For the rich, national borders are irrelevant and for the poor they are inconsequential. To both these classes, they are but imaginary lines on a map, albeit for different reasons. Hence, a lot of store is set by the middle class. The rich have vested interests and the poor are desperate. It is the middle class who is to be level headed and set the right political and social narrative. It is also the educated middle classes that lend ‘legitimacy’ to any ruling class or leader. Every leader realizes that mere popularity won’t do without legitimacy – that veneer of acceptance and respectability. In our country too, it has been the educated middle classes that have proudly held aloft the flag of legitimacy for the current central ruling dispensation. It is not an exaggeration to say that no leader in recent Indian political history has enjoyed the levels of popularity and legitimacy as does the Supreme Leader.
In the context of the pandemic, some questions, however, have begun to emerge. The horrible human tragedy that continues to unfold, is perhaps forcing some to reevaluate. Questions have begun to emerge on inefficiency, on how science was ignored, on how things were not thought through and the like. The one thing that perhaps is being given the short shrift is that the ruling dispensation was always like this. The tragedy of the pandemic has just brought this starkly into view.
The Supreme Leader had taken a short cut to our hearts and gained legitimacy by sufficiently reflecting our worst instincts and hypocrisies and giving them legitimacy. To that extent it is a recursive, reciprocal process, a virtuous cycle of reinforcement if you will. Here I attempt to recount some of those worse instincts that we are possessed of. I am a constituent myself of the educated middle classes and some of the things that I am recounting are stuff that I observed growing up in a tier 3 town and that I continue to observe. These are not scholarly or analytical observations, just anecdotal ones. And they are not blanket observations, just general ones. Many honorable exceptions exist. Also the list is neither complete nor comprehensive.
So in no particular order, some of our worst instincts are:
- A ‘Father knows Best’ Attitude: Right from the beginning and through the entire arc of our life –as we grow up , in school , college and to some extent in our jobs-we are not exactly encouraged to ask questions. If anything, we are either subtly or even overtly discouraged. True , lip service , is paid in schools to the importance of asking and clarifying ‘doubts’ ,but God forbid we ask uncomfortable questions and questions that the teachers can’t answer. There is always a right and wrong set of questions. The authority figures know best – be it your parents, your teachers and then your bosses. We essentially engage in a life –long search for and submission to authority figures, hoping that one day we become authority figures ourselves. And then we perpetuate the cycle. Not rocking the boat and not asking ‘too many’ or ‘too uncomfortable’ questions become internalized behaviors and the norm. Free discourse be damned. Perhaps that is why you hear the common refrain “India needs a dictator”, particularly among many in the middle class. You are not particularly afraid of or worried about dictatorships, when your entire life has been about living under a series of dictators with the eventual hope that you will become one yourself. So when along comes a leader who is able to elevate himself to the status of the ‘Supreme Patriarch’ and promptly proceeds to behave like a dictator – it doesn’t feel frustrating, it feels familiar.
- Technology literate but unscientific in temper: We are ‘tool’ obsessed. We are good at employing tools and the tools become ends in themselves. We are not particularly bothered about what the tool means. We are perfectly comfortable in situations that would otherwise have been considered paradoxical. For instance, we find no contradiction in being adept at using a laptop as also worshiping it on a few occasions. We know that the Sun is but an inanimate star but have no problem paying obeisance to it should the occasion so demand. Our education seems to do little to change our practices. It is a scathing indictment of our education system –in that education has become a ‘tool’ and seems to do little for either our outlooks or our belief systems. We love technology, without setting much store by the scientific temper that created it in the first place. Confusing myth for history, not asking enough questions, not revaluating beliefs are all byproducts of this. Combine this with an enduring belief that we are THE greatest civilizations on earth, and you have some unsavory results. So, when a leader claims that plastic surgery and unmanned flight always existed in India and cites Ganesa and the Pushpaka Vimana , we don’t find it ridiculous – we say “of course”.
- ‘Casually’ Bigoted: Casual Bigotry abounds. Stereotypes rule. We don’t think much about it. The very many artificial divisions in our society only add to our bigotry. The trouble is we are quite casual about it and don’t think of ourselves as being bigoted for holding on to certain stereotypes. We perhaps don’t even think along those lines. The number of times I would have heard statements like ‘He is of so and so religion, but he is a god guy’ is not funny. It is a matter, of course, that people of certain religions and castes find it difficult to rent houses. It is matter, of course, that people of only certain castes get to buy or rent houses in certain localities. These things don’t even register, let alone cause any outrage. We don’t realize our own bigotry. People belonging to certain religions and castes are ‘aggressive’, some are ‘soft’. These stereotypes and attitudes are symptoms of a deeper problem, a deeper rot. A rot whose full stench stays hidden in normal times, but takes only a few determined scratches on the surface for it to start manifesting itself. So when a leader deliberately and cleverly stokes divisions by appealing to our innate bigotry – it doesn’t cause outrage but occasions agreement.
- Oversimplification and lack of nuance: May be because the problems facing us are so complex, we have a tendency to oversimplify. Solve xx and everything else will be solved, is a common refrain. Replace xx with corruption, population –take your pick. And our solutions are also quite simplistic. Popular cinema has been exploiting this attitude of ours for a long time to reap rewards at the box office. Murdering the corrupt is a popular theme. So is the theme of a strong willed leader. We set much store by intent and will than expertise. I have written about it elsewhere. We assume that there are simple, straightforward solutions to mind bogglingly complex problems and we also conveniently forget that any solution could have several downstream implications and these also need to be accounted for. This disdain for expertise and an overreliance on ‘intent’ and ‘will’ combine with a condescension for the social sciences- the realm of solutions for many problems that face us. The ‘arch problems’ that we identify like population for instance, also are pressed into the service of justifying the ruler’s failures. “Oh, but we are a 130 crore people, not like Europe”. Well, it did not so happen that the population exploded overnight, because people suddenly decided to do it like bunnies. Instead of demanding from our rulers that they build solutions that scale for our size, we let them offer up it up as an excuse and even join in the chorus. Many movies, unfortunately, have also taught us that getting 15 lacs into the bank account of every citizen is not only possible but also very straightforward. So when a leader displays disdain for expertise and steamrolls on ahead with simplistic solutions even when they threaten widespread hardships, we don’t feel worried, we feel vindicated.
- Privilege unconscious: We have the uncanny ability to recognize everyone else’s privilege, but our own. A martyr/victim complex lurks just beneath the surface. This typically translates into 1) a self-imposed feeling that each one is on their own 2) a shameful lack of compassion. When the migrant crisis had struck last year, I heard many who are close to me ask “if the migrants were stupid”. “But where are they going? Shouldn’t they just stay where they are? This is just stupid baba”. That a young man -who is away from his family, who just lost his livelihood and who is hearing of a deadly pandemic – would want to be near his family and would crave a support system , did not occur to these people. Interestingly, many employees moved bases back to their hometown when indefinite WFH was announced by many companies last year. They moved for very valid reasons. Trouble is, we are unable to see the parallels between the two –that this is just a difference of economic means and not intentions. So when our leaders conveniently ignore these tragedies that affect those that are less fortunate than us, we do not flinch, because we had ignored those tragedies long before the leaders did.
We could go on. But the larger point is our leaders reflect who we are. As the philosopher Joseph De Maistre said – In a democracy, people get the leaders that they deserve. The tragedy of the pandemic has been personal to many of us. The bigger tragedy is that it takes a tragedy of these proportions for us to start demanding accountability and start asking questions. The biggest tragedy of them all is that, it is quite likely that we will forget all of this and slip back to our old ways.
We need better leaders. But for that we need to be better ourselves. We will do well to remember that.
REALLY RANDOM RAMBLINGS 