On Suffering: a Dialogue with Rajendra Swaroop Bhatnagar ______

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On Suffering: A Dialogue with Rajendra Swaroop Bhatnagar ______

DANIEL RAVEH Tel-Aviv University, Israel ([email protected])

This paper is a tribute to Rajendra Swaroop Bhatnagar (1933–2019). Bhatnagar Saab was a philosopher of the here and now, of the worldly, of the social, who did not hesitate to look into violence, poverty, pain, and suffering. He was an activist through his writings, and worked to establish social awareness. Metaphysics and the spiritual, considered by many as a central leitmotif of Indian philosophy, he saw as secondary or even marginal. The first part of the paper surveys and contextualizes Bhatnagar Saab’s work as a philosopher and translator of Plato into Hindi. The second part of the paper is a multilingual manifesto, which calls attention to philosophy in Hindi and other modern Indian languages and challenges the over-dominance of English. The third part of the paper is a jugalbandi, a philosophical duet. It includes one of Bhatnagar’s last essays, “No Suffering if Human Beings Were Not Sensitive” (2019), published here for the first time, interwoven with my “commentary,” in which I aim to amplify different points raised by him and to expand the boundaries of the discussion. The main theme to be addressed is suffering. What could be more relevant during the present COVID-19 days?

Key words: Rajendra Swaroop Bhatnagar; contemporary Indian philosophy; philosophy in Hindi; suffering; violence; nonviolence; Mukund Lath

1 Bhatnagar Saab

Rajendra Swaroop Bhatnagar (1933–2019), known by everyone as Bhatnagar Saab, passed away in November 2019 in Jaipur. He received his PhD from Allahabad University in 1959. The title of his dissertation was “Hegel in the Light of Existentialism.” Bhatnagar taught philosophy at the CMP Degree College, Allahabad (1957–1965), Banasthali Vidyapeeth, Rajasthan (1965–1970), and finally at the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur (1970–1992). He wrote mostly in Hindi, and his last published project was a Hindi translation of Plato’s Republic (or Politeia) under the title Nāgarikī (2014). The Greek polis, the famous city-state, resonates in the title Bhatnagar Saab chose for his translation. As he was reaching the age of eighty, he decided to study ancient Greek, an adventure that resulted in Nāgarikī. It was not just the educational task that he was taking upon himself, knowing all too well that not every Indian student is fluent enough in English to be able to read Plato in one of the English translations of his classical writings. It was also a matter of reading Plato closely. “Translation,” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak famously wrote, “is the most intimate act of reading” (Spivak 1993: 180).1 Every translator would agree. However, it was not only Plato, ancient Greek, and his commitment to Hindi and Hindi readers that drew Bhatnagar Saab to the Politeia. It was also the theme of the text. Unlike others of his generation, Bhatnagar Saab was not interested in the beyondness of Ātman, Brahman, and Mokṣa. He was interested in selfhood, collectivity, and freedom, but not in the metaphysical or spiritual sense. He was a philosopher of the here and now, of the worldly, of the social. In this respect, Plato’s text was a perfect fit.

———————— Journal of World Philosophies 6 (Summer2021): 186–199 Copyright © 2021 Daniel Raveh. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.6.1.15

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When I think of Bhatnagar Saab’s Greek voyages (he also translated Theaetetus, The Symposium, and The Sophist, and I hope that someone will take up the challenge of publishing these manuscripts), I am reminded of the interfacing journey to the shores of Greek philosophy by Mukund Lath, Bhatnagar Saab’s colleague at the University of Rajasthan. The word “levaker” in Hebrew means both “to visit” and “to criticize.” This is exactly what Lath did: he “critically visited” the writings of Aristotle. The context was his attempt to refute the myth about the “rational west” versus “spiritual India,” which prevails even today, even in India. Rationality is supposed to be the feature that distinguishes the west from other cultures. It is rationality, Lath suggests, which grants the west, in western eyes of course, a sense of superiority over “the other,” which, in western eyes again, is seen as irrational or at least not as rational. In his paper “Aristotle and the Roots of Western Rationality,” Lath looks into The Nicomachean Ethics and Politics to decipher the background of Aristotle’s famous maxim “Man is a rational animal,” and to reveal the connection between the rational and the political in “the major guru of western rational thought,” as he puts it (Lath 1992).2 In Aristotle’s Politics, Lath finds a discussion of what he refers to as “two basic pairs among humans in which the one is incapable of existing without the other,” namely man-woman and master-slave. To what extent did Aristotle’s master-slave narrative (the former endowed with intelligence, the latter characterized by physical strength, Lath discovers) contribute, justify, and give a tailwind to colonialism from Alexander of Macedonia, Aristotle’s alleged student, until today? Besides the roots of rationality, and of colonialism, it is interesting to see that Lath—a Sanskritist and (in his own way) a pandit—does not hesitate to travel (intellectually) all the way to Greece and to read Aristotle’s writings firsthand (even if in English translation). It is of course an invitation for anyone rooted in western philosophy to make the parallel visit to classical Indian texts. Back to Bhatnagar Saab: I would like to suggest that in his Plato translations, he is both a guest and a host. On one hand he is a guest in Greek philosophy and Greek language, and a host of Plato in Hindi and in the context of Indian philosophy at large. But there is also the political—or ethical- political—dimension, revealed by Mukund Lath. Despite a history of colonialism and fully aware of its consequences even today, Bhatnagar Saab believed in dialogue, in the power of dialogue. On the little coffee table that he used as his desk in the final years, at his Mansarovar residence in Jaipur, there was always an open volume of the Rāmāyaṇa in Sanskrit, or the Mahābhārata, or the Upaniṣads, or Kant, or Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya, or Daniel Dennett, pages from Plato in Greek, one or two dictionaries, one on the top of the other, inside the other, all interwoven with one another. Metaphorically, this is the way he thought and worked: searching for a common denominator despite obvious differences. He believed that philosophy, or more broadly, thinking, can disentangle a knotty reality full of conflict, violence, and suffering, and contribute in the direction of social and political justice and equality. Violence was a central theme in Bhatnagar Saab’s later writings. He taught us that there is no use in talking about (and there is so much talk about) nonviolence if one does not begin with what is—that is, violence. In one of our last meetings, in the fall of 2019, shortly before he passed away, Bhatnagar Saab said:

When we try to explain something—what would this explanation amount to? When should we say that the explanation is alright? I thoroughly understand what you are saying, I understand the explanation, it seems to be a reasonable explanation. But then, does the explanation allow some gap in what I am trying to explain? Freedom requires that there must be a gap. If everything is explained, where is freedom? If everything is explained, kya mani hai? What does it mean?

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This is not to say that a good explanation is a complete explanation without gaps, but just the opposite. It is the gap, namely that which is not covered by the explanation, which allows and invites further thinking. Philosophically speaking, then, a good explanation is not hermetic. In his work The Nature of Philosophy, Daya Krishna—Bhatnagar Saab’s colleague and friend—writes that “philosophy lives in the clarification of its own confusions, a clarification that is its own death” (Daya Krishna 1955: 230).3 It is Bhatnagar Saab’s gap which keeps philosophy alive. A good explanation is not the end of thinking about a philosophical problem. It is a stage of thinking, thinking as an ongoing process. I had the privilege to spend many hours with Bhatnagar Saab. Whenever I asked a question, or presented a philosophical move, he would take a minute to think before answering or responding. Again, the gap. That moment of silence allowed not just him, but also his interlocutor, to think further.

2 Broadening the Scope

You might be asking yourself if Bhatnagar Saab (who very few of the journal’s readers, if any, have heard about) is “important enough” to deserve this farewell essay. His list of publications will indicate that he published mostly with local publishers in Jaipur and Delhi. No Oxford here, or Cambridge. In what sense does he deserve our attention, assuming that it is not just a matter of personal relationship and the ṛṇa, “debt,” to one’s teacher? My answer is this: Contemporary Indian philosophy (an intriguing genre of philosophy corresponding simultaneously with classical Indian sources and with western materials, classical and modern) is not written solely, or even mostly, in English, despite the impression that some may have. It is also written in Sanskrit (even today) and modern Indian languages, in Bhatnagar Saab’s case, Hindi. In “Development in Classical Indian Philosophy After the British Intrusion and the Creation of Apartheid in the Intellectual World of Modern India,” chapter 18 of Daya Krishna’s alternative textbook Indian Philosophy: A New Approach (1997),4 he dedicates a thorough discussion to Indian philosophy under the British rule. The apartheid in the title refers to the “gradual invisibility,” as Daya Krishna puts it, of the pandits (the classicists, thinking and writing in Sanskrit) and of the pandit-way of philosophizing, and the creation of two parallel intellectual worlds, in English and in Sanskrit. Jonardon Ganeri, in his The Lost Age of Reason (2011), prefers the term “bifurcation” to Daya Krishna’s harsh “apartheid.” Ganeri explains that owing to “the disruption caused to established patterns for conducting and financing education by the British imposition of new fiscal arrangements and educational policies,” “work in the new reason” (Navya-Nyāya), the heart of “the lost age of reason” that he writes about (focusing on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), “continued into the ninetieth and twentieth centuries in an educational setup now sharply bifurcated between low-prestige traditional networks and well-funded colonial colleges and universities” (Ganeri 2011: 10).5 I wish to sadly suggest that philosophizing in modern Indian languages, despite the newness involved in thinking-writing philosophy in these languages (rather than in Sanskrit or English), and the development of a new vocabulary suitable for a dialogue with western philosophy, finds itself too often in the category of “low-prestige networks.” These networks include publishing houses and academic journals. But it is not just because of the language, Hindi, that Bhatnagar Saab opted for local publishers. It was also his level of accessibility. He used original sources, in Sanskrit, Hindi, Greek. He hardly had access to “secondary literature.” Across the globe, scholars do not enjoy equal accessibility to this literature, whether through libraries or the internet. A manuscript without references to the latest publications in the field has a good chance to be rejected by “big” academic journals and publishers. My contention is that we should evaluate a philosophical text in a different

Journal of World Philosophies Remembrances/189 way. Not lower the standards, but broaden the scope. The “standard standards” are like a fishing-net. They “catch” only academic fish that are bigger than the net’s holes. What about smaller but not less interesting philosophical fish that our net cannot catch? “There are many ways of being philosophically rigorous,” Ramchandra Gandhi says in his nothing-less-than-intriguing talk “Mokṣa and Martyrdom.”6 I totally agree. One more word about philosophizing in Hindi: Bhatnagar Saab is one of those who chose to philosophize primarily in Hindi. Together with him, in the same rubric, I wish to mention Mukund Lath and Yashdev Shalya, brothers-in-arms, who founded and co-edited for many years the Unmīlan, a journal of philosophy in Hindi (now edited by Ambika Datta Sharma of Sagar University). All three taught at the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, and belonged to the Unmīlan Circle, Movement, Experiment, which aimed at “svarāj in ideas”—freedom at the level of ideas, apropos Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya’s famous lecture-manifesto-invitation from the late 1920s. Language, identity, and freedom are closely interlaced. The members of the Unmīlan Movement (Unmīlan means opening one’s eyes, waking up) decided to philosophize no longer, or not only in the colonizer’s language. Except for Shalya, and now Ambika Datta Sharma, both of whom write solely in Hindi, other members write both in Hindi and English. In the hybrid world in which we live, creating a multilingual philosophical discourse makes sense.

3 On Suffering

In the following section, I would like to engage in a dialogue with Bhatnagar Saab, through one of his very last essays, “No Suffering if Human Beings Were Not Sensitive” (2019). Writing in English for a journal in English, I chose an essay written by Bhatnagar Saab in English. Since it is unfinished, owing to his premature death, I appended to the manuscript a few paragraphs from older papers of his, “Suffering” (presented at Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, in September 2011), “The Other” (presented at Viswa Bharati University, Shantiniketan, in March 2012), and “Reaching Out” (2018; unpublished). My aim is to provide the readers with at least a glimpse of Bhatnagar Saab’s work and voice. A bilingual writer, the issues raised here also resonate in his Hindi writings of the same period. For the sake of dialogue, the dialogue that he strived to facilitate through each of his essays, his text is presented here interwoven with my own bhāṣya, or commentary. “Bhāṣya,” Jonardon Ganeri explains,

is a highly distinctive style of philosophical commentary in the Sanskrit literature. It represents an elaboration or development of an aggregation of brief statements called sūtras, a reading (or literally, a speaking) of them. A bhāṣya has been defined in the tradition as “an amplification or expansion of what is said in the sutras (sūtroktārthaprapañcakam). (Ganeri 2008: 3; Ganeri quotes and translates from the nineteenth-century Sanskrit lexicon Śabdakalpadruma, which in this case cites Hemacandra)7

Along the classical lines of sūtra and bhāṣya, my attempt is to amplify different points raised by Bhatnagar Saab in his essay, and to expand the boundaries of the discussion. The main theme to be addressed is suffering. What could be more relevant during the present COVID-19 days?

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“No Suffering if Human Beings Were Not Sensitive” by R.S. Bhatnagar

Suppose that I am a being who is physically insensitive to pain of any kind; suppose that I am abuse- proof, insult-proof, indifferent to what goes on around me—torture, violence, killing, lack of respect to one other, injustice, and everything else—would I suffer? If it hardly matters to me whether I am praised or condemned, rewarded or punished for my actions, would I be hurt or pained by all the above? If I were completely insensitive, would anything matter? Obviously, I would be beyond suffering of any kind. But is sheer absence of sensibility possible? Are sensitivity and the capacity to feel not essential qualities of every human being? There must be at least feelings of hunger and thirst, besides heat, cold, etc., so one cannot be completely insensitive. Or we might say that one cannot be totally insensitive to one’s own needs, but can be insensitive to the needs of others. I spoke of torture and injustice. Looking around I would add abuse, insult, and cruelty. Are you-we still moved and shaken when we hear these words?

Bhāṣya: Bhatnagar Saab cannot believe that a human being can be totally insensitive, even if our experience often suggests otherwise. He further wonders out loud whether the level of violence around us does not numb our senses. Do words still touch us, or have we become tired of overused words such as “abuse” and “exploitation,” to the extent that they no longer have moral effect? Another point that will be further developed is the double standard. One sees and treats “I and my” differently than the way one treats the other. But is an alternative imaginable, namely treating the other equally, or even prioritizing the other, you, over me?

Now suppose that I am an extremely lazy being. I do not want to move my limbs, and expect somebody to feed me, clad me, and meet all my physical needs as if I am a patient confined to a bed. To move my limbs is to exert. Any exertion requires effort and some sort of action. For the lazy me even this much is painful. To act is to move, and to move is to exert. In this context, it may be graver than the case of “lazy me” if we move from action to labor. This leads to social and political aspects of suffering. The body becomes a place of all kinds of suffering—starving, shivering, neglect, indifference, sickness, pain, and whatnot. Besides the “laborer,” these afflictions also victimize war- torn victims, particularly children and women, whether as the result of wars or terror attacks. Add to these the victims of rape, torture, and murder. Those who inflict such suffering knowingly or unknowingly on gagged human beings have no “milk of humankindness,” like Lady Macbeth of Shakespeare who used the phrase. They are insensitive to pain of other fellow beings.

Bhāṣya: The “lazy me” illustration suggests that every action in the world involves a certain amount of pain (to oneself, or others, intentionally or not). But is it worth it? Or is inaction, at least as much as possible, preferable because it decreases the level of suffering? Here and elsewhere, Bhatnagar Saab does not forget the body. For him, the body is part of who we are, even if soulists from different traditions tend to underestimate body and corporeality. Finally, his discussion quickly reaches the invisible, or weak, or weakened, referred to by Gopal Guru as “excluded, marginalized, ghettoized and bracketed” (Guru 2000).8 Like Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva with the thousand eyes and hands, Bhatnagar Saab sees and wishes to extend a compassionate hand to innocent victims of wars and terror. But for him, even exploitation and segregation at the social level are acts of terror.

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We have heard of “sabbam dukkham” [All is suffering] and the three types of dukkhas [suffering] uttered and thought about centuries back [most famously in the Buddhist tradition], so the phenomenon of suffering is not a new invention. What is different about the twentieth and the twenty- first centuries is the media which allows more access to terror acts, religious frenzy and fanaticism, toxic power, intolerance, and the weight of suffering involved in the climate change. We face the increase of poverty and unemployment on one hand, and rapid technological development on the other. Earlier people died of starvation, sickness, or were killed in wars. Now they also die in road and rail accidents, terror attacks, but even out of obesity and lack of physical activity (the “screen culture”). Political eliminations and people killed because of intolerance of numerous kinds are nothing new, but seem to have reached a new level. The question that I wish to raise is this: is it suffering, primarily suffering, that characterizes human life and existence?

Bhāṣya: Two things: First, Bhatnagar Saab believed that epidemics belong to the past. He could not foresee, like so many of us, the pandemic coming. Second, as he looks around and sees suffering of numerous types, old and new, or old in a new avatar, Bhatnagar Saab appeals to the “specialists” of suffering in classical Indian philosophy, namely the Buddhists. It is interesting to notice that classical Indian philosophers categorize suffering to different rubrics. The Buddhists distinguish between duhkha-duḥkhatā, saṃskāra-duḥkhatā, and viparināma-duḥkhatā, i.e., “the suffering of the suffering” (palpable physical and mental sickness), “the suffering of saṃskāra or saṅkhāra” (arising from the state of being a compound, composed and decomposed repeatedly), and “suffering born of change” (I draw on Ferenc Ruzsa 2003).9 The Sāṃkhya-Kārikā opens with the statement:

duḥkhatrayābhighātāj jijñāsā tadabhighātake hetau (Because of the torment of the threefold suffering, there arises the desire to know the means of counteracting it; Larson 1979: 255).10

Vācaspatimiśra in his commentary explains that the three categories of suffering are ādhyātmika, ādhibhautika, and ādhidaivika, namely “internal suffering” (diseases of body and mind), “external suffering” (caused by others, humans or animals), and “daivika suffering” (caused by supernatural agencies or fate; I draw on Swami Virupakshanananda 1995).11 And Patañjali of the Yogasūtra writes (in YS 2.15): pariṇāma-tāpa-saṃskāra-duḥkhair guṇa-vṛtti-virodhāc ca duḥkham eva sarvaṃ vivekinaḥ (Owing to the suffering inherent in change, in tapas [pain], in the [ripening of] saṃskāras [karmic residue], and in the strife of the fluctuating guṇas [the activators of prakṛti, Matter, which create the phenomenal-objective world that we live in], all is suffering for the discerning; my translation). The Sāṃkhyan and Buddhist formulations emphasize the distinction between internal and external suffering. Internal suffering occurs at the body-mind level, while external suffering, for the Buddhists, involves change, which is the crux of the human situation. External suffering for them is the fluid context which brings each of us into existence moment after moment. For the Sāṃkhyans, externality refers to the other, human, non- human, and even super-human. The Buddhists and Patañjali highlight the role of saṃskāra and pariṇāma. Saṃskāra stands for the karmic (from karma) load that shapes our experience (birth, life-span, and nature of experiences, Patañjali writes in YS 2.13, jāty-āyur-bhogāḥ), and pariṇāma refers to the constant whirlpool-like change underlying the surface of our alleged stationary, fixed, stable, persistent reality. For the Buddhists and for Patañjali, saṃskāra and pariṇāma are the basic causes of suffering. Patañjali’s articulation in YS 2.15, namely “owing to the suffering inherent in a, b, c and d [see the full verse ———————— Journal of World Philosophies 6 (Summer2021): 186–199 Copyright © 2021 Daniel Raveh. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.6.1.15

Journal of World Philosophies Remembrances/192 above] all is suffering for the discerning,” invites further reflection. The phrase “duḥkham eva sarvaṃ vivekinaḥ” corresponds with Bhatnagar Saab’s title: “no suffering if human beings were not sensitive.”12 It is implied that for the vivekin, the discerning yogin, who can see things “as they are” (bhūtārtha), on and under the surface, “all is suffering.” The others, less sensitive or totally blind to the forces bubbling under the surface, are less exposed. Is it preferable, then, not to see (or to look away)? Not quite. To be sensitive, Bhatnagar Saab hints, is to be human, and it is my suffering, he further implies, which enables me to see the other, to be empathetic to her or his suffering. The phrase bhūtārtha is from Vyāsa’s commentary on YS 1.47. Here Vyāsa, Patañjali’s foremost commentator, quotes a proverb (by a parama-ṛṣi, a great seer, the commentators after him explain), which resembles prajñā, the “yogic insight” discussed in this sūtra, to the lucid vision from the top of a hill. From this inner hilltop, the yogin who stepped out of sorrow is in a position to see the śocyatā, the suffering, or misery, or miserable condition of those who are still soaked with suffering. To see things as they are, Vyāsa posits, is to see that the human condition is mixed with śoka or suffering. The Buddhist overtones here, both in the sūtra-text and its commentary, in terms such as prajñā and śoka, are obvious. In his commentary on YS 2.15, the “all is suffering for the discerning” sūtra, Vyāsa compares the yogin to the eye (akśipātra), which is the most sensitive of organs. A falling cobweb, he explains, hurts the eye, but is hardly felt by any other body part. In the same way, the yogin “feels” the suffering discussed in the sūtra that this commentary refers to, again, both on and under the surface. Interestingly, Bhatnagar Saab and Vyāsa are on the same page regarding sensitivity and suffering. The eye metaphor is strong, since the eye is not just sensitive, but also sees. For Bhatnagar Saab, we will shortly discover, seeing is primarily a matter of seeing the other.

One can think of a first-person suffering and of the suffering of others. When Siddhārtha [the Buddha] reflected on the phenomenon of suffering, he thought of sickness, old age, and death of those whom he saw. But he also realized that these afflictions characterized not only those whom he passed by, but anyone who is born. When Kapil [Kapila, traditionally seen as the father of the Sāṃkhya tradition] raised the question of three types of suffering, he was not thinking only about himself, but about the humankind at large. There is an old saying, “jiske pair na phaṭī bivāī, vah kyā jāne pīr parāī,” that is, “one who has not suffered cracks in one’s foot will never know the pain of the other.” It is the first- person suffering which allows one to know what pain or suffering is. It is through one’s experience that one understands the sufferings of others, as the Jains point out. That leads to the injunction, “ahiṃsā paramo dharmaḥ [nonviolence is the highest virtue],” as was put in the Mahabharat [Mahābhārata]. Those who believe in the distinction between mind and body may raise the question whether suffering is physical or mental. The answer may have to be given in the way in which Descartes met the objection, “Why cogito (I think), why not amblo (I walk)?” Descartes had said that unless you are conscious of walking, you do not know you are walking. So it is basically the consciousness or thinking which is primary or more basic than a physical movement. In case mind and body are not considered as distinct entities, and the mind is considered as part of the body, then the answer would be different. In that case, suffering may be described in terms of peripheral and central nervous system. The crucial issue is how to understand the feeling of suffering. For some cognitive scientists, such a feeling cannot be understood in terms of mere neuron circuits. Since we are more concerned with the feeling of suffering, let us assume that our context demands awareness or consciousness rather than mere physical causality.

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Bhāṣya: I wish to engage with two points raised here by Bhatnagar Saab. First, my suffering as the key to understanding your suffering. Dorothy Walsh introduces the notion of “knowing by living through,” which according to her is “a distinctive mode of knowing,” different from what she refers to as “scientific knowledge,” pertaining, she explains, to stars, volcanoes, etc. (Walsh 1970: 266).13 “I know that I am in pain”, she writes,

by living through the pain experience. […] Lived experience is something more than just experience. […] Lived experience is understanding by undergoing, by participation, by living through. […It is] knowledge from within. (Walsh 1970: 267-8)

But here comes the twist: according to Walsh, this firsthand knowledge can be extended to the other. When someone else is in pain, I know that he is in pain, I understand this pain, owing to my own experience of pain, through what Walsh refers to as “the act of imaginative projection, imaginative identification” (Walsh 1970: 270). The second point raised by Bhatnagar Saab that I wish to take forward is the quote from the Mahābhārata which projects nonviolence, ahiṃsā, as the highest dharma, or virtue. For Bhatnagar Saab this is the necessary conclusion of one’s experience of suffering. Mukund Lath, a “Mahābhāratologist” as many of his writings indicate (see especially his work Dharmasaṃkat, “Moral Dilemmas,” 2004),14 writes:

Supremely aware of the complexity of the moral problem of action, the Mahābhārata comes up with more than one supreme moral principle, namely with several paramadharma [“highest virtue”], that should guide our action.15 (Lath 2011: 114)

One of these virtues, or paramadharmas in the plural, is ahiṃsā, nonviolence; another is ānṛśaṃsya, which is at the center of Lath’s discussion. I cannot delve into the textual journey that Lath takes his readers on before he reaches the conclusion that “ānṛśaṃsya is ahiṃsā adapted to the pravṛttimārga, or worldly life” (Lath 2011: 119). Ānṛśaṃsya, then, is a more “down-to-earth” version of ahiṃsā. The latter concept stands for a non-compromising ideal suitable, according to Lath, to the “nivṛttimārga, the mārga of saṃnyāsa [renunciation].” A renouncer can aspire for absolute nonviolence and ultimate freedom. But as long as one is part of the world and the worldly, he strives not for the absolute and the ultimate, but for “solutions” in the far from perfect realm of the here and now. “Some hiṃsā [violence] has to be there,” Lath explains, “for the practice of both the gṛhasthadharma and the rājadharma,” the duties of the householder and of the king. This is to say that to aspire for ānṛśaṃsya is to aspire for less violence, for a minimum amount of violence in one’s worldly life which is mixed with at least a quantum of violence. “Mixed,” not as an unavoidable evil, but as a necessary worldmaking tool. I explained above that I cannot delve into Lath’s textual voyages, but one of the epic stories visited by him should be mentioned here (this is the power of a good story, that it takes hold of you). This is the Yakṣapraśna story (“The Riddles of the Yakṣa”), which appears in the Vana Parva, book 3 of the Mahābhārata. When asked by a Yakṣa, a pond deity (in fact god Dharma in disguise), “What is the highest dharma [virtue] for people living in this world?” (kaśca dharmaḥ paro loke?), Yudhiṣṭhira (son of Dharma) replies that “ānṛśaṃsya is the supreme dharma” (ānṛśaṃsyaṃ paro dharmaḥ). But what is ānṛśaṃsya? After answering a long series of riddles to the Yakṣa’s satisfaction, Yudhiṣṭhira is granted the boon of reviving just one of his four dead brothers. This is the final riddle, or trial: Who will live, and who will remain dead? In

Journal of World Philosophies Remembrances/194 search of a guiding principle, Yudhiṣṭhira resorts to ānṛśaṃsya, projected here as a practical guideline: “I wish to act out of ānṛśaṃsya” (ānṛśaṃsyaṃ cikīrṣāmi), he says, and against all odds chooses Nakula, his half-brother, the son of his father’s second wife. Yudhiṣṭhira’s choice implies that ānṛśaṃsya is a matter of justice and equality (a son for each mother, for each of his father’s wives). But it also implies that ānṛśaṃsya is something that one must pay a price for. It is not easy, to say the least, to choose just one of your brothers for life. Yudhiṣṭhira’s choice is a matter of prioritizing equality and justice over one’s smaller or narrower inclination or even needs (Arjuna and Bhīma are celebrated warriors, and the great war is imminent). Nonviolence, then, from the Mahābhārata to Bhatnagar Saab, conveys a sense of expansion beyond the immediate “I and my,” but nevertheless is introduced as an applicable virtue in the world, for the world. I would like to raise (not to answer) another question related to Bhatnagar’s text, concerning the distinction (if any) and the relation between pain and suffering. In his paper “Suffering Pains,” Olivier Massin argues that the two are distinct. “Pain,” he suggests, “is not a suffered bodily sensation, and suffering is not experiencing the badness of pains.” Rather, he implies, “Suffering is the correct emotional reaction to pain” (Massin 2020: 88).16 The relation, according to him, then, is causal: pain is the cause, suffering the “correct” emotional effect. “Correctness,” he explains, “is a normative relation.” I therefore presume that according to Massin, deriving pleasure from pain, as in sadomasochistic pleasure, would be considered “abnormative.” Neither Massin or Bhatnagar Saab mention Marquis de Sade in their discussion. But “correctness” and “normativity,” to my mind, narrow the scope of the discussion, here and elsewhere.

So far, the narrative appears to indicate that life, or existence, is full of pain and suffering. Also it is believed that suffering is something which is always unpleasant and therefore needs to be shunned. But these features are only partially true. Although Thomas Hardy wrote [in The Mayor of Casterbridge, his 1886 novel] that “happiness is an occasional episode in the general drama of pain,” his remark has to be seen in the context of various classes of the society. For some sections, what Hardy said is largely true. Think for instance of downtrodden men and women, or uncared-for children. Think of farmers who commit suicide because there is no food or since they have unmanageable debts over their head. We read about them in the newspapers too frequently.

I am now skipping an incomplete paragraph that Bhatnagar Saab planned to return to and revise, where he touches on the perennial question about “the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve” (as in Ecclesiastes 8.14), namely suffering and prosperity respectively.

But in India there is no question of suffering being deserved or undeserved. If one is born, one is bound to suffer. Trishna [tṛṣṇā, thirst], or craving for worldly objects is bound to bring suffering, so one should give up all desires and turn away from this world. There is nothing in the world which would afford permanent joy since everything is momentary. Momentary pleasures later bring sorrow and suffering. Being born and dying make a vicious circle, from which one should get out. One remains in a vicious circle because one thinks of this decaying body as the “real self.” The “real self” that is the ātman is to be distinguished from this body. For realization of this fact, one needs “right knowledge,” which can be attained by a guru, or through sādhana [method, praxis], such as the one

Journal of World Philosophies Remembrances/195 prescribed in the Yogasūtra. “Right knowledge,” one has to remember, is the knowledge of the self, that is, the ātman: “ātmānaṃ… viddhi (“know thyself,” Kaṭhopaniṣad 3.3). But there is another stream of Indian thinking which does not recommend turning away from the world. Not at all. If we look at the hymns offered by the rishi [the Vedic poet] in the Ṛg Saṃhitas, we find that the rishi is asking for worldly goods such as wealth, healthy offspring, longevity, and lucid thinking. Take for example the first two mantras of the Ishavasyopanishad [Īśāvasya or Īśā Upaniṣad]. They advise us to realize that since the whole world is pervaded by Īśa [the ruler, the master, the Lord], one should not covet the wealth of the other. Giving up the idea of ownership and performing good deeds, one should desire to live a hundred years. Obviously, this is not a complete world-denying approach. Or as another example for a world-affirming approach, take the arguments given by the Pāṇḍava brothers [in the Mahābhārata] to persuade their eldest brother Yudhiṣṭhira not to give up the kingdom which has been won in hard battle and opt for saṃnyāsa [renunciation]. Moreover, the various Dharmaśāstras would not have been written if world-denying thought has been given primacy. In one of his last papers, “Eros, Nomos, and Logos,” (2005/2011), Daya Krishna totally rejects world-denying thought. He writes:

Man cannot live “with” or “in” the denial of the world. He always has the desire to make the world a little better, or to build anew, or make a fresh start, and to know the world a little more, to unravel its secret to the extent he can. It is this impulse in man, which makes him accept suffering as the price of this ceaseless endeavor [to build, to start, to know]. Suffering is acceptable only if it is not meaningless, and if it is not felt as a manifest injustice in the arrangement of men, and due to what man does to man and which seems so obviously avoidable in the circumstances that obtain. Inequalities may be unavoidable, but inhumanity is not. Pain and suffering may have to be there, but not cruelty and disease and disability which no one is willing to accept, even if ageing has to be accepted as a necessary part of life, and as something with which we must live. There is nothing in suffering that is to be glorified, nor is it the essence or truth of life. (Daya Krishna 2011: 320)17

Daya Krishna is right. Suffering can be meaningful and worthwhile, whether in the first person or for the sake of others. In such cases, pain and discomfort are inevitable. But as he points out, suffering is neither to be glorified, nor to be taken as the essence of existence or life. Elsewhere, he remarks that “one ought to be disturbed, and if one is not disturbed at the suffering of others, then one is not a human being” (Daya Krishna 2012: 28).18 It is our sensitivity to the suffering of other people, or others at large, non-humans included, which makes us human.

Here the paper comes to its end, i.e., left unfinished. I therefore attach a few paragraphs from older papers by Bhatnagar Saab, to provide a befitting closure. The following paragraph is from his paper “Suffering” (2011):

That sickness and old age infirmities are painful is universally accepted, but it is amazing that though poverty, privation, exploitation, and torture were known in all early periods and all over the world, they got into focus only much later as forms of suffering. Earlier, thinkers thought of transience, finitude, imperfection, and bondage as undesirable states which need to be overcome. But it is only lately that thinkers reflect on the causes and remedies of torture, exploitation, privation, poverty, and racism. Is it because the earlier phase of reflection on suffering was basically associated with those who were well fed and were leading a comfortable life?

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Bhāṣya: The point raised here by Bhatnagar Saab is crucial. Suffering, for him, is first and foremost the suffering of the other, suffering as a social disease with the abovementioned symptoms, from poverty to racism. Social injustice and not old age, illness, and death. The Buddhist narrative, based on the alleged life-story of the Buddha, took over the discourse of suffering, or duḥkha, at least in the Indian context. “Will this evil affect me too?” (kim eṣa doṣo bhavitā mamāpi?), Prince Siddhārtha asks the royal charioteer when he sees an old man for the first time in his life (I quote from Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita; Olivelle 2012: 70–1).19 On illness, he asks the charioteer, “Is this an evil (doṣa) peculiar to him [to a sick person he sees], or is the danger of illness common to every living being?” (Olivelle 2012: 74-5). And when he sees a dead body he asks, “Is such the end that awaits every living being? (sarva-prajānām ayam īdṛśo ‘antaḥ?; Olivelle 2012: 80-1). Freedom (mokṣa) is projected in this narrative as release from the doṣas, “evils” in Olivelle’s translation, of old age, illness, and death, which comprise yet another potent threefold suffering scheme (besides the triangular schemes mentioned above, Buddhist and Sāṃkhyan). In the Buddhist narrative, the Buddha seeks a universal remedy for these doṣas, or types of suffering, and the particular people that the protagonist meets on his way are shifted from center to periphery. They are just a case-study, illustrating a broader “problem” that needs to be “solved,” namely human life with its inbuilt death sentence. But Bhatnagar Saab strives to shift his readers’ attention back from the universal to the particular. He is not interested in general compassion for every sentient being. For him, compassion, in order to be compassion, needs a specific addressee, a specific human being whom one can reach out to. In his paper “Reaching Out” (2018), he corresponds with his contemporary Ramchandra Gandhi (through Ramchandra’s Presuppositions of Human Communication, 1975), who emphasizes the ethical significance of addressing (of the vocative, of saṃbodhana), and speaks of “the response- inviting character of an act of addressing.” “Patience and concern for the other,” Bhatnagar Saab comments, “besides a certain amount of control of oneself—in order to clear a space for the other—are essential to facilitate reciprocity and cooperation.” Interestingly, addressing the other, not referring but addressing, has an effect on the addresser as much as on the addressee. “The act of addressing,” Bhatnagar Saab explains, “enables us to see and treat every human being at par. At this level nothing counts, except for that which makes the human being a human being.” Ramchandra Gandhi takes a similar route and pertains to the common human denominator that the gesture of addressing reveals as advaita (nonduality), injecting new life to this classical concept. In the paragraph from “Suffering,” Bhatnagar Saab is critical of the fact that suffering has become identified with old age, sickness and death, which are natural features of being human, of who we are. Thinking of suffering through these features is for him an instance of our usual self-centric tendency. Like Daya Krishna in his 1967 Shimla Lectures (that Bhatnagar Saab draws on), he aspires for a more socio-centered approach. He is hardly impressed by the hardships of Prince Siddhārtha. He is more concerned with the struggle of poor migrant workers who pitch their tents—without electricity, running water, education for their children—two hundred meters from his home in the outskirts of Jaipur. On these workers, and other “invisible” human beings, in Jaipur and everywhere, from the Greek Polis to this very day, Bhatnagar Saab writes in another paper, “The Other” (Bhatnagar 2012):

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There is yet another context where the term “other” has acquired a pejorative nuance. There are whole segments of people who in one way or the other are neglected, underprivileged, considered as second-rate beings or insignificant minorities. They are categorized as “them,” and treated with indifference as objects for exploitation.

Martin Buber (in I and Thou 1937, first published as Ich und Du in 1923) famously propagates the transference of the other from the third person (“it”) to the second person (“you”). Ramchandra Gandhi (in I am Thou, 1984)20 calls for another step of closening, from the second person to the first person. This extra step is conveyed by his title-phrase “I am Thou,” which evokes—he connotes—the abovementioned common human denominator. Bhatnagar Saab emphasizes the fact that the tool with which we either distance (“them”) or bring the other closer (“we”) is language. At this point I recall Manusmṛti 4.138:

׀ satyaṃ brūyāt priyaṃ brūyān na brūyāt satyamapriyam Olivelle 2005: 531)21) ׀׀ priyaṃ ca nānṛtaṃ brūyādeṣa dharmaḥ sanātanaḥ “Speak the truth; speak pleasantly. Do not speak the truth in a way which is unpleasant. Even if it is pleasant, do not speak untruth. This is the eternal dharma.” (My translation)

This famous verse invites an experiential inquiry toward a “middle way” as far as speech is concerned—a middle way between Satyam and Priyam. Mahatma Gandhi, one of Bhatnagar Saab’s protagonists throughout his oeuvre, suggests that Priyam, or “gentleness” as he puts it (“one should speak the truth in a gentle language”), is an expression of ahiṃsā. “In other words,” Gandhi writes, “truth without nonviolence is not truth but untruth” (Gandhi CWMG Vol. 32, 408).22

With nonviolence and language, I close this philosophical tribute to Bhatnagar Saab, who dedicated the final decade of his writing career to the bad and the ugly, but whole-heartedly believed in the good; the good not as idyllic idea, Platonic or Upaniṣadic, but as a negotiable remedy for human suffering, which according to him is primarily social and needs our immediate attention.

Books by Rajendra Swaroop Bhatnagar

Darshan Ka Parichaya [Invitation/Introduction to Philosophy] (Rajasthan Hindi Granth Academy, Jaipur 1993). Sat, Astitva Tatha Mulya [Being, Existence and Value], The Collected Papers of R.S. Bhatnagar, Vol. I, ed. Rajveer Singh Shekhawat (Jaipur: Anant Publications, 2013). Niti [Ethics], The Collected Papers of R.S. Bhatnagar, Vol. II, ed. Rajveer Singh Shekhawat (Jaipur: Anant Publications, 2014). Nagariki: Platone ki Politiya ka Hindi Anuvad (Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research and D.K. Printworld, 2014) [Hindi translation of Plato’s Republic]. Aspects of Life: An Invitation to Think (Gurgaon: Partridge India, 2015). Gandhian scholar and activist Rajni Bakshi wrote in a review of this book: “In an age when daily routine, for most people, runs at a faster and faster pace with ever new digital distractions soaking up mental time—an invitation to think

Journal of World Philosophies Remembrances/198 might seem out of place. Who has the time to ‘think’ when we barely keep up with the deluge of cognitive stimuli. Yet this is precisely why the invitation by the author is both urgent and deeply meaningful.” Bhasha, Samaj aur Sanskriti [Language, Society, and Culture], The Collected Papers of R.S. Bhatnagar, Vol. III, ed. Rajveer Singh Shekhawat (Jaipur: Anant Publications, 2016).

Daniel Raveh is Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, Israel. His latest book is Daya Krishna and Twentieth-Century Indian Philosophy (Bloomsbury 2020).

1 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “The Politics of Translation,” in Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York: Routledge, 1993), 179–200. 2 Mukund Lath, “Aristotle and the Roots of Western Rationality,” Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research 9, no. 2 (1992): 55–68. 3 Daya Krishna, The Nature of Philosophy (Calcutta: Prachi Prakashan, 1955). 4 Daya Krishna, Indian Philosophy: A New Approach (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1997). 5 Jonardon Ganeri, The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India (1450–1700) (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011). 6 Ramchandra Gandhi, “Mokṣa and Martyrdom”, a lecture delivered at the National Institute of Advances Studies, Bangalore on 14 November 2003, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPYb3BsoCI0 7 Jonardon Ganeri, “Sanskrit Philosophical Commentary,” Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research 25, no. 1 (2008): 107–27. I used an online version of Ganeri’s paper (pp. 1–13): http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pollock/sks/papers/Ganeri(commentary).pdf 8 Gopal Guru, “Dalits from margin to margin,” India International Centre Quarterly 27, no. 2 (2000): 111–6. 9 Ferenc Ruzsa, “Three Types of Suffering in the Mahāvyutpatti and the Pāli Canon,” Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 56, no.1 (2003): 49–56. 10 G.J. Larson, Classical Sāṃkhya: An Interpretation of its History and Meaning (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1979). 11 ed. and trans. Swami Virupakshanananda, Sāṃkhya-Kārikā of Īśvara Kṛṣṇa with the Tattva Kaumudī of Vācaspati Miśra (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1995). 12 This is the place to mention Bhatnagar Saab’s English translation of the Yogasūtra (2010, unpublished). It is yet another uncut diamond in his hardly known oeuvre. Like Nāgarikī, it is an exercise in close reading of a classical text. It is “uncut” in the sense that it is very close to the source, almost “literal translation,” which apropos Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator” (originally published in 1923), “does not cover the original, does not block its light.” This quote is from Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (London: Pimlico, 1999), 79. 13 Dorothy Walsh, “Knowing by Living Through” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 31, no. 2 (1970): 265–72. 14 Mukund Lath’s Dharmasaṃkat is open for reading online at “Daya Krishna: The Open Library,” dayakrishna.org, under the “Interlocutors” rubric. 15 Mukund Lath, “The Concept of Ānṛśaṃsya in the Mahābhārata,” in The Mahābhārata Revisited, ed. R.N. Dandekar (Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2011), 113–9. 16 Olivier Massin, “Suffering Pains,” in Philosophy of Suffering: Metaphysics, Value and Normativity, ed. David Bain, Michael Brady, and Jennifer Corns (New York: Routledge, 2020), 75–100. ———————— Journal of World Philosophies 6 (Summer2021): 186–199 Copyright © 2021 Daniel Raveh. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.6.1.15

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17 Daya Krishna, “Eros, Nomos and Logos,” Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 22, no. 2 (2005): 165–82. Republished in Contrary Thinking: Selected Essays by Daya Krishna, eds. Nalini Bhushan et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 309–21. 18 Daya Krishna, Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia (Delhi: SAGE, 2012). 19 trans. Patrick Olivelle, The Life of the Buddha by Ashva Ghosha, Clay Sanskrit Library (New York: New York University Press, 2008). 20 Ramchandra Gandhi, I am Thou: Meditations on the Truth of India (Delhi: Academy of Fine Arts and Literature, 2011; first published by the IPQ Publications, Pune, 1984); Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1937). 21 ed. and trans. Patrick Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Mānava- Dharmaśāstra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 22 M.K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 32 (November 1926–January 1927). https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/mahatma-gandhi-collected-works- volume-32.pdf