> Thoughts/reactions welcome, as always..
I really like the Paul Graham's article "How to Disagree":
See: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
> 'I've spent my whole life asking You to change others
> for the better, but I've never thought of asking You
> to help me change--into a good and loving person.
There's a similar story told by Buddhists. :)
> I was actually, and quite literally, living off the
> misery of the 'oppressed', although I did not fully
> realise it then.*****
Being compensated for helping to fix problems
isn't shameful unless you find yourself promoting
the problems (or willfully ignoring their causes)
in order to maximize your revenue.
Example: doctors.
Some doctors are greedy, others very charitable
and compassionate. Denouncing the entire
profession might make for a nice rhetorical
flourish at one of those bitter rallies
the author talks about, but that's hardly
a case for abandoning all profit motive
in medicine in all cases.
> Being a 'social activist', I imagined that the sources
> of all oppression and negativity were external--'out there'
Problems aren't external or internal, they're both.
> One's whole life became one great protest.
It seems to me that the author of this article
got the idea of activism wrong, then repudiated
it making the same mistake in the other direction.
> I need not clarify that this was not always the case,
> and I did have the good fortune of meeting a number
> of other activists, truly sincere in their commitment,
> who were among the most loving and compassionate souls
> I've ever come across. But these were rare exceptions,
> I have to admit.****
Why, after having seen these shining examples,
was the entire project of working on both the
internal and external simultaneously abandoned?
This too is a spiritual dead-end; all the strong
words used to justify giving up improving one's
internal & external world are a very thin cover
for personal shame.
A more constructive approach is to reclaim the
idea of activism as something that apply to one's
own person as well as to the assistance of others.
> Negativism, then, was a defining feature of being
> 'progressive', and that's what I began to revel in.
More accurately, it was a defining feature of the
author's improper understanding of what it meant
to be progressive.
> I couldn't even change my family and close friends,
> to bring them to think and behave as I wanted them to.
People need to realize things for themselves,
but giving up on creating the forum to help
them along & setting a good example in public
and private seems like what's really being
abandoned here.
As Shakespeare said:
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
-Jon
=======================================================
=======================================================
> **
> Why I Gave Up On 'Social Activism'****
>
> By Yoginder Sikand****
>
> 19 April, 2012****
>
> Countercurrents.org****
>
> http://www.countercurrents.org/sikand190412.htm****
>
> ** **
>
> [image: Inline image 1]
>
>
> Just the other day, Raja, a dear friend of mine from Kashmir, forwarded me
> a wonderful anecdote. It isn't often, I have to confess, that he does such
> things. Most often, his postings are drab and mournful and monotonously
> predictable: reports about hordes of Kashmiris taking to the streets in yet
> another demonstration demanding 'freedom from Indian oppression'; an
> interview with a Muslim cleric pontificating on some esoteric or
> controversial subject or the other; news about rival sets of Muslims
> squabbling among themselves, as they always have, and will always do, over
> the 'true' meaning of their faith; a story about the latest demented
> outpourings of a noted Hindutva ideologue--subjects that no longer interest
> me in the least, I have to say, although they once did.****
>
> ** **
>
> But the anecdote that he sent me this time was truly a precious gem. It
> neatly summarised, in a manner I never could have done myself, much of what
> I've been thinking about these last couple of months, ever since I won for
> myself the luxury of no longer having to slog for a living against my will.
> It was the story of a wise man who, in his youth, spent hours every day
> tearfully entreating God to radically transform the whole world and turn it
> upside down into a veritable paradise so that all the problems that people
> face would finally and firmly end. But the man's youthful enthusiasm for
> this global 'Revolution' doesn't last long, and once he gets married and
> sires children his prayers become less ambitious in their scope. He now
> prays simply for the transformation of his wife and children so that they
> begin to think and act as he thinks they should. He spends years beseeching
> God for this to happen--in vain, of course--till he arrives at old age and
> knows that he is about to die. *Thereupon, he turns to God in repentance
> and says, 'I've spent my whole life asking You to change others for the
> better, but I've never thought of asking You to help me change--into a good
> and loving person. Please, Lord, now let at least that happen!'*
>
> ** **
>
> *This delightful anecdote neatly sums up the story of my life till now, and
> that is why I found it so endearing.* Ever since I left home, at the age of
> eighteen, I've been desperately trying to change the world, as a
> self-appointed missionary of the 'Revolution'. I began identifying with
> communities in India that saw themselves as 'oppressed', and took it upon
> myself to champion their 'cause'. How desperately I craved to be recognised
> as one among them! That is how I became what is called a 'social activist',
> and began writing mainly about Muslims, but also about Adivasis and Dalits
> and other such 'marginalised groups', attending their conferences and
> participating in their protest demonstrations, and even churning out
> ponderous tomes about them, all of which further reinforced my belief that
> I was indeed a seriously committed do-gooder.****
>
> ** **
>
> *For two whole decades, writing on such 'marginalised groups' and their
> 'problems' -- many of them real, others imaginary and yet many others
> self-created -- and participating in the 'struggle' against 'caste/class
> oppression', 'gender injustice' and 'imperialism' was almost my sole
> occupation.* In these many years, I must have written well over a thousand
> articles that, in my eyes, championed the cause of the 'oppressed' and of
> the 'Revolution'. Hardly a week passed without my churning out a piece or
> two on the subject. 'It's my way of contributing to the Revolution,' I
> would tell myself, seriously believing that my writings were making a major
> difference to 'The Cause'. Only I know what smug satisfaction this gave me!
> I know you'll find it absurd but I even began to imagine that if I ceased
> writing on the issues that I so sincerely obsessed about, it would make a
> major dent in prospects for the 'Revolution' to ever arrive!****
>
> ** **
>
> *All that energy and enthusiasm that went into my contribution as a 'social
> activist' and in the cause of the 'Revolution' paid me well in material
> terms*, however, though I have to say that this wasn't the only or even
> major reason why I was in the business of championing the 'Revolution' in
> the first place. I won generous scholarships to go abroad to do a Ph.D. and
> then two post-doctoral projects to study various aspects of 'marginalised
> groups' in India. I was invited to attend conferences in over two dozen
> countries to pontificate on the same subjects. I was appointed as a full
> professor in an Indian university and was paid handsomely for the articles
> and books that I continued to churn out, machine-like, all about the
> 'oppressed'. *In addition, I was assigned projects by several NGOs to study
> the 'oppressed', for which I was well rewarded financially.* Although I
> have to say that I did not quite intend this to begin with, writing and
> conferencing about the 'oppressed' soon turned into a lucrative source of
> livelihood for me. *I was actually, and quite literally, living off the
> misery of the 'oppressed', although I did not fully realise it then.*****
>
> ** **
>
> *But all that came with a heavy personal price. The more I identified with
> the 'Revolution' of the 'oppressed', the more unbearably negative I became
> as a person.* For one thing, the sense of being indispensable to the
> 'Revolution' and to the 'struggle' for 'justice' for 'oppressed
> communities', of playing a crucial part in championing 'The Cause' through
> my writings and public speaking, gave a tremendous boost to my battered
> ego. Being a 'social activist' made me feel nice, for once, about myself.
> It made me think of myself as selfless and all so very goody-goody and
> pious, while leading me to look down on others as allegedly miserably
> self-centred and uncaring. I was, after all, a 'social activist, 'devoting'
> and 'sacrificing' my life for the sake of the 'oppressed', or so I fondly
> imagined, while just about everyone else , I told myself, was mean and
> selfish, concerned only about their own material advancement.****
>
> ** **
>
> *Being a 'social activist' and a supposed 'expert' on the problems of
> 'oppressed communities' also helped me to stand out among the crowd, in
> this way satisfying my inner urge to be somehow different from others so
> that, finally, I would gain their attention, even if in a negative way.* As
> a child, there was nothing more than I craved for, and was denied, than
> recognition and acceptance and the feeling of being wanted, and the notice
> I began to receive as a supposed 'expert' on various 'marginalised
> communities' served to fulfil that desperate urge and fill that deep
> psychological vacuum.****
>
> ** **
>
> Being a 'social activist', I imagined that the sources of all oppression
> and negativity were external--'out there', in the 'world beyond'--in
> classes, castes, structures and ideologies that I identified as
> 'oppressive'--Brahmins and Banias, Jews and Americans and their
> Saudi-Wahhabi stooges, Feudalism, Communalism, Capitalism, Casteism,
> Zionism, Brahminism, Religious Fundamentalism, Imperialism and so on. If
> these were successfully combatted, I was led to believe, all the problems
> of the world would be set straight. *Directing my energies and anger onto
> these external forces, I saw no need at all to introspect and recognise,
> leave alone solve, my own inner negativities, which I left completely
> ignored and unaddressed all these many years.* It was truly a very
> convenient way of running away from my own inner dilemmas, insecurities and
> incompleteness. In hankering after the 'Revolution' and for the sake of
> 'The Cause', I saw no need whatsoever to make myself a better human being.
> That would have been an 'unnecessary diversion' from the 'real' task of
> 'reforming' others and 'combatting social injustice'.****
>
> ** **
>
> Imagining myself as crusading on behalf of the 'oppressed' and as being a
> key player in the 'struggle' for 'social justice' for a host of
> 'marginalised communities' turned me completely blind to every good thing
> in those whom I began to see as their 'oppressors' (in the Indian context,
> mainly 'upper' caste/class Hindus) and in what was termed, in the jargon of
> the 'progressives' whose ranks I so desperately wanted to join, the
> 'present oppressive system'. There was nothing at all good in Hindu
> traditions or in America or in Capitalist Modernity, for instance, I
> convinced myself, for I was hooked onto the 'progressive' and 'radical'
> rhetoric that 'upper' caste Hindus in general (including most of my own
> family!) and almost every single American was complicit in perpetuating
> 'oppression'. *If you had to be counted as a 'social activist', you simply
> couldn't see or find anything worthy at all in 'upper' caste Hindus or in
> Americans, and, if you did, your sincerity and commitment were gravely
> suspect.* So deep-rooted was this negative mentality among 'social
> activists' supposedly committed to the 'oppressed' that for a 'progressive'
> to discern anything positive about 'the present system' or Indic
> spirituality, for instance, was about the most serious anathema conceivable.
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> *The hatred that often passed for 'progressivism' in 'activist' circles was
> truly astounding, and I fell lock-stock-and-barrel for it.* One was trained
> only to look for the negative in every nook and corner, and, if it didn't
> exist where one looked, to imagine and fervently believe that it did. One's
> whole life became one great protest. Protesting against real or imaginary
> injustice was almost the only respectable thing to do. It was as if there
> was nothing at all good in the world to celebrate, and even as if
> celebration and joy were themselves an 'unnecessary diversion' or a
> 'unaffordable luxury' that truly committed 'activists' had to carefully
> shun. *That explained why many 'progressives' and 'radicals' were
> horrifically negative as human beings, many of them being irritatingly
> obnoxious, judgemental, cantankerous, dour and sullen.* Their penchant for
> protest made them only more so. Believing themselves to be somehow morally
> superior to others because they had, so they thought, devoted themselves to
> the 'oppressed' made many of them painfully sanctimonious and proud. Of
> course, I need not clarify that this was not always the case, and I did
> have the good fortune of meeting a number of other activists, truly sincere
> in their commitment, who were among the most loving and compassionate souls
> I've ever come across. *But these were rare exceptions, I have to admit.****
> *
>
> ** **
>
> For many of us (including myself, too), the negativity that was blessed as
> 'progressivism' in 'activist' circles was a convenient and respectable ruse
> to give vent to our own personal turmoils, inner insecurities and
> complexes, which were often rooted in troubled childhoods or broken
> marriages. I took to this negativity like a duck takes to water--in part to
> compensate for my own psychological traumas. *It provided me just the
> excuse that I needed to express all the hidden hatred for my family that I
> harboured deep inside me since a child, for what more potent way was there
> for me to rebel against my decidedly 'upper' class and largely Hindu family
> than to denounce them as part of the 'oppressive ruling class/caste system'?
> * What better way to get back at them for all that I had suffered at their
> hands than by taking up the 'cause' of Muslims and Dalits and
> ultra-leftists, folks who saw rich Hindus like my family as their real
> 'oppressors'? I had had an extremely troubled childhood, and so all I ever
> wanted was to get as far away as possible from my folks as I possibly
> could. They were rich and, for the most part, Hindu, and it was thus that I
> desperately craved to identify myself with all that they were not and would
> dread to be. *I have to admit that it was this, more than any genuine
> concern for the 'oppressed', that drove me on for over twenty years for the
> sake of 'The Cause' that I so obsessively championed.*****
>
> ** **
>
> Negativism, then, was a defining feature of being 'progressive', and that's
> what I began to revel in. But such negativism was almost entirely one-sided
> in 'activist' circles, for to be counted as a 'real' 'social activist' it
> was simply unthinkable that the 'oppressed' could be faulted for almost
> anything at all. *For a 'social activist' to even mention, leave alone
> condemn, the foibles of the 'oppressed communities' -- gender injustice or
> caste rivalries among Dalits or the obscurantism and misogyny preached in
> many Muslim madrasas or the terror attacks and killings of innocents by
> Naxalites and radical Islamists -- was tantamount to nothing less than
> treason.* Reports about such matters were generally dismissed as 'malicious
> ruling-class propaganda' or 'malicious Brahminical brainwashing' or even as
> an 'understandable reaction of vulnerable minority communities to ruling
> caste/class/imperialist oppression'. Sometimes, if these were grudgingly
> admitted to be true, they were sought to be passed over in silence in order
> to 'respect the sensibilities of the oppressed' or as 'minor
> contradictions' that ought not to be addressed on the grounds that it would
> allegedly 'divide' the oppressed, 'sabotage' the struggle against
> 'oppression' and thereby 'play into the hands of the real opressors'. If
> you only just pointed out that there were serious faults in the madrasas
> that needed to be urgently addressed (even for the sake of the Muslim
> children who studied therein) or that Muslim Personal Law was seriously
> biased against Muslim women or that many Dalits who had taken advantage of
> the system of protective discrimination behaved with fellow Dalits almost
> as shabbily as did their 'upper' caste Hindu 'oppressors', you were sure to
> be shouted down as a 'government agent' or a 'paid stooge of Hindutva
> forces', not only by fellow 'progressives' but also by a whole host of
> voices among the communities whom you had spent years trying to defend and
> promote. *If you even so much as mildly hinted that the conditions of
> Muslims in India weren't half as bad as sections of the Urdu media wanted
> people to believe or that the Muslims in this country had much more freedom
> than in any Muslim-majority state or that untouchability was no longer as
> rampant as it once was in some parts, you were bound to be accused of
> betrayal and your motives were rumoured to be entirely suspect.* If you
> acknowledged that probably less Muslims were killed by Hindus in riots in
> India every year than the number of fellow Muslims slaughtered by their
> co-religionists in the 'Islamic' Republic of Pakistan or in God-forsaken
> Afghanistan or that the plight of religious minorities in many Muslim
> countries, particularly those ruled by theocratic regimes, was much worse
> than in India or that some Dalit officials were neck-deep in corruption,
> you were bound to be hollered at for allegedly being a 'traitor' to 'The
> Cause' of the 'oppressed'. *The very same folks who egged you on to write
> about their problems and to take the Hindutva beast by its horns (for they
> were either too scared to do it themselves or didn't have the same writing
> skills or the same access to the English media) would shrilly denounce you
> as an 'agent' of this or the other 'power' if, in your quest to be honest
> and balanced, you pointed out even some of the mildest of their faults.* It
> was as if by definition the 'oppressed' were spotless angels who could do
> no wrong and their 'oppressors' wholly and incorrigibly demonic.****
>
> ** **
>
> It was amazing how, barring some really genuine folks, whose sincerity and
> commitment simply cannot be doubted, many of us 'activists' actually
> thrived on this one-sided negativity that we lived on and churned out
> day-in and day-out. It was as if without it we would have no reason at all
> to justify our own existence, for it served as a very convenient peg to
> hang our own inner traumas on. *For some folks, spewing negativity in the
> name of 'social activism' and 'protesting against social injustice' was all
> that they were capable of doing and, in fact, the only reason for them to
> carry on living.* Decrying 'social injustice' was the only thing they could
> talk of, and attending one protest demonstration after another their only
> form of entertainment. Never for a moment did many such folks ever feel the
> need to introspect, for every ill that they could think of was traced to
> and laid at the door of the 'oppressors'. I could imagine at least some of
> them seriously believing they were God's little innocent lambs, all very
> pious and unblemished.****
>
> ** **
>
> *Protesting against 'social oppression' had truly become a profession for
> many, who turned into what are called 'professional social
> activists'.*Negative news and developments were quickly seized upon by
> them to write
> about and demonstrate against, to pontificate about in seminars and to
> appear on TV to debate over and thereby worm their way into the public
> limelight, and *even to wangle well-funded research projects, academic
> assignments and jaunts abroad in exotic locations*, where they would share
> their 'expertise' about the 'oppressed communities' and exhibit their
> 'radical commitment' to them, *often being handsomely paid for this service*.
> I was guilty of the same misdemeanour, too, in some very fundamental ways,
> I have to admit here.****
>
> ** **
>
> *Some folks I know made pretty neat fortunes this way, setting up NGOs and
> 'think-tanks' ostensibly to study and 'work with' 'oppressed communities',
> and raked in vast amounts of money from gullible foreign donors.* In fact,
> barring a few really committed souls, a whole host of 'progressives' in the
> NGO, academic and media world, made their living out of the misery of the
> 'oppressed', *earning in this way not just their daily bread but also the
> really serious money that they needed to buy their cars and houses and to
> send their children to the 'best' English-medium schools and then for
> higher studies to the USA (which they never tired of reviling in public, of
> course), where they, too, would often sojourn when their 'social activism'
> became just a bit too tiring, boring or bothersome*. Not many of them, who
> never ceased showing-off their 'commitment' to the 'oppressed' communities
> and their visceral hatred for 'oppressor' castes, would, I suspect, want to
> be treated in an Adivasi-run nursing home or to send their children to a
> Muslim-run school.****
>
> ** **
>
> But, to set the record straight, it wasn't just us 'professional social
> activists' from rich or middle-class Hindu families who had taken upon
> themselves the onerous task of crusading on behalf of the 'oppressed
> communities' who behaved in this way. *A great many folk from these very
> same 'oppressed' communities -- Muslims, Dalits and such others -- were
> also heavily into the business of 'social activism', supposedly on behalf
> of their own people.* They, too, set up their NGOs, often with hefty
> financial aid from generous foreign patrons. They, too, enjoyed their
> all-paid-for trips and conferencing stints abroad, and *many of them made
> sure that their own children had built comfortable nests for themselves in
> Europe or West Asia or even in America*, which, like us, they never ceased
> to revile as the fundamental cause of global oppression.****
>
> ** **
>
> So, that, in brief, was the world I had chosen to inhabit, for over twenty
> years, till, *finally and thankfully, sometime last year the idiocy of it
> all suddenly dawned on me*. I lost complete faith and interest in the
> 'social activism' that had kept me going and had supplied my life with
> purpose and meaning all along. Although I recognised that social injustice
> was indeed a universal reality, and a harsh one at that, especially for
> certain minority groups, I had to admit that 'minorities' were often as
> guilty of it, in their own ways (such as victimising women and other
> minorities within their own communities) as were 'majorities', and that no
> community had a monopoly over virtue or vice. A tyrannical Muslim or Dalit
> husband or father was as oppressive as a Brahmin one, as far as I was
> concerned. And I realised, too (and it is really a wonder why it never
> struck me before) that there were good and bad things about every person on
> the face of this earth. No one, it dawned on me, is perfect, not even the
> most 'oppressed' man or woman alive, and, likewise, no person is wholly
> evil, not even the most tyrannical 'oppressor' around. The world and the
> people who inhabit it, I now knew, were infinitely far more complex that
> the 'progressives' I hung around with made it out to be. *And to assume, as
> they did, that merely changing a 'system' or pitting communities against
> each other would end all oppression seemed downright stupid to me, and even
> entirely counter-productive from the point of view of the quest for social
> justice.* As long as human beings didn't change as individuals, it made, I
> now knew, no difference whatsoever what sort of 'system' they lived under
> or what religion they followed or what ideology they championed or what
> radical rhetoric they spewed. It was how each of us were as individuals
> that really mattered, and no matter how loudly one protested and
> demonstrated against 'oppression', as long as people, including the
> 'oppressed', remained just as they were as people, with all the
> negativities that we all are burdened with, oppression would still remain
> intact, even though its forms might change and today's 'oppressed' might
> become tomorrow's 'oppressors'. The only Revolution worth striving for, I
> now realised, was the 'inner' one.****
>
> ** **
>
> My only task, I found, was now to focus on my own 'inner' revolution, and
> not any other. In the mindless quest for 'reforming' others, championing
> the 'cause' of the 'oppresed' and 'struggling' to usher in the
> 'Revolution', never for a moment had I turned my attention to this in all
> these twenty years. I now knew that all I had to do was to deal with
> reforming myself, and no one else at all. After all, I hadn't come into
> this world laden with a heavier cross than that or burdened by a bigger
> mandate--to change society or to save the world, for instance, as I once
> pompously imagined. You may say I was being selfish, and maybe I was. But,
> then, maybe I really was not, for it was only if I truly reformed and
> psychologically healed myself and made myself whole and kind and loving, I
> now came to realise, that I could truly and sincerely help others. But as
> long as I didn't do that, and kept postponing it, the 'help' that I
> rendered others in the name of 'social activism' would remain, as it had
> over the last two decades, a miserable exercise in self-serving hypocrisy.**
> **
>
> ** **
>
> *And this meant that I no longer needed or wanted to use the extreme
> negativity, blessed in the name of 'protesting against oppression' or
> 'struggling for social justice', that I had once so fervently championed as
> a means to vent my own inner insecurities.* That's why I decided that I
> just had to refuse to allow myself to continue to wallow in the negativity
> and hatred that my supposed 'concern' for the 'oppressed' had driven me
> into. And so it happened that I stopped writing on the subjects I had for
> so long obsessed about and was paid handsomely for. I resigned from my job
> at a research centre, where I was supposed to spew out wisdom on 'oppressed
> communities'. *I realised that I would no longer be invited to spout my
> 'wisdom' and 'expertise' on the 'oppressed' at conferences, in India and
> abroad, and that the well-funded projects to study and highlight the
> problems of the 'oppressed' that I had once so desperately hankered after
> were now a thing of the past.* Knowing all this, I felt a heavy burden lift
> itself from off my tired shoulders. I decided that there was nothing more
> that I wanted or needed now than to lead the rest of my life watching the
> clouds gently pass by and smiling at the birds chirping high up in the
> trees. That was how my 'inner' revolution was going to happen. I no longer
> nursed ambitions more grand than this.****
>
> ** **
>
> *I knew now that I didn't want to change the world any longer, painfully
> aware that no matter how much I tried, the world's problems would always
> remain and might even get worse.* Why waste whatever remained of my life
> chasing the mirage of a problem-free world? *If one problem were solved
> through human efforts, a hundred new ones would take its place, sooner or
> later, I thought to myself as I reflected on the dismal fate of all the
> many Revolutions the world has witnessed till date, most of them enormously
> bloody, all being hungrily devoured by their own progeny.* I no longer had
> any illusions about myself as a 'social activist' and crusader for a
> 'Revolution' that would put an end to the need for all revolutions. If
> there was indeed a God, I told myself, it was She/It/He who should take
> care of the world and its ills, and for me to arrogate to myself this
> responsibility was downright ridiculous. It was too much of an effort, and,
> at 45, I no longer had the energy for it all. *In any case, I knew, if my
> motives in becoming a 'social activist' twenty-odd years ago were far from
> altruistic, it was improbable that I could ever sincerely be one.* Let
> those better equipped and more genuinely motivated than me shoulder that
> task, I said to myself.****
>
> ** **
>
> *I now saw clearly through the hollowness of the revolutionary rhetoric
> that I was hooked on to for years.* Leave alone the whole world or the
> 'system', I couldn't even change my family and close friends, to bring them
> to think and behave as I wanted them to. It was quite enough, I realised,
> like the wise man whose story my friend Raja sent me the other day, if I
> dreamt of changing just myself in order to become a better, happier, more
> gentle, compassionate and loving person and to cleanse myself of all the
> enormous negativity that I've bottled up deep inside. That was really the
> only, and the best, that I could do. And if everyone else thought that way
> too, I knew, there would be no need at all to dream of 'Revolution' or of
> changing others in order to bring about a better world.****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
> Comment ****
>
> ** **
>
> This article is a must read for all the social activists, not just in India
> but all over the world. The really visible ones are those who have made
> social activism as a business for themselves, and a means of their
> livelihood. They are the ones who keep travelling all over the world, and
> the ones whom the media, the government, etc., often consult to get
> ?expert? views on the subject of their supposed speciailisation.****
>
> ** **
>
> What the author has said is as follows:****
>
> ** **
>
> - Social activists divide the world between the oppressors and the
> oppressed.****
> - Social activism has actually become a profession and that it pays
> handsomely. They are actually living off the problems of the oppressed.*
> ***
> - The professional social activists also come from within the oppressed
> groups. They too are paid handsomely, and are today living a life of
> reasonable luxury.****
> - These professional social activists get invited all over the world to
> tell others the problems of the oppressed. ****
> - The professional social activists have, in blaming the problems on
> others, have acquired a negative set of mind. He says, ?(M)any
> 'progressives' and 'radicals' were horrifically negative as human beings,
> many of them being irritatingly obnoxious, judgemental, cantankerous, dour
> and sullen.?****
> - The problems identified by the professional social activists are not
> all real. Some are imaginary and some others are self-inflicted.****
> - The professional social activists are not permitted to talk about the
> problems within the oppressed groups. And if anyone did, he will be
> accused of being an agent of the oppressors.****
> - Also the social activists ?simply couldn't see or find anything worthy
> at all in 'upper' caste Hindus or in Americans, and, if you did, your
> sincerity and commitment were gravely suspect.?****
> - In mentioning about the money received by the professional social
> activists, the author has exposed the funding agencies, who seem to swallow
> the line taken by the activists in blaming others for the problems.****
> - The professional social activists indulge in hollow rhetoric.****
>
> ** **
>
> In the recent past, in different parts of the world, the professional
> social activists have been confronted with a demand that they offer
> solutions and not just narrate problems. This is because those that the
> activists identified as oppressors were not viewed by the oppressed as
> being oppressors. As one of the comments, posted to the article, says: ?As
> someone who considers myself a progressive, I too have wondered at times
> how everyone we oppose - Hindus, Jews, Americans, capitalists - pursues
> positive actions and are the ones who build up the world while we seem to
> want to smash what they do without trying to understand them?* *I have
> wondered many times why every position I have is based in hatred for the
> other group and in negativity and not in constructing something new that
> adds value to the world?. I have sometimes wondered how the groups we hate
> live in peace and harmony for the most part while we permanently seem to
> plan a violent revolution although we blame them for all wars and riots.? *
> ***
>
> ** **
>
> The social activists were so busy wallowing in their negativeness, and
> spewing hatred against the supposed oppressors, that they have no time to
> see what is happening at the ground level.****
>
> ** **
>
> Sadly, the article ends in a negative note. He has decided to cop out,
> rather than fight the professional activists with the same energy that he
> expended in fighting the ?oppressors?. Another comment to the article
> says: ?After your self-awareness moment - the least you could do is to try
> and remove the poison that you have spread all around the place.?****
>
> Interestingly, most of the comments on the article are supportive of what
> the author is saying, and that the commentators would not be classified as
> progressives. In fact, some of them would be classified as belonging to
> the oppressor groups. There are hardly three or four, out of some 40-odd
> comments, that are available that are made by those from the progressive
> group. Except for one, quoted above, the others have condemned the author
> for expressing his angst.****
>
> ** **
>
> Yet, the author has felt it necessary to offer an ?apology and
> clarification? of what he wrote. This is available at:****
>
> http://www.countercurrents.org/sikand210412.htm****
>
> ** **
>
> In it, he has offered an apology to the members of the progressive group
> (namely, the professional social activists) for giving ?ammunition? to the
> oppressed so that the arguments of the professional social activists can be
> exposed. Little does he realize that what he has written is what those
> identified as oppressors is what the latter have been saying for many years.
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> In his original article, the author has mentioned that speaking about the
> issues that he has done will mean a sort of ostracisation form the
> progressive group. This is an example of what can truly be called
> intellectual terrorism. But in giving the apology, he has shown that he is
> not able to stand up to this terrorism, when directly confronted.****
>
> ** **
>
> One does hope that the professional social activists in India, and their
> supporters all over the world, seriously dwell on this article. There is a
> need for enduring solutions to the problems being faced in India. The
> professional social activists have nothing to offer in this endeavour.****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **Ashok Chowgule
>
>
> ** **
