Equality

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

I remember to have read the story of an octogenarian couple taking a hotel room to celebrate their fiftieth marriage anniversary. After dinner and some loveplay the man told his wife: Darling, we two are the best in humankind but I am slightly better than you. In Orwell’s Animal Farm four legged  creatures are better than the two legged at the beginning. But nowhere does history or literature give us an example of two persons or things being equal in all respects . The feet and eyes are not paired in man or women as  equal units. Two trees of the same family do not grow as Siamese twins unless mechanically trimmed (Bonsai ) by a professional. If two persons or things are similar in all respects it is a freak of nature. People talk about equality only in the economic sense in the society. Had man been of the selfsame stuff in all countries the West  could not have dominated the East for long centuries. A greater part of humanity was subordinated by Western civilization disproving Abraham  Lincoln’s  Gettysburg exhortation that “all men are created equal”. Orwell’s “some are more equal” in a world of glaring inequalities is a politically correct expression of man’s position. The human condition induces struggle for survival but the best and ’more equal’ alone survive. Darwinian evolution and the civlizational evolution are parallels in inequality only.

Equity, for me, is more acceptable than equality. Half or more of the human population is poor, lives with less than two dollars worth of living and shouts the loudest for equality. Which will never come. If we believe that man is created by God, we tacitly acknowledge, the superiority of the Maker. This maker or God is present in some form, seen or unseen, in the King, Prime Minister, Father, Employer and all kinds of leaders. If people follow a leader or obey a master equality immediately becomes acontextual  if not irrelevant . Honestly who claims equality with whom? The weak claims equality with the strong. The strong never claims equality with the weak. In democracies the ballet paper, now the EVM button, makes every one equal. But once the elections results are  out the mastery if not tyranny of the winner begins. In the general drama of life it’s only the weak, poor and defeated who claim equality with their opposites. The high brow – low brow, have-  have not conflict is mostly and primarily economic. Once the survival constraints are overcome the power concept enters to distrub the socio – political atmosphere. Even the complexion of the body makes people superior. Nobel Laureate Chinua Achebe once said that when the Englishmen came to Nigeria, they doubted whether the blackmen had souls. This story continues even today all over the world and conflicts do raise their ugly heads.

Cultural  inequality is another divisive factor in contemporary reality. Anti Semitism, Islamophobia and many such other phobias divide the human world into combative cultural fragments. If all the resources of the world are equally divided among all the 688 crore(or more) people of the world somebody will yell “my share of the sky has no stars”. Man is born unequal because each human being is unique. When socialists try to put them all on the same platform, the surface will crumble. Each according to his ability and each according to his need also has turned turtle in the march of civilization. Man is an overreacher. He aspires to rival God. The only creature who is never satisfied with what he has is man. He will gamble for more even if he is reduced to a zero like Yudhistira.

Stones and bricks can be made of equal size, shape and weight . But man is born unequal. We will never play equal music in the human symphony even if God conducts the Orchestra.