[Poeetiol]

This was a cigarette brand launched in India in late seventies or early eighties - not being a smoker yours truly does not know the exact date. The cigarette company had invited suggestions for the brand name in a competition and the man whose proposal was accepted was give a refrigerator, a TV, a Maruti car and rupees hundred thousand in cash. This type of jackpot was not the order of the day - that came much later. Decades later. Yours truly happened to meet the nephew of the winner and that is how this old tidbit became known and got struck in the memory. Yours truly does not know whether the brand names survives today or not but that will not be relevant for the rest of the argument.

That the tobacco company wanted to make money, as they have done for a long times and continue to do so even today, is no brainier. This is some thing that should be clear to all. There is nothing in Shariah against making money as long as it is through halaal way and this business of money making does not make you oblivious of your other duties, especially hereafter.

It is something else that should catch our attention and exercise our concerns. It is the psychological trick that is worth focusing upon.

For the record it should be mentioned that Scholars of Islam have advised against using psychological tricks to invite people to Islam.

So what was it that the tobacco company was using?
It is there in the name.

This reminds one of the original tobacco company trick to entice US women folk to smoke publicly.

The story begins with US President Woodrow Wilson's announcement to enter Second World War against Germany - to restore democracy. Sigmund Freud's nephew, let us call him Dr B, was in the advisory team to the President and the task was to make the President acceptable to the European people. The decision was to present the President as liberator of Europe and the President toured the Europe with speeches to the same effect. It worked like a charm and the rest is history. World War II was won and people like Dr B wondered whether the war time trick can be used in peace time. To generate business. Women in the US did not smoke publicly and the tobacco companies thought of doubling their clientele by incorporating women. Or the psychologist Dr B thought so. Action plan? Some strikingly beautiful women were chosen to stage a dramatic event at the periphery of a huge public demonstration. They will march with placards and after a short walk will collectively light cigarettes publicly in front of the well tipped press. And that is how it was done. Press lapped it up and the US women came to know about the torches of freedom, the cigarette.

Dr B and company asserted, of course there was liberal advice from Sigmund Freud himself, that you can incite people to behave irrationally if it caters to their hidden desires. Women's hidden desire to break loose of male control, the so called women's liberation, was used to double the cigarette market.

So what has it got to do with the cigarette brand in question?
It is, as we said earlier, in the name. Personal Preference. Do you get it? It is my personal preference to smoke. I am some one who has a preference. I am some body. Do not think of me as no body. I am a man of preference.

This is a heady thing. It is intoxicating. And it does not need Freud to figure out that a person drunk on personal glory is ready to indulge in irrational behaviour.

Yours truly read a book on popular psychology called The Road Less Traveled by a very successful psychologist named L. Scott Peck. This is amongst cult books of modern times like How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie Amy and Thomas Haris's book on transactional analysis called I'm OK, You Are OK. Late Scott Peck, curiously, had got his inspiration from Islamic mysticism and he did use it in this book but in his own way. We shall talk of that at some other time but the sore thumb statement goes some thing like this: The ultimate reason for restoration of mental health is the assertion that you are some thing. Now what was that again? It is strange that he should get the opposite of what mystics of Islam teach - there are diverse mystics in Islam but there are some points on which there is no diversion at all and self-annihilation (called Fana Fillah) is one of those points where all mystics converge. You have to annihilate your ego in Lord Most High - you have to completely submit to Him. To think that you are somebody, even if it is in the least bit is completely contrary to the spirit of mysticism. This is a concept easy to understand but difficult to accept. Annihilation of ego is not trivial. This is the main business in Islamic mysticism.

Two points need squaring here. Dr B mentioned something about the hidden desire to be free or to revolt on part of women. Or some thing to that effect. Yours truly had it from a westernized female psychologist, a Christian, that even modern women desire to be owned by man. In fact one striking case of conversion to Islam in India was of a very famous female writer in English from Kerala called Kamala Das. She was amongst those writers who wrote about female feelings and sensibilities so audaciously that the the people who were shocked were left with no choice but only to keep quite. So what was her reason for conversion so late in life after fame had come to her and did not leave?

Well she wanted to be owned and protected by her Muslim husband. Simple.
Thank you Kamala Suraiya - as she was known later. Her case was devastating to majority community in India she did face ire of the uncouth elements but they could do little in face of the brutal onslaught of truth.

Second point to square is that it might give an impression that we have built up a mansion on few isolated examples. That is not the case. This was the time, when the said cigarette brand was launched, when India was coming out of the old freedom movement mentality, for it was already free, and was looking for new ideologies. And what ideology did they find? Well western ideology of so called freedom and liberalism as only post renaissance Europe could offer.

A little later a magazine called India Today was launched that periodically carried such articles that portrayed the above type of irrational behaviour as fait accompli. It means that they were giving out the message that our society is already like that and there is nothing wrong it with it and this is the order of the day, either ride the band wagon or be ready to be left behind. There was one article about teenagers breaking free of parental bondage. "Babes are an expansive lot", declared a Madras boy who was earning money to spend on girls by working in a garments shop. Slightly later girls were portrayed saying that their hall mark is that they will not depend on a father of a brother for their decisions. And so on.