The Winner doesn’t take it all

 

A friend of mine, who is also a teacher in a public school, told me a few days back that he was called by the manager of his school. 

“We are not happy with you,” said the manager.  “We have decided not to continue your service after March 31.”  The next day he was called again.  “What have you decided?” asked the manager. 

“I’m looking for another job,” said the teacher.

The manager was taken aback.  “Don’t you realise the gravity of the situation?” he asked with much annoyance.  “You’ll be putting your family in great risk if you leave this institution.  Which school will give you as much security as this?”

The teacher was stunned.  “But, sir, you told me…”

“Do you ever walk into the office of the principal or mine,” said the manager cutting him short, “to have a friendly chat?”

The teacher understood what was being demanded of him.

As he narrated the incident, I remembered my former manager advising the staff, “If you want to rise in your profession, you have to keep your boss happy.”  He had no hesitation to add that he owed his success to his ability to keep his bosses happy.

As I was reading a book on Transactional Analysis today in order to complete an assignment on the topic in connection with a psychology course I’m pursuing, I realised that both the managers mentioned above are not exceptional cases.  The vast majority of the people in the world are “eager, willing, and compliant to the demands of others,” (Thomas A. Harris, I’m OK – You’re OK).  The author goes on to say, “‘Some of our best people’ are where they are because of these efforts to gain approval.”

Most human beings need approval, recognition, appreciation.  According to the theoretical model of Transaction Analysis, every child begins with the ‘life position’ called I’m Not OK – You’re OK.  That is because the child is dependent on the adults for most needs.  The child is controlled, guided and shaped by the adults.  So the child comes to abide by this particular life position.  Later on, the life position may change in many cases.  But most people continue to live in that belief and hence want constant positive strokes from others.

Even those who live withdrawing themselves from the society may be living by that script: I’m Not OK – You’re OK, so I withdraw.  Those who behave negatively are also reinforcing the same script: I’m not OK and I’m proving it to you.  But a good majority choose to live by a corollary-script: I Can be OK.  This corollary-script is learnt from the approval gained by living according to the conventions set by the society, religion, the elders, etc.  People who follow this corollary-script seek friends and associates who have a certain high status in the institution or society.  Such people’s approval is a big pat on the back.  People who live by this corollary-script are, I repeat after the psychologists, “eager, willing, and compliant to the demands of others.”  They usually reach high positions too.  What they are actually doing is rewrite the I’m Not OK script with You’re OK and hence I’ll be like you. 

Such a life may take one to certain heights in the social or institutional hierarchy.  But, the psychologists say that it may not bring self-actualisation.  One may not become what one can and what one is supposed to.  Hence a certain degree of frustration is likely to set in.  The winner doesn’t always take it all.

Transaction Analysis theory goes on to say that those children who have a ‘battered’ childhood usually acquire the script, I’m OK – You’re not OK.  This is a ‘life position’ that the child acquires while ‘licking his wounds’ all by himself.  I am OK by myself, says the child, it’s you who is dangerous to me.  You hurt me.  You terrify me.  Having survived many brutalities, such a child knows he will survive in the world: he’s tough, he is sustained by hatred.

Such people may become incorrigible criminals.  Such people also may surround themselves with ‘yes men.’  The ‘yes men’ stroke the person heavily through praises.  But the person also knows that the praises are not genuine.  So he despises the ‘yes men.’  He will reject them sooner or later and get new ‘yes men.’

I added the details about the I’m OK – You’re not OK group of people because I’ve seen them too in administration: people who gather ‘yes men’ (and ‘yes women’ too) around them and chuck them at will only to take in new avatars of the same kind.

To conclude this apparently negative post on a positive note, Transaction Analysis says that anyone can change and make him-/herself an emancipated adult by choosing the ‘life position,’ I’m OK – You’re OK.  That change is a conscious, verbal decision. It is a choice made consciously by the individual.  But, like in all life situations, this is not an easy choice or decision. 

 

 

Confessions of an Alcoholic

 

One of the longest and most disciplined queues of the world will be found in front of the alcohol shops in Kerala.  When I was young, those shops used to be called IMFL (Indian Made Foreign Liquor) shops.  Later the name, as called by people, became beverage shops.  I don’t know what they are called now since I have become a rare visitor to god’s own country, much as I’m in love with that ‘country’.

‘Consumption of alcohol should be made a confessable crime,’ reads a headline in today’s Malayala Manorama newspaper [29 Jan].  The Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference [KCBC] has made that demand. 

Kerala ranks quite high in many statistical data.  Like in suicide, alcoholism, literacy, sex ratio, lunacy, road accidents, and economic growth.  And, according to me, the queues in front of alcohol shops.  The various Malayalam TV channels have made fun of that disciplined queue many a time in satirical shows.  And I personally verified it by standing in one such queue during my last brief holiday in Kerala a few weeks back.  It was a delightful experience standing in such a queue.  Everyone was in a hurry.  To buy their bottle(s).  In discussing their job prospects.  There were also a few individuals who knew how to circumvent the queue by approaching the right persons to get their order added to the queuer’s list. 

I’m not surprised that the Catholic Church is feeling jealous of such a queue.  The Church would love to see even a minuscule fraction of such a disciplined queue in front of the confessional of the local parish church. 

“I have sinned,” the penitent should say. “Through my own fault,” he should add according to the latest demand by KCBC. Instead of the thrice breast-beating old formula of “My fault, my fault, my grievous fault.”

“I drank yesterday,” the penitent should say.

“Drinking is a grievous fault, don’t you know, according to the rules of the Church,” the priest will say.  “Your penance is to recite Our Father and Hail Mary ten times.”

Amen.

The drinker goes and recites Our Father and Hail Mary ten times in the church.  And then he goes directly to the most disciplined queue in the world.  Tomorrow’s confession will absolve him of his sin.

 

What the Catholic Church in Kerala is trying to accomplish by making drinking a sin is beyond my understanding just as what the church does anything is.  I don’t know what confession means today because I made my last confession decades ago.  But I have asked people who do get their souls cleansed through that ritual and they tell me that the penances are the same as I used to get in those (my) prehistoric days.  Recite mantras to cleanse your soul of all the sins. 

Confession.  The word brings to my mind the Malayalam movie, Kuttisrank.  It won many awards including the national award sponsored by the Govt of India.  There is a scene in which a young woman goes to confess.  “I have done the dirty act,” she says.  “With whom,” asks the priest.  She is silent.  The priest insists.  Because the priest thinks she had sexual intercourse with the hero of the movie whom the priest cannot endure in the least.  She had never had any sexual intercourse.  She had only the fantasy of the intercourse.  And perhaps the masturbation.  [That perhaps is my imagination which is in tune with the movie.]  When the priest keeps insisting on the name, the woman says, “Delete that sin.”  And she walks out.

She is the heroine of the movie.  She deserves to be.  Not because she walked out of the confessional.  But because she had the personality to understand what religion is, what life is, what one’s real responsibility is.

The priest in the movie is a bully.  As most priests are.  He is only interested in manipulating the entire parish so that it is under his control.  The hero in the movie will never come under his control.  So he uses the woman’s confession in order to haunt the man even more vindictively. 

That’s what confession means, I think. 

And I know what I’m speaking of.  There was a time when I was an alcoholic.  And I too went in for confession to cleanse my soul. And I know how the priests, including the principal of the college (where I worked as a lecturer) who egged me on to the confessional, made use of my confession in order to cut off my drinking water (and did much else).  When I started carrying water in two buckets for over a kilometre in the hilly terrain of Shillong, the priests used their political clout to get the water queue longer and undisciplined so that I would find it difficult to get even drinking water.  Were they thinking that I should be denied of the water to be added to my whisky?

No, eventually when I overcame my alcoholism they continued to persecute all the more.  Simply because they wanted me to  be a meek sheep in the church.  Following the flock.  Following the Good Shepherd.  I was the black sheep.  According to them.

Well, I really didn’t mean to make this a boring post telling the story of my bleak days.  But KCBC revived the memories. 

Can KCBC (most of whose members must be taking a couple of Vat 69 or something better every evening) bring more discipline into Kerala than what’s seen in front of the alcohol shops by making drinking a confessable sin?

Confession is a formula.  It would have worked in those ancient days when people were simple and could be controlled with mantras.  Can it work today?  Can the Church convert the mantra into counselling?  Meaningful counselling?  Does the Church have the intellectual capacity to do that? 

What a list of sins can do is to increase the guilt feeling.  The miserable Catholic drinker (whose problem lies elsewhere, including in the dark social areas made darker by the Church with all its corrupt practices like in admissions and appointments to its institutions) is sure to increase the volume of his order when he goes to the disciplined queue again.  Alcohol is a good escapist cure from guilt feelings. 

Can the priests in the Catholic churches redeem the drinkers of Kerala with the latest sin added to the list of grievous sins?

By the way, I am not an alcoholic now, thanks to my leaving the Church and its priests.

Religion as the handmaiden of Politics

 

Vast and powerful Empires are founded on a religion.  This is because dominion can only be secured by victory, and victory goes to the side which shows solidarity and unity of purpose.  Now men’s hearts are united and co-ordinated, with the help of God, by participation in a common religion.     [Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)]

Religions are not merely social organs meant to promote spirituality.  The rituals and traditions they establish may have deep political motives; they are often meant to protect and promote the interests of a group of people at the expense of other groups.  The history of the Namboothiri Brahmins in Kerala is an example from history how a group of people entered Kerala at some time long ago and established themselves as the lords of the earth with the help of their gods and scriptures.

At the outset I must say that the entire history and other details in this blog are based on P K Balakrishnan’s book, The Caste System and the History of Kerala [available only in Malayalam so far]. 

The Roman Empire had trade relations with Kerala during the period from BCE 1^st century to 3^rd century CE.  Pepper was the most exported item from Kerala in those days.  Pepper grew abundantly in the forests inhabited by the tribal people of Kerala.  Land was not a private property in Kerala until the Namboothiris came much later and took possession, in the name of god, of all the land wherever they settled down.  In the tribal culture land did not belong to any particular persons.  It belonged to everybody.  The tribal people’s was a food-gathering economy.  They gathered food from nature wherever it was available without cultivating anything.  The tribal people were not friendly in the least to outsiders.  Inter-tribal wars were common affairs.  Hence the Roman traders wouldn’t dare to enter the forests.  They worked through certain intermediaries. 

The Namboothiris must have entered Kerala through the Karnataka coast some time in the 7^th or 8^th century CE.  They did not establish any relationships with the Tamil Brahmins or the Tulu Brahmins who also lived in certain regions of Kerala.  The Namboothiris did not even follow the traditions of the other Brahmins.  They made a set of rules for themselves some of which went against the grain of the Brahmin tradition itself.

For example, while the other Brahmins tied up their hair at the back of the head, the Namboothiris ruled that their hair should be tied in the front.  The sacred thread of the other Brahmins had two strands, while that of the Namboothiris had only one.  Being totally nude while taking bath was taboo for the other Brahmins, while the Namboothiris stipulated absolute nudity while bathing.  Unlike the other Brahmins who had to recite certain mantras while bathing, the Namboothiris had to bathe themselves without letting any god enter their minds.  While white dress was forbidden to all women except widows among other Brahmins, the Namboothiris insisted on all of their women to wear white dress only. 

The list of such distinctions is pretty long.  What the Namboothiris aimed at was to establish themselves as a distinct set of people specially chosen by the gods to occupy and control the land. 

And occupy the land, they did.  For about 1000 years, the Namboothiris who comprised less than one percent of the state’s population were the proprietors of most of the land in the state.  They succeeded in taking possession of the land with the help of gods.  Some god or the other appeared to some Namboothiri or the other with the order to take hold of some land and build a temple there.  Scriptures, rituals and magic [curse, magic healing, etc, apart from astrology and other pseudo shastra] came in handy in the process.  The tribals could be easily controlled with the help of these supernatural entities.  Moreover, according to the Namboothiri legend, Kerala was created by Parasuram just for their sake.

There was a caste system among the indigenous people already.  The Namboothiris exploited the system to the hilt.  They put themselves at the top of the hierarchy.  Everybody else was declared ‘untouchable.’  Even the Nairs on whom the Namboothiris depended for most of their work including the cooking of their food were untouchable.  The Nair women, however, became the sexual partners of the Namboothiris who did not allow any male member except the eldest son of the family to marry.  The Nairs were happy to offer their women to the Namboothiris as the latter were perceived as the earthly incarnations of the gods.  The Nairs, for all practical purposes, were raising their social status by letting their otherwise untouchable women share their bodies with the Namboothiris.

The Namboothiris did not allow any other community to build proper houses.  Every community existed only for one purpose: the service of the Namboothiris.  It is that blatant selfishness that made them enact such rules as the one that denies them even the right to marry and love their spouse and offspring.  They wanted to keep their population small so that the entire system would be under absolute control.  In the process, not only did the Namboothiris go about spilling their lust wherever else they wished to, but also imposed absolute chastity on their own women. 

Any system that is built up entirely on the selfish motives of a group of people cannot last for ever.  No wonder, the Namboothiris became an impoverished lot [in every way – morally, materially and intellectually] by the turn of the 20^th  century.   

The Namboothiri history is quite an exception in many ways. Yet it is a fascinating study of how religion can be misused for selfish purposes but with terrifying consequences. 

Yet the Namboothiri history is not an exception entirely.  Many religions were created for political as well as material purposes, spirituality being a necessary facade.  I wrote earlier on the genesis of Islam and its roots in politics and commerce.  [http://matheikal.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/the-tribal-mentality-in-islam/]

The growth of Christianity also has much to do with the Roman Empire.  Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and the subsequent slogan that was heard loud and clear in Rome, “One god, one emperor, one empire, one church, one faith,” are eloquent proofs about the integral relationship between religion and politics. 

It is pertinent that today the reformist moves made in many religions including Hinduism in India are made by political leaders rather than religious persons.  It is always easy to hide human selfishness behind sacred idols.