THE WAY IT WAS: Poverty alleviation or elimination —Mian Ijaz Ul Hassan
Presently nothing sells unless first it is converted into a commodity. Hasn't
man himself been transformed into a commodity or getting dangerously close to
it?
Rarely do we think well of a person who has let us, or someone, down. In reality
the feeling may have more to do with our high expectations rather than any
innate inadequacy or malevolence on the part of the other. Should one not have
compassion for the limitations of others?
Some individuals may not have the strength while others may find loyalty beyond
their means. I don’t believe men are inherently bad or evil. Marlowe, and
Shakespeare after him, believed to the contrary. They thought that evil existed
in its own right and motivated individuals to action. Aeschylus, Sophocles and
Euripides before them also believed in this.
With Marx we enter a world where individual conduct is determined by class
interest and judged by its social effects. A person may harbour good motives but
if he misappropriates the labour of others he is an exploiter and therefore bad.
Accordingly, those who are exploited and made to sweat for the rich are
essentially good. In Marxian society the criterion of goodness is determined by
a person’s loyalty to the working class. I believe once when Khrushchev
informally bumped into Zhou En-Lai, at a peace conference in Geneva, he took a
dig at Zhou by saying that while he himself was the son of a Russian coalminer,
Zhou was the son of a Chinese mandarin. Zhou En-Lai did not deny the charge but
added that there was at least one thing common between them, “You are a
traitor to your class and I am a traitor to mine.”
Sigmund Freud introduced psychoanalysis to fathom the mind and understand human
conduct. He maintained that man was inherently a predator and his actions were
largely determined by subterranean motivations, outside conscious awareness. He
asserted that man’s ‘instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable
interests’. He was of the view that human nature could not be changed. In the
spiritual sense, does he not absolve the individual from being responsible for
his deeds?
The Greeks and the Elizabethans ultimately held the individual morally
responsible for whatever he did. Freud explained away individual responsibility.
He viewed human conduct as a product of pathological causes. In the classical
worldview, gods and witches often interfered with events. But since individual
choice was never wrested from man he was held accountable for his actions and
made to suffer for them.
In the past man was primarily concerned with his individual redemption and
worked for divine retribution through suffering. Sometime the high and mighty
were made to go through trials without faults of their own choosing. They were
put to test because the gods willed it so. Jacob goes blind crying for the loss
of his beloved son Joseph. Oedipus gouges out his eyes on discovering that he
was bound in wedlock with his mother. Ironically he begins to perceive more
clearly than when he had eyes and could see. Moved by his suffering the gods
elevate him to become their equal. Oedipus becomes a god but tragically ceases
to be human. In a sense it was an unfair, cruel and irrational world.
With Marx the preoccupation with individual redemption is replaced by the need
for humans to evolve and better themselves, which is inseparably linked with the
struggle of the oppressed against all forms of oppression. Marx, unlike Freud,
held that man was wholly good but the institution of private property had
corrupted his nature.
In the contemporary world how far can man be held accountable for his actions? I
think it was the well-known existentialist novelist Albert Camus who observed
that for an individual in the modern world, it was a question of presuming to
exercise choice where the choice didn’t exist. Increasingly it is becoming
difficult for man to determine his actions when the forces of market economy are
taking over his life.
Most modern artists and writers who once upheld high social ideals are today
content to work within the prevailing system. The collectors, the readers, the
viewers, determine what an artist should paint, an author write and the cinema
produce. And yet shouldn’t humans be accountable for whatever they do? Nothing
sells today unless it is first converted into a commodity. Hasn’t man himself
been transformed into a commodity or getting dangerously close to it?
The day after Askari Mian Irani, a well-known Lahore artist, unexpectedly passed
away, I received a telephone call from a friend in Karachi. He wanted to know on
behalf of an anxious collector, how Askari’s paintings would be valued now
that he was dead. It seems that nothing has intrinsic value. A society that does
not cherish art for its intrinsic goodness and provides space for it limits its
own horizon.
Getting back to Freud, is it pertinent to ask whether a person should be
forgiven for drowning babies, because as an infant his mother would not change
his nappies? It is not easy to answer such questions. How does one resist the
irresistible urge for theft, or the irrepressible urge to rape or kill? In the
past people were hung for stealing bread. Theft was considered a heinous crime.
If a person with psychological disorder can be set free for manslaughter, why
are not the misdemeanours of those afflicted with poverty and hunger treated
with similar consideration? Is cutting of hands for petty theft right? Should
not slaves and the wretched of the earth have the right to rob and revolt? Why
should some people sleep in soft warm beds and others freeze on a footpath?
The answer is: the poor are naturally endowed to suffer the adversities of life,
including cold, heat and hunger. The common Kikar and wild Beri trees can thrive
anywhere, whereas the roses have to be carefully nursed and nurtured. Or so the
rich believe. The rich are smooth and soft whereas the poor are rough and hard.
The rich have abundant comforts that make them vulnerable; the poor have
generations of poverty, which makes them tough. How unfair for the rich?
I sometimes wonder why those who were once kindly disposed to the poor now talk
of poverty? Poverty as a virtue of the Prophets was an elevated state of
self-denial, which envisaged aesthetic simplicity and cherished virtue in
restraint, whereas poverty as a social phenomenon means diarrhoea, ignorance,
vice, lice, starvation and human degradation. Isn’t it awful that this should
be so when humans look across the cosmic frontiers, towards new worlds in the
distant galaxies, while most of humanity lives in abject poverty? Poverty is not
something that needs alleviation; it needs elimination. Should we work for
personal redemption or try to evolve ourselves into better humans? That is the
real question. What we do in response to the answer will presumably determine
what we are, or can be.
Prof Ijaz-ul-Hassan is a painter, author and a political activist