வெள்ளி, 11 டிசம்பர், 2009

Padhukasahasram

Politics continued

(FromSri Kesava Iyengar’s introduction to his own “Thiruppaadukamaalai)

Politics has become the game of Letting Ioose animality on humanity. The game has In recent  years  developed  into  a  contagious disease and has taken an epidemic form.   Many  are the individuals and states that have  already  fallen victims to it.  The survivors  have. however, in  a sense of false, perhaps dubious,  security  taken  to building air-castles.   It does not seem unlikely that they will  soon be engaged in pumping  out  the  air and in that engagement pumping themselves out of their own castles.   The phenomenon is but  the truth of history repeating  Itself,   That history  is the history of the nemesis of cuius est  regio eius est religio.  To trace that history one has perhaps to go back  to  pre historic  days.   The  Danava emperor (42)  was, the  founder  and the  first pontifex rnaximus of that religion -the imperialistic religion  of geo-ethnic theocracy.    He incorporated the entire ge in Danava  ethnos  and founded  his universal empire in that incorporation.   That  was his constitution and his law  was  the law  of  that constitution.   Vedanta (Philosophy) was  repugnant to that Yaw and he therefore  repealed  philosophy in the omnicompetence of his Legislative rage.   He not merely put his Iaw on the statute book,  which to him in  his practical clarity was a mere euphemism for the dust-heap of the legislative chamber,  but expanded  all  his   imperialistic energy on the propagation of that law.  He took particular  care not  to  Ieave  in  doubt  the  import  of the all-  important  word “cuius” in that statute. He declared that 'cuius'  means  ‘Danava's’.   He being the primate of all  Danavas and therefore of the regio, the religio was, as It  must be,  his.   None else could  poach upon his preserves,  That the regio was his was to him a fact,  an ethnic fact, from which flowed in law the conse- quence of his  religio- the political religion  of  group-egoism, and geo- ethnic imperialism   Ex facto oritur jus  (from  fact arises law).  Good Logic and  good  law.   He  was so much convinced that there was no fault  in  that logic  and no flaw In that law, that  he convinced himself of  the  infallibility of his own  political  judgment and in that  infallibility  he  effected  the  repeal of ''philosophy” and enacted his “theocracy” into a Universal religion.   That was his rule of  law  and that law was to him immutable. He thought that his security was established in the immutability of the law which he enacted.  But alas ! it  proved to be, not a· law  but an  explosive,  which  in its explosion consumed its very discoverer. All later history is but the history of the recrudescence of that prehistoric explosion. Suffice  it to mention only one such recrudescence.  It was in the year 529 A. D. during the historic reign of the ' Roman" emperor, Justinian.   It was the fitting  culmination of the process of conflict and disintegration which had  already begun  centuries  before  with the capture of Alexandria by  the  Romans  and  which  functioned in that process to such completeness  as to result In  the  words  of  Vinogradoff  in  "the Romanization of the provinces and the barbarization of Rome''.  To  the  imperialistic  genius  of the Roman,  law  and engineering alone appealed.   They alone had a value to him.  All else, and particularly philosophy, were  wholly  barren  and  worthless. The emperor therefore codified law  and  crucified philosophy.   He had  all  schools of philosophy closed in 529 A. D.  and  Ieft  Europe  to  darkness and to ‘Iaw'.  The great plague of Europe followed soon after.   The plague was undoubtedly post hoc. Whether, however, it was propter hoc  Iet discerning students of history judge for themselves. The imperialistic could only close the colleges of philosophy, but he could not close the communion of philosophers. The philosophers migrated to the east leaving the west to its law and darkness. Ex oriente lux,ex occidente lex! (From the east light, from the west law!) The philosophers of the west came into communion with the philosophers of the east and the result of that communion was the restoration to the west by east after a lapse of nearly a thousand years of its light of philosophy in integrum. What a magnificent restitutio in integrum! Aristotle was preserved and commented upon by Averroes. That commentary in Latin translation became the second Bible of St.Thomas Aquinas. The service rendered to the cause of human culture by the Jewish philosophers, who were at once great thinkers and translators of great thought by their translations into Latin was unique. It was the very triumph of cultural fellowship over geo-ethnic obscurantism. That fellowship was a union and a republic of philosophy. It was a union in cordiality of the philosophic culture of the “Pagan” Aristotle, the “Moslem” Averroes, the “Jewish” Maimonides, and the “Dominican” St.Thomas aquinas. What a luminous galaxy, what an illuminating society, of noble souls! And yet man has taken to preaching and propagating the creed of darkness – the one darkness of barrack-burial, in the smoking bigotry of his geo-ethnic theocracy.

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42.: Hiranyakasipu: The above is an interpretation of the allegory. The
        story is an elucidation of the supremacy of universal oneness over
        individual and group egoism. It is an elucidation of the apparent
        paradox that the ethical process though born of the ‘cosmic’ process 
        is at enmity with its parent. It is an elucidation of the Upanishadic “Neti
        Neti”.

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