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International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) ISSN 2249-6912 Vol. 3, Issue 1, Mar 2013, 13-20 TJPRC Pvt.

. Ltd.

REDEEMING SENSIBILITY TO DISCRIMINATION AND MARGINALITY: AN EXCLUSIVE POST-MODERNIST STUDY


PRAVEEN KUMAR ANSHUMAN Assistant Professor, Department of English, Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India

ABSTRACT
The attempts to scrutinize the intrinsic nuances inherent in the dormant recesses of human mind at different levels have been elucidated in consequent terminal propositions in this paper. As an initiation it functions on the understanding of terms like class, caste, race and their consequential outcomemarginality. The kind of differences at every level in the history of English literature from Shakespeare to Tom Stoppard, from Aristotle to Arthur Miller, Science to Religion has been understood in more constituting equation. The paper is not just something that evokes the screwing impressions in exclusive terms on the social stigmas, rather their respective causes, reasons and the why of these entire in singular gamut. It sees from the perspective of the shifting slides of peripheral notions onto the center point in which subaltern criticism, feminist studies are of much more significance. Couple of ideas are shown to have erupted out. One is the integration of the chaotic and fragmented fabrication of psychic landscape. And the other could be the understanding the stick-in-water stage. The paper gropes into how these two directions pave the path of understanding in these stratums. All the ideas progressing in one ambit comes to be resolved as something that transpires and transforms the trodden tracks; and open new possibilities of the world getting metamorphosed in totality. It does not defy the idealistic utopian vision altogether yet creates a space in which the differences to which humanity has punishingly stooped since time immemorial. In final terms, the paper, in successive terms, expounds in resolving forms.

KEYWORDS: Silence, Psychology, Sociology, Majjhim Nikay, Dalit Studies, Consciousness, Understanding, Tao,
Left/Right-Hemisphere, Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam

INTRODUCTION
The face of the world has been arbitrarily incoherent, unstructured and incohesive that there seems no remedy of equanimity, magnanimity and serenity. There have been scholars upon scholars in time immemorial to irradiate the pitfalls our humanity has been falling into since the beginning of the cosmos. But the but has been persistently present in every remedial signature regardless of being epithetic to any name. An astoundingly abstruse microscopic version of perception reveals such truths that the mind does not seem to grasp in easy terms. But the truth is bound with its natural veracity. The fallacy inherent in every segment does not appear to be gluttonized by what is not discerned. Genius minds have also been exploding with all their weapons and instruments but the feeling of ease has never been reached. The destination always proved a fiasco endeavour like mirage. The paper is a seminal work in terms of bringing a covert understanding in view to see the world at parity. Silence is the experience of oneness. The silent mind resides in integration. Integrated state is able to perceive coherence in the chaos; symmetry in the unsystematic; and moreover timeless phenomenon beyond the clock-work. It

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coincides with the enigmatic situation the Existentialist School of Philosophy descended into where diaphanous perceptibility has been kept on diametrical discordant yardstick. Fredrick Nietzsches saying God is Dead and dissolution of all sanctified versions of actualized realities resulted in estrangement between the outer and the inner or the outer and the beyond. On the intellectual plane that has transgressed all the walls, science has also broken the so-called walls. Stephen Hockings revolutionized the whole gamut of belief system and has shaken the very roots of what used to delimit the scientific approach He says: So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really selfcontained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end, it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator? (pp. 156 - 157) The greatest genius William Shakespeare has also been alleged to have marginalized the couple of characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in his play Hamlet whose state of being and existence has been accentuated in 1967 with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Even Jesus Christ used to say that blesses are the poor people, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Besides Manu, Lord Krishna has spoken extensively in his Gita about all the four types of varna that promote the hierarchical system in the world. The study of the roots of class, class, race and the consequent marginality is to be experimented on the levels of social, psychological, spiritual structures. Classification, caste-ism, racism are the offshoots of the slide that shifts from silence into words, abstract into concrete, spirit into the matter where the naturally unavoidable repercussion descends into marginality. From theoretical statistics, class reflects a number of sociological perspectives, informed by anthropology, economics, psychology, and sociology. The major perspectives historically have been Marxism and Structural functionalism. The common stratum model of class divides society into a simple hierarchy of working class, middle class and upper class. Within academia, two broad schools of definitions emerge: those aligned with 20th-century sociological stratum models of class society, and those aligned with the 19th-century historical materialist economic models of the Marxists and anarchists. Caste is a form of social stratification characterized by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultural notions of purity and pollution. Racism is generally defined as actions, practices, or beliefs that reflect the racial worldview: the ideology that humans are divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called "races". And the natural outcome is to thrown on the periphery ceasing to acquire any good position at the centre. Life moves more like in the form of a pendulum. When the pendulum has gone to one extreme, it should not create any illusion of being stagnant at the extreme point. When it did, its momentum was mitigating for this extreme and gathering energy to move to the other extreme. Our society, literature, psychology swings in this capacitive vacillation. It can only be in relaxed state when it just stands still at the middle what was given word by Buddha as Majjhim Nikaay. The common desire to even an average mind has is the effacement of all such discriminatory standpoints and by way of extinguishing them, creating a society of well-being and equality is to be established. But this seems to be ideologically and even practically unfeasible to practice. As far as we see Shakespeare who has categorically peeled out different deeper layers of human consciousness through his works, it is found that there are favours to be done for some characters. In some specific characters, the Keats negative capability seems to function in full dexterity; and he refines himself into Eliots objective co-relative but this can be said that even Shakespeare was conscious of some traits to be of higher value and some as lower. In connection with this, it is to be remembered about Chimney Sweepers by Charles Lamb

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where he says that he is not like Robert Browne who, as he opines, sees the world impartially. Lamb says that he does not understand this idealistic way which was simply absent in him; he was not able see all with the similar eyes. Lamb seems to be more genuine who does not boast of being a philanthropist or a godly figure. The sublime definitions also bear favoritism. This is quite interesting to see how Aristotle speaks of tragedy in poetics: "Tragedy, then, is a process of imitating an action which has serious implications, is complete, and possesses magnitude; by means of language which has been made sensuously attractive, with each of its varieties found separately in the parts; enacted by the persons themselves and not presented through narrative; through a course of pity and fear completing the purification (catharsis, sometimes translated "purgation") of such emotions." The most fundamental change has been the rejection of Aristotle's dictum that true tragedy can only depict those with power and high status. And then the American novelist Arthur Millers Arthur Miller's essay "Tragedy and the Common Man" (1949) argues that tragedy may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings In Jane Austens novel Pride and Prejudice (1813) the protagonist Elizabeth Bennet is the second daughter but her life approach and understanding through many vicissitudes makes her the best character; she is sometimes favoured by either of her parents. They novel depicts also about the classes and the type of opportunities available to women of the then society. In the post-modern world where all that was on the periphery has come in the centerfeminist study, dalit literature, subaltern realm and the like, there has certainly come some changes in peoples thought. But Renowned Dalit writer Laxman Gaikwad of Maharashtra once said that even though the attitude of the people towards Dalits had changed considerably in recent times, a lot still remains to be done. Nomadic tribes are still being treated as second grade citizens and they are yet to become a part of the national mainstream. He regretted that the Dalit literature has remained so far ignored and neglected. It must be duly recognised by the society and Dalit writers should also be also encouraged and rewarded for their writing, Gaikwad said. So far as racism is concerned, it is a lively topic for critical debate since approximately the 1950s, with scholars examining the treatment of various kinds of discrimination based on race, religion, or gender in literary worksboth past and presentas well as in the attitudes of the writers themselves. In some cases racism is a prominent, or even the chief theme, while in other works critics have revealed racist attitudes that serve as underlying assumptions, but may not be immediately evident to the reader. Laura Niesen De Arua has written about racist and imperialist currents in Caribbean literature, while Frances A. Della Cava and Madeline H. Engel have cited examples of prejudice against Blacks, Jews, and women in recent detective fiction. Some other general approaches have included discussing how the role of whiteness plays in fiction, as Rebecca Aanerud has done. Scholars have also been particularly interested in discussing the treatment of racism in fiction written by and about African Americans. For example, Ralph L. Pearson has commented on Charles S. Johnson's attempt to combat racism through his work during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Karen Overbye has examined Evelyn Scott's depiction of mulattoes in two novels composed in that same period, and Jerry H. Bryant has commented on racial violence in Richard Wright's Native Son, written in 1940. Focusing on more recent times, Margo V. Perkins has traced Toni Cade Bambara's handling of the image of Black women in her short stories of the 1970s, and Steven G. Kellman has written of the uneasy relationship between African Americans and Jews in the contemporary city as seen in Bernard Malamud's The Tenants (1971).

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It is, therefore, seen that the consciousness to all these territories is prevalent and people are prone to bringing amelioration to the pre-existing structures, deconstruct and then reconstruct in the new formulated structures. But many a times the discussion done on the print media does not adequately ignite fire in the spirited soul which can pave the path to the really metamorphosed strata on the societal plane. Consequently no corner seems to exist anywhere which is not facing the natural outcome of all this mess in the form of being marginalized. The world is so much agitated that it has resulted into much more squalid settings; confining to narrowed squires and realms. Around the whole world nowhere is this to be experienced the state of oneness and a sense of fraternity though it is very much reflected in literature, books, criticism but failingly in literature. Hence it appears to be an idealistic phenomenon which is gorgeous in thinking, cogitating and meditating over but arduous to be found on humane grounds. Thus we see the world to be segregated into two idiomatic universal fashions: one stream of consciousness heading towards the peripheral curvature and the other stream of awareness descending into sub-, un-, cosmic unconsciousness. Yet even these two do not give adequate surety to the proper functional units to be acquired by all the discriminating minds. Surprisingly both the directed arrows resolve in no salvation or rather say solution. Solution to problems is the salvation. And there cannot be any other one except this. Theoretical base to the conceived realities do not consecrate into acquiesced compendium. This discriminating mind arisen from distinct sets of class, subversive caste-ism has been the cause of every society of the world. Interrogation here is not at all on the shortcomings of the advent of the existing norms but to the extinction of the covert nerves that perturb the tranquillity and accelerate the turbulence. The approach that is universally in vogue is the first one: the arrow headed towards. But now let us focus on the other way round in which the deeper doors are knocked down where we see the psychological terrain which, though not ripened enough to healthy state, tries to pacify the agitating human mind to a state of normally abnormal. But this realm does not end up here; it trespasses the other deeper ones consequently. The post-modern British playwright Tom Stoppard fabricates the existential design in such a way that ultimately there are moral problems, that we are responsible for our choices however freighted with ambiguities and vagueness they may be, and that there is an enduring sense of right and wrong even if the ambiguities of the particular contexts make such choices difficult. Although Hapgood, a play discussing the connection between the quantum physics and the human nature, invites all of us to probe into and recognize the unfeasibility of plucking out the mystery of an individual; the conclusion of the play leads us to acknowledge that what is right and what is wrong comes down to the matter of how one individual treats another individual and to see that the person is more important than the business, however, lofty the aims of the business may be. Finally, the play leads us to see that even if it may be difficult or impossible to say that one action is absolutely right, it is possible when comparing and altruistic action and exploitative action to recognize the difference and to say absolutely, using the final words of Hapgood, thats good- thats better. Getting back to the centre is one step in transcending the enigmatic unstoppable rut and the great mathematician of twentieth century P. D. Ouspensky in his book In Search of the miraculous worked in recounting his experiences derived from George Gurdjieff, his Master with whom he was separated after some time he met him. But in his other book Tertium Organum, he theorises some abstractions that are achieved in the inner world. And that way was not even acquired by Aristotle in the Organum nor in Novum Organum by Francis Bacon though these books were formed much before his. Consequently, Fritjof Capra, like Stoppard, who was interviewed by Renee Weber in the book The Holographic Paradigm, discusses his ideas with Werner Heisenberg in 1972, as he mentioned in the following interview excerpt: I had

Redeeming Sensibility to Discrimination and Marginality: An Exclusive Post-Modernist Study

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several discussions with Heisenberg. I lived in England1972, and I visited him several times in Munich and showed him the whole manuscript chapter by chapter. He was very interested and very open, and he told me something that I think is not known publicly because he never published it. He said that he was well aware of these parallels. While he was working on quantum theory he went to India to lecture and was a guest of Tagore. He talked a lot with Tagore about Indian philosophy. Heisenberg told me that these talks had helped him a lot with his work in physics, because they showed him that all these new ideas in quantum physics were in fact not all that crazy. He realized there was, in fact, a whole culture that subscribed to very similar ideas. Heisenberg said that this was a great help for him. Niels Bohr had a similar experience when he went to China. Fritjof Capra (page 217218) What is resolved in conformation with the disproportionate purview of life is getting to accept the reversal order to be acquiesced. All the orders that claim to be at par; that accept the notional arithmetic in respect to the absolution of all dichotomies and distinctions have to be at any rate in reversal equilibrium. The disintegrated mind has no potential to perceive in the sanguine equation. This is naturally impossibility. All the great geniuses of the world have attempted to rationalize the irrational, intuitive and Non-Euclidian. And now is the eve to ponder upon the fact on what could be the ways to dissolve all the class-based, caste-based, racial discriminations and differences to be effaced out totally. Couple of ideas seem to erupt out here. One is the integration of the chaotic and fragmented fabrication of psychic landscape. And the other could be the understanding the stick-in-water stage. If we take into account the psychological implications and impressions in the general life, we are bound to be surprised at the fact that all the discriminations humanity is victimized to is the result of psychic layers that colour our emblematic life structure. Culture, Etiquettes, mannerism, behaviour, all in one are the natural products of the kind of structuring or building we give impetus to the mind of the person. In this connection, Osho Rajneesh in his book Ancient Music in the Pines says: Modern science has come to a very significant fact, one of the most significant achieved in this century, and that is that you dont have one mind, you have two minds, your brain is divided into two hemispheres: the right-hemisphere and the left-hemisphere. The righthemisphere is joined with left hand and the left-hemisphere is joined with the right hand, crosswise. The right-hemisphere is intuitive, logical, irrational, poetic, platonic, imaginative, romantic, mythical, religious; the left-hemisphere is logical, rational, mathematical, Aristotelian, scientific, calculative. These two hemispheres are always in conflict. The basic politics of the world is within you; the greatest politics of the world is within you. You may not be aware of it, but once you become aware, the real thing is to be done somewhere between these two minds. He continues: The left hand is concerned with the right-hemisphere; that is intuition, imagination, myth, poetry, religion. The left hand is very much condemned. The society is of those who are right-handed; right-handed means left-hemisphere. Ten percent of the children are born left-handed but they are forced to be righthanded. Children who are born left-handed are basically irrational, intuitive, non-mathematical, and Non-Euclidian. They are dangerous to the society; the society forces them in every way to become right-handed. It is not just a question of hand, it is a question of inner politics; the left-handed child functions through the right-hemisphere. That, society cant allow, it is dangerous; he has to be stopped before things go too far. This is where Oshos endeavour at suggesting about the proper blossoming of our intrinsic seed by becoming aware of the whole phenomenon. And the second thing is that the outer perceptivity and inner receptivity do stand on diametrically discordant yardsticks. And this is the redeeming exactitude but very arduous in its applicability to the normal fractions of society where the mass has suffered a lot. Here the perspective is changed in terms of knowing the nature of things as they are.

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If we try to understand with an allusion of world being compared with a stick kept in water. The stick is absolutely a straight one; but when it is put under water, the half of it which is in water looks to have gone astray. We know that the stick is straight and there is no change to have happened with it when it is under water. Despite all our knowledge, our effort of having touched the whole stick from within and without, the stick looks to have gone astray inside water. The world is something like this. We acknowledge many realities in one form but the reflection happens in the other. Here we see that there is a difference between the reality and the appearance. This becomes also our inner knowledge that stick is straight but it looks the other way. This knowledge becomes possible only because we have access to touch the stick holistically and know the complete reality. Now the inquisitiveness is raised here as to how and what could be the remedies to the bewildered world we have encountered yet. The man is bereft from having experienced the real valueTruth, Godliness, Beauty of life. Man is now in an endless rut. It is because man does not have access to understand the deeper layers of what all the religions have been speaking of. Thus all the philosophies preached ever, knowledge discovered ever, do not seem to be sufficient enough to incorporate in building the complete human being. It is understandable perhaps now that the peripheral knowledge is O. K. but unless and until one is back to the source, to the root, to the unmoved silent centre, there is going to be explosion of the mind of all the beautiful persons we have on this earth. This is quite apt here to get reminded of Bertrand Russells essay Science and War where he pessimistically refers in the last line that the way the science is piling up explosives, it is certain to destroy the whole earth in time to come. And he expressed his idea that man is so adamant that he will chose death than understanding. He hopes he is mistaken. Therefore, the only possible way for the extinction of the result of class, caste distinction which is marginality can be nothing but an understanding, understanding that all the human beings are the offspring of the same existential energy and a feeling of Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam to be aroused in all our hearts. Otherwise the scene cant be prevented from becoming more horrific in time to come.

CONCLUSIONS
Thus it has been quite naturally understood that the seeming extrinsic world is something like diametrically discordant yardsticks. They are contrary but they are conjoined with certain unavoidable complimentary segments that are not to be fragmented. They could only be done upon when they are combined with trespassing and transmuting psychic bent of mind. And when the mind performs in this equation, the world appears in a harmony despite all its diversities and contradiction. The world is what we are and how we see. Its just a question of see-ing, the whole gestalt is metamorphosed. Otherwise there is no other way out.

REFERENCES
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system-powerful-dalit movement&ei=h8Z8ULKZDs7LrQfGwYBg&usg=AFQjCNHXpB3NkR_z67Z2EKEzXtEYGQI3Ig 3. The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (1975). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Physics 4. 5. 6. Billington, Michael. (1985). Stoppard: The Playwright. London: Methuen. Hayman, Ronald. (1982). Tom Stoppard. London: Heinemann. Cloby, Douglas. (1978) The Game of Coin Tossong: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard in his as As The Curtain Rises On Contemporary British Drama 1966-1986. Farleigh Dickinson University Press. 7. Rajnessh, Osho. (2005) War and Peace: Insights from the Bhagawata Geeta. A Rebel Book Published by Tao Publishing Pvt. Ltd, Pune. 8. Rajneesh, Osho. (1976) Ancient Music From The Pines. A Rebel Book Published by Tao Publishing Pvt. Ltd, Pune. 9. Hunter, Jim. (1982). Tom Stoppards Play. London, Faber & Faber.

10. Kerr, Waiter. (October 29, 1967). Taking Revenge On Life in The New York Times. 11. Tom, Stoppard. (1972). Jumpers. London: Faber and Faber. 12. Stoppard, Tom. (March 1988). Some Quotes and Correspondence, Hapgood Theatre programme, London: Aldwych Theatre. 13. C. J. Gianakaris. (1968- 69). Absurdism Altered: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Drama Survey 7, Nos. 1 & 2. 14. Herbert Read. (1973) Forward. The Rebel: Penguin Books. 15. Stoppard, Tom. (1967) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. New York: Grove Weidenfield. All subsequent references are to this edition.

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