Conversation, by contrast, begins with the acceptance of the person, and only thereafter do participants immerse themselves in what they share through expressions. Here, people take cognisance of one another as fellow human beings and respond with caring, sympathy, and attentiveness. Though these two forms of communication belong to different domains of human life, broadly speaking, dialogue pertains to public life, while conversation belongs to the private and personal sphere.
What I urge here is the need to bring the spirit of conversation into public dialogues, which I here conflate with debates and discourses. However, getting into a conversation on public issues is an exceedingly difficult task and remains a rarity. I identify several factors behind this crisis of people not being genuinely conversant with one another.
The first factor is obvious: poor education. Many lack command over language and suffer from inadequate knowledge. Yet this is the smallest hindrance. The more critical impediment arises from ideologies that respond to existential anxieties and from the manner in which these ideologies are appropriated. Another overlapping, but more general, hindrance is the sway of instinctive, bestial drives wrapped in the language of values. These drives are sustained and legitimised by a form of contrived intellectualism, which supplies ready-made justifications and shallow abstractions. This results in a vicious circle in which such values and contrived intellectual inputs enter, reinforce, and circulate within the socialisation processes of communities.
A knowing person, therefore, cannot enjoy the ease of conversation in public dialogues; instead, engagement in such conversations becomes a burden. It is the burden of being in the know and of remaining corrective while conversing on public issues, yet doing so without becoming condescending or imposing.
Niraj Kumar Jha
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