Prema Jayakumar

At a recent discussion of a poem (Bengal by K. G. Sankara Pillai) which had been published half a century back, the topic that came up repeatedly in the speeches was the different types of blindnesses that existed. The protagonist of the poem is Dhritarashtra, the sightless king of Hastinapura, who turns a blind eye to the misdoings of his children. The poem finds him anxious for news about his children in modern day Bengal as he had been during the Kurukshetra war.
Some of the speakers wondered whether the aged king used his physical blindness as a reason, as an excuse, for letting his children do the evil deeds they did, for results that he too actually wanted. He wanted the results but refrained from the actions for fear of condemnation. Blindness, very often, is a convenience. If you do not see, you do not have to react. And reaction is so much trouble. It is often complicated by your personal inclinations, societal condemnation and what you really wish to do.
Writers other than the sage who narrated the Mahabharata have used blindness with great force. They have used the blindness of the character as a metaphor for either not seeing the evident as in Shakespeare’s Lear, who is first morally blind and then physically blinded. This blindness is what leads to tragedy. The prophet Tiresias of Sophocles who would have to react if he saw clearly is blind. And more recently, Jose Saramago creates a whole novel out of the blindness that strikes various people randomly and as far as they can understand, for no reason.
Do we all practise a willing blindness in our day to day lives? All of us have been in situations where we have been made uncomfortable by the blatant unfairness of some action. The situation might vary from the blame-game of domestic unfairness to the much larger unfairness of an encounter killing. We have refrained from reacting for various reasons it might be that to speak would make the situation worse, it could be from embarrassment, it could be because we would have to fight with someone in authority to right that wrong, it could be just from inertia, just that we don’t want to be bothered. Sometimes, in the words of John Lennon, ‘Living is easy with eyes closed’ and so we consciously shut our eyes. And then, blindness and non-interference become wilful acts and by our pose of non-involvement, we too become culpable.
To go back to the poem, there is a second character who remains silent throughout while the blind man speaks. Ironically enough, this is Sanjaya, who reports the day to day happenings of the war to Dhritarashtra. Sanjaya is given the power to move scathless through the violence of the war so that he can report what is happening there faithfully to the blind king. But here, Sanjaya, the reporter, remains silent, does not communicate at all. Seeing and not narrating, goes against his reason for being. So, someone who sees unfairness, and does not report it is to blame too for the state of the world he does not talk about. Non-interference, non-violence, in that case, can become too much of a good thing, if by running away, you perpetuate injustice and violence. To report, to bear witness, even if you can’t make an immediate difference is an act of courage too, an act of righteousness to use a big word.
In these uncertain days, when ‘the best lack all conviction and when the worst are full of passionate intensity’, when it is so much easier to stay away from politics, from injustices, from the violence that goes on around, a reminder that these anxieties and helplessnesses don’t belong exclusively to one age or one time, but have lived with human beings through generations, is good. In a way, in times of hopelessness, when one feels helpless in the midst of violence and injustice, it is good to be reminded that other times and other generations have puzzled over the same conundrums, have agonized over the same choices and perhaps made the same mistakes. It is good to be reassured that, in spite of all that, the world has gone on, not necessarily always in the direction of progress (a difficult word) but moved on nevertheless.