The revolutionaries of the 20th century were, admittedly, influenced mostly by the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Germanic notion of ‘stages’, the on-the-ground example of the Russian Revolution and the voluminous theories it engendered, Euro-Centric, deterministic and in other ways flawed of course.
The formulation included an observation that the capitalist
epoch would obliterate things ancient and even new-formed opinions and
prejudices would themselves be antiquated instantaneously (Communist Manifesto:
section on ‘Bourgeois and Proletarians’).
What we witnessed is the opposite, but perhaps we are still not yet as
far into the capitalist age as warranted by the description ‘late capitalist’
frequently used by some Marxists.
Marx also rubbished history and tradition and created the
impression that revolutionaries and revolutions are ‘revolution-bound’ to
abandon/destroy everything touched or smeared by the ‘past’. In the ‘18th Brumaire of Louis
Napolean’, Marx plays on Hegel’s claim, ‘all great world-historic facts and
personages appear twice,’ offering that the first time it is tragic and the
re-enactment a farce. What he failed to
anticipate was that Marxism and its adherents would end up creating their own
histories, develop their own iconography, temples and holy cows, and
consequently their own tragedies and farces, although not in the order of
Marx’s formulation.
What did make sense and indeed made for healthy
revolutionary practice was the question mark that he stamped on ‘the past’,
including tradition, customs, prejudices and opinions. His know-all followers, handicapped by the
yes-no, black-white, either-or logical frame on which their gurus built the
theoretical edifice that they came to regard as temple and consequently
worship, unfortunately read question-mark as revolutionary license to rubbish
and destroy. They’ve not progressed much
either in the elimination of ‘tradition’ or in bringing the exploited closer to
emancipation.
What is pertinent to this discussion is the fact that Marx
had a point, even though it was vulgarized by his followers. Marx predicted or at least hoped that man
would in the end be ‘compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of
life, and his relations with his kind’.
There is very little in life that is ‘compelling’ and the compelling is
as influenced by reason as by emotion, as much by cold logic as by burning
blood. The sobriety that Marx would have
liked quickly gave way to fixation. The doctrine of approximation was replaced
by the erroneous ‘finality’ of exactitude and consideration of context ditched
for parroting of convenient quote and the inevitable abandonment of question
mark in favour of exclamation mark.
It is perhaps an indicator of colonial servility that
prevented many Marxists from discovering and/or acknowledging that Siddhartha
Gauthama, our Budun Wahanse, had in less dogmatic and therefore more ‘compelling’
and sober ways outlined the importance of questioning ‘tradition’ and
‘legend’. ‘Do not believe in traditions
and legends simply because they have been handed down for many generations,’
the Compassionate One told the Kalamas in outlining the pithy and telling
Charter of Free Inquiry, the Kalama Sutta.
What is recommended is not the wholesale abandonment of tradition and
legend, but an informed and critical engagement with these elements.
Marx wrote that the tradition of all dead generations weighs
like a nightmare on the brains of the living and warned that they are
particularly heavy in ‘revolutionary’ moments, with ‘revolutionaries’ conjuring
up the spirits of the past, borrowing from them names, battle slogans and
costumes. Marxists are as guilty of this
error as any other ‘revolutionaries’.
It is true, is it not that we tend to treat legend and myth
as fact? Are we not reluctant to examine
and determine the true dimensions of event and personality by stripping account
of frill? Are we not selective when we refer to history, prone to valourization
of that which feeds our political project and suppression of that which is
uncomfortable or disconcerting? How
ready are we to obtain a narrative of some reasonable degree of approximation
by peeling off rhetoric and poetry? Is
it not true that people whose accounts of community and lineage are short on
acceptable evidence often depend on ballad and slogan while rubbishing history
as irrelevant? Don’t those who belong to communities whose track record is made
of bloodletting and pillage prefer political discourse to be limited to the
here-and-now and do they not call for the virtual burning of books (that survived
the arsonist adventures of fellow-practitioners of an earlier era) by outlawing
‘history’ from school curricula? Is it
not true that some faiths happily embellish the relevant doctrine by borrowing
artifact, symbol and even tenet from other traditions and thereafter treat
these as ‘god-given’, sacrosanct and exclusively owned by the faith from then
to now and all time?
The importance of questioning legend and tradition stems
from a simple observation, i.e. such things are not cast in stone but are in
fact products of contexts and histories.
That which makes sense in one context, i.e. in a particular time-space
matrix need not necessarily have meaning in another. The difference between the Marxian
formulation and that of our Budun Wahanse is that the former is dogmatic and
lends to finality whereas the latter advocates the exercise of reason and the
application of logic taking into consideration all available facts pertaining
to the context. Underlining it all is
the call for equanimity. Budun Wahanse neither
recommended the hard grip or fixation, nor did he advocate out of hand rejection.
What is stressed is ‘critical engagement’.
What is advocated is not blind acceptance of word (which is
what legend and traditional amount to) or the callous rejection of something
simply because it is a ‘legend’ or is ‘traditional’. It is always a judgment call but one
predicated on the exercise of reason and not a response to some emotional
impulse. This is the spirit in which
‘legend’ and ‘tradition’ should be considered by those who want to change
things as they are.
To the Kalamas he said, "When through the exercise of
the intellect and the testing through observation and practice you discover
that these things are bad, these things are blamable, these things are censured
by the wise and these things when undertaken and observed lead to harm and ill,
abandon them’. That which is and that
which was, by virtue of existence in the ‘now’ or in the ‘past’, respectively,
are not necessarily good and/or wholesome.
In the case of traditions and legends, the revolutionary would do well,
I believe, to assess their dimensions, relevance and benefits. If they are
indeed good, if they are not blamable, if they are indeed praised by the wise,
and if, when undertaken and observed, they lead to benefit and happiness, then,
as Siddhartha Gauthama advocated it would be logical to enter on and abide in
them. Not otherwise.
A revolutionary, accordingly, is by definition, called upon
to apply his/her critical gaze not only on that which he/she seeks to change
but that which he/she considers ‘articles of faith’ as represented by relevant
legends, myths and traditions.
Sabbe Satta Bhavantu Sukhitatta. May all beings be
happy!
Malinda Seneviratne is the Editor-in-Chief of 'The Nation' and can be
reached at msenevira@gmail.com
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