Dear Editor,
Disappointing is the one word that keeps coming back as I read Mr Seopaul Singh’s ‘GK Lall has raised the bar so high that even poets and philosophers have no answers’ (SN March 31).
It is disappointing because I believe that Mr Singh knows and appreciates the gritty realities of our existence to not have grasped my position; disappointing because the answers have only been elusive by virtue of the questions never being honestly considered; and, most disappointing of all, has been Mr Singh’s readiness to seek refuge and comfort in the ordinary.
Mr Singh should know that for close to 50 years, two of five (if not more) of our brothers and sisters of differing hues have felt the sting of exclusion and the uncertainty of want in what has been a zero sum game. To help him, I will detour from the highways and bypass the ramps. I will walk in the gutter. There were the days when Indians were stripped of their dignity, and stood on the outside with their noses pressed up against the window pane. They did so longingly and abjectly. While others celebrated, this segment endured and somehow existed. But no one –no leader – in the ascendancy did anything meaningful for them. No one, and certainly not on a sustained basis.
Now fast forward to the last seventeen years. This time it is the black man and woman (a different 2 of 5) who inhabit a forlorn and miserable gulag amidst the festivities of successor neighbours. Once again, there is the pain and emptiness of those languishing in the tormented realms of need and want.
And once again, those who lead have preoccupied themselves with the ambitions and expectations of their own kith and kin.
If ethnic loyalties are suspended, if political bias can be held in abeyance, and a cold, dispassionate examination of heroes exalted is risked, then the blemishes of truth and accuracy are exposed to our tentative voyeurism. Which leader has really gone outside the perimeter of only his people? Who has progressed beyond the unconvincing – even scorned – tokenisms, symbolisms, and paternalism? If there is the courage to get to this place of understanding, then the history of failure furnishes the incentive to transcend where we have been immovable. Why not? When it is the way of some men to see things as they are, and ask why; and to envision things as they should be, and ask why not.
In the 28 years of Indian despair, now followed by 17 years of black enfeeblement, no leader has gone the extra yard to confront the why.
No leader has been inclined to step into the untested waters of why not. Instead, all have been content to operate within the confines of the safe and the comforting. This is the tragedy of the land that we call home; and where all the jockeying and speculating has been, and is, about the aggrandizement of the self and a section. And this is not good enough, acceptable, or sustainable. It cannot be; it must not be.
This is what I find disappointing from the past, and where Mr Singh’s well-crafted commentary refused to travel. Disappointing that that which challenges our leaders (and us) is seen as requiring the superhuman and angelic. I will agree that what I call for is extraordinary and unprecedented, and only feasible if there is the will and the vision.
Yes, history overflows with failures and those found wanting. But that did not deter King and the 10% of the populace that believed; or Gandhi from going up against an empire while backed by a multitude of peasants. I might be naïve, even empty headed, but surely that should not stop us from wanting to shatter the pattern. Or to raise the bar on ourselves and those who aspire to lead in the quest for answers. If not we will have consigned ourselves to a purgatory of mediocrity or worse, and another fifty years of anguish and turmoil.
In my mind, the choice is as clear as it is stark: accept the status quo and failures and those found wanting. Or dare to seek and challenge leaders to go where even the poets and philosophers fear to tread by asking why and why not; and then pursuing both.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
