What comes first?

 What comes first? Did the title make you think of that ancient debate which apparently science seems to have now answered, that is, the rather notorious egg/chicken stuff? Well, no, not really! That is not the theme I am referring to.

Actually, I was alluding to the great Tilak-Agarkar debate. Yes, both of them, best friends, fell out over the issue, 'what comes, and what should, come first?' Indeed, it was an issue literally central to the very identity of and meaning of being 'Indian', especially because we were not Indians then. We were the colonised. In other words, the answer to this question would decide the very future of our national being. Hence this title of our blog.

So what exactly were the two alternatives defining this debate? Tilak thought that political freedom preceded any social re-vamp, while Agarkar thought progressive societal contours would accede political maturity. What great thinkers they both were to have so profoundly and deeply  thought of the independent India, that heaven of freedom in to which the country should wake up, as Tagore would put it.

Indeed, what wonderful thinkers they all were, Bhagat Singh, Tilak, Agarkar, Gokhale, Nehru, Gandhi, Bose, Patel. The list is literally endless. What I admire the most about them is the fact that their debates dealt with huge and honest ideas. These were not merely self-centered either. They had the larger good at heart. They respected each other, moreover, and seemed ready 'to agree to disagree'. They made, moreover, the common man dream, debate, discuss "i-deals", that is, both ideals and "i deal's", that is, actual action charged with these ideals.

Well, now in the third decade of the twenty- first century, almost a century later, we all are enjoying the fruits of their labour. Oh, yes, we continue to be the argumentative Indians as well. What do the common, ordinary Indian people debate these days though? A majority would heatedly squabble about, bicker over grand themes such as hotelling, recent most films, tinsel celebrities and their glamour, t.v. serials, cricket, fashion, and politicking, both at the workplace, and as party politics!

So vitiated and minimised is the public space now that public intellectuals of the giants of the variety mentioned above no longer matter much, while the private space obsesses with 'i, me, mine'. The question now hence is, what comes first? Self-respect or self-centeredness!?!

Pratima@They say, tell me who your friends are, or show me the books you read, and I shall tell you who you are. May be, these days, it could also be, tell me what comes first for you, and I shall tell you who you are!