Anthropologist Felix Padel, who was taught by Uberoi while he was a student at Delhi University in 1979, gave the first JPS Memorial Lecture titled "Arms and the Man" recalling the Bernard Shaw play that questioned nationalism.
Published Sep 10, 2024 | 5:33 PM ⚊ Updated Sep 10, 2024 | 5:33 PM
Felix Padel.
If Indian sociologist and philosophical anthropologist Jit Pal Singh Uberoi were alive, he would have turned 90 on Thursday, 5 September, the day Teachers’ Day was celebrated in India.
On his birth anniversary, Vishwaneedham Centre for Asian Blossoming in Chennai organised an online lecture to commemorate the man who passed away on 3 January this year.
Anthropologist Felix Padel, who was taught by Uberoi while he was a student at Delhi University in 1979, gave the first JPS Memorial Lecture titled “Arms and the Man” recalling the Bernard Shaw play that questioned nationalism.
Padel remained friends with his teacher long after he finished his studies in Delhi, and delivered the first JPS Memorial Lecture online, titled “Arms and the Man” recalling the Bernard Shaw play that questioned nationalism.
The lecture was a wide-ranging analysis of the persistence of war as the reigning paradigm for human prowess. It dwelt on success as the ability to inflict pain and fear on people.
Recalling JPS’ deep interest in the Sociology of Science – a subject he taught at the Delhi School of Economics for many years — Padel discussed the deceased professor’s varied interests. Padel and this correspondent were students of JPS, in 1979 and 1999 respectively.
Padel discussed Uberoi’s interest in world history and his concerns regarding patriotism and war. When Shaw’s ‘Arms and the Man’ was first produced in 1894, it was not popular to question patriotism; war was central to the world economy and the identity of the nation state.
“Nationalism and approach to war were like Hindutva in modern-day India. They were considered deeply divisive issues in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,” said Padel. He also mentioned Sylvia Pankhurst, daughter of Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, who fell out with her mother and sister on the question of nationalism, and her opposition to the killing fields of World War I.
Padel noted that war was considered humanity’s natural state, and quoted Thomas Hobbes. The war of “all against all” was deeply disrespectful of Indigenous communities across the world, where traditions of leadership and negotiations with other groups were highly evolved.
Scientists, Padel noted, are often seen as neutral, but are themselves products of their societies. And scientific research, it is now clear as daylight, is not immune to the power of corporates, the weapons and pharmaceutical industries, and government policy.
Padel talked of the reigning paradigm of war as a principle of organisation of human societies, and noted how war is the central theme of the Mahabharata as well as Greek epics; that paradigm continues to hold sway, and women are seen as the booty of war.
The technology of war has continued to remain an important aspect of modern nation-states and their budgets, and the notion that it is “sweet and honourable to die for your country” is seldom questioned.
Despite the terrible consequences of the First and Second World Wars in the 20th century and the formation of the League of Nations and the United Nations, the war continues; the sale of weapons for profit has surged, as the realization takes hold that war is not just terrible but also terribly profitable.
Padel noted that over a century after aerial bombardment first began, the technology of war is in constant upgrade, as obsolescence is built into technology. This was an intellectual concern JPS Uberoi too engaged with for long – obsolescence and technology.
Padel noted that cultural products often echo technological change, and mentioned the Manifesto of Futurism, published by Italian poet Filippo Marinetti in 1909, anticipating Italian Fascism. The book would glorify war and technological change, celebrating speed, violence and youth.
Propaganda has become an important feature of war and aggression, and networks of spies and intelligence agencies now perform important propaganda roles, he noted.
The links of war to prostitution were touched on too – with a reference to Lydia Cacho, whose book Slavery Inc. exposed the prostitution cartel’s links with the state in Mexico. She shows in the book how servicing the US soldiers led to a proliferation of prostitution, the one trade impervious to recession, throughout Southeast Asia.
South African politician Andrew Feinstein, whose book The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade was also cited by Padel, shows how war and trade in weapons are sources of deep corruption – war has links with metals, mining and science, and is deeply destructive to the environment and an orderly world system.
Besides the formal government-to-government trade in arms, there is also the “shadow world” of illicit trade, and the two are shockingly often linked.
War can cause debts of nations to mount, and unrepayable debts then make countries liable to manipulation. All this happens even as technologists dealing in weapons systems may be celebrated for their prowess, like former Indian President Abdul Kalaam.
This then paves the way for the development of weapons of mass destruction without qualms of conscience or a reckoning of the enormous destruction that these weapons could cause.
And it is apparent even currently, in the genocide unfolding in Gaza, with extreme dehumanisation that reminds one of Auschwitz.
Padel commented also about the “priesthood of experts” – the tendency to unquestioningly accept what scientific leaders offer, as evidenced during the discussion on the Covid vaccine, for instance, when fighting disease too was couched in military terminology and questioning was disallowed.
Padel’s was a lecture in the tradition of JPS – spanning centuries and topics across a wide range, and thus hard to capture in a nutshell. Padel is at work on writing up the lecture as a paper, and readers will soon have a fuller account of the first JPS Memorial Lecture.
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