Ketchup and mustard. Salt and pepper. Mickey and Minnie. Peanut Butter and Jelly. Milk and Cookies.. Seven colours forming a white light. Seven notes forming a tune .Dogs and Cats.Errr......Wait a minute. Maybe not dogs and cats. Cats shouldn’t be together with anything or anybody, but I digress.

Community is a good warm word frequently invoked by citizens, social workers and politicians. There is hardly any shadow to it. The word society by contrast , is more ambivalent, invoking something elitist and exclusive, “a high society”. The word “individual” or “individualism” , often connoting selfishness and bracketed with society , is even more suspect of our time , and that is what I would be talking in detail about. Not too long ago the individual was the pride of western civilisation, and individualism was a concept and a value that distinguished the west from other civilisations.

In the middle ages ‘ according to Jacob Burckhardt , ‘human consciousness ... lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil...Man was conscious of himself only as a member of race , people party , family , or corporation- only through some general category.’ In renaissance Italy , however ‘this veil first melted into air .. man became a spiritual individual, and recognised himself as such’

The importance of this concept was that it freed remarkable individuals and geniuses, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus, Michelangelo, Botticelli, to live up to their potential without being held back by a medieval society that discouraged innovation or questioning traditional beliefs. Artists started signing their paintings, thus showing individualistic pride in their work. Also, the more communal guild system was being replaced by the more individualistic system of capitalism, which encouraged private enterprise.

The individualistic age of Europe was in its beginning a revolt of reason, in its culmination a triumphal progress of physical science.
If this is what individual would stand for in the present age , I would have strongly argued favour of its continuation , would have supported it. But I would do just the opposite, why ?

Concrete man , living man, man in flesh and blood living in the sixteenth century and modern man do not much resemble each other.

Today individualism , rather than recognising our inner self , or to reason is a tool to project and to project ourself as the only one and the only best. One which I recognise as pushing others back and propagating ourselves. Where human is an enemy with himself.

Whether through the tongue of religion , or through the arms of politics , the saying of our age sadly dwells on “Divided we stand , United we fall”

When god brought Eve to Adam , Adam experienced emotion that he had never felt before. Adam was love struck . Here was someone like him. Together they could communicate , together they could connect emotionally, and together they could live out their dreams. He whispered in her ear that they were part of each other now. “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”. Together they sinned. Together they were judged, together they lived the rest of their lives under the burden of their curses placed on them by God.

Neither Mahatma Gandhi , Jawaharlal Nehru , or Mr Jinnah , individually win the great Independence . Without the public’s trust and faith in their leadership, without the participation of several other leaders Subhash Chandra Bose , Chandrashekhar azad , Maulana Azad , Sarojni Naidu and the list goes on , without the united spirit , without the united will , would any colony imagine herself of dying and breaking the cages of imperialism , colonialism. NO

To opt for a very ordinary example , lentils form a major ingredient of Indian food meals and my personal favourite. If we take inspiration from them we see the lentils , all, had to give up their individuality . All these flowers , which please our eyes are formed by a group of petals . In fact whole of the cosmos is but reflection of human body which stands a combination of many tissue , millions of cells combined intelligence. All of our solar system is a big we.

What favours the nature , what favour all human being , what favours our personal growth , what favours the society , is thus best to move from me to we.