friends and admirers of octavio paz the mexican nobel laureate came together at the national gallery of modern art in new delhi last wednesday to reflect on the relevance of his ideas in a world assailed by dogmas and ideologies claiming to be omniscient acclaimed as one of the finest poets of the 20th century paz was also acknowledged as a stimulating if controversial thinker while his essays on poets and painters went a long way to establish his reputation as an exceptionally gifted man of letters the ones he wrote on philosophers and on political issues isolated him from the intellectual mainstream in his own country and abroad despised by the right loathed by the left and frequently misunderstood by the liberals paz remained for years a marginal figure or as he himself said an eccentric after the end of the cold war however he has gradually occupied centrestage his essays on history and politics are now hailed for their lucidity rigorous logic and above all for their relentless assault on cant selfserving pretensions and sanctimonious humbug this rehabilitation long overdue is of special interest for us in india a country paz knew well and where he counted many friends including particularly j swaminathan the painter and shamlal the distinguished former editor of this newspaper he had served as a diplomat in delhi in the early 50s and returned to the capital a decade later as mexicos ambassador during the two sojourns he had taken a passionate interest in the arts and religions and in the philosophies and politics of this country that passion found eloquent expression in the large number of poems inspired by india in some of his essays and especially in his quasiautobiographical work in light of india the pertinence of pazs ideas in todays context lies in his abhorrence of closed systems of thought his sharp criticism of ideologies with encyclopaedic pretensions such as marxism infuriated the left even as his disdain for religions which claimed to be sole possessors of immutable truths such as christianity and islam irked the right he attacked the former for regarding revolution as the great goddess the eternal beloved the great whore at one and the same time and in the process condoning the most heinous crimes and he took the latter to task for promoting fanaticism and violence armed or so they assumed with divine sanctionthe implosion of the soviet empire vindicated pazs harsh pronouncements on totalitarian systems but the upheavals in the capitalist countries and in the developing ones have vindicated even more forcefully his acerbic assessments about them the spiritual panorama of the west he once observed was hugely desolating cheap tastes triviality shallowness rebirth of superstition the pleasure enrolled in the service of the communication media had emasculated dissent heightened frustrations and allowed fanaticism and terrorism a run of the placebut the situation in the developing countries was infinitely worse the west was able to make progress and allow democracy to blossom primarily on account