IP Man, Hindutva and Abrahamic Monotheism

Youtube recommendation algorithm acts weird at times. Of late, it started recommending me videos of Jaggi Vasudev. Certain individuals with white beard must be admired how they have mastered the skill of marketing; especially to a credulous, scientifically inapt audience. Anyway, I will not allow white beard to hijack this post of mine. Let me come directly to the topic. Apart from Jaggi videos, in recent weeks, my Youtube wall is also bombarded with martial art movie clips, as if Youtube has scanned my memory to figure out that the 90s kid inside me has special liking for Van Damme and Jackie Chan movies. Youtube did manage to pique my interest to watch a couple of martial art movies over the weekend. One of them was IP Man.

While watching IP Man, I realized that my taste for martial art action movies has weaned, just like many other things in life. The excesses in my materialistic life are perhaps to be blamed. But there is something else about IP Man that lingered on in my mind for some time- its subtle attempt at historical revisionism.

History is full of atrocities and injustice whose scar has a role to play in present day socio-political events, especially when those are committed by “them”. The excesses by “them” should have never existed. The insult and shame are too heavy even if they were done in distant past. The only way to do away with them is to somehow erase them from the past; rewrite the history, at least from the common man narrative of history.

Japanese invasion and occupation of China is a humiliation too recent to be erased or rewritten. But movies, unlike history, need not care about the recency. They can have the artistic and creative liberty to shape the script that would appeal to the scarred hearts. When Yip Man defeats the Japanese general in the climax of IP Man, the history is rewritten to somewhat assuage the Chinese wound. The wound is very deep and this rewriting in the parallel universe of cinema is very minor but, perhaps, in a near or distant future, people will take movies as truth (if they are not doing it already) and Yip Man’s movie feat will become a historical fact.

Rewriting the history to erase the insults caused by crimes committed by “them” may not always suffice. It is occasionally important to keep the wounds open so that “them” of past can be identified with “them” of present who are holding “us” back even now.

The best example of such a case is the meddling of history by the present-day Hindutva brigade of India. The present mediocrity of the country must be blamed on certain “they” who are holding “us” back. “We” should never be blamed. “They” are easy to identify and it is even easier to associate “them” with the past “them” who have been holding us back since centuries. While “we” must blame “them” for all the ills, yet “we” must ensure that the humiliation part is erased. So, on one hand, “we” must blame the even the present “them” for centuries old demolition of temples by Mughals while, on the other hand, must build an alternate history that Maharana Pratap won against Akbar.

But how does Abrahamic monotheism fit into all this?

I read the book, The Evolution of God by Robert Wright a year or so back. There is an interesting theory in the book that Abrahamic monotheism has perhaps less to do with gradual progress in theological abstract thinking but more an outcome of the political stage of middle-east when the Abrahamic religions evolved. The path to monotheism from polytheism was through monolatry with each “us” tribe trying to establish the superiority of “our” God as compared to others.

Rewriting of history too played an important role in establishing the Abrahamic monotheism. Much of Jewish religious texts including parts of Old Testament were written by people who were in exile. Those were the people who were defeated and humiliated. But they knew that they cannot simply let the history pass on the humiliation to their kinds of the future. Hence, they rewrote the history where they were ultimately the victors with their superior God by their side. This altered narrative has mostly worked so far for them.

All this goes to show how strong is the human propensity for kin selection which impacts all spheres of life, be it movie or religion. Or maybe I am being too much of a reductionist and rather should had paid more attention to enjoy the well-choreographed martial art sequences of the movie, IP Man.