Continuing
with the discussion of the type I ended the last post with, the problem with
this type has become rather serious of late. This is because of the intolerant
majoritarian tendencies that have become highly visible (and politicians are
stoking the fire with very short-term goals in mind, blithely unaware that they
might be releasing a Frankenstein’s monster) of late in many countries,
certainly in India. When I mention majoritarianism, a lot of people will think
that I have only religious divides in mind, but that is not so, though I am
definitely thinking of that, too. But let me first talk about the Hindu
majority community in India, which is the milieu to which I belong, and which I
know best.
The
problem with India is that it is far from becoming a true nation in the sense
that much smaller, far more culturally homogeneous communities became nations
centuries ago. ‘Hindu’ is a vast, portmanteau term that denotes nearly a
billion diverse people, and these people are sharply divided by looks,
language, caste, tradition, and local customs, to the extent that a lot of
nominally Hindu folks do not recognize many others as proper Hindus at all
(there are brahmins in the south and the Deccan who refuse, for example, to
acknowledge any Bengali as a real brahmin, seeing that he eats fish, and even –
horror of horrors! – meat, and casteism, unfortunately, still divides one Hindu
from another at least as sharply and cruelly as religions do; some, especially
educated high-income urban types find it quite okay that a girl has multiple
sexual partners before marriage, which anyway has become just an option, while
millions still shudder to think that their daughter can know a man before
marriage, or that there could be any other goal of a girl’s life). Regardless
of the – I believe misguided – efforts of numerous strong-willed individuals
and organizations, there has not emerged any monolithic Hindu community, no
matter how much we gush that we all have roots in the vedas, epics, puranas and
Manusmriti. So what we do in real life is give primacy to local – very, very
local – custom and tradition. Wherever you live, you must do as your mummy and neighbours
do, or else. It would not be very wrong to say, I think, that, except perhaps
in urban condominiums where nobody knows anybody else nor cares what she is
doing, India is a vast congeries of little villages under the sway of
absolutely local majoritarian tyrannies. In the neighbourhood I live in, despite
the fact that most people fear me enough to give me a wide berth, and despite
the fact that I don’t socialize, I could not openly declare I am gay if I were
and continue in my present profession; a quite decent Hindu middle-aged
gentleman confessed to me without a trace of shame a few years ago that in the
housing cooperative he lives in, there is an unwritten law that no flat owner
can rent it out to a ‘Mohammedan’, and the very smart female who lives it up mini-skirted
late nights in Bangalore pubs will be seen in very proper saree-sindoor-bindi
during the puja days at her neighbourhood pandal back home – nyaka chondi as she is, she would
neither notice the absurdity nor quarrel with it. And I have always had to live
with the knowledge that many of the same mummies who desperately shove their
kids into my tuition because they are convinced I know some magic to get those
kids the all-important marks in examinations also sternly warn them not to pay
heed to all the ‘nonsense’ I say in class ‘outside the syllabus’.
What
has all this got to do with corruption? Well, if I have to spell it out, I have
actually lost you already. Anything that the local Mrs. Grundy says is out
stays out, and who cares what the Constitution of India says? Mummies and aunts
hold far stronger sway over the minds of the young – and by that I mean even
people in their twenties and thirties, beyond which age you, of course, have
safely become clones of them! – and the best you can do if you are a young or
very old woman living in a tribal village where people have begun to look
askance at you because you mumble to yourself and wander about at nights, is to
get out and go far away if you don’t want to be burnt alive as a witch one fine
evening. The majority has dubbed you corrupt and dangerous, so your dignity,
freedom, life itself, is not worth a busted nickel. If anything, the millions
of bigoted idiots slogging all sorts of ‘issues’ out on Facebook and twitter
are merely strengthening these atavistic tendencies: you call someone a thief
and he becomes a thief overnight, no proof needed. Which is why I decided long
ago not to make a single friend on Facebook, and never to use twitter. Those
who frequent those sites take great care to see that they interact only with
‘people like us’, wasting days, months and years persuading people who are
already persuaded beyond the reach of fact and reason! How pathetic some people
can get, really. You and I live in a democratic country, so you have every right to agree with me, as long as I myself am
comfortably ensconced in the politically correct cocoon; if you don’t, we shall
ostracize you or hound you out of the country. Notice anything ‘corrupt’ about
all this, or do I have to spell it out further?
Coming
to the third category, this is the most pitiable of the lot. I find this type
particularly distasteful, so I shall pass lightly over it. Suffice it to say
that it is this (very numerous-) category, people who cannot help doing what
they have been told is wrong, that ensures that prostitution, legal and
otherwise, remains one of the largest and most profitable professions, and pornography
rules the roost on the internet. Humans
make rules which most humans find it impossible to obey, at least all the time:
hence cheating in examinations, and job-shirking, and breaking traffic rules,
and shoplifting and marital infidelity, etc etc. Talking pruriently about these
things and pretending to be horrified and condemning them serves nothing except
fill the gossip columns of our rags and clog our courts; at best we drive them
underground, and they find ever new ways of making themselves evident. The only
remedy for such ‘corruption’ is to be more understanding and forgiving in
making laws, and administering those laws with more fairness and leniency, too.
Also, when you accuse someone’s dad of being a serial molester just because you hate him or are jealous of him, remember your
dad is just as vulnerable, unless he is just too insignificant for anyone to
take note of his existence: when others do that sort of thing to you, you
suddenly discover that it is not a good thing to do at all. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
For
the rest, we shall always have to live with them, as long as human beings are
the way they are; there is no help for it. I believe that some societies are
generally more moral and law-abiding than others: how they have managed to
become that way without tyranny is something I still haven’t been able to
figure out. Maybe education of a certain sort helps; in India, at least, that
kind of education has never been available for the masses, rich or poor. All my
pupils write essays about how their parents teach them to be ‘good’ people: I
have never stopped wondering how, then, this country remains one of the most
corrupt in the world (if you think of cheating in exams, breaking traffic
rules, taking bribes, job-shirking, shoplifting… maybe our only true moral is that
it’s alright when I or my dad does it, but wrong when you or your dad is guilty
of the same?).
The
long and short of the matter is, after observing and thinking for several
decades, I have decided, once and for all, that the issue of ‘corruption’, so
popular a talking point in this country, does not arouse my interest any
longer. This three-part series of essays was my effort to explain why. Unless
we are truly interested in taming the monster, which would require greatly changing ourselves first, we had all better stop talking about it: that by itself would make a considerably cleaner country.
