Chaos Theory and the History of National Song

One of the less appreciated – but no less onerous – duties of a statesman is to elevate the zeitgeist of his nation, to nudge it towards novel realms, to sublimate nation’s consciousness.

Our statesman extraordinaire is conscious of this weight on his shoulders and never squanders an opportunity to offer advice and improve the spiritual being of his long-suffering citizens.

Means of communication are an important link in performance of this arduous task. Interviews and press-conferences, the chosen means of the past leaders are wasteful and quite futile. These only open chinks in an argument. The quibbles, the bickerings, the dissenting opinions, hinder meaningful communication – a monologue that the spellbound people deserve. Thus, the supreme religiously eschews them.

He regularly shares his heart’s content with countrymen on radio waves. The profundity of topics takes your breath away: Vocal for Local, for making India self-sufficient; Har Ghar Tiranga, for breeding patriots in every household; Amrit Kaal, celebrating the golden times in which countrymen prosper today; and hundreds more such essential, but complex subjects.

He has consistently coaxed his people to develop a scientific outlook in life. He informs the people, in these heart-to-heart conversations, of our scientific achievements in deep past: Satellite-communication (Sanjay, narrating to the king Dhritrashtra, a live commentary of the great Mahabharat war that was being fought hundreds of miles away), aircrafts (Pushpak Vimana in the prehistoric period of Ramayana), and plastic surgery (Transplantation of the head of an elephant on to the body of the god Ganesha).

Parliament offers another forum for these pedagogic sessions. Opposition here is on the brink of extinction, and what feeble voice remains can be peremptorily extinguished by a loyal speaker.

Recently, he outperformed himself while discharging this state-duty in parliament – that of educating the countrymen. Who would have suspected that under the garb of narrating an essential part of our history, he had just elucidated a most intricate scientific theory that is ubiquitous in the affairs of universe? This was a stroke of genius, a most exquisite skullduggery, worthy of an exalted mind.

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World is chaotic and unpredictable – assassination of an heir-prince incites a global war, lending-crisis in a country sees its stock market plummet and economies of all nations fall like dominoes, a virus jumps on to human lungs from its natural host, a small flying mammal, and kills millions. Amid this tumult, human heart longs to discover pattern wherever it looks. It sees faces in clouds, on discolored moldy walls, sees its future enmeshed in the constellation of stars at the time of his birth, and holds the actions of his long dead ancestors responsible for his present joys and sorrows.

Unlike the traditional science that deals with predictable phenomenon like gravity, electricity, and chemical reactions, Chaos theory deals with things that are nonlinear and difficult to predict, like weather phenomenon, stock markets, and states of brain. Theory teaches us to expect the unexpected. It reiterates the uncertain nature of our universe.

Butterfly effect is the most popular metaphorical representation of Chaos theory. A butterfly flapping its wings in Amazon can cause a tornado in the distant Texas. It highlights the sensitive dependence on initial conditions when a small change in the initial state can cause a major change later.

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I was pleasantly surprised to hear a most clear and lucid explanation of the Chaos theory in our parliament a few days back. The revered one effortlessly wove the principles of the theory in his narrative and surreptitiously introduced his beloved citizens to an intractable mathematical concept of all times.

Story clearly enunciated the tumultuous events of today, and linked them convincingly with the apparently innocuous initial conditions of more than three quarters of a century back.

He told the nation that the National song, Vande Mataram, was truncated in a conference of Indian National Congress, held in 1937. This, he informed, was at the bidding of its president, who was afraid of offending leaders of a minority community. Later had objected to few stanzas of the song. Congress thus bartered national pride for minority appeasement.

This initial event, the slimming of National song, led to partition of the country, a decade later, in 1947. In years this came to hound the citizens as anti-majority policies of the ruling party. Our colonial mindset that has hindered achievement of the developed-nation status, was the legacy of this pusillanimous back-tracking by the anti-national leaders of past.

Whoops! Emendation of a song to partition of a nation of millions, to an inexplicable yet all apparent, ‘colonial mindset’ of its more than billion citizens. Such fantastic example of the butterfly-effect. This was an awe inspiring leap of imagination, product of a razor-sharp intellect.

With steadfastness of a most committed archer, who only sees the bullseye and discounts all else as noise, the exalted one overlooked the minor quibbles over his theory: his chronology of events that defied recorded history, advice of an eminent poet-thinker of the era whose opinion had been sought by the Congress and who had recommended adoption of only first two stanzas of the song, the final decision that was not the sole action of the party president, but a collective opinion of country's most senior leaders then.

Critics of the leader have once again missed the wood for the trees. They aver that in the grip of humongous problems in country today, a day’s discussion of National song in parliament is a flagrant mockery of the miseries of crores of citizens. List of their woes is unending: Subversion and weaponization of state institutions, disenfranchisement of millions of voters in the intensive revision of voters list, toxic air in cities, alienated neighbors in all directions, National currency in free fall, systematic erosion of environmental laws in face of increasing natural disasters, failure of government regulations leading to massive disruption in air traffic lasting weeks, demonization and othering of the largest minority community, steady dismantling of the federal structure of the nation, plummeting citizen-liberties and ballooning state-policing, and so on. But the beloved leader had set his eyes on exalted motives.

The all-knowing leader is aware of this caviling of his critics. He is on a mission to improve the mind of his countrymen by unraveling for them the wonders of modern mathematical reasoning. Leader is obsessed with encouraging scientific thinking among his people. He knows that only this will make us a developed nation by 2047. Chaos theory has been shown to be relevant in Political and Social sciences too. Must he then let go of an opportunity to neatly explain the theory through an historical parable? And waste precious time of the Parliament over challenges that wouldn't be whittled a bit even after prolonged concerted actions? Parliament is a place of worship for him – where he prostrated flat, in an emotional outburst, before entering it after his first win – and he cannot desecrate it by discussing inconsequential subjects in its holy precinct.

There is also an unrecognized merit in the highfaluting deliberations on the history of National song that go on for a whole day in the parliament, even when the same parliament passes dozens of bills, directly affecting fate of millions, without any discussion. In the cacophony of such lofty erudition, one forgets the mundane problems pestering the country. People's minds exit their suffering earthly bodies and levitate to a stratosphere breathing a lighter, mildly hypoxic air. In turn, becoming euphoric due to lack of oxygen.

Religion is not the only opium of the masses. Nationalism is another and more potent. A mind that knows and caters to this essential need of its people is not of this earth born; its origin is truly non-biological.