I won't do it. Sorry

WHEN Stephen Menon asked me if I wanted to take part in “The Truth Untold” (read here and here), an exhibition featuring Tamil calligraphy, I jumped at the opportunity. It would be a unique experience to explore Indian culture, exchange thoughts on the subject matter and put together some ideas that had been percolating in my mind for some time.

The title “I won’t do it. Sorry” draws inspiration from Albert Camus’ The Rebel published in the early 1950s. These words are the essence of rebellion.

In the book, which I read in the early 1970s, Camus (1913-60) stated that saying “no” is the behaviour of a social actor claiming his or her right and, therefore, affirming a value. According to him: “Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that, somewhere and somehow, one is right. It is in this way that the rebel slave says yes and no simultaneously. He affirms that there are limits and also that he suspects—and wishes to preserve—the existence of certain things on this side of the borderline. He demonstrates, with obstinacy, that there is something in him which ‘is worth while . . .’ and which must be taken into consideration. In a certain way, he confronts an order of things which oppresses him with the insistence on a kind of right not to be oppressed beyond the limit that he can tolerate.”

Camus at the time read about and bore witness to historical events that started as rebellions but ended up as the worst of autocracies where the actors, collectively, went on rampages to kill, maim and abuse millions in the name of liberty, democracy and/or building a stronger human specie. He wrote:

Which is why I endorse the idea of rebellion, also of holding power to account. I did it in my own little corner, via the building of communication platforms where alternative, critical information can be disseminated – although, regretfully, such platforms like the mass media in the West now, can be turned into propaganda machines that buttress inhuman state and elite agendas. This is where I hope that the participants within such organisations would rebel. In the case of Gaza, after weeks of disinformation, over 1,300 journalists (as at Nov 13, 2023), many in the West, finally came out to protest. Read here. Indeed, in a much wider context, the worldwide protests against governments and companies that support the Israeli genocide in Gaza is an example par excellence of rebellion.

The problem with such mass rebellions however, as Camus rightly pointed out, is that they could negate the very impulses they originated from. Which is why it is very important that the seeds of the original feelings be planted into the alternatives to be grown.

The creation of such alternatives would involve lengthy negotiations and compromises. It would involve a communications nexus that allows for freedom, equality and trust. But that’s another long, long story...