Rustam Singh (poet)
[4][5] He writes poetry in Hindi (under the name Rustam) and theoretical and philosophical papers and essays in English.
His poems have been translated into many Indian and foreign languages including English, Telugu, Marathi, Malayalam, Panjabi, Swedish, Norwegian and Estonian.
Apart from his books, his poems have appeared in many important literary journals and magazines, such as Sakshatkaar, Poorvagrah, Bahuvachan, Jansatta, Pratilipi, Indian Literature, International Quarterly, Aufgabe, LyrikVannen etc.
The most recent publication of his poems in Hindi was in the online literary magazines Samalochan,[6] Janakipul[7] and Sadaneera.
This volume is titled Aur Kash Ki Main Aik Neeli Shila Hota: Chuni Hui Kavitaen, Surya Prakashan Mandir, Bikaner, 2021 (ISBN 978-93-87252-93-6).
His poems also figure in Teji Aur Rustam Ki Kavitaen, HarperCollins India, Noida, 2009 (ISBN 978-81-7223-879-7).
Apart from Indian languages, Rustam Singh's poems have been translated into English, Swedish, Norwegian and Estonian.
[3] Ingrid Storholmen, the Norwegian poet and novelist, gave several readings of her translations of Singh's poems during the India Festival at Trondheim, Norway, in 2011.
[34] Further, his book A Story of Political Ideas for Young Readers, Volume 1: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli has been translated into and published in Hindi.
[35][36] Some of his philosophical essays, for example "Remembering a Century: Mourning a Lack and a Loss of Power", "Ruptured (in) Writing", and "Roots of Violence: Jīva, Life and Other Things", too, have been translated into and published in Hindi.
For example, in 2008 he read his poems in the international poetry festival organised by the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators, Visby, Sweden.
[41] A key idea of Rustam Singh is his idea of the "dialogicality" of the socio-historical world, laid out primarily in his essay "Dialogicality and Being: A Fragment",[42]: 15, 257 but also in "Man, Political Man, Political Theory", published earlier.
The subject therefore tries to get rid of it by creating or inventing in different ways spheres of existence which are free of the dialogicality of the received world and are as such "non-dialogical".
The dialogicality of the world compels the subject to make an ever-greater and frequent use of imagination to create and take shelter in the non-dialogical.
As a consequence, subjecthood is in perpetual conflict with subjectivity; it struggles to get rid of the latter—the latter being a creature of the (undesirable) dialogical world.
In this essay, Singh introduces another concept related to the self, namely, "the self-less one",[42]: 189 which at first look appears to be similar to but is actually very different from the other-than-self.
The fuller significance of this concept is shown by the following quote from the essay:The self-less one has a face and a figure and a shape.
But, as Singh puts it, "[T]he self's belief that it will now endure is already an illusion, for in the process of self-focusing, and all that happens as a consequence, the self loses its existence.
But since it finds that death is inevitable, "it would like to die its own way and at a moment of its own choosing" because it "does not wish to give up control over its destiny."
Trying to explain the reason for this behaviour of existence, Singh reemphasizes a point he had made earlier in the essay "To be Regardful of the Earth".
At the end of the essay, Singh talks about that "ravaged landscape" that the self manages to create before it is killed by its fabricated death.
[42]: 226–27 Singh expresses in the following words his final denouement of the self:These things, which surround the self, symbolise what it has ravaged in the course of creating this desolation.
"[43]: 170 According to Singh, humans claim to be different from and superior to other jīvas due to their "'superior' ability to think."
However, Singh argues that this is more or less a false claim, for this so-called ability to think has not stopped humans from killing and consuming other jīvas.
[43]: 171–72 So that, to quote Singh:...the thinking which leads to such complex acts of violence has, to a large degree, become disconnected from our life as jīva.
[43]: 175 Singh believes that "whenever they are in a position to do so, humans tend to use and consume almost everything in excess, and it is this fact [which] is the most crucial in any discussion of consumption in connection with violence.
Firstly, it is a tendency "whose emergence makes humans different from other jīvas in as fundamental a way as the so-called ability to think."
"[43]: 176 Another activity that humans do quite blindly is what they call the pursuit of knowledge and they have been busy pursuing the latter since ancient times.
"As such, the desire to acquire knowledge incessantly and indiscriminately, which has turned into a habit and already looks like a drive, is one more thing that holds a central place in the monstrosity of humans.
"[43]: 177 In Singh's view, a lot of human knowledge acquired under the influence of this desire is not only artificial but also excessive.
