Bootstrapping together: Religion and Economics

I am an ordinary human being, I am no genius and I am completely anonymous. There are thousands or millions of people like me who aspire for a better financial freedom in their life, a good life, free to do whatever we please within the boundaries of our own morality and culture. So in a way, our aspiration of good life, achieved by economic well-being needs to be within our framework of our own religion.  Sometimes a narrow framework developed from misinterpretation of religious sayings restricts our economic activity but mostly, in the context of modern 21^st century it is not. While at a personal level there is no dialectics between economics and religion it is there at a macro level. If a religion is organized one with a mandate to convert and spread, then economic power might become very useful in achieving that objective. After all, morality and culture can only have a meaning when one survives. The fundamental instinct of every human being to survive can only be appeased by economic success, but all these attainment loses significance if there is no morality and culture to give it a meaning. In a way, economy is needed to pull a man out of poverty but not enough to dissolve his wretchedness. It is also not self-sustaining as an unhappy man will not perform well enough to climb into high echelons of economics and endure there.

On our planet there are multiple religions and each having many followers choosing to live their life in one way or the other. It is their religion; their belief is what gives meaning to their life. The economic judgments that these individuals make to live their life according to their faith is what micro decisions are about. A company doing business need to be cognizant about these and act accordingly so that it can achieve its mission, whatever may be, profit maximization or social welfare. Collected together these micro decisions become broad economic behavior. For centuries, we have seen various religions endeavoring to spread their faith, and increase the number of followers, which was the indicator of that religion’s power or influence level.  All these lead to dynamics of macro demand for goods and services, say certain product maybe of high demand in Saudi Arabia but may not be worth that much in England. Presently world religion are either organized (like Christianity, Islam) or personal (like Hinduism), this fragmentation also have a profound effect on the individuals behavior and thus in turn macro demand/supply curve. Also throughout history, we have seen many cases where the society – not only internationally, but also domestically - is under dispute among polarized rival religions, sometimes they lead to holy war and destroy the economy. At the other extreme, a tolerant society promoting diversity, at an international or national level can lead to a happy ending with a synergy effects. Economic growths is either, about increasing the size of the Roti via higher productivity or make a new roti with a different taste so that there are two roti’s instead of one. So yes, religions do have a deep impact on economics and that is manifested by defining an individual’s morality framework that subsequently influences the culture and behavior.

Religious practices impose an immediate trade-off, as they require time and resources that are then unavailable for an alternative way. However there are many alternative ways, each and every religion have their own chosen way. For every opinion there is route. Also for the atheist, there is a way, the way to find the meaning of life and live in joy, fulfillment and freedom. The fundamental aspect that is common to all forms of religion or no religion is that they prescribe rules of behavior, or practices, which constrain followers, with varying degrees of strictness. All of them have a common goal, which is to give a better life to an individual. This is also the very reason for the existence of the subject of study of economics. Its approach is not through prescriptions on human morality but through efficient allocation of resources. This work best when there exists diversity, increased choices provides numerous ways to arrange resources for higher productivity or building a new economic engine. This, I think is the cause of affluence of the modern society. Twenty first century society is much more multicultural, multi religious than in any other in known human history.

The other side of the argument is that if the world had only one religion, can we say we would have been economically better off. My answer to it will be ‘no’ simply because we will be ignoring the all the other possibilities. Diversity is the key, while choosing a particular way to live a life brings coherence, along with it, it is also important to be aware of multiplicity of evolution and ready to absorb newer, different ideas (be it religious or economic) that might enhance our way to live life.

India still needs to clean up the dirt of colonial mentality from its psyche….

India still needs to clean up the dirt of colonial mentality from its psyche….

This idea of any individual of a particular race is superior to any other is contrary to Sanathan Dharma we Indians believe in, where God is everywhere and is present in every living creature. If that is the case then it is impossible for one to be superior to any other just by the virtue of birth.  This is defies any rational thinking.  I cannot speak for indigenous population of South America who were overrun by the Spanish or about Africa.  As far as Asia is concerned, long before the continent became a colony, its civilization was highly developed with distinctive culture and religion, as a multifaceted manifestation of Sanathan Dharma. If not anything else, it is because of this idea of dharma only, it is impossible for an ordinary Indian to believe in that kind of race superiority.

This does not mean that colonial mentalities do not exist. It does and even today is very much prevalent in these societies and contrary to all rationalization the acceptance is complete. For India, after the British conquest, its imperial power was too strong to be effectively resisted; the colonized population often had no other immediate option than to accept the rule of the foreigners as an inescapable reality of life.  This was no religious or philosophical justification but rather total resignation to fate.  British ruled India but did not mix with the population. It gave its citizen and all white people a privileged position in the society.  As the time progressed the Indians began to associate the British ways as something which leads to successes. Not because they are superior but the simple fact that following those ways one can easily gain material success and power in the society. It was a kind of a necessary compromise for material success in life. It is because of this English as a language became accepted in Indian societies, people started playing cricket, British education system and so many others were absorbed.  India has always been a society where any kind of external influence got absorbed into the great cauldron of color. The British ways was just another shade.

However British wanted to create Macaulay's Children out of all Indian people i.e. people born of Indian ancestry who adopt Western culture as a lifestyle and believing them to be superior. Religion was one of the ways, which was extremely effective in South America or North America. Converted Christians virtually worked for free, devoted and gave their life. This approach did not work in India, so British took more direct approach through the education system . It worked to an extent and they did manage to create what we call a ‘babu’ class who rejected Indian ways and glorified the British ways. Nonetheless some cast off this notion, instead went to create a new India by assimilating the scientific outlook, rationality of western education and classical Indian thought. These were the intellectual giants of the 19^th century India.

Post Independence, after spending the initial years consolidating the freedom and searching for self identity, India started to shed the colonialism culture one by one. The symbolic ones like reverting back to original city name from colonial names , like to Kolkata from Calcutta or Mumbai from Bombay were the easy ones. The difficult ones are the ones which have been intricately wrapped within the Indian psyche. Like in the Indian university system Indian professors always look towards the west for approval instead of organizing themselves and create a merit based peer recognition structure or the works of any great Indian, in almost any field needs to be accepted by the west first before getting recognition at home. The very subtle things, akin to wearing a suit and tie in a tropical country  or the  common notion of greeting  ‘warmly’ or ‘warm regards’ in mails and letters in India (a rip off from the English tradition which is a cold country and where these kinds of greetings do have a specific meaning). It is still a problem that top government posts in India go to phd’s from MIT, HARVARD, Oxford , Cambridge and not to somebody who has been brought up  in the Indian education system. Indian college students study books written in UK or US whereas in America or England, students study largely ,except exceptions, from books written by authors from their own country.  These are indirect influence but in longer terms they are devastating for the induced society.  A sense of default acceptance of the superiority of western education evolves, degrading the national intellect to servility. Then it is no more about the material success in life rather colonial mentality with all its bells and whistles.

Over last two decades the world has also changed dramatically because of the momentous revolution brought by Information Technology. Globalization has become a reality and in the front of exploitation, the direct rule of colonialism has been replaced by the meandering hegemony of the foreign exchange rates. Modern foreign currency exchange rate mechanism is the central tool that has been supplying endless resource of cheap labor for economic growth; similar to what was almost a hundred years ago came from the colonized country.  Unlike Australia, India being a non white, ex British colony, naturally is on the wrong end of the currency exchange rate dipole.

Things are changing and changing for good. Today’s youth do not possess the idealism of the generation of 60-70’s but they do have a strong sense of practicability, fierceness in their sense of freedom and utter ruthlessness in their dealings. Let alone accepting superiority of anyone, they are out there to beat you by any means they can. I believe that this will not stay long and will not suppress the ambition of today’s youth. In the following years, if India manages to stay united as a country, then they will figure a way out of this tool of exploitation and turn the tables. China is already doing that, in its own very creative way.

Over time the colonial mentality will go away and melt into historical time. Thinking this to be strategic advantage,  British probably still want to keep that sense alive by proposing, sponsoring organizations resembling their lost kingdom as the commonwealth, like a reminder that I ruled you.  Throughout the history of mankind no conquered citizens has harbored a sense of intellectual inferiority ceding to the subjugators, for generations, even when after the conquerors have been evicted away from the land. Time obliterates everything and  if artificially extended,  major destruction sets in wiping away everything setting the ground afresh for a new beginning.

The question is how fast can get rid of it? Faster it goes; rapid will be India’s development into a proud nation with a thriving economy. Getting rid of colonial mentality is the acceptance of British rule of India as just another story in India’s thousand years of civilization.   On the other side for the British, it should be a national guilt for them, similar to modern Germany, for all the systematic murders, atrocities and exploitation they did in India and every other colony they ruled.  A country becoming rich at others expense not through their own resourcefulness, hard work and honor.

How I lost my language, Bengali?

How I lost my language, Bengali?

I was born in an Independent India a period when the memory of independence is still fresh in Indian psyche. India just settled one of its national integration issue, language, with the division of the country into smaller states based on the vernacular.  Hindi was grudgingly accepted as national language, supposedly a unifying factor, at least on paper. This would change soon by the sheer power of the artists working in the hindi movie industry as they transformed and churned the Indian cultural world and would become great unifier in the form of Hindi movies. English language as it existed then never stood a chance. It was a language which the previous ruler s and spoke and did not have the constructs to express the emotion of the Indian life. It was more of a language which existed in a glass box.  Yet the post Independent Indian rulers could not ignore it . They themselves spoke it, it was the language that brought the advances of Western Science and technology to India and was also the defacto language for big business.  Also since India was linguistically fragmented it did not have the critical mass in population to change Hindi, Bengali or any other into a tapestry where the idioms and expressions of modern science coexisted with the original  lexis that it already had. I would say, the will was not there.  Though majority of the population spoke Hindi and to some extent Bengali it was not the case for English. English, although by minority of the population, however was the only language within the subcontinent that was spoken in almost every geographic region. So English remained with us, as one of the many languages officially recognized by the government. More important, the result was that India was split once more by a language which conveyed the emotions, the blood and gut of the people , their mother tongue and English for more formal career advancement opportunities.  

It was a strange mixture but there it was.  Very Indian. My parents enrolled me to English Medium School where as my first language I was reading on Wordsworth’s daffodils wondering where on the dusty Indian road you could find them.  I spoke Bengali at home , read Bengali novels , argued with my friends in Bengali , listened to Bengali music  and yet at school  I was formally taught a language and literature which did not exists in the life I lived. So I grew up in this dual world, slowly over the years gathering proficiency in English and losing the ability to write and sometimes even to read formal Bengali.  I remember during my childhood I use to think in Bengali and write my school essays by translating them in English. It was a mistake which was pointed out to me a numerous times by my teachers. That also quietly changed over time, unknown to me  I started to think and write in English. In a way, truly losing the ability to write anything in decent Bengali and becoming one of those Indians educated in English. On the periphery , Hindi as a language never left me. I never spoke Hindi nor could I read the same, yet I understood a considerable bit of it. Thanks to the Hindi language movies and their mega stars which I enjoyed considerably.

In my teens, like any other, I went about in search of my roots and identity. Naturally I picked up Bengali and made it an intellectual priority of myself to thoroughly learn the language. I immersed myself in the Bengali literature, arguably one of the richest in the world. I read novels, poems, essays of numerous authors. I could identify with them, the words they used, the fabrication of their language, the beauty of their vision which were so very my own. I felt deeply satisfied and felt a strong sense of belonging.  That I was, a Bengali, it became a matter of pride for me. Still my intellectual curiosity did not want to end there, I wanted to know more, read more, and learn about the world. I wanted to read about the modern advances in science, works of the authors from various parts of non English speaking world, ideas and opinions of the philosophers from around the world.  I had to restore to English, the language in which I was trained in for all these years. It is in English, books were available on authors from around the world.

So I started reading in English as well. Books that were not my school books, books that I read at home for pleasure, to satisfy my intellect. As I moved from school to college, English became a even bigger part of my life. My physical reality remained Bengali as I lived , talked , did everything else in my life in Bengali but my intellectual world almost fully turned to English. I was studying technology in English , I was reading more and more works in English,  I was speaking English with students of other states who were similarly educated as me.  In this extremely competitive pressure of my academic education Bengali fell through the cracks. I did not get time to read Bengali novels and writing in Bengali was not needed at all.  All transactions that I did on my daily life, like buying bus ticket, train tickets to reading bills in restaurants or shops were done entirely in English.  The calendar we followed was English calendar, the shops had their names in both English and Bengali, Hindi movies posters were in English and Hindi, only Bengali ones were in Bengali. All street names, addresses everything was in English and Bengali. I did not need Bengali in any way, except to speak.   Still I made it a point to read the daily newspaper in Bengali, just to keep in touch; also I read poetry in Bengali.  Poetry is something which emotes the life, land and culture it arose from. I felt that it cannot be translated; it has to be the language of the earth. Also for practical purpose, for me reading a poem was a quick way to keep in touch with myself, my Bengali awareness. At least I thought so, at that time.

Years came and years went by. Nothing changed for me. Intellectual framework of my life remained same with English as the proactive medium and Bengalis receding to the background humming poignantly. With all these use of English in post independent Indian society arose a set of Indian writers in English language. They wanted to bring and make the language more Indian. They rebelled against the notion of teaching Wordsworth’s daffodils to the Indian kids of dusty Indian roads. Their novels, writing were much more Indian and way more familiar, rooted to the sub continent than even the pre-Independent India writers in English. We the new generation of educated Indians at once embraced these writers , the likes of Vikram Seth, Arundhuti Roy, and so on. There was also a new generation of Benagli writers , but they were writing about life in Bengal only,  most of them  did not have a pan Indian essence. Bengali Poetry was powerful as usual , but they were very personal.    

When I started my working career I started reading again. When I looked at the offerings, I picked up the new Indian authors writing in English almost instantaneously. I was very comfortable in English by then and my Bengali had become rusty because of years of neglect. It needed an extra effort of me to read and absorb Bengali novels whose language nuances slipped out my consciousness.  Anybody who wrote in colloquial Bengali was a friend, rest I ignored. Also many of the stories they wrote were very local, stuck to Kolkata or Bengal whereas I was a person whose colleagues were Marathi, Guajarati, Punjabi  flying all across the country reading novels at the airport and airplanes. I needed pan Indian stories.  I became the voracious reader that I was in my teens but this time, except for poetry I read almost exclusively in English.  I thought of writing but no words came to me in Bengali. I even lost my ability to think in Bengali. I had to write in English . I will have to  innovate in English language and make it to tell stories of my culture, my land and thousands of years of India heritage.  On the contrary I could not modernize Bengali  to mould it to express all the new ideas, concepts and science.  It is not economical, given the effort , the audience size is too low . More important, I lost my ability to do so. I lost my language, Bengali. It is just a medium with which I speak with some special people , I do not think, breathe or dream in Bengali anymore.

Poems by Shakti Chattopadhyay : Translation from Bengali by Pinaki Sarkar

Poems by Shakti_Chattopadhyay

Aboni are you there in the house ? (অবনী বাড়ি আছো?)

Behind the closed doors the neighborhood is sleeping

I only hear knocking of the night

Aboni are you there in the house?

Rains fall here all the year

Clouds roam here like buffaloes

All the eager green grass

Grab the door-

Aboni are you there in the house?

In my half dissolved heart within a faraway pain

I sleep and fall asleep –suddenly

I hear knocking of the night

Aboni are you there in the house?

******

Why the Tree (Gaach Keno)

Why the tree talk against another tree ?

I don’t know, why do birds fly ?

Like the clouds in the sky is the scent of flowers-

I don’t know why there is beauty in the hair .

I don’t know why the tree talk against

another tree, trees are not human.

*****

Easy (sahaj)

I thought that I will talk a  little easily

You made it hard

I have nineteen ways, but the beginning is only a fist-

I thought that I will talk a little easily !

Thought that I will go home but there is already somebody there

I guess there is no place for me there

the pull to draw in nineteen ways has tied me nineteen times

with my voice enmeshed in complexity, I cry to you from inside

I thought that I will talk a  little easily

could not get to say anything.

****

When are you coming ? (aascho kobe)

On the banks of Roro river that kid

found a colored breast feather

and getting a stone, wrapping it with

the feather he threw it from this side

after all the feather will not go alone on the other side ?

A big dark male was on the other side of the river

showing off his portion of the red headgear…

kid saw that for so many lines and posts

difference will not go just like that ?

I found and threw the breast feather

-when are you coming ? when are you coming ?  when are you coming ?

Tagore Poems translated from Bengali by Pinaki Sarkar

Aguner poroshmoni

আগুনের পরশমণি

Touch my life with your fire
So that this spirit
burns as a glorious offering.

Lift my body
 like a lamp into the heavens
day and night; let its flame
burn in a glowing song.

In this body of darkness
I shall feel your touch
through the nights…..
as you light the stars
One after another.

No darkness shall
cover my eyes-
I will find wondrous lights
wherever I gaze.
And my pain
will burn away
and dissipate up in the skies.

Sokhi Bhabona kahare bole?

সখী ভাবনা কাহারে বলে

What is thought, what is pain

Day and night you say  ‘love and love’

What is love ? is it always painful ?

Is it tear drop ? is it the breath of sorrow ?

How do people find joy in this sadness?

                                

In my eyes all is beautiful

Everything new, everything fresh 

Wide blue skies, green fields

Soft moonlight, tender yielding flowers- everything like me

they always laugh, always cry     

they want to laugh and cry while they die..

they don’t know pain, don’t know how to cry

don’t know blissful suffering

flowers drop off with a smile

moonlight smiles away into the night

stars from the sky , laugh as they drop from the sky

and fade into the morning sun

who is there as happy as me ?

come my friend come to me

with happy heart and happy song, I will

bring delight into your life

if everyday you always cry

why not everybody laugh for a day

for one day, why not forget sufferings

and let us sing all together.

-----------------------------$$--------------------------------------

Jodi prem dile na prane

যদি     প্রেম দিলে না প্রাণে           

If you did not give love in my heart

Why did you fill the morning sky with songs?

Why there is a garland of stars ?

Why a bed of flowers-

Why do southern breeze whisper so many secrets in my ears ?

If you did not give love in my heart

Why do the sky stare like that at my face

Every moment, why

the madness in my heart

longs to float the boat in an ocean with unknown shores.

3 POEMS BY PINAKI SARKAR TRANSLATED FROM BENGALI BY PINAKI SARKAR

1.

Silence

hung above the door

something else also

Walls are rhythm

the wire is the breath

hanging on it are silence

hanging

At a moment

silence tear down and fall

Into the pond below

With a fearsome sound.

2.  Marble Boat

Marble boat

this side to that side

that side to this side

again this to that side

Moves again and again

across the huge body of water.

On the marble boat

With marble hull

Marble rower

Marble sail

Only

Passengers are human

The boatman is human

3. Moon Dance,  Dance of Woman

Dance of woman

you dance, round and round, standing at a place, shaking every part of your body

you dance, sometimes with somebody, sometimes alone

you dance, sometimes on riverside, sometime under dark sky, on moonlit

glistening sand, sometimes on seaside , sometime on the

floor of your room , with the breeze and moonlight

entering through your window. There is no child , no old man,

only you , your existence’s perfume dance around.

Light , unorganized. Haphazardly strewn on the sand.

Only a magician knows the story of your ghungru,

from where do you get this spinning rhythm.

Moon Dance

moon on the sky also dance. From one cloud to the other, open

Jumping like a white rubber ball on the dark sky. Moonlight jumps ,

from one widow to the other, from one wave to the another, from one rivulet

to the other, from one sand grain to another. From one face to another.

Only a magician knows the story of the moon’s joy,

where do the moon gets inspiration.

Dance of the woman , Moon dance

You dance, moon dances. You dance together, sometimes

on the hard ground, sometimes on the cloud.  Covering the

whole field, the sea, the river , the empty sky

the entire horizon. Hand in hand, from sky

to ground , again from ground to sky.

Around the world on two wheels (Dui Chakai Duniya) (Bengali: দু চাকায় দুনিয়া ) by Bimal Chakraborty.

Around the world on two wheels (Dui Chakai Duniya) (Bengali: দু চাকায় দুনিয়া ) by Bimal Chakraborty.

This is the daring story of a young Bengali cyclist who set about to travel the world on his cycle in 1926, 12th December. He had very little money but all he had was his extreme passion and attraction for the unknown. After cycling through Iran , Syria, Turkey, Britain, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia , Greece, US, Germany, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru , Vietnam, Egypt, Greenland, Tanzania, Thailand, Japan, China and many other countries he returned to Kolkata in 1937. It took him a decade as he had to earn his way to travel. In the process he worked as a photographer, sailor, speaker, teacher, day laborer and many more. In his one life he lived many lives and many times over. Mr. Chakraborty is definitely the first Indian and probably the first man in the entire world to do such a thing. Yet this extraordinary story of adventure lay hidden and obscure in a small out of print Bengali book he published years ago. Sometimes I wonder as to what kind of race we Indians are?  We do not take pride in our own heroes; we do not publicize the achievements of our world conquering children. Why ?

Even in today’s interconnected world with all the hi-Tech gadgets this is a audacious feat. To think about the fact that this journey was undertaken in 1926 , with very little money, in a fragmented , low-tech ,post  war intolerant world dominated by colonialism, slavery and absolute ignorance is astounding.

The book is about three hundred pages, packed with personal observations and opinions on an extraordinary broad variety of people and places. It is a compilation from the letters, describing his experiences, the author sent to his mother in Kolkata, from all the places he visited around the world. It is written in a fluid language, humble tone and with deep empathy towards the human race. The book begins with Ashok Mukherjee, Ananda Mukherjee, Manindra Ghosh and Bimal Mukherjee  as they start their epic voyage  from The Town Hall in Calcutta on 12 December 1926. Ashok Mukherjee led the team of four friends on their bicycles. As the days went by and adventures starts accumulating, one by one his friends drop off or get lost in the swirling currents of multiple events. It was left to Bimal Mukherjee to survive with steadfast focus on the end goal and complete this extraordinary journey.

As I turn the pages of the book I see the radiance of humanity glowing through all his varied experiences. An Eskimo in 1930 might not ever have seen a Bengali before, yet he trusts a fellow human being, welcomes him to their home, so did an Old Danish couple and the tribal’s from a remote African village.  The book is about people. Ordinary people and their lives. These are the people the author lived with and interacted during his journeys.  Even through Europe, at that time , was undergoing tremendous change, Germany was preparing itself for Hitler, Russia was fresh from Bolshevik revolution, there was astounding prosperity in some countries with the money obtained from their colonies, Mussolini was rising in Italy,  author looked at all these  from a distance. Like a detached tourist, who was watching a play in a foreign language. Nature, the scenic details that he encountered during his travels also get a passing mention. It was the people that the author focused on. It is their culture, customs as he lived through them, intermingled with, experienced, is what he wrote about.

He also mentions is interaction with many expatriate Indians at various places. How he was spurned and insulted in London by Indian bureaucrat soaked in colonial mentality, greeted by a Guajarati trader in Africa, received and appreciated by a Bengali Indian Independence revolutionary fighter in Russia.

He was a proud Indian, a pride that acted as his backbone and base to absorb all that he experienced throughout the world. It is also this pride that drove him to keep travelling and complete his mission and return home triumphant. In his travels, he got love, he got riches, he got everything a youth can possibly want, yet he threw down everything to embrace his will and zeal for adventure. He kept a detachment to all the linking that might have fettered him down, always surging forward like a true explorer.

This is a fascinating story and observation of life from a heroic individual who conquered all the obstacles to succeed. Truly  inspiring.