Simone de Beauvoir, an outstanding novelist, feminist and companion of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Mandarins, which evoked an eternal dilemma for an intellectual or a public person about how to be truthful. When the dilemma is a choice between defence of an ideology and commitment to one’s conscience, how does one resolve it? 

The period of the 1950s was the spring time of socialist thinking. A journalist who had gone to the USSR had discovered the existence of concentration camps in Siberia. When he came back and revealed the story to the famous French newspaper Le Monde, the editor was not sure whether to publish it or not. His problem was that publication of a story like this could harm people’s faith in socialist ideology. But, by not publishing it, he would violate the journalistic ethics. Either way, he was damned.

It is not important as to what he actually did. What is important is to realise that ethical dilemmas we face every day. The famous lines of veteran poet Dinkar seem to reverberate in the corridor of our conscience. He wrote, “Paap ka bhagi nahin hai keval vyagh, jo tatastha hain, samay likhega unka bhi apradh” (those who perpetrated violence are not the only ones to blame; those who remained quiet or neutral are equally culpable). Don’t we all face such a challenge in our life almost every day? 

I have always argued that breakthroughs in life cannot be achieved without authenticity. And authenticity cannot be achieved without bringing the outer and inner beings in sync. To achieve this synchrony, we have to develop the courage to be humble and vulnerable. We cannot empower ourselves without being vulnerable. It is only in the moment of vulnerability that we listen to our inner voice. And without listening to our inner voice, can we ever be peaceful?
There is nobody who does not have to answer his or her inner call. Nobody from outside can really goad anybody to pay more attention to this voice. In fact, to run away from the ordeal of listening to this voice, we often engage ourselves in mundane and sometime not-so-mundane occupations. We assume, like an ostrich, that by hiding our head in the sand, the echo of the inner voice will disappear. It doesn’t. 

The Mahabharata is full of instances when Lord Krishna defies the principles of justice and fairness by advising shortcuts. This has remained a question in the minds of ordinary mortals as to why somebody so knowledgeable and visionary would advise shortcuts. Why would ends be used to justify the means? Gandhi argued for the opposite but he revered Lord Krishna. Are we like Abhimanyu, caught in the chakravyuh, not knowing how to come out?

Having burnt the Ravana effigies on Dussehra, we have perhaps lost the ability to realise that the truth is not always in black and white. When Lord Ram asked Sita to prove her chastity because a washerman in the street had doubted it, he had created a new norm of accountability (disregarding the rights of Sita). Even one dissenter counted. But, why don’t we reflect on the fact that Ravana, a sage as he was, did not touch Sita despite having her in his captivity because her consent eluded him. Can we see the virtues in the wicked and vices in the righteous? But then, that is not what normal people do. Are we normal?

How do people then manage to be sane? When Vincent Van Gogh, the famous artist, became incoherent and schizophrenic towards the end of his life, he had to spend time in an asylum. There is a famous song in which the poet wonders whether sanity is worth it if the price to be paid is to compromise. Do some not suffer because of their sanity?

In a way, many of us are living in an asylum asking the same question. Do we retain our schizophrenia and keep our visions grand and perhaps also generous or we listen to our inner voice, get away from illusions and begin to see the world as it is? If a poet or a painter loses the capability to create, so be it. Wouldn’t this world be much more manageable if poets don’t promise a world that is different and the painters don’t show the colours of compassion?