JK PANORAMA VOL 4 ISSUE 5 MAY

5
6 &
7
Five, six and seven
Shantiveer Kaul
The Pali Canon of Buddhism talks of a
'sixth' element. For students of
Orientalism this may be a tad amusing.
After all, the whole of Orient has been brought
up on the diet of five elements – air, fire, water,
earth and ether. Wu Xing of China may not
correspond exactly with the Godai of Japan,
but the latter is very much like the concept of
tattvas in Indian traditions. Chinese, Japanese
and Indian philosophies have dwelt at length
on the number 'five'. Many other articles of
other faiths and their religious practice revolve
around this number. According to the Greek
mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras,
five was the number of man, because of the
fivefold division of the body, and the ancient
Greek division of the soul. According to
Pythagoras, the five points of the pentagram
each represent one of the five elements that
make up man: fire, water, air, earth, and
psyche. But the 'psyche' of Pythagoras, which
replaces the 'ether' of the Oriental traditions
gets transformed into 'consciousness' and
becomes the sixth element of the Pali canon
alluded to above.
When five becomes six where does it leave the
five and what becomes of the sixth? Long
before Panchayati Raj was the subject matter
of any legislation and even longer before it got
onto paper to remain on paper as it does now in
Jammu and Kashmir, long ago – when another
freshly minted dream called Naya Kashmir
was in the process of similarly getting
marooned on paper, we witnessed the rise and
rise of the sixth element – the khadpanch. The
word khadpanch literally means the sixth
Panch, 'khad' being the derivative prefix used
for number six in the plains of Indian
subcontinent from where the term, and the
phenomenon, both were imported. Now a
panchayat of yore would only have a
committee of five, four Panches and a
Sarpanch, dispense village level community
justice. A khadpanch was thus extra-legal. By
implied usage he was also less than savoury as
far as his morals and methods were concerned
but more than savvy in the matter of his street
smartness. The khadpanch would classically
have some distinguishing features – first of all,
the swagger. One could easily make out who
the village khadpanch was by the manner of his
carriage. Secondly, he would have this
expertise of positioning himself in a manner
that can best be described as 'solus next to
prime' or separate and alone while being next
to the VIP. This positioning would give the
khadpanch a unique aura. No fawning acolyte
was he, but almost a peer. The third thing that
characterized a khadpanch was his speech.
Without his actually using the royal pronoun it
would sound as if he did. He would also sound
as a plenipotentiary or sole spokesman of the
Power Centre he would give the impression of
representing at that particular moment. 'At that
particular moment' because the Power Centre
would change every day as surely as the March
weather, and that would be the other defining
attribute of a true khadpanch.
The institution of khadpanch or khadpanchil, if
one might call it, lost its sheen for some years
as institutionalization happened in this sector
too. Instead of soldiers of fortune, one began
approaching PA's to Ministers or Section
Officers in service sector departments or that
22
May 2019