Making and masking of Mutant Modernity.

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mutantMyths do not need any scientific evidence to prove them. Describing a myth is not only justifying it but validating the society in which it is being told. Thus, traditional and nontraditional societies still carry anecdotes, fairy tales and myths with them.
Post modernist argue that Science cannot depend upon Science to answer questions such as: why should there be scientific activity at first place? Here Science needs myths to argue.


At the start of 20th century, the post enlightenment era was so full of reason and logic that central character of western society, the myth, the Christianity, the church and age old moral values were fiercely contested and some time described as null and void, thus, creating a hole in a society which was habitual of seeking whole over hole or presence over absence.    

The west could not have been at piece when their center was challenged or tarnished. The habit of seeking a center was always there and yes they did. They did in form of Modernity. They started seeking new fashion trends, newer forms of Music, Paintings, literature, poems, entertainment and ultimately a culture. Remember Elvis Presley’s hair style or Jimmi Hendrix’s curly hair. The humongous success of Beatles was a reflective outcome of desperation. It was only 20-30 years and people could not have turned back to Christian moralities and therefore liking the challenges posed by Bob Dylan and liking the rhymes of Bob Marley songs. Bob Marley knew what it was meant to be a slave and a black. Through his songs West sought a mean to challenge the moral values prior to renaissance, colonialism and the church. Did west really come to term what or colonialism or Imperialism meant?

In between, the same Science which was an eye opener to lead to liberty was a tool of destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a player in nuclear arms race. The Science which was propagated as the establisher of liberty and consciousness ultimately destroyed Vietnam, almost started a World war near Cuba in 1962 and killed many people around the globe.             

Science emerging from a quantitative bent philosophized qualitative argument but ultimately gave an impression of objectifying human, human race and civilization. Modernism was full of these complexities. Thus, creating a strange but mutant picture of development in developing world in form of Neo Colonialism aka Neo Classical economic theories. Now we do know that our part of the world was severely plagued by a second thought of development. It was a thought which carried wholesome tags such as Poverty elevation, Bridging Urban Rural divide, Education, Policy Making, Governance and last but not the least Democracy. All these tags are highly contested, contestable and are evolutionary. But with science they were put forward as an end rather than a mean to end and Development becoming a complex and confusing miscarriage of orthodox conventions and modernity. For example India and Indian administration built many Educational Institutes of repute i.e. IIM and IIT and carried forward the rituals of Majority religion during the openings of new sessions in the name of optimism. Till date this practice is going on in the Educational institutes of a secular state.

I mean quantitatively India is and was a Secular state, because it is mentioned in the preamble of the Constitution of the state. Quantitatively Indian government policies are holistic. Indian development pattern was Scientific because it has borrowed it from the Scientific and empiricist pattern of West. But somewhere Science has to be mythical to describe itself. Natural Science, Physics, Chemistry and Biology and many others always try to distance it from myths. But when Science/Natural Science and its methodologies come to deal in Society the myths are bound to come. I mean you believe it or not but to my understanding there can’t be a quantitative answer to Freedom, Power or Governance. All these abstracts are indefinite. In seeking broad answers people start narrating narratives, small narratives of their experiences of presence and of past. Small narratives are easy to tell, confess and admit. The history of third world after World War second is a history of exploitation under the garb of grand-narratives like Freedom, liberty and constitutionalism. Freedom carried many different things in Maldives than in Britain.

This is where the paradigm of Development, World Bank and IMF was always criticized for what they did and this is what Modernism was mostly about. Modernism created a disdain for classical tribal and hippy values. It created big buildings and many reasons for people to suicide from these big buildings. Along with buildings it glamorized PEPSI and Coca Cola and objectified Female and feminism.

 In last ten years though grand-narratives have been confined to books and intellectual arguments, instead small and smaller narratives are coming to play. Mohammed Yunus of Grameen Bank lend money to poor people provided they send their children to schools and provide them with hepatitis injections. There are more and more subordinates to Grand –Narratives thus reducing the scope for science and scientific empiricism in Society. People are happy elaborating there past baggage’s and must be allowed to become more thoughtful.

In between these many narratives the orthodoxy of religion has again find its place. Subsiding with Science, religion has created ultra form of symbols like six packs abs of mythical god like Shiva in India, the live broadcasting of Aartee of God and Goddesses. The smaller and funkiest skirts for girls which have Hari Om written all over it, excessive use of guitars in classical Indian music and many others have created a divulgence of mind thinkers to deconstruct  these innumerable intricacies. A Tamil song “Why this Kolavari di” was widely heard and a book trilogy called ‘Meluha’ became a best seller and yet these small narratives are about many other reflections such as increasing violence, Rapes and communal violence.

Some call it the time of Post Modernism; I call it the era of Mutant and un-mutant modernity.    


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