CULTURE OF PEACE

www.ignca.gov.in

PART-II
EXAMINING THE EMPERICAL REALITY OF BEAUTY AND PEACE

07 A Dehumanized Environment

Keshav Malik
This is my third day in Rampur, a small hill town in north India. It is the prototype of similar hill towns all
along the Himalayan foothills. Like others, I too at times go to the Mall, but oftener to the more secluded
forest roads. The fatigue of the Indian plains that has accumulated these many years comes unstuck,
here where nothing much happens except when the football of the schoolchildren overshoots into
the khud. Down in the dusty town where I live I can rarely hear the sounds of the earth. Oh, I know you
can hear them even there, but the effort that one has to make is prohibitive. Nature, or what to me are the
distinct individual voices, of running water, the clear ring of a single human voice, the fall of a stone, a
footfall on the gravel, and so many little things, these cannot be heard, just as the colours on the
mountain tops, the contrast of the bottle-green with the azure, the lights shimmering in the valley, these
and many other things get lost in the cry of humanity and the crazy traffic down below.

But now at last I can hear the running water in the pipe, and the bansee down in the pines. The water’s
sound changes ever so often: at first it is like an engine letting out steam at a wayside station at night; at
other moments it climbs purposefully, at still others it compares well with the crickets’ sound beyond the
fence.

It is night, and very quiet outside. As my eye lifts I see a moth by the wooden ceiling, flitting about in
abandon. Yes, the plains, in psychic terms, are far away.

And now remember too, with me, the sounds from, and the shapes of, the mountains during the day:
then, as I recline in my armchair, my eyes open up at the thickly wooded hill parallel with the eyes. I
watch the lights change every so often; there are the greens, the dark shadows and an eagle or two
circling above, round and round. The clouds are bathed in the autumn sun. I hear the cows’ bells tinkle on
the slopes of the hill to my side. The fern-covered oaks near the fence, these I stare at for minutes on
end; I notice each curve of each branch and the movement of the leaves in the lightest of breezes. I
watch the clouds’ surgical white float by and the grass by the old threshold stir. I breathe a deep sigh of
relief. And why?

This is a escape, a necessary one, I tell myself. Where I live and work, down in the big mega-town in the
plains, the silhouette of personality is lost. I have no clear idea what the Indian was like before the
machines came, before the British came, before the Moghuls came. But perhaps this Indian’s was a well-
defined world with its particular harmonies, its peculiar refinements, with little of the ugliness and
hopelessness that invests such a large part of life at least in my big town on the northern plain. Oh yes,
there are good things: there are electric light and the flush system, two admittedly very important
acquirements, which can extend one’s day and conceal a tell-tale object of organic origin. I’m all for these
and for all the other inventions. But no, these are only good means, now unwittingly made out as ends.
What I assert is that civilization, its gadgets, its assets, serve better if they help serve one fundamental
primary end. The end has not changed, it has not changed since the pastoral age with all the vicissitudes
of complex civilizations and cultures. This all-important end is the flavour man gives to his life, or to put it
better, the consumption of beauty. This end is quite unrelated to the accumulation of the skills of
civilization. This end is achieved through a certain simplicity, open eyes and ears, and the receptivity of
the skin’s surface to the phenomena of nature. What I say is that nature, rather our receptive attitude to
nature, has been lost in the plethora of our skills; we have brains, but those of shopkeepers, accountants,
clerks, so we can see nothing save with a view to profit and loss. What has happened, may I ask? Was it
always like this? I do not know.

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 CULTURE OF PEACE
www.ignca.gov.in

But too many people, and it is only from them that one hazards generalizations, and especially those like
myself of the middle strata, are lost in the worship of means; there is such grasping for things, for power,
that no time, no possibility, is left for the human in the machine. How then can we have peace? For we do
not listen but are driven, and so the internecine conflicts between competing individuals wanting the same
object, an object perennially in short supply. This is a strange fate for a culture that prided itself on deep
meditation. But perhaps it is not so strange, for the meditation in question has itself for long been put at
the service of salvation, that is, as a means to the furtherance of the defensive or offensive self. This is
the way I look at it. Most of present-day religion, a good deal of what is called our current spirituality,
serve non-contemplative goals. All we have ended up with is a sort of ancestor worship. The perpetuation
of the line, a natural enough end, appears to have become the chief goal. It may not even be that, but
merely each for himself or herself. Meditation or yoga, or whatever, to men already cast in this form,
becomes no more than a technology, a magical means of emotional control over others. But there is no
inner tranquillity.

A growing will to power, yes, but a rapid loss of the sense of beauty — and therefore no peace.

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