A NATIONAL FAILURE

The brutalization of the Delhi girl which cost her life today, the innumerable rapes across the country, honor killings, the irrational khap panchayats, female foeticide, the corrupt politicians and their vote bank politics, ineffective administration, the toothless legal system...

Every greed and every failure of ours towards a fellow human being has us thinking; of how, as a society, we have deteriorated. 

Yesterday, a friend from Britain expressed his outrage... that every Indian, right from the President to the Peon is sold out- as much in the spiritual sense as in the mere material sense... to which, I reacted indignantly.....The crooks of the country are not Indians; (there are citizens of nowhere) but every Indian is not a crook. 

My indignation not withstanding, I am a part of the system and I am responsible for its every failure.

Where then, does one begin the introspection and reformation ? The causes and the steps to be taken, to address the issue, are being widely debated and  discussed.

All I want to do is to present the following excerpt from a book which I am writing which tries to fathom the divinity in classical performing arts. I point out to the fact that morals and aesthetics in education and life as a whole, have depleted .... which perhaps is the reason for the destruction of the social and political fabric of the country...

"In the Republic*, Socrates discusses how the philosopher- rulers of the ideal state should be educated. He reflects about the importance of musical and poetic education to youth and how rhythm and mode of music penetrate more deeply into inner soul than anything else does. He further suggests that they have the most powerful effect on the soul, since they make a person graceful. He also stresses that right education in music and poetry will lead a person to clear perception of things which will lead him to shun the ugly and praise only the beautiful and the fine; and thereby delight in it and imbibe it deep into his soul; and thus a person becomes noble and good. 

Youngsters brought up thus; when rationality makes an appearance in them, will be able to recognise good and condemn the ugly which is the point of musical and poetic education. Thus Socrates says aesthetic experiences ought to improve morals as they infuse the idea of harmony as a universal principle and lead man to preserve such harmony in his soul too even before he masters conceptual arguments for moral behaviour..."

The point I would like to open for introspection and discussion is.... Is not exploitation of women rampant even in the rarefied echelons of Dance? 

Reference:

Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, Greek and Roman Aesthetics, Oleg V. Bychkov and Anne Sheppard (eds.), kindle version.