Defiance as a virtue

In this smothering second wave of the pandemic, I read some of Voltaire’s essays in his Lettres philosophiques (or “Letters concerning the English Nation”) walking wall-to-wall in a small apartment (my home), deep in the suburbs of Mumbai. At no point in these elliptical, dizzying walk-reads did it ever strike me particularly that these essays were written around 3 centuries ago!

The essays read like those of a contemporary from a far-away world, tugging on our common thread of reason. Au contraire, I can barely speak to anyone aged 50 or above without constantly being reminded of the massive age gap; the power of great writing cannot be understated.

Writing is not the sole act of putting words to paper, as Ava explains beautifully in this post, it is a distinct form of consciousness. It cannot be separated from thinking.

We all think in our daily lives but when the endless waves of thoughts hit the rocky shores of our mind, the froth of ideas rise, only to quickly dissipate. They can rarely be recalled in the same fervour let alone expounded in a compelling fashion.

Moreover, these thoughts themselves are largely influenced by what we are exposed to. Growing out of immediate biases, whether it is 300 years ago or now is more or less the same challenge. The difference is, then there was a dearth of information, and today we are drowning in information. Stuart Turton expresses it best:

“Too little information and you’re blind, too much and you’re blinded.”

Hence, I am fascinated by great writers who didn’t conform, who were defiant in the face of extraordinary resistance, both internal and external. The conscious choice to tread unknown waters (unknown even to self), knowing you will be persecuted by society, requires a will forged in fire. Unlike what is popular today, it is not just being a bitter contrarian, looking to amass adulation for being “unique”. It is normalizing the unspeakable to force acceptance, the first step towards change.

Voltaire’s magnum opus, Candide, showed me how magnificently humour can be wielded. When I read it, I was so visibly in splits that my dad mockingly asked me if I was doing okay. In the story, the eponymous Candide is a young and slightly dull gentleman who unequivocally believes in the teachings of his mentor and philosopher, Pangloss (an Optimist). Candide goes on an unforeseen adventure fraught with danger, pain and ridicule in an ugly and unforgiving world which breaks him at every turn.

Voltaire shined a spotlight on something that nobody was ready to acknowledge, let alone accept at the time. This book was a response to Leibniz’s cause and effect theory which is surmised as Pangloss’s teaching “All is good in the best of all possible worlds”. Since this brilliant satire openly and equally mocks the royalty, government, and church, it was banned by the Greater Council of Geneva and Paris outright upon its publication. It was also later listed in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Roman Catholic Church’s list of prohibited books.

So often, history gifts you a complete picture with seemingly obvious turns of fate, but such paths were paved in the suffocating heat of conviction.

I truly love George Orwell’s Animal Farm for the same reason. At the height of world war II, in the early 1940s, when Britain and the Soviet Union were allies against Nazi Germany, Orwell wrote this allegorical novella. Even though he’d had the idea for a few years, an excerpt in his war-time diary from 3 July 1941 describes the sentiment that led Orwell to pen this book:

“One could not have a better example of the moral and emotional shallowness of our time, than the fact that we are now all more or less pro Stalin. This disgusting murderer is temporarily on our side, and so the purges, etc., are suddenly forgotten.”

The novella describes how a caste of pigs, on the back of a social revolution (Animalism) slowly enslaved the citizenry and essentially replaced the tyrannous humans that owned the Manor Farm (later renamed Animal Farm). It alluded to the inhumane state of the Soviet Union with characters being a direct inspiration from Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin.

Today, it is considered a massive hit, and is present in almost all the ‘must read before you die’ lists but when it was fully written down by 1943-1944, there was a huge difficulty in getting it published; the novella was flat-out rejected by 4 publishers. During this time, Orwell consulted someone from the ministry of information who strongly advised him against publishing the book. Here is an excerpt from the letter he received:

“I mentioned the reaction I had had from an important official in the Ministry of Information with regard to Animal Farm. I must confess that this expression of opinion has given me seriously to think…. I can see now that it might be regarded as something which it was highly ill-advised to publish at the present time. If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators, that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships. Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.”

Orwell publishing this book was deemed politically incorrect. Knowing how paranoid Stalin was, how recent and most likely brief the alliance was, it was much easier to sweep inconvenient morals under the rug – to close your eyes when shaking hands with the devil. It might have been desperate and unavoidable but the hypocrisy of the act should be openly discussed. To beat the evil knocking at the door, you turn to bigger evils elsewhere. At what point do you lose sight?

Obscene truths, more than anything, crave to be in full display. They dream of a release from averted gazes, muffled voices, sweaty handshakes, stony countenances, and hasty signatures at the bottom of documents. In secret, open or closed, they slowly grow into hideous monstrosities that tower high above us. To the extent that we may end up owing our existence to their shadows.

Only those trapped in the shackles of heritage understand how terrifying it can be to speak out. Ultimately, only those willing to bear shame, scorn, and hatred, find their own voice in the crowd. It is imperative to find it because sometimes, you can only save your culture by moulding it in the furnace of open defiance.