LITERATURE- LIGHT AND DELIGHT
93. WHERE KNOWLEDGE IS FREE
In the famous poem beginning "Where the mind is without fear" from Gitanjali,
Accessed from:www.slideshare.net/Tamanna-Amir/lesson 31831199. Copyright status not stated.
Gurudev Tagore speaks of "Where knowledge is free", as a condition or feature of the "heaven of freedom" into which he wants his country to awake.
Everywhere knowledge is sold
When we look around today, we find knowledge being made prisoner of both financial and institutional control. With the so called Intellectual Property Rights, knowledge has been commodified, packaged and is sold like cattle or car. But the absurdity of the scene is that , while if I take away your car or cattle, your enjoyment of the benefits from it will be reduced or wiped out, my quoting or employing your words or works will not interfere with your own enjoyment!
The basic idea behind is to derive a monetary advantage out of a new idea or invention, especially when it is embedded in technology and gets embodied in a product, as in a drug or toy. While it may have validity in respect of physical things, to talk of "property" seems absurd, the very negation of knowledge, in respect of pure ideas.
Even in respect of things, mere ownership does not confer real property rights. If we own an ocean, but cannot swim, do we really "own" it? A street urchin really owns all the oceans if he can swim!
The real long term effect of such restrictions on free flow of ideas is to limit cross fertilisation and creativity. While a few individuals may make money in the short run, humanity suffers. Leaving fiction aside, there are very few ideas which are really original. Intellectual property rights seal them in small containers , there to fade into oblivion. It is the very nature of ideas to originate somewhere outside our mind; our mind is only a receiver, not a creator; others on the same wavelength may receive them, if they contemplate the same problems.
IPR is an off-shoot of aggressive capitalism. The argument is that an inventor or originator of ideas should get some monetary benefit out of it. At least in respect of literature ( I don't have fiction in mind) this is the result of the disappearance of the system of patronage. In the pre-modern days, before the 17th century, writers and scholars pursued their interests, disinterested in money considerations; they were patronised by kings, lords or local chieftains. With the abolition of all such orders and the rise of capitalism, education and knowledge have also been packaged into goods and services so that they could be traded.
In his Nobel prize acceptance speech , on 26 May,1921, Tagore said:
....the traditions of our country are never to accept any material fees from the students in return to the teaching, because we consider in India that he who has the knowledge has the responsibility to impart it to the students.
Today, one cannot learn anything in India, even the alphabets, leave alone poetry or philosophy,-the real foundation of true knowledge- without paying for it, often through the nose.
Salutations to two great Masters of our age!
Before the spread of literacy, and cheap printing methods, serious writers wanted their works to remain in manuscript form, and considered it cheap and vulgar to have them printed and circulated. Of course it was a time when such scholarly pursuits were associated with class notions. We are told that:
"Manuscript was seen as a more private, class bound form of publication,....and writers like Philip Sidney or John Donne were extremely leery of appearing in print for fear of seeming common.......The public, commodified circulation of print,on the other hand, was seen by those with court ambitions as a cheapening, chancy, even dangerous business.......John Milton's late and agonised decision to begin to print his writing......"
From: Anne Baynes Coiro : 'Writing in Service: Sexual Politics and Class Position in the Poetry of Aemilia Lanyer and Ben Jonson' in 'Seventeenth Century British Poetry' Norton Critical Edition,2006.
Sir Philip Sidney:1554-1586
English poet and courtier of Elizabethan age.
John Donne: 1572-1631
Considered a leading Metaphysical poet.
Both pictures in the Public Domain.Taken from Wikimedia Commons.
Of course there are no kings and courts to patronise authors now, who depend on the publishers and reading public. Nobles might have gone, but we still have noble minded rich who generously support education and scholarship but it takes an institutional form. IPR has thus become a necessary evil. While it is necessary for freelancers and professional writers who depend upon it for a living, I cannot understand why academics paid well by the universities should seek further unconscionable gain from their writings. After all, the universities had supported and funded their research, directly or indirectly. Perhaps they are guided by a new idea of "class"- that they should price themselves out of the many, and land in a few 'niches' and corners!
But it becomes absurd and ridiculous when one cannot reproduce a photograph or painting of a leading artist or thinker or scientist or academic due to copyright restrictions. What is the scale of values of a society when the newspapers are full of the photos of criminals and rowdies, politicians and film stars & and starlets. while it is so rare to see a good photograph of a scientist or artist? "What will sell" is the only guide.
Where the mind is sold out
We Indians suffer from a different kind of loss of freedom. Our academics, intellectuals and writers have completely lost any originality of mind, and merely echo the ideas of the West. They are guided by western frameworks and theories even in evaluating purely Indian themes. In the academic disciplines such as economics, political science, poetics, aesthetics, logic, philosophy, astronomy, metallurgy, mathematics, medicine, literature, etc our scholars are not even aware of India's own achievement. They do not care that we have our own standards and theories. In his Nobel speech in 1921, Tagore also said:
We lost our confidence in our own civilization for over a century, when we came into contact with the Western races with their material superiority over the Eastern Humanity and Eastern culture, and in the educational establishments no provision was made for our own culture. And for over a century our students have been brought up in utter ignorance of the worth of their own civilization of the past. Thus did we not only lose touch of the great which lay hidden in our own inheritance, but also the great honour of giving what we have and not merely begging from others, not merely borrowing culture and living like eternal schoolboys.
And just think- another century has gone by like this!
Nor do our academics and 'intellectuals' even now critically examine the contribution of the West, ancient or modern. Their standard of appreciation is what the West does. The popular culture is becoming mere imitation of pop American ways, but the slavish mentality of the academics is hard to understand.
With the spread of modern science and technology, and the accompanying commercialisation, it is natural that there has been standardisation and uniformity in most spheres of life. However it need not be so in all areas of intellectual activity. For Indians, the 'West' is a uniform monolith. But in the West itself, there is considerable variety and variation in their tastes and approaches. The US and UK are both basically Anglo-Saxon , but they are not copies or replicas of each other. Such variation is the sign of life and growth.Modern Indians can only copy, not adapt.
Indians have made the monumental mistake of confusing English language and Anglicised education.We had many leaders during the freedom movement who learned English , but did not give up our cultural roots. The Tagore family and Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo immediately come to mind. They used English language to interpret the genius of India to the whole world, and thus counter the mischief created by the colonial interests. Sadly, free India has blindly continued with the colonial mind set, and made it the standard. All the above leaders transcended the ideas of narrow nationalism and pleaded for universal values, but they were firmly rooted in our soil and psyche. Post-Independence India has mistaken Westernisation for modernisation, Nehru being the chief villain in this regard. It has used English not to uphold and promote Indian interests, but to destroy them.
Most educated persons of older generations could only write Victorian English- to which they were exposed in their schooling. Today, our writers copy mainly the American style. England itself has changed, and America has its own peculiarities. But Indians seek to survive by imitation. Sri Aurobindo alone wrote English in an original style, which was the envy of even Englishmen.
We can stand out
This is where R.K.Narayan scores easily- with a very natural, simple style, combining a "beauty and sadness" , in the words of Graham Greene that appealed to all cultivated minds in England and other countries.In the obituary note on 14 May 2001, Myrna Oliver of the Los Angeles Times wrote:
(Narayan's) spare,wry English language novels and short stories gave the world insight into the richness and depth of life and literature in India....
(his) 34 books of elegantly subtle, simple and universal fiction made him India's most notable writer.....
(his) prolific works were translated into all European languages, Hebrew.... Narayan also expanded English lexicon with such India-based words as "swat", meaning ridding oneself of flies.
'The Economist', London wrote in its issue of 24 May 2001:
...seeking to understand India,R.K. Narayan is more accessible than Salman Rushdie and less cumbersome than Vikram Seth....
Gradually, the reader learns to view the world through Indian rather than Western eyes.
We may learn all the English we can, but we must learn to be Indians first for the world to respect us. Imitation attracts ridicule and contempt.
Public Domain via Wikimedia commons.
The revolutionary Tamil poet Subramanya Bharati sang that if it is true literary excellence, foreigners should salute it. This is what RKN proved.
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Subramanya Bharati 1882-1921
Regional politics, linguistic chauvinism and caste considerations have combined in India to deny Narayan his due place .
We have a long way to go to even glimpse that heaven where knowledge is free.
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