Despite Dogma: Roots of Resistance

Deep will, dogma, and personal resistance

Previously, I wrote about furies of dogma: dogmatic narratives that act upon us and influence us.

These forces of dogma exercise authority over the collectives we are a part of. But they also persuade us and act upon us through their presence in our personal lives and psyches. They actively exert pressure and their pressure has substantial consequences in our lives.

In thinking about the ways that we are overwhelmed, steered and streamlined by these forces, I had to grapple with not just oppression but freedom.

I had to acknowledge my deepest yearning, my most independent and intimate will, my sovereignty of knowing. Instead of “free will”, I would call it our own personal will or the will of our deep self…deep will.

I had to think: how do we uncover this deep will, how do we encourage and nurture this deep will. How do we claim it and stand by it? And how do we balance it with so much else that is a part of life?

Once we experience this deep will, we long for it and reach for it again and again. And as we do, we come up against forces that attack us, interrogate us, condemn us and raise skeptical eyebrows. Forces that silently drain away our conviction, inhibiting us from accessing this deep will.

Some furies are overtly oppressive. Others are wily and better disguised: they dress up distractions to look like desire and lure us away from our deep will.

So we must become wiser and savvier in our approach to self-will, independence, and empowerment.

It is vital that we learn to recognise our own deep will. It is vital that we create a knowing of deep will that is truly our own.

It doesn’t have to sound clever like a college debate. It doesn’t have to be intellectually edgy.

It doesn’t have to be a restless and hungry will that is so overbearing and controlling that it is a fury of its own.

Freedom is so much deeper, more substantial, and more precious than we are led to believe.

Deep and substantial freedom may not be as glittery as illusory freedom or as evident as outer freedom. But it full-fills you instead of keeping you hungry, it warms you up like rum, it honors your living reality, it listens to your deepest values and challenges you to not just fight for them but own them.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Dominant narratives of politics, freedom and knowledge — particularly liberal narratives — are allergic to the slightest whiff of sacredness.

For instance, Christopher Hitchens, an acclaimed British-American journalist (considered left-liberal), wrote and spoke extensively against religion (particularly Islam) and in favour of liberal freedoms. He opposed religious censorship and defended so-called free speech (actually condescending, insulting, and insensitive depictions that demeaned Islam as a religion). He wrote in an article,

‘I was stopped by a female Muslim interviewer and her camera crew and asked an ancient question: “Is nothing sacred?” I can’t remember quite what I answered then, but I know what I would say now. “No, nothing is sacred….”’

“Nothing is sacred.” To me, that narrative seems arrogant, violative and exploitative, but also spiritually hollow. It is a narrative that is at its core — cynical.

Liberal dogma with all its “tolerance” cannot tolerate anything deeply meaningful. It ridicules values that are not sanctioned by the rules of its narrow narrative. For instance, it is terrified of the Muslim woman’s burkha because it cannot fathom interiority; it cannot understand the refusal to bare all to the outer world.

Ratna Kapur, a critical legal and feminist scholar, critiques the liberal conception of freedom. In her book “Gender, Alterity, and Human Rights: Freedom in a Fishbowl”, she refers to

‘the normative order of happiness and understandings of freedom that are continually restless, profit-driven, instrumental, transactional and directed towards an ever elusive goal whose true contours remain obscured.’

She refers to various assertions of agency and acts of empowerment by women across different strata of society, which do not fit into the liberal paradigm of freedom.

Liberal dogma aside, even supposedly alternative or left-leaning discourse can often be disgruntled and harshly limiting in its portrayals of empowerment, bringing its own furies of dogma. Particularly when it is still following the same rigid rules of political discourse, still carrying the same self-righteousness, still evoking so much despair and so little possibility.

In the polarized world we live in where “politics” is played as a ping-pong match between left/liberal and right/conservative, it is so easy to misconstrue a critique of one to be a support of the other.

So I will make it clear that I am in no way supporting right-wing dogma. Right-wing dogma derives its clout from a narrative of us vs. them, belonging vs. not belonging, normal vs. the other, and claims to stand for the “us”, the “belonging”, and the “normal”. By posing as the upholder of strong religiosity and no-nonsense values, it gains influence in a society that is hungry for spiritual and moral conviction.

But what I am pointing out is this: there are furies whose oppressive and dogmatic nature are not explicitly visible but are deeply influential. Such as liberal narratives, capitalist-commercialistic narratives, and the modern hyper-productivity/race-to-the-top narrative. These narratives decide what is a valid achievement, what is a valuable outcome, what is a legitimate aspiration, and scoff at anything that does not tick those rigid boxes. They are invasively influential.

Or the furies of certain narratives of the political left (narratives that are so often dominated by men or masculine-dominated thinking, often condescending and full of intellectual superiority), which promote skepticism and repression under the guise of socio-political awareness and shoot down anything you say by screaming “privelege!”.

There are more well-known furies, which continue to be pervasively active. Such as age-old patriarchal dogma and other anti-woman furies that continue to exercise authority in our collectives, communities, and families (outwardly and inwardly, literally and psychically), and continue to oppress, discipline, and shame women.

There are also dogmas that are particular to cultural and economic class and caste. For instance, there is upper class (socially or economically or both) dogma and upper-caste dogma and all the judgment, condescension, and posturing it brings. And there is religious dogma (which is not actually religious in the truest sense of the word) with its regressive so-called morality.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Given that there are so many life-sucking narratives circulating around us, we must develop our own resistance, much like our body’s immune resistance, which fends off infectious agents.

Carving out a way for our deep will — this cannot happen without resistance.

Resistance is how we push back against dogmatic narratives that dictate how we lead our lives and who we become. It is the refusal to accept those formidable (and debatable) portrayals of “reality” that can be so misleading.

Resistance is what gives us vitality and sovereignty, enabling us to stay numinous and nourished, even when there is skepticism, despair and destitution around us.

As women, we are conditioned to doubt our most intimate will, our most personal values and sentiments. We learn to second-guess it, dismiss it and even feel guilty about it.

We learn to accept the invasions of societal furies into our personal realms, instead of fending them off and protecting our most life-giving values, our beloved deep will.

We are supposed to be “open-minded” and “non-judgmental”. These qualities may be useful in themselves, in the sense of allowing us to expand our way of seeing and not become narrow-minded. But the way this indictment is so often used is to reinforce this message: we are not supposed to have strong convictions, we are not supposed to make wise, empowering deductions, and we must allow our most heart-held values and sentient knowing to be overridden.

But discernment is a crucial sensibility. Our ability to tell true from false, to sniff out what is rotten and what is ripe, to pierce through facades to what lies underneath, to discern for ourselves, to say no to what doesn’t feel right, to fight for what feels so right — this is a woman’s most crucial faculty. It is essential for her survival, her protection, her peace of mind, her vitality and her power.

What happens when women stand firm in their deepest convictions, committed, unshaken, undeterred? In the image above, the sturdy roots are growing thickly over the dark shrine, without blocking up the entrance. I see it as a strong and formidable protection of what is most sacred and most intimate.

In resisting oppressive narratives around us and fighting for our own deep will, it is useful to watch out for the quicksand of consuming anger. At the same time, it is important to not dismiss our anger in a quick bid to rise above it.

For so many Indian women, rage is taboo — especially our own rage. It is something we find very difficult to accept. If we do stumble upon it, we immediately turn away from it or try to get over it. Yet, if we could only listen to what our rage has to say, it would tell us what we are really feeling, what we are resisting, why we absolutely must resist it, and what we are fighting for.

We must bear witness to our rage, hear it out, legitimize it and let it guide us. We can learn so much from rage without letting it take over us and without letting it boil over and scald someone. The fire of rage can be a furnace for action, a catalyst for transformation, a burning blaze of clarity.

The idea is to resist in order to grow, breaking through barriers of dogma like a stray plant breaking through hard concrete, and to keep growing and growing and occasionally blooming.…………………………………………………………………………