Shaping Spaces for Multiple Equalities: Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar,
the Indian Renaissance Man
Shanker Ashish Dutt & Zaara Urouj
Biographical
and historical studies have portrayed Ishwarchandra Bandopadhyay as a pre-eminent
figure in the Bengal Renaissance. While the context of his education,
professional life and socio-educational activism were located in Bengal, the
latent inequalities that he challenged were pan-Indian. His passionate campaign
for the Hindu Widow Remarriage despite belligerent opposition led to Lord
Dalhousie finalising the bill that led to the legislation of the Hindu Widows’
Remarriage Act in 1856. Hence, he is being recast as an Indian Renaissance Man
as his ideas and campaigns impacted the entire subcontinent, then a part of the
Empire.
Vidyasagar’s
pluralism melded the richness of the Indian knowledge system with the
empiricism of the West and therefore he did not uncritically vilify English
influences as was a common practice among the orthodox bhadraloks in 19th
Century Bengal. Enumerating the positive off-shores influences modified with
irony that occasionally carried a considerable weight of social satire, he had
stated at a social gathering: “On the whole, I feel that we have received three
good things from the English. The literature of Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Sir
Walter Scott and others that we have got from them – do not under-estimate
their value. Second gain – ice. In the searing heat of summer, put one piece of
ice in a tumbler of water, and your relief is immense. And the third is sliced
bread.... You laugh at what I say? But tell me, did we have anything comparable
to sliced bread in our country before? Soak a slice of bread in a bowl of milk
and have it, and you will be full, and you will also not fall ill. The third
advantage cleverly satirises orthodoxy as bread was largely produced in
bakeries run by Christians and Muslims and hence was a prohibited item in Hindu
orthodox households. (Chaudhuri, The Telegraph Online 12th
July 2020)
Born
in an orthodox Hindu Brahmin family, where hierarchy was the social norm,
Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar built spaces for multiple equalities. With or without
him, the Bengal Renaissance would have certainly taken place but his
credibility lies in the fact that he dared to transform Hindu society from
within and brought out remarkable changes in the thought process of the people
not by denying the al-ready existing beliefs but by interpreting them in a new
manner. Neither poverty nor the erroneous beliefs of Indian Shastras
could stop him from becoming the man he was destined to be: a social reformer
and an educationist of rare distinction. An epitome of egalitarian com-passion,
modesty and simplicity, he was a man grounded to the earth but blessed with a
mind that was open to the pursuit of truth and the stark social realities. At a
very early stage in his life, he realised his responsibility towards society
and he dedicated his entire life to uplift the disadvantaged communities and
helped enable women’s agency at a time when patriarchy was deepening its roots.
Vidyasagar
carried forward and indigenised the social and educational reforms begun by The
Serampore Quartet comprising William Carey, Joshua Marshman, William Ward and
Hannah Marshman who believed in ecumenical pragmatism (Daniel 171), an
egalitarian vision and edu-cation as an instrument of equality and justice.
They founded schools for the girls in order to impart western education to them
(Chatterjee 121). These schools were the first of its kind in Calcutta and the
efforts of the Serampore Quartet was instrumental in their development. William
Carey prepared books like A
Grammar of the Bengalee Language, Iitihaasmala, Kathopokothon, A Dictionary of Bengali Language
and the translations of the Bible
in Bengali and several other Indian vernaculars as a part of the curriculum.
They adopted the Serampore system of native education, encouraging knowledge in
history, science, geography and mathematics apart from the general 3 R’s i.e.
reading, writing and arithmetic – a blend of the traditional and modern, giving
special importance to orthography and grammar of Bengali and English languages.
Vidyasagar
was influenced by the outlook and liberal thoughts of Ramkrishna Paramhansa
(Ghosh 44). His personality was forged with utmost dedication to his education
and later his profession, vast knowledge in eastern and western disciplines,
devotion to his parents, morality, mercifulness, kindness, empathy,
cooperation, unconservative attitude, a heart filled with regret to the then
situation of women and a vision to give Indian educational system a modern
perspective. He is well known for his educational and social reforms throughout
the world paving the way for introducing the modern education system in India.
His linguistic, educational and social activities, which he was committed to from
his early life till his death, are remembered by Indians from that time to the
present day.
In
1839, he graduated in law examination conducted by the Hindu Law Committee. His
education at Sanskrit College saw him amassing considerable knowledge and mastery
in a number of shastras or disciplines – kabya (poetry), alonkar
(rhetoric), Vedanta (vedic litera-ture and anthology), smriti (philosophy of
law), nyaya (logic, science and jurisprudence), and jyotish (astronomy) (Bani,
Alam 15). The title of ‘Vidyasagar’, meaning the ‘ocean of knowledge’, was
conferred upon him by Michael Madhusudhan Dutt, who later with great affection
addressed him as Vid. It is said that he derived strength from the knowledge
and used it as a powerful instrument to eradicate the evils prevailing in the
society namely child marriage, gender discrimination and other social taboos.
Having
worked in the Education Department and having observed the education system
very closely, he decided on radical educational reforms. He favoured English
and Bengali as mediums of learning alongside Sanskrit and wanted to offer
students a wider range of subjects and thus broaden their horizons, to
inculcate critical and lateral thinking in examining European and Indian
knowledge and practices side by side so they could apply their own judgement in
discovering the truth for themselves. He was influenced by Western thoughts and
was indeed one of the modern thinkers of his time along with Raja Ram Mohan
Roy, Keshab Chandra Sen and others. In addition to his responsibilities as the
Principal of Sanskrit College, he travelled around Bengal in the capacity of
Inspector of Schools witnessing the pervading darkness, stark realities and
superstitions in which people of Bengal lived in the absence of education. He
realised that it is only Education that can help in liberation and emancipation
of people from the prevailing injustices and inequalities in the society. He
opened twenty schools in just 60 days followed by thirty schools exclusively
for girls’ education. He also established a normal institution for making
competent teachers for these schools. He opened thirty-five schools for girls
between 1857 and 1858. The significance is under-pinned by the realisation of
the Bengali educated class of “the importance of female education for bringing
social reformation and reformers like Roy, Vidyasagar and Radha Kant Deb
endorsed education for girls. This was generally linked to caste taboo and
superstitions among the Bengalis about sending girls to school. But now the
new orientation toward Western ideas and missionaries resulted in the
development of native female schools.” (Dutta 32) One of his major
contributions was the establishment of Calcutta Metropolitan Institution for
higher education which is now known as “Vidyasagar College.” He also was
directly involved in the establishment of “Calcutta Female School” with the
help of Drinkwater Bethune in 1849. Now it is called “Bethune School.” He has
also made his valuable contribution in education through his writings. He wrote
many text books, translated books, biographical books and was a continuous
writer contributing to different magazines.
He commenced
the process of education with his first book of alphabet (Part I and Part II)
called Barna Porichoy first published
in 1855 which laid the foundation of Bengali prose. Vidyasagar was a source of
inspiration for Bengali writers such as Tekchand Thakur, Pyarichand Mitra and
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. Indeed, Tagore revered him as 'the father of modern
Bengali prose'. He also translated a number of Sanskrit works to Bengali and wrote
biographical notes on numerous noteworthy personalities in the history of the
world so the young generation could be inspired. His notable literary
contributions include Banglaar Itihaas (1848), Jivancharita (1849),
Shakuntala (1854), Mahabharata (1860), Seetar Vanavas
(1860), Bhrantivilaas (1869), Oti Alpa Hoilo (1873), Aabaar
Oti Alpa Hoilo (1873), Brajavilaas (1884) and Ratnopariksha
(1886). (http:// bengalonline. sitemarvel.com/vidyasagar.html)
Though
Vidyasagar was not financially very sound, he was philanthropic from his
student life. He would feed the poor and needy and buy medicines for the sick
from the money received through scholar-ships and even borrowed money from
others for his altruism. He opened the doors of Sanskrit College to lower caste
students that was previously exclusive to only the Brahmins; he nursed sick
cholera patients, went to the crematorium to bury unclaimed dead bodies, dined
with the untouchables and walked miles in darkness to take urgent messages to
people who would benefit from them. This was the beginning of his life as a
social reformer. He was deeply affected by the inequalities in the society such
as polygamy, ban on widows from remarrying, child marriage, gender
inequalities, keeping them away from the light of education and depriving them
from property rights. When he tried to call for dialogue to discuss social
matters, he was rebuked and his efforts were rejected in the name of dictates
of Hindu Shastras. He received threats of physical violence and death
from the orthodox and narrow-minded priests but he stood fearless and continued
his work with determination and diligence. Conducting extensive research into
Hindu scriptures and Puranas he tried to explain that there was nothing
evil in a widow’s remarriage and polygamy which was in practice unacceptable as
it was an evil. He published two separate volumes on remarriage of widows and
another two volumes on polygamy citing from the scriptures and explaining the
validity of his arguments (https://biographypoint.com). These include Bidhobabivah
(whether widows should remarry) the first exposure (1855), Bidhobabivah –
the Second Book (1855), Bahubivah – (whether polygamy should be banned)
the first exposure (1871), Bahubivah – the Second Book (1873) and Balyabivah
(flaws of child marriage). To prove that his compassion for widows was not
empty rhetoric as some might have assumed, he married his own son off to a
widow. He compiled a list of 'distinguished' polygamous Calcuttans and another
for surrounding districts. It is an infernal statistic that a considerable
number of men on those lists married up to 80 times, often under-age girls, and
yet were unable to control their boundless thirst for lust.
(http://www.deshforum.com/showthread.php?tid=949)
In
earlier times, widow remarriages would occur sporadically only among
progressive members of the Brahmo Samāj. The prevalent custom of Kulin Brahmin
polygamy allowed elderly men – sometimes on their deathbeds – to marry teenage
or even prepubescent girls, supposedly to spare their parents the shame of
having an unmarried girl attain puberty in their homes. After such marriages,
these girls would usually be left behind in their parental homes, where they
might be cruelly subjected to orthodox rituals, especially if they were sub-sequently
widowed. These included a semi starvation diet, rigid and dangerous daily
rituals of purity and cleanliness, hard domestic labour, and close restriction
on their freedom to leave the house or be seen by strangers. These hapless
widows were prohibited (as spiritual sanc-tion) to abstain from consuming meat,
fish, onion and garlic. Every day, they had to rise before dawn to conduct
their diurnal religious rituals, bathe in icy cold water and wrap a clean white
sari around their wet bodies without drying themselves, and pick fresh flowers
with dew-drops, to offer prayers to the Gods. By custom, they were the last
ones to eat in the household, or went without food observing various religious
fasts. They had to dress in plain white cotton saris and re-main with their heads
tonsured for the rest of their lives to render them unattractive to other men. (http://swpust2015.blogspot.com/2016/06/ ishwar-chandra-vidyasagar-as-social.html) Some widows would even be evicted
from their homes or sent to religious places like Varanasi or Vrindavan,
supposedly to pray and purify themselves, but in reality, they frequently ended
up as prostitutes, rape victims and unsupported mothers. Unable to tolerate the
ill treatment, many of these girls would run away and turn to prostitution to
support themselves. Ironically, the economic prosperity and lavish lifestyles
of the city made it possible for many of them to have quite successful careers
once they had stepped out of the sanction of society and into the demimonde. In
1853, it was estimated that Calcutta had a population of 12,718 prostitutes. (http://www.deshforum.com/showthread.php?tid=949)
Vidyasagar
took the initiative in proposing and pushing through the Widow Remarriage Act
XV of 1856. He fought with the conservative society in the 19th century and
influenced the Government to enact the Widow Remarriage Act which was legalized
on 26th July, 1856. He also established the Hindu Family Annuity
Fund to help widows who could not remarry; he took the initiative to finance
many such widow re-marriage weddings, often getting into debts himself. To stop
poly-gamy among the Kulin Brahmins and child marriage, the Civil Marriage Act
was passed in 1872. His contribution in the uplift of the women by eradicating
blind superstitions and tortures in the name of rituals will be always in the
heart of the women. (Ghosh 46)
Vidyasagar
was one of the earliest in India to realize that modern science was the key to
India's future. He translated into Bengali the English biographies of some
outstanding scientists such as Copernicus, Newton, and Herschel and sought to
inculcate a spirit of scientific inquiry into young Bengalis. A staunch
anti-Berkeleyan, he emphasized the importance of studying European Empiricist
philo-sophy (of Francis Bacon) and the inductive logic of John Stuart Mill. He
said, “Education does not only mean learning, reading, writing, and arithmetic,
it should provide a comprehensive knowledge.” (Alam 14)
Ishwarchandra
Vidyasagar managed to continue the social reformation movement that was started
by Raja Ram Mohan Roy by picking it up from where he left. A staunch believer
of humanity, he brought revolution in India especially in the uplift of the
women and education system of Bengal. While Raja Ram Mohan Roy represented the
new aspirations and the earnest work of the first generation of his country-men
in the nineteenth century, Pandit Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar reflected their
arduous endeavours in the second (Mitra I). The influx of western knowledge,
art and culture as well as advanced moral values enriched the mental horizon of
Bengal liberal intelligentsia. Playing a pioneering role in expanding modern
education and social mobilisation during the nineteenth century Bengal that
spread to the other parts of India, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar not merely
confined himself to the role of a sermonizer towards spreading education within
the superstitious notions engrossed in the Hindu community through their
native language, but also engaged himself in the practical field of social
changes that led to the beginning of the modern India. (Alam 12) He believed
that there is no other religion and goodness than another person’s welfare.
In the
book Makers of Indian Literature, Sarkar says that Ramendra-sundar
Trivedi looked upon Vidyasagar as a giant of a man and wrote: “There exist
instruments of a kind called microscopes that make small things look big.
Physics has indicated [conversely] a big thing may be made to look small, but
such a device is hardly ever used…. The people around us, who usually pass as
big, suddenly get dwarfed if an account of Vidyasagar’s life is placed by the
side of any of them.” (Sarkar 39)
In
1857, the Revolt against the East India Company was to radically alter the
administrative and cultural relations between the coloniser and the colonised
subject. With organic and structural changes in colonial policies of reform, the
bhadralok began to protect and promote their traditional customs. The
38-year-old Vidyasagar left government ser-vice a year later citing exhaustion
and increasing disappointment with British policy. Yet he remained active until
his death, aiding malaria patients, caring for widows and orphans, and pursuing
his work as an author and reformer. Plagued by poor health and disappointment,
he retreated in 1873 to Karmatanr in western Bengal, where he built a home and
provided homeopathic care to the tribal population. (Hatcher Instagram@Harvard
Magazine May June 2014) An epitaph penned by Tagore, etched in marble below a
modest bust of Vidyasagar at Karmatanr, reads: “The chief glories of [his] character
were neither his compassion nor his learning, but his invincible manliness and
imperishable humanity.”
Celebrating
historical figures does not mean that we deify them, inviting persons of
importance, usually those from the political class, to put marigold garlands on
designated dates on their bust to the aplause of onlookers and a photo
opportunity for a self-seeking media. It means to walk the talk; to emulate the
words and deeds of nobility; to cultivate egalitarian compassion toward the
anonymous ‘other’; to resist the human hubris that sanctions the repetitive
wrongs of history and to uphold dignity, justice and equality. In emulating
Vidyasagar, we can do our bit to express our humanity.
WORKS CITED
Banu, Dr. A. and Alam, S. (June, 2016). Influence of western know
Chatterjee,
Sunil Kumar. William
Carey and Serampore. Sheoraphuli, 2004.
Chaudhuri, Rasnika. “The Unexpectedness of Ishwarchandra
Vidyasagar’. The Telegraph Online.2020.
Daniel,
J. T. K. “Ecumenical Pragmatism of the Serampore Mission.” IJT 2 (2000): 171 –
177.
Dutta, Sutapa. British Women Missionaries in Bengal
1793-1861. Anthem Press, 2017.
Ghosh,
Roni (July-September, 2018). “Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar’s Contribution in the
Development of Bengali Language and Literature and its Relevance in Present
Context.” Asian Review of Social
Sciences, 44-49, Retrieved from www.trp.org.in.
Hatcher, Brian A. Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar: Brief Life
of an Indian Reformer: 1820-1891. Intsagram@Harvard Magazine, May-June 2014.
Luca,
R. (19th March, 2018). Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar Biography, Social Reforms and
Quotes. Retrieved from https://biographypoint.com
Mitra,
S. C. Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar, A Story
of his Life and Work. Ashish Publishing House, 1975.
Sarkar,
Ramatosh. Ramendrasundar Trivedi (Makers
of Indian Literature), Sahitya Akademi, 1993.
http://www.deshforum.com/showthread.php?tid=949
http://bengalonline.sitemarvel.com/vidyasagar.html
http://swpust2015.blogspot.com/2016/06/ishwar-chandra-vidyasagar-as-social.html
·
Dr. Shanker Ashish Dutt, former Professor & Head, Department of English, Patna
University, Patna, has been Chairman, Bihar Sangeet Natak Akademi. Writer and editor, his publications are
in areas of Cultural Studies and Libera-tion literature. He has been a
U.G.C. British Council and American Centre resource person for English Studies
and has lectured and chaired seminars at various eminent institutions. He has
also distinguished himself as a theatre actor and director.
·
Zaara Urouj is Ph.D. Research Scholar in the Department of English at Patna
University, Patna.
Re-Markings Vol. 20 No.1 March 2021. pp. 44-51.
Copyright Nibir K. Ghosh 2021.
v
Overcoming Disaster: Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning
Saurabh Agarwal
Literature based on World War
II reveals to us the horrific carnage that were unleashed on the Jews in Nazi
Germany and forces us to think whether a parallel to such an act could have
existed in the annals of the history of mankind. Writers, through their
works, fictional and non-fictional, time and again have provided us with “the
accounts and facts of the events” (17) that were suffered by millions of
prisoners who led life in sub-human conditions and were subjected to mass
brutality which may put even the barbarism of uncivilized world to shame. But, as
Victor Frankl, remarks, Man’s Search for Meaning is a book that takes us
to “hopeless, meaningless world” (52) where attempts were made to preserve the
sanity in the state of utter despair. The book is ranked by Library of Congress
as one of the ten most influential books in America. The original English title
of this work was “From Death-Camp to Existentialism.”
Victor Frankl’s fame stands on
his widely read Holocaust testimony, Man’s Search for Meaning (originally
published in 1959). Born in Vienna in 1905, Frankl was the founder of a school
of psychotherapy known as logotheraphy, an existential form of analysis he
described as therapy through meaning. He, from his first-hand account of his
days in the concentration camps, has chosen to bring forth a book which seeks
to overpower the pain and suffering with inherent love for life by treating
them to be the integral part of it. The book resonates and follows the
philosophy which embodied in the words of Nietzsche, “He who has a Why to live
for can bear almost any How” (84). It explores the meaning of life when life
itself is nothing but misery without end. It is in the opening passage that the
author states that this book” is not concerned with the great horrors, which
have already been described often enough (though less often believed), but
with multitude of small torments” (17). The book resets the capacity of
humanity to undergo suffering and be able to retain ability to love and
survive. “Auschwitz – the very name stood for all that was horrible, gas chambers,
cremations, massacres” (22) – is where author has been
brought to and enslaved. Conditions at the camp in which he and his
fellowmen are made to live may not be fit even for the animals. Devoid of their
identity through a system which reduced a person to just a number, one thousand
five hundred prisoners were put up in a shed that had the capacity to
accommodate only two hundred. A diet of a few ounce of bread and a pint of
watery pea soup were given to sustain their body which is subjected to hard
labour in harsh climatic conditions; for clothing, they were given “uniform of
rags which would have made a scarecrow elegant by comparison” (33). Unprovoked
beating by Capos and no news from family are factors enough to drive any person
to terminate his own life by running into electrified barbed wires. The
prisoners at these camps look at them-selves not as an individual but as “only
a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of
animal life” (60). In their earlier part of lives they may have occupied
prominent positions in the society but in camps they would barely mention that.
Here the structure of society has taken new shape with Capos occupying the
helm.
The author had ensured his
survival by enduring the suffering that came to him within the world fenced by
barbed wires. This discovery of his new self in the “world which no longer
recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of
his will and had made him an object to be exterminated” (60) and “he thought of
himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence
descended to the level of animal life” (60). Frankl’s work attempts to chalk
out a road map which is to be seen as “effort to save his self-respect” (60)
and regain the “lost feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with
inner freedom and personal values” (60).
The signs that people are
giving up faith abound. It is under these in-humane conditions that Frankl begins
to see a pattern for survival through “delusion of reprieve” (20), revisiting
past, revival of spiritual and moral being, looking for cultural escapes,
humour and seeking bliss in trivial beauty. Frankl says, “In psychiatry there is a certain
condition known as delusion of reprieve. The condemned man, immediately before
his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last
minute. We, too, clung to shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that
it would not be so bad” (23). But then these shreds of hope don’t come
easy in the grim times; they have to be sought out and though however small,
have to be looked at as if magnified many times. This is seen when author
clings to the image of his beloved wife, talks to her and seeks respite in the
thought that one day he will be united with her, though simultaneously he is
aware of the reality that she may not be alive. These lines reveal the epiphany
he experiences through this fancy: “A thought transfixed me: for the first time
in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed
as the final wisdom by so many thinkers” (48). Frankl’s
longing for his wife obviously preoccupied him during his internment and
eventually led him to have semi-mystical experiences. As he says, “The guard
passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and
more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that
I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The
feeling was very strong: she was there” (52).
Love for the important person
in life who had existed in the world outside the camps became a pivotal point
around which one could rally all his emotions which would have eventually gone
dormant in the environment so frigid that didn’t leave any other though but of
death alive:
The salvation of man is through
love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world
still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of
his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself
in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his
sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can,
through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve
fulfillment” (49).
Through this he had developed
an escape mechanism which brought to him temporary respite from the heat of
reality and through these fantastical musings he wove himself a rope of hope to
cling to. These thoughts became his sanctum sanctorum which helped him
preserve his sanity. This was done simply by revisiting the past. He terms
it as “intensification of inner life” (50) by letting him escape into the past.
The following statement by Frankl exemplifies this:
When given free rein, his
imagination played with past events, often not important ones, but minor happenings
and trifling things. His nostalgic memory glorified them and they assumed a
strange character. Their world and their existence seemed very distant and the
spirit reached out for them longingly: “In my mind I took bus rides, unlocked
the front door of my apartment, answered my telephone, switched on the
electric lights. Our thoughts often centered on such details, and these
memories could move one to tears” (50).
The fearsome surroundings of
camps, the torture at the hands of Capos and SS, impending death and filth in
which the inmates dwell have smashed their ability to rejoice in art and
nature. These trips down the memory lane had a therapeutic effect on the author
and his inner ability to perceive joys in small things was restored. If one
looked at the inmates watching the mountains of Salzburg, while being
transported from Auschwitz to a Bavarian camp through barred windows, one
“would never have believed that those were the faces of men who had given up
all hope of life and liberty” (51). Similar experience of watching the changing
colours of sky during sunset are used by Frankl as the “last violent protest
against the hopelessness of imminent death” (Ibid.)
In concentration camps it
should have been moronic to be thinking of entertaining oneself through any
form of art. But for the author, who was on good terms with the Capo, because
of certain service he had rendered, he comes to see crude form of art in the
camps. On certain days the Capos “came to have a few laughs or perhaps to cry a
little; anyway, to forget. There were songs, poems, jokes, some with under-lying
satire regarding the camp. All were meant to help us forget, and they did help”
(53). The effect of these activities was such that some of the prisoners missed
their daily portion of food.
It is important to note what Frankl
says about art: “Generally speaking, of course, any pursuit of art in camp was
somewhat grotesque. I would say that the real impression made by anything
connected with art arose only from the ghostlike contrast between the
performance and the background of desolate camp life” (53).
Another strong link that Frankl
discovers to keep himself connected to life was humour. Like art, humour in the
times of war can be ephemeral but he saw it as “another of the soul’s weapons
in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humour, more than
anything else in the human make-up, can afford aloofness and an ability to rise
above any situation, even if only for a few seconds” (54). Journey in a train,
which is so cramped that a person can take turns to squat “on scanty straw
which was soaked with human urine,” (56) ended up in the camp without gas chamber
or chimney had inspired prisoners to crack jokes and share a laughter in spite
of the knowledge that new ordeals awaited them. Frankl collates these rare
pleasures, which may be as scant as two in several months, in the balance sheet
of good memories.
There had been episodes where
people succumbed to state of despair so deep that no amount of punishment or
beating would bring them out as they lay in their own dirt and filth. It is
mentioned that once cannibalism too had broken into the camp. Thus, Frankl has
this realisation that the hope is the biggest factor that keeps a person going
in the face of suffering. An individual has to come to terms with the
sufferings for they are his own and no one else can suffer in his place:
“Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross. Every
situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one
right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand” (85).
It is evident that only the
person who enjoys highest degree of sadism could have been able to perform the
tasks assigned to them. Frankl has rightly questioned the “psychological
make-up of the camp guards” (91) who could bring themselves to perpetuate the
kind of crimes we see being committed. But here too, Frankl shows a balanced
view where he refuses to classify them strictly as good and bad: “From all this
we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these
two—the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are
found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists
entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of ‘pure race’—and
therefore one occasionally finds a decent fellow among the camp guards”(94).
Frankl does recount helping
several prisoners who were suffering from typhus though he is without any
medical amenity at his hand. It is his perusal of an active life at typhus ward
that makes him realise, “if there is a meaning in life at all, then there must
be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as
fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete” (76).
In a significant statement Frankl tells us that it is we ourselves, who permit
others to “rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether
or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and
dignity to become moulded into the form of the typical inmate” (75).
Frankl’s work can be seen to be
germinated out of pain that is intricately linked to the horrors of war and
crime on humanity perpetuated in name of protecting nations, race and religion.
Emptiness of the cause that can be seen in the life of concentration camps
doesn’t leave the psyche of inmates unscathed. Their lives after being released
from the camps were never the same. Many went to their homes to discover the
fact that the individual in whom they had vested all their hopes and dreams was
no longer there in the world. Their ability to integrate with the outer world
had been marred by the torture they had undergone in the camps. Many of them
had come to acquire the sadistic tendencies of their predators and would
unflinchingly inflict pain to others as a justification to what they underwent.
For many the sub-humane treatment that was accorded to them left their dignity
in shreds.
It was Frankl’s existentialist
approach that helped him find meaning in an oppressive and dehumanized
situation. His testimony is full of many uplifting statements which form the
basis of the popularity of this book. His solution relied upon the promotion of
attitudinal values where he claimed that even in extreme circumstances, one can
overcome apathy to find meaning in suffering. Through his work, Victor
Frankl, not only shows the way employed by him for coming to terms with his
experience but lays down the strategies for persons who need to resolve their
psychic turmoil through the events in life on which any human may not be having
control.
WORK CITED
Frankl, Victor E. Man’s
Search for Meaning. Rider, 2008.
·
Saurabh
Agarwal, a Management graduate, is an Agra-based
entrepreneur and freelance writer.
Re-Markings Vol. 20 No.1 March 2021. pp. 119-124
Copyright Nibir K. Ghosh 2021.
v
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