उड़ना ही इसका साहस और सौंदर्य है। लेकिन अपने पंखों के भार के कारण यह पक्षी ज़मीन पर चलते समय बहुत अनाड़ी लगता है। एक जहाज के कप्तान ने गलती से इनमें से एक समुद्री पक्षी को गोली मार दी और उसे आंशिक रूप से पकड़ लिया, और फिर, डेक पर उसके पंजों को घसीटते हुए आनंद लेते हुए, उसने पक्षी के शरीर की फुफकार देखी। जब बलपूर्वक खेलने की उसकी इच्छा चरम पर पहुंच गई, तो कप्तान ने विशालकाय पक्षी के पंख को जलती हुई मशाल की नोक से जोड़ दिया। उसकी उलझी हुई चोटी में छेद करने पर, कप्तान को उपलब्धि का अहसास हुआ। चार साथियों को बुलाकर, वह अपनी आत्म-प्रेरक शक्ति खोजने में लगा रहा। सिद्धार्थ की आत्मा के जीवन/अस्तित्व के पिंजरे में फँसने की अनदेखी करते हुए और उसके निष्कर्षों को मानव दर्शन की नींव के रूप में देखते हुए, मुझे उन ज्ञानियों की बैठक की याद आती है जो समुद्र में मत्स्यांगना की अंगूठी से झनकार रहे थे। सिद्धांत इसी तरह लोगों का मज़ाक उड़ाते रहते हैं। ये वे शरणस्थल हैं जहाँ लोग अनुभव के अंतर को स्वीकार करने के बजाय एक स्वीकृत सामान्यता के आगे झुक जाते हैं। तो फिर पैगंबर के कष्टों का क्या? विश्वमंत्रियों के उपदेशों और मुल्लाओं के भोर के अलार्म से अस्थायी रूप से खामोश हो सकती है, लेकिन यह दुनिया को हिला नहीं पाती। मंत्र के पीछे छिपे हुए रसूलों का अनुभव ही वास्तविक मार्गदर्शक है। धोखेबाज गुरुओं की शरण में जाने से व्यक्ति न केवल मार्ग खोजने में असफल होता है, बल्कि लगातार भटकता रहता है। इस तरह के पथभ्रष्ट मार्गदर्शन को स्वीकार करना या अस्वीकार करना एक व्यक्तिगत निर्णय है। लेकिन अस्वीकार किए बिना अस्तित्व को हिलाया नहीं जा सकता, और बिना चुनौती, कोई नवप्रवर्तन नहीं हो सकता। यही दुख और शोक की महिमा है। इस पठार को छोड़कर सृष्टि के इस जल-तल में डूब जाना ही आत्म-खोज का तप है।
It just occurred to me Some people like me doom scroll Instagram because it gives me/Them an analytical charge, to constantly keep parsing information that is coming your way. Here, the lust for information is maintained much like the earlier form of media - be it books reading material. However, the nature of information is much multi mediated - to include not just text, but also Sound, video, Thus, rather than consuming a single kind of thing, me is bombarded with a lot more, which to an analytical mind could be very exciting and testosterone inducing. It gives a thrill to sit and crunch more data, it makes the right kind of next level challenge then to consume this multimedia data, reeling at a much faster pace.
Connected to Earlier Post
Link: https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/mumbai-news/cultures-of-play-a-new-book-looks-at-how-children-play-in-the-city-101742756856410.html
includes my essay:
Locating Play Across the Inside / OutsideThis paper aims to trace the evolution in the cultures of play-spaces for children within the changing apartment living configurations of the middle class within the city of Mumbai over the last fifty years. The contention of the paper is to bring out the dialectic relationship between the forms of spaces and spaces of play that emerge in the densifying suburban residential neighbourhoods of Mumbai. In order to scope this study, I focus on three stages in typological forms of apartment configurations that have evolved in the city over 1970-2020, and the allied neighbourhood provisions to compensate for playspaces, that primarily come to characterise suburban living in Mumbai. These evolutions are reflective of the social, economic and political forces that shape urban development, and in effect the infrastructure of play as inscribed in the city.
In a documentary noted vocalists from the Gwalior gharana Rajan Sajan Mishra mention of one question their father used to ask them:
"What is the opposite of sur?"
Sur, in common parlance - is a note - an established harmonic frequency of sound between which the musician glides to produce delightful experience.
"A quick answer to this question," Mishra brothers elaborate, "is besur meaning, off-note. However, we don't believe that is so. The opposite of sur is silence. Music is the play between sur and silence. If we dont allow silence, we cannot appreciate sur."
The generosity of such a definition of sur certainly needs discussion. Now, sur is often understood as to be in sur. So the opposite of it could mean to not be in sur. One could approach the understanding of sur from speech too: For example, why is speech not considered music? Why is speaking not singing? In this line of thought, singing or music is that experience of hearing that glides between or through particular frequencies of sound. These frequencies are ascertained as harmonics of a base note in ascending or descending order, clearly distinguishable as different from the previous. We thus have 12 key notes - including harmonics and intermediate sharp/flat notes. A more trained ear would be able to decipher 23 - which demands immense hearing acuity. At a simply level then, to be in sur means to glide from one identified note to another through an aesthetic rule. Any sung or heard note, off the aesthetic register shall be deemed off-note or besur. Speech does not follow musical rules thus, but is not bereft of sur thus. We all speak in some pitch - however, our subsequent words are not uttered in complimenting musical pitches. Speech my have lyricality, but still, it ceases to be called musical, or surail (surila).
To think of sur held in conjunction with silence rather than be-sur offers a fundamentally insightful way of thinking about music, people and the world at large. For music, it calls to identify each utterance as a musical frequency - in some scale. If not identifiable, it coaxes the listener and the musician to rethink their own knowledge so as to locate the sound in an appropriate scale. In such an understanding, Pt. Rajan-Sajan Mishra not only go past the binaries of sur-besur, but they suggest, in fact that every uttered word in a part of the world, in some sur - that exists in some scale - identified or unidentified. Such a reading speaks of the emancipatory potential of musical knowledge in its abstraction, making it inclusive through the transcendence of spoken language.
What is there in enjoying (Hindustani Classical) music? Sometimes, I feel it's so simple - dwell on the glides and transitions between the different notes and what they make you feel. You suspend yourself in a pure abstract space - you are free to make your meaning out of it. A free wheeling journey that you can totally indulge in. Sometimes, it answers the internal questions in bypassing jargon of verbalism completely. If you are able to decipher, the tone, texture, quality, ingenuity of moving between the notes will reveal to you the emotions that speech carries in its intonations, instead of words. And at times, the economy of words that dot the intonational will upen up multiple words between speech and silence. It is perhaps this interplay of sound and silence that defines the world of sur in the musico-philosophical conception of Pt. Rajan-Sajan Mishra.
