Idea Ahead of Substance

Although nobody considers the Marxist economic model seriously anymore, it would still be simplistic to say its influences on current thinking, not just in economics, but in practically every field of the social sciences and philosophy, have died. Marxism failed not so much on any account of a shortfall in the richness of ideas it threw up, but arguably because of what Isaiah Berlin summarized as a too optimistic presumption of the predictability of human history and predicament. From the crooked timber of humanity, nothing perfectly straight was ever made and nothing perfectly straight can ever be made is the famous statement of this contemporary thinker who is considered as one of the greatest historian of the human mind. Marxism, like all other utopian philosophies, set about doing what essentially is impossible `“ evolving a doctored and presumably perfect architecture of the future of human history. Such things work on paper, and seminars of intellectuals only, but seldom ever in practice. This warning needs to be heeded by one and all, but especially by our ever growing number of self-righteous, self-appointed moral police forces, each spelling out their own versions of the Ten Commandments, enforced in manners and styles that would shame even marauding mobs.

But despite this irredeemably flawed presumption of Marxism, the thought process that it introduced, replete and pregnant as it is with humane thoughts of justice and equality, would have already been immortalized. Its underlying philosophy such as encapsulated in the often quoted line: `to each according to his needs and from each according to his ability` is still stuff for the finest poetry and certainly one of the most profound statements on the essence of fraternal bonds. The strain between the beautiful and the ugly is tremendous. It is for these strains between the ideal and substance embedded in the ideology that the college days jokes made half in jest and half in seriousness, such as: `if you are not a Marxist at 25, you have no heart, and if you remain a Marxist at 35 you have no head` have been so appealing and illuminating of an inherent dilemma. The idea may be beautiful, but if the shadow falls between it and its substance, its obituary would have been embedded in its very birth announcement. It is not just Marxism, but so many other ideas and ideologies marked by an arrogant presumption that human societies progress in rectilinear paths that are completely predictable, which have met with the same fate. Here too our idea makers and pushers, most of whom have assumed the mantle of these onerous missions without any democratic mandate of the population amongst which they function, must be wary. They must have to continuously draw up a balance sheet between the ideas they champion and the substance of it viewed against the backdrop of current reality, so that between the form and substance; between the idea and reality do not fall the notorious shadow.

This is no idle rumination. For very often, the unmistakable tendency amongst our midst has also been to give premium to certain consciousness created by persistent, hard-pushed and campaigned ideas, over what is substantive and material `“ a very subtle and gradual process of `brain washing` which ultimately results in the `consciousness` itself replacing the substance, and at some point subsuming the identity of the substance itself in the minds of the recipients of the message. But these games, more often than not heavily politicized, are destined ultimately to nowhere, and if at all they have destinations, it is in the shape of various states of frustrating stalemates, precisely because of the inconsistencies between the ideals and reality. Often such incongruencies ride on the shoulder of emotion and sentiment thus effectively camouflaging them from reason`™s eyes. But without these camouflages many of these campaigns would be exposed as lost and redundant causes. Painful as the case may be, the need has always been for the courage to see the issue after stripping them of such camouflages. Meitei revivalism, Naga homeland and many of our most burning issues need to be put through this test by fire.