Tweaks and Leaks: An experiment with truth

[a version of the following was published here: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/122854/tweaks-leaks-experiment-truth.html ]

Bringing out the “ghee” by tweaking one’s finger is an age-old Indian way to assuage difficult situations. It is apparent that it is indeed used in non-Indian pastures too. With respect to the recent hullaballoo in arresting Julian Assange, the owner of wikileaks, tweaking the finger (or the “reasons” to catch him, if one can) is the only recourse when faced with the impunity of not being offered the customary “ghee” as part of being the rulers of an established status-quo. Indeed, wikileaks among its other endeavours, had been raging a cyber jihad against the equally revered and hated nation of the world—the United States—through strategically timed, leaking of “truth” and thereby debunking the nation’s credibility across eyes that behold. The U.S had to do something—albeit that “something” was shrouded in legal and technological confusion as to what could be done—since Assange had been claiming it as “investigative journalism”, and wikileaks has fought and won over 100 legal challenges since its inception in 2006. Finally, the god of lady luck smiled on hurt parties like the U.S., as Julian Assange was recently arrested, but on charges of various sexual offences, which, he claims to be not true; quite, in the same vein the U.S and U.K. organizations have been claiming news leaked by wikileaks as not true.

Consequently, Assange’s arrest has brought off on the forefront not only a cyber gang war, as visa and mastercard websites were hacked in supposed retaliatory reactions, and the editorial in the Washington Times by Jeffrey T. Kuhner saying that Assange should be treated “the same way as other high-value terrorist targets”, but also the question as to who should control the representation of “truth” and how. Should everybody know everything? Or should news/facts/truth be privy to powers that be? As a recent nationally renowned journalist claimed, it is within every media person’s powers what should transpire and what should not, the overlap of moralistic prescriptions and dominant preferences on “truth” notwithstanding. Post-Matrix (the movie) and post postmodernism, it is common understanding that there is no single truth. Truth is subjective and dependent on agreement by two or more individuals on the experience and interpretation of a particular event, leading to the formation of an emergent consensus on reality. Assange sought to strike on this consensus, and while his arrest on irrelevant (that is, irrelevant to the “real” grounds on which he was most sought after) grounds has led to media and mass speculation on what would happen next, whether one could continue to receive the forbidden pleasures of having sneak peeks in the green rooms of the major powers, the audacious question meekly raised is: whether the U.S. or hierarchical superlative powers could really do anything to silence voices against it?

To revisit this question from a Foucauldian perspective, through punishment, a disciplining process is attempted. It is expected that this disciplining attempt would create docile entities—that would work in unison in economics, warfare, politics and the media—and be subjected to continuous surveillance, recordings and notes for subsequent internalization of the principles of the status-quo. Jeremy Bentham might be dead, but his Panopticon design of the prison, framed in 1785, still continues in latent form, as lesser hapless mortals are watched by bigger mortals without being informed of the process. Is it then really surprising and illegitimate, given the circumstances, that bigger powers would retaliate when the gaze is reversed/directed at them?

Despite the arrest of Assange, wikileaks declares that it will be back and continue to show the true facts. After all, facts exist independent of human perception and/or experience. Whether a statement is true or not, is largely dependent on certain other facts presented as supplementary evidence. Holding the control and access to those evidence adds on to one’s position in any hierarchy, local, international or informational. To clarify, supervisors hold facts/truth from their subordinates in the office, adults contain truth from children, friends keep secrets too, and percolating these small, restricted scenarios of taking liberties to the broader level, holding down of facts or truth become a classic and fascinating display of power struggles. Changes in regime and powers happen not when one power is overthrown but as Vilfredo Pareto said, one elite takes upon the other. We’d like to believe that the media would behave like the famous character in the cult movie “Gunda” who always professed that he keeps everything open (“mera naam hain bulla, main rakhta hoon sab khulla”). However, the role of the common man is but to accept such transformations in power struggles without much ado, as supporters or followers of one elite or the other and less as initiators or reactors to the proceedings.

They used to say, whoever goes to Lanka, becomes Ravana. As for finding the truth behind things in general, in this such-called age of information, the fun has just begun. Welcome to reality as it continues to ruin our lives, as Calvin says and get more bites, sorry bytes out of it.

Balance Forward

They say habits are ingrained. I'd say some are borne out of relationships and stay with their "once upon a time" mark-ups even though those relationships might not be there; or might have changed their form and content. And these habits get so much under your skin that one would wonder whatever happened to the processes of their genesis.....yadi yadi... "whatever happened to us?" etc.
As I was engaged in one of such habits, I was listing them.....and they surprized me in their range though I guess I could be spared of any embarrassment as regards their numerical nominality. Here they are:

1. Certain food habits, such as having certain food, in certain ways, in certain parts of the day; though I had the idea that I was fairly open-minded as far as having food in whichever form and at whichever time of the day was concerned.

2. Having throat lozenges (Halls)

3. Music preferences (okay, a tad little bit)

4. writing in dots and ending sentences with dots, with full knowledge of how ungrammatical they are

5. This one concerns the activity I was engaged in as mentioned in the beginning. This I've been doing, even after 31 years.

Sleep in foetal position, in perfect foetal position that is, even with my feet crossed.

Considering all relationships are based on some form of tacit or stated understanding of exchanges, we all probably carry our own unique balances forward while checking off the option of reviving some of them.

Life, is good. Ain't it?

Measuring up Multiculturalism: just a pinch

[A version of this entry is published here: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/117822/measuring-up-multiculturalism-yardsticks-may.html]

“We are all multiculturalists now”, Nathan Glazer, the well-known social scientist from Harvard had called attention to the way of life in 1997 when Americans of all ages, shapes, sizes, colour, political orientation, sexual orientation, gender, race and religion of the contemporary post-civil-rights era subscribed. This society spoke the language of tolerance, and respected the mosaic in diversity. Now in 2010, in both of our capacities as active and passive observers of social reality, we have the options of weighing in declarations of multiculturalism being a workable policy or being an “utter failure” as asserted by Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany. Indeed, opinions on multiculturalism range from being the proverbial sweet carrot waved to attract and assuage immigrant settlement in a new country, to the attempt of putting a square peg on a round hole. Whether or not we are all multiculturalists, the concerned philosophy affects us all beyond having relatives living in Australia, U.S.A., Canada or Germany, in our existences of being citizens in a multi-ethnic country where ethnic diversity is not a recent consequence of immigration.

Stepping aside from debates on whether multiculturalism is an unachievable dream, an empty promise, an assimilationist garb or a cultural commitment to ethnic groups, it remains so that multiculturalism is a demographic reality. Demographic multiculturalism is and will be on the increase in the global north owing to extraordinary regionalization of population growth and global fertility, leading to an unequal and irreversible migration gradient. Based on this actuality, quite understandably, multiculturalism as an official policy promises an atmosphere to retain cultural integrity and heritage for migrating ethnic groups. However, the congruence between policy and practice does not align perfectly as evident in empirical evidences the world over, owing to willingness to accept demographic multiculturalism but dismiss right-based multiculturalism to ethnic groups. The age old debates of melting pot and assimilation, of recognizing and encouraging diversity that exists as an antithesis to integration lies at the heart of multicultural debate which surface in situations of banning the hijab in France, granting of minimalist rights to skilled workers in Singapore or even the murder of Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam or bombings in trains and buses in London. As onlookers, populist views question the granting of equal and civil rights to new immigrant groups who fail to respect the “laws” of the new country, who do not follow the “original” cultural practices; in addition, these immigrants are found to engage in disruptive and non-integrative practices, many of which are derived from their ethnic lineage that stand in stark contrast to the “basic” culture of a country. A natural question follows: how far should one tolerate difference from other cultures that threaten to move cornerstones of preceding settlers? Moreover, how much multiculturalism is enough to maintain sustainable cohesiveness in contemporary societies? Answering these questions somewhat, a convenient and workable form of multiculturalism is entails active invocation of “tolerance”; even then, in spite of granting cultural rights to maintain one’s lineage, the multicultural festival manages to marginalize ethnic groups and turn them into exotic artefacts to be brought out and made visible when the time and demand is right.

Assimilation, rationally speaking, is offered under bated breath as the veritable survival strategy to escape being branded into specific identity markers and to blend in with the “mainstream”. This involves making simple choices in cuisine such as opting for pasta over curry, meatballs over falafel, making certain choices in dressing like leaving the turban, the hijab and salwars behind, not being overtly religious except when fashionably celebrating Christmas in the contemporary social climate and being able to pronounce in perfect accents, words such as “Wednesday” or “homogenous”. Put another way, any such showcasing that can keep people (migrants or immigrants) off from “blending” with the mainstream/dominant ethnic group is encouraged to be shed off. The tacit assumption remains that multiple cultures can exist together only when lineages intermesh, with differences having the least chance of being perceived in antagonistic terms. Homogeneity amidst heterogeneity or unity amidst diversity remains the covert agenda target of any society, multicultural or not. As they say, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”; when in Bombay, do as you are told; when in Bangalore, be who you are but respect the locals who are tolerating you.

Worth noting is the fact that the use of tolerance as an idea points to a sense of a privileged position, a sense of superiority complex, a sense of hierarchical content, that allows others to exist, in fitting with the existing status quo. Moreover, the notion of tolerance comes hand in hand with a defined sense of boundary within which new entrants to a community or nation are accepted. As a Ph.D student staying in Canada and researching on immigrants and Canadian identity, I’ve often found that for “mainstream”/dominant Canadians (of British lineage) their sense of Canadian identity is often admittedly derived from the colonial history of ruling the world. This enables a mainstream/dominant Canadian to draw upon a common reference point and justifying the age-old sense of authority when perceiving, defining and categorizing people from different ethnic groups. The question of assimilation, tolerance and multiculturalism, thankfully or not, did not arise in case of colonizing nations when they captured different nations or when they came to settle in the lands of the aboriginals.

Logically speaking, there is a degree to which individuals could assimilate into a new culture. For example, immigrants coming from countries that are similar in linguistic, economic, political, cultural and religious aspects are found to integrate and adapt to the “host” society easier than those who are considerably different linguistically, religiously, culturally, politically and economically. An immigrant coming from England or France would assimilate, adapt and integrate better with the dominant Canadian society than those coming from China or India. Several immigrants to Canada have adapted and assimilated to an overarchical western notion of Canadian identity in terms of customs, views and perspective and have emulated western ways of socializing, dressing, speaking and the like, based on their interaction with mainstream/dominant Canadians. Simultaneously, they have also maintained another exclusive, “ethnic” life and navigating within these dual worlds complete their Canadian identity of being multicultural.

The crux of the matter remains that living with diversity does not necessarily entail a more accommodative or accepting standpoint. Whether multiculturalism remains a successful social experiment or a failure is dependent on whether we consider terms such as “tolerance”, “host society” and “original culture” acceptable and find them okay to live with or assimilate and bury them altogether in our quest for cushioned existence. As they say, there ain’t no easy way out.