Ideas and Identities

“Where am I heading?” This is one question that frequently arises in everyone’s mind. Each person has defined a path for himself in the mind and travels in that. But most of the times, at the end of the journey when we look back and ask ourselves, “Was this the path I wanted to take?” Many are unsure and some repent that this is not the destination they had desired. We need to perform introspection and find out why this happens. To arrive at the cause, we must first determine the root, i.e., how have we decided and nurtured our aim, and why do we falter midway. I had a chance to speak about this to many people.

I figured out that most of them frame their aim based on someone who has already proved himself or from achievers. For example, a girl wanted to become an IPS Officer and said after 6 years I see myself as Kiran Bedi. I was appalled and said, “if you become Kiran Bedi, then where’s you?!” This phenomenon of setting targets based on someone can be observed in many streams of life. From a student to any professional, everyone wants take the same beaten path, thinking safe, imitate their inspirations and try to reach their destination. I guess this is where we go wrong, as we have always wanted to follow an identity. The identity could be anyone, a great leader, a successful person or our next door neighbor. This is a common thread running across people. People try to identify or relate themselves with someone. When success is measured using this scale, certainly this won’t bring smiles in the faces. We need to understand that everyone is a unique in their own right as the odds stacked against and the circumstances that each person undergoes are different.

What I had described above is at individual level. When we look at this from a higher plane or from an overall perspective, we would observe that this casts a negative impression on our society. Upon looking at the societies of the present, we discover the diversity in it and the repercussions of the same in it. Diversity has two varied impacts on a system. The presence of high diversity quotient can act as a catalyst and help the society to thrive and flourish when utilized in a positive note. On the other hand, an unsynergised diversity will pull the system to numerous outer directions making it more scattered. Our society is now suffering from the latter. This is because when we move in our life following the identities, we tend to attach great importance to the identity we follow and undermine the importance of others. This has a direct negative effect. I would like to present a simple analogy to substantiate this point. I asked a good number of people as what is the first thing that comes to your mind when I utter the word Ahimsa? Immediate answer I got was Mahatma Gandhi while the right answer would have been the principle of non-violence. I am happy that we remember Gandhi, but at the same time what we failed to realize is, his idea of principle of non violence that he proposed as ahimsa. Now instead of inculcating ahimsa in our lives, we have kept ahimsa as something that is to be associated only with Gandhi. This is why our society falters following the idolizing culture and this has now become a stumbling block in our growth. It would be worthwhile to read the observation made by Tushar Gandhi when he was posed a question by a journalist during his Dandi March campaign.
Q: You said that you're expecting many foreigners. What is Bapu's impact on the international scene, especially in the West, 55 years after his martyrdom?
A: “They understand Bapu differently in the West. They don't idolize him as we do. In a way, what we do is a disservice to him. We need to understand and implement his ideas in life. Many westerners are trying to implement Bapu's ideas and methodology to solve problems and adapt them to their own society. Many have registered for the march. They are coming for a discovery of Gandhian philosophy. They see a physical challenge as well as a spiritual experience”
This is just one simple instance. There are lots more that can elaborate the point. The conflicts, social disharmony and communal violence that are prevalent in our country are all negative impacts on blindly following the identity form. We are fighting over Ram, Allah and Jesus, the religious identities, but we have failed to realize the ideas put forth by them such as Gita, Bible and Quran which preach love and peace.

I am not undermining the importance of identities here but trying to convey that ideas are the significant, supreme and powerful creations in this world. Until we keep moving as flock by idolizing, our society cannot develop. It would be worth mentioning that politicians are using this weakness of ours to their advantage. Human development is characterized by growth of ideas and it can happen only when our thoughts ponder on the theories that created great revolutions. Remember, identities are mortal, ideas aren’t.