Thinking Like a Planet, published in the Financial Chronicle 5th September, 2017

There are several ways in which we know that a new evolutionary step in the recorded and fossilized histories of the planet,  is on the way. Sometimes, when the earth seems more prone to disaster, we watch horrified as cities crumble into running water, when earthquakes and wars coincide, when bombing destroys beautiful terrains, and leaves them looking like deserts, without people or oases. Theologically, and experientially speaking, people during these moments wait for the world to end. The mortuary rites of people dead in large numbers, during disasters, are often quite different from the ones that such victims would have had, if they had died in due course, of old age or lingering illnesses. The idea of  “mass deaths” then, is represented through the morgues, the recognition of amputated body parts, the state funeral in the case of heroes, or the recital of sacred verses for the lost body at sea.

 The statistics of suicide also go up, during this time, as people who feel they cannot withstand the pressure of the times, lose their life by irrevocable individual choice. The crushing of the peasantry in the 19^th century in Europe, was reflected in the large number of suicides that occurred in every country.  Based on these statistics, Emile Durkheim provided a typology of four basic kinds of suicides, since the subject matter of Sociology had to be foregrounded as a discipline.  By reading the Suicide rates, he understood that  firstly, individuals could take their life if they were too integrated in the society, and felt that their  very lives were being demanded of them, by Society, resulting in altruistic suicide. Cultic suicides belonged to this set, as did heroism in the battlefield. Then there were egoistic suicides, where individuals did not feel integrated in the norms of the society, felt alienated, and sometimes, (as with intellectuals) saw themselves as being different from their fellow beings. Anomic suicides occur when the norms exist, but have no hold on the individuals who commit suicide because normlessness is rampant, because of social crises. And the fourth kind of suicide, fatalistic suicide, occurs because the individual has no solution, no possible avenue for survival. Clearly, typologies are used only for the purpose of bringing some clarity and order to reality, which is blurred, fleeting, constantly changing.

The loss  for the Nation, of S. Anita, the young woman from Tamil Nadu, (Indian Express 2^nd September 2017) who committed suicide, because there was a huge gap between the  syllabi and training of  Dalit students from the State run schools, and   that provided to more privileged students from CBSE schools, while entering Medical Colleges,  show us how much pressure is put on young people. In this respect, their lives are ransomed to death, because they take on the burden of their community upon themselves, and draw attention to the state of educational hierarchies which are  so evident in India. Such young people believe that mobility is the avenue to freedom, and that with education they can hope to achieve a better life, while at the same time serving their community. How can we protect these young scholars? Privatisation of education is not the answer.

The idea of Human Rights is placed in a planetary circumference, and globalization is the way in which young people initially draw their vocabulary and their strength. They find, to their horror that the established system with its hierarchies is larger than their motivations, and the despair they feel is so total, they take their lives. Durkheim proposed the institutionalization of guilds (associations) as the best way by which this call to suicide, could be restrained. “Currents of Suicides” have also been seen  recently with regard to Blue Whale Challenge. Durkheim excluded the element of psychological  disorders, while explaining rates of suicide, and presented the concept of social causes, as the predominant aspect of analyzing suicides. One of the most important films made by a young  contemporary director, Abhay Kumar, is Placebo. Here, he shows how completely alienated medical students can feel in their work place, the hospital, and the sense of constant panic they experience, when the absorption of other people’s pain, leaves no time for understanding one’s own.

 The questions that Ram Rahim, trickster godman, (in jail, now, for rape of devotees,)  poses to society, is essentially the same, “what or who will integrate the declassed?” By providing a make-believe world, the opium of the masses, (as Charles Dickens and Karl Marx diagnosed it) he provided solace to those who whether rich or poor, were already in the clutches of misery, by drug abuse or by hunger. By manufacturing illusion, through film and  pseudo architecture, he wished these people to understand that the experienced world, through hallucination and emotional manipulation, was easier to follow than the real.