Listening to the inner voice for inner peace

Speaking in Dallas, Texas, on September 9, Rahul Gandhi said something that was rather different and very important. He said that for a political leader “listening is more important than speaking”. I endorse that with the added observation that listening to what has been called the “inner voice” is equally if not more important. What if anything at all, is the “inner voice”?

Conscience would be the most plausible synonym for it, rendered generally in Hindi as “antaratma”. In great literature, it can appear as a soliloquy — self-colloquy or “talking to oneself”. Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be…”, one could say, was his inner voice asking him the existential question. The same “something” within Robert Frost led to the great lines in Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening ending with “But I have promises to keep/and miles to go before I sleep /and miles to go before I sleep”.

But literature apart, history shows inner monologue or an inner voice akin to conscience leading persons to act on its “goadings”. Most famously, in ancient Indian history, it was Emperor Asoka’s conscience speaking to him after the Kalinga war that led to his “active” remorse and atonement, carved in his Edicts.

In modern times, Gandhi’s fasts were invariably the result of such an inner prompting.

Three features, I would say, mark the urgent, irresistible and clear impulse coming from that inner monologue. These are:

One, un-premeditated, uncalculated, un-“reasoned” spontaneity — the work of what may ordinarily get to be called one’s “heart”; two, unmistakably clear direction — somewhat like what we would admire (and be grateful for) in our wired times: “strong network”; three, complete peace-of-mind over the resolve to follow the inner command, utterly impervious to others’ reactions to the resolve.

I will confine myself to India’s experience.

Resignations are a major example of the phenomenon. Some resignations from Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet came from what I believe to be a “command” from their inner voices though the men resigning did not describe it to be so and though there may have been other quotidian stimuli for it as well — finance minister John Mathai’s in 1950, law minister BR Ambedkar’s in 1951, labour minister VV Giri’s in 1954, finance minister CD Deshmukh’s in 1956, and railway minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s, also in 1956 following the Ariyalur train accident.

But resignations are only one manifestation of the “inner commands”. Gestures of other kinds reflect its working no less.

As an Opposition leader of rare sparkle, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was moved by his inner monitor to give on the floor of India’s Parliament the finest tribute of the day to Nehru on his death in May 1964.

Some believe Indira Gandhi’s decision to hold elections in 1977 was the result of an inner call. I am not so sure but then it is known that she did meet the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti at that time when, it is said, he told her things that made her reflect, self-critically, on her Emergency record.

In a class I was taking on the broad subject of ethics recently, I asked students to share examples they knew of remorse and atonement. Two cases of an apology from the high bench of the Supreme Court of India, no less, were cited to me. One was an apology that came 30 years after the “deed”. Justice PN Bhagwati was one of four judges of the Supreme Court who, in 1976, in the case popularly known as the habeas corpus case, going against the unanimous decision of all the high courts, upheld the right of Indira Gandhi’s government to suspend fundamental rights during the Emergency. In an interview with MyLaw.net, Justice Bhagwati said his conclusion was “an act of weakness” adding, “It was against my conscience…” The other instance cited to me by a member of the faculty present in the class was a statement from Justice Indu Malhotra, who, on September 6, 2018, with four other judges of the apex court, declared that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (broadly known as the law against sodomy) was unconstitutional. She said on the occasion memorably: “History owes LGBT people an apology.”

Teachers learn in class as much as and sometimes more than they teach. There are huge follies on which we have let our collective consciences be silent, our inner voices to be “on mute”. I list some of them below.

Three rampant As: Autocratic practices visible in almost all political parties, aggression by monopolies over the resources and opportunities of our people, aggrandisement of wealth and its control by an apparently unregulated oligarchy.

Three Bs encountered across the country: Barbarisms practised by hideous specimens of the Indian male on vulnerable women and children, brutalisation by so-called vigilantes of invariably very poor men suspected of trading in or consuming cows’ meat, and the relentless bullying of the under-privileged castes by hefts of higher and sometimes within their own kind.

Three stubborn Cs: Communalism, corruption and cronyism.

Three unrelenting Ds: The greedy disembowelling of fragile surfaces for so-called “development”, the frenzied denudation of forest cover — a situation that can be seen from Ladakh to the Great Nicobar Islands and on another plane, the phenomenon of drug abuse which, often accompanied by drunkenness, is emasculating our youth.

We do not have social philosophers like Jayaprakash Narayan among us today, to caution us about our follies. But let us not imagine we do not have “help-line” like persons in our midst: We do have several of them, guiding non-governmental and grassroots initiatives across the country.

But if each one of us, in whatever field one is in, listens to the inner voice on any of the areas I have mentioned, and on any other, even if that makes little or no difference to the issue, it will, to our sense of peace with our souls.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a former administrator, is a student of modern Indian history.The views expressed are personal