Colour Colours the Reality

In our childhood we have studied that there are seven colours in the Rainbow. There are three primary colours - red, yellow and blue; three secondary colours – green orange and purple and six tertiary colours obtained as a result of mixing the first two groups. All other colours are combinations and shades of these. According to the psychophysicists, human being can perceive almost 10 million colours. Depending on the viewing conditions, the perception varies. However, what I want to reflect is not the scientism behind it, but the phenomenology of colour in the socialism. 

If someone is asked a question, “which is the natural colour?” obvious answer would be “White.” However, white is not considered the basic colour. In the spectrum, white is the result of seven colours of the rainbow. On the other hand, the most hated colour is, “Black.” Can anyone call ‘black’ as a colour? It is colourless or at least the absence of colour. Scientifically, when a ray of light is absorbed and not reflected back, it is called ‘black’. Therefore, neither white nor back are colours!? Yes, very much debatable. I am not going into it.  

White is the colour some people are proud about and think that it is ‘pure’ and ‘black’ as impure and vice-versa. The world has seen many wars, fights, bloodshed ever since human beings began to reflect over ‘colour.’ In the past, some colours enslaved and colonized the other. The shame is, this even continues in today’s postmodern globalized society! Can one colour be superior to another? If one colour were to be superior to the other, the whole equilibrium of the nature would collapse. 

The colour dominance depends on the light availability, its absorption and reflection. Light availability in the Polar Regions and the Tropical Regions is not the same. The pigmentation in the mineral rich and natural places like dense forest regions and arid desert landscapes varies. Temperate and cold regions have different equation. Therefore, claiming one colour to be superiority in one region and applying it to all other regions is a sweeping generalization and argumentum ad ignorantiam (fallacy of appeal to ignorance). Can anyone say a brown cow is superior to the black-spotted red cow? Absolutely no. If so, why should some human beings are to be considered superior or inferior to the other? Superiority should be gauged not with colour but with the internal traits – ones character, nature, personality, culture and behavior. In other words, your greatness is measured not with the kinds of attire you have, but with your ‘softness of heart’. 

Colour garnishes the reality. Often, multi-colour is preferred over unicolour. If the nature had only one colour, like the Arctic region (in fact not the case there) full of white ice, there would not be any creativity and life. The more colours in the nature, life bubbles out with joy. Varieties of trees and their flowers, colourful birds and animals, varieties of climate and landscape speak wonders of creation. This verily applies to human society. Varieties of cultures, people, habits, way of life, languages, relations, traditions etc. add life to the earth. The more varieties accepted by each other, there emerges a better harmony and peace. The world becomes habitable and in its real sense can be called ‘the earth’. If not accepted, the earth becomes a battle field, a hell. 

Psychologist and Counselors speak about the ‘Colour Therapy’ to treat the ‘unresolved’ brokenness of the self. It is a therapy where by a disorder or ailment is identified with an unpleasant colour. As a treatment, a colour which is pleasant and healing is filled within or the person is immersed in the healing colour. Thus, the unpleasant colour is taken away or abandoned. This heals the person. If a culture or a tradition is not a soothing one, unpleasant or if it is not making one a ‘human being’ it needs to be discarded and a culture / tradition which makes the person ‘truly human’ is to be imbibed. Years of unpleasant and subjugated life will only add agony and not happiness. Increased dose of pleasant colours will make life palatable. 

Colour blindness or Chromatopsia is disease whereby the person is unable to detect a particular colour. It can vary in number of colours. In our social life, many are not just blind to colours but also blind to the reality. Having eyes and sight is not able to see and judge. Even within the family, children do not recognize parents and parents their children and often from such families elderly parents end up in the ‘old-age homes’. What a pity! One community of people, do not recognize the other community. Many are blind with culture and tradition. Some see only the traditional language and letters inscribed in the scriptures and are unable to translate them into the vernacular language and culture and end up as fundamentalists. This is not just the case with some religions, but seen within one’s own religion and culture too. Religion, instead of binding (re-ligare = to bind) the scattered, scatters the bounded. Should I call such religions as salvific? 

I do not want be a Christian if my religion does not allow me to relate with a Muslim.

I do not want to be a Muslim, if my religion does not allow me to relate with a Hindu.

I do not want to be a Hindu, if my religion does not allow me to relate with a Buddhist.

I do not want to be a Buddhist, if my religion does not allow me to relate with a Jain.

I do not want to be a Jain, if my religion does not allow me to relate with a Sikh.

I do not want to be a Sikh, if my religion does not allow me to relate with an indigenous.

I prefer to be an atheist, an agnostic, a Carvāka, an Epicurean, a Materialist and Irreligious, if my religion does not allow me to relate with the last, least and the lost of the society hailing from any traditional background.

I prefer to be blind than to see.

Fr. Raju Felix Crasta

Picture source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/colours-important-trademarks-fashion-in-season-2019-a7705261.html