The Morning Inspection
The political and apolitical of Androcles and the Lion
An old friend, now domiciled in Australia, after urging me to set up
my own blog and not finding any enthusiasm on my part except for ‘yes,
I’ll think about it’ each time the subject was broached, she went ahead
and did it. She reads, corrects and suggests improvements almost every
day. I didn’t write anything for Tuesday (August 22, 2011) and therefore
picked something I had written over a year ago to post on the blog: The
counter-democratic and communalist thrust of re-inventing ‘ethnic’
conflict (Daily Mirror of April 18, 2010).
Social research
My friend (let’s call her Manel) appeared in ‘chat’ and said ‘this is
an old one’. I told her I picked it randomly from my files and found the
content still relevant.
‘Yes, I gathered you might not have written anything,’ she said and
recommended that I ‘leave politics and write about something else
today’.
‘Such as?’
‘Sex toys!’
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Androcles
and the Lion |
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Bernard
Shaw |
She was kidding. I asked her to pick a random book, turn to a random
page, close her eyes, place a finger on the page and tell me what’s
beneath it. She mentioned some social research textbook so I told her
that I would prefer fiction. She came up with the following exchange in
the script of a play by (yes, of all ‘non-political’ people!) George
Bernard Shaw:
Lentulus: Centurion: I call on you to protect me.
Centurion: you asked for it, sir. It’s no business of ours. You’ve
had two whacks at him. Better pay him a trifle and square it that way.
Lentulus: Yes, of course. (To Ferrovius) it was only a bit of fun, I
assure you; I meant no harm. Here (he proffers a gold coin).
Ferrovius: (taking it and throwing it to the old beggar, who snatches
it up eagerly, and hobbles of to spend it). Give all thou hast to the
poor. Come, friend: courage! I may hurt your body for a moment; but your
soul will rejoice in the victory of the spirit over the flesh. (he
prepares to strike).
This is from Androcles and the Lion, in a collection of his plays
published by Colorgavure Publications, Melbourne. Page 691.
Dramatic Society
My last encounter with Bernard Shaw was when I played a drunkard in
an abridged version of Major Barbara written by Prof Ashley Halpe and
produced by the Peradeniya Dramatic Society.
My first was when I acted out an extract from Androcles for a Speech
and Drama examination, probably over 30 years ago, trained by the
evergreen Lakshmi Jeganathan, who not only taught me my Eai, Bee and See
but made me appreciate literature.
The political intrudes, I am sorry to inform Manel. It can be about
boys and lions and thorns, but Bernard Shaw framed it all in subtle
political commentary. This reminds me of the late Gamini
Haththotuwegama’s production of Hamlet in Sinhala way back in 1991. A
Shakespearean tragedy made of love, betrayal, palace intrigue and the
machinations pertaining to power. The particular iteration was of youth
being drawn into the political, often reluctantly.
It is nice to think the world is not just about things political, but
politics pervades apolitical life; politics informs choices and
manufactures choice-lack. Politics is about power and power is not just
about parliamentary composition, the clash of ideologies, the
articulation of dissent and the meeting of dissent with force.
It is not only about relative strengths of political parties, the
structure of the state, the health of institutions pertaining to
governance, the overall focus of policy or the relative value of factors
in the political equation of a community, electorate, province, nation,
region or the globe.
It is about power-manifestations in all things, including
relationships, professional and personal, in social, cultural, economic
and even ecological spheres of engagement.
It is about privilege and privileging, footnote and footnoting, even
as it is about making choices, limits on choice-making and the modes of
conduct vis-a-vis all these things.
Hapless boy
Androcles and the Lion is from Aesop’s Fables and is a story that
speaks of gratitude, where a slave boy who escapes and befriends a lion
is later left alone by the lion when the two find themselves as players
in an arena with the emperor present to see a hungry beast tear to
pieces a hapless boy.
In the play, written in 1912, i.e. a century ago, the story is used
to comment on earnestness and the pitfalls of hypocrisy. Indeed, in the
preface that complemented the print version of the play, Shaw claims
that Jesus was nothing more than a benevolent genius who eventually
bought into popular ideas of his divinity and impending martyrdom (or
else that’s how his story was mis-written by the his followers; a deft
political move, one might say in the context of this discussion). Shaw
claims that the teachings were lost with the crucifixion and that the
teachings and philosophies that are collected in his name are but those
of Paul or Barabbas.
I didn’t know all this in those early Androcles days of mine and
hadn’t heard of Shaw either. I don’t know enough to either reject or
endorse Shaw’s version of events that happened 1900 years before his
time, or are alleged to have happened. Faith is a highly personal thing
of course, but when faith is wielded like a flag, it cuts like a sword,
for the faithful, regardless of the intensity of their fervor or indeed
on account of it, can never be equivalent to divinity.
Moral universe
Divinity itself is in a sense largely a construct or at least a frill
of frail-human extrapolation. There is a lot of machination and
hypocrisy, which in turn dilutes that which is embrace-worthy of
philosophy and relevant practice. This is why when someone says that
“‘God’ should be ashamed of himself for having created a creature as
vile as man”, it is not entirely illogical or even blasphemous.
Similarly thought-provoking is the twin contention, “‘God’ is man’s
silliest creation”. Like all things, in the final instance, it is the
human being, the individual, who has to come to terms with his/her
notion of the cosmos, life, afterlife, the moral universe, the
dimensions of retribution and reward, and fashion ‘way of life’. Belief
in or disavowal of divinity are reference frames and useful in their own
ways.
Androcles is a political story, but that’s perhaps just me. Manel
might not think so. I was not planning to write about lions, human
frailties or questions regarding the existence of the divine. There is
power, though. And there is agency. There is decision. There is need to
cut through the vague and indeterminate. There is need to figure out
location in a moral-amoral continuum and choose journey-direction.
There is a need to write a column and a need to oblige a friend.
There is a need to be apologise and appreciate. Sorry Manel, and thank
you.
www.malindawords.blogspot.com
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