Tradition and Empowerment

 

Tradition and Empowerment

“Thou shalt not ...”

This post is to establish the truth value of the opening statement, and how and why it is true. Starting from an assumption that God would not have lied to Moses, we see that many of the commandments–as many as seven, and eight if you would paraphrase the first, saying, “Thou shalt not have any other God before me”)–He delivered had the phrase as an integral part.

Of course Jews do lie, have lied throughout their history, and would continue to, just as the followers of all other sets of tenets prescribed by their religion. I am sure atheists and secular humanists do too. I do not have to give examples.

The Jewish tradition, though, continues, against almost insurmountable odds. And, Jews are empowered, least of all to tell lies, ironically. They lied to themselves that they would return to their “Promised Land”; sans these lies, it is impossible to believe that they could have survived the atrocities of “The Final Solution”.

The land was theirs, by tradition; their own, of course. And, this tradition did not brook any interference by others, even those they displaced from their “Promised Land.” The Allies in WW I captured Jericho from the Ottoman Empire in 1918 and Israel came into existence again, much later. This recent warfare success is but a re-enactment of the original laying-to-waste of Jericho by Joshua, as in the Bible.

Ask yourself, without the tradition of “celebrating”, in whatever way and even if only mentally, the Biblical victory of Jews over Jericho, could the historical (about a little more than 100 years ago) event have had a moral justification. I answer, no.

This post is not about Bible as history, Israel, Jericho and the associated events and people. I merely took Jericho as an example to show how tradition(s) of any group of people become a Lorenz Attractor located in a moral, political, cultural and economic sphere. Jews in Israel are empowered, no one would doubt. French speaking Lebanese in Lebanon (if that were wider than a city block!).

I was in Delhi for more than 15 years. It was my parents who made me even aware that there was a temple for Pillayar (the single–tusked elephant God, actually an inset in a bigger temple for Goddess Durga, the ferocious one (?)) in the then suburb I was living in. Then, I realized that this mini-temple was the gathering place for all the Tamils in that suburb. Friendships were created, and more importantly, the TamBrahm culture of the “Diaspora” (I know the purists would use this word only for the Jews spread beyond their “Promised Land”; kindly excuse) took root and spread. This, I feel, is empowerment. “Thou shalt ...” took root, about celebrating any function, or even daily homestead rituals. One can, of course, rewrite the sentence as, “Thou shalt not ...” without straining! One would enjoy more proscriptions, more than ten.

C R Park in South Delhi empowered, in my thinking, Bengalis and they have stayed empowered. Sowcarpet in Chennai is so for people of Saurashtra. Likewise for Punjabis from the then East Pakistan (?), the Kalkaji enclave just north and east of C R Park. Sion, Matunga for south Indians in Mumbai. Alipore Road in Kolkata for TamBrahms, particularly from Thanjavur! All are empowered through traditions, rutted and rusted, not carrying enough fidelity to age–old customs but spawning new age customs.

It is a two-way street between tradition and empowerment. But, they are not Siamese twins not to be separated. It is not that one cannot survive without the other. Rather, they survive best by co-evolving, and retaining the property of spreading like water hyacinth in a fetid, stagnant water.

 So much for empowerment through groups, ersatz butter. Individual empowerment is the real thing.

Raghuram Ekambaram