View From The Outer Harbour
By: Thalmann Pradeep Pereira
JAI E-GANESHA
. !
Ganapati Bappa comes every year
. and goes. He is revered as the
Lord of Wisdom. But how much wiser are we getting every year?
The "Gana" was originally the collective of persons in a
community. And the chieftain was known as the "Ganapati". When the village
community was united, there could have been only one Ganapati. All property,
including land, was owned by the Community. It was with the introduction of
the system of private property, that the Community started slowly splintering.
Even so, in India, the joint family came to be the unit for holding of private
property. Thereby, each Family began re-inventing itself as the "Gana".
Consequently, each Family began having its own "Ganapati".
In modern times, though, the joint family itself is cracking up
into so many different nuclear families. Hence, the worshipping of
the "Ganapati" is now generally taking place at the level of each nuclear
family. Nevertheless, some families are still maintaining their tradition of
having just one single Ganapati celebration: an occasion that during those few
days recreates the illusion of a grand united Joint Family!
In Western countries, children separate from their parents the
moment they become majors. If this trend, like so many other Western trends,
also comes to India, then even the present-day nuclear-family-level
celebration of the Ganesh festival will become a thing of the past. In fact,
in India the separation of the individual child from the family has long been
taking place on account of the individual child's exodus to the city in search
of a job. The Laws of Dialectics, however, dictate that the celebration will
now continue at the level of the "aggregate of the disaggregates" -
precisely, a new "community": the social club of individuals otherwise
unrelated to each other, but coming together in the form of "Ganesh Mandals".
It would not require much imagination to conjure up an "E-Ganesh
Mandal" in the not-so-distant future: an e-community of individuals dispersed
in different parts of the world, who weld themselves together on every Ganesh
Chaturthi through the internet!
Much the same process is seen in the case of the Durga-Puja of
Bengal. And the same social dynamic is visible in the formation of cyber-
communities of persons hailing from one town or village but dispersed
throughout the world. The Cyber-Goemkars in the "Cyber-Cudds" will understand
this logic of the "aggregate of the disaggregates".
But the persons comprising the "Ganesh Mandals" could not really
forge amongst themselves the close bonds which existed within the members of a
joint family, though they were in close personal contact with each other. The
result has been that the Ganesh Mandals have become the preserves of a few
select persons who perpetuate their own rule over the club. The next step to
commercialisation was not even noticed!
So how much bonhomie can there possibly develop amongst persons
comprising a cyber-community, persons who may never meet each other
physically? How much camaraderie? How much joie-de-vivre? And, considering
that a cyber-group has an "owner", besides a "moderator", how will
commercialisation be prevented from creeping in?
Isn't it rather strange that for all the intense debate
on "Free" software ("Free" as in "Freedom", only), there is no debate about
the free association of like-minded persons on the internet without being
hindered by the tyranny of the owner/moderator? Or, is it that freedom of
association is itself an old-fashioned word not commensurate with the
new "knowledge-based economy"? Is it an answer to say that each person is free
to start his own cyber-group, in case he feels oppressed by the tyranny of
some particular group's owner? That answer would be as much valid as saying:
Go, celebrate your own individual Ganapati!
We seriously require to learn the lessons of the privatisation
and commercialisation of the Ganesh Mandals, before the promise of the
Internet as Modern Science's Method of unifying widely-dispersed individuals
itself gets bogged down in the morass of Private "Ownership" and the
concomitant crass commercialisation masquerading as Sponsorship.
Till the next Monday, then, Happy Thinking!
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Harbour Times" (12-09-2005)
