Wednesday, May 20, 2015

So, What Kind of Ashamed or Proud Indian Are You?



I do not remember exactly when but sometime in the past 10-15 years or so, a phrase caught the fancy of people in India. “Mera Bharat mahan,” it said in Hindi, meaning, “My India is great.”

This happened much before the current ruckus around Prime Minister Modi’s remark to the effect that Indians have turned from being ashamed to proud in the past one year (presumably under his rule). The social media largely took it as an insult that the insinuation was that Indians were an ashamed lot before they elected him and his party BJP to power. The hashtag #ModiInsultsIndia started trending furiously.

The two “items” above are somewhat related and symptomatic of a virulent divide that can be seen playing out on social media, in various clubs and other platforms, among different “stripes” of Indians.

The arguments are seen flying thick and fast, without much justification or civilized discussion, often taking an ugly, unintended or tangential turn. The prevailing attitude is: my way or the highway.

Let’s first see the different sides of people in India.

One side, let’s call it Side A, comprises a small majority that wears its pride on its weapons of noise and nuisance. Some in media call them the “saffron brigade” but I find it silly to use the otherwise nice and healthy moniker “saffron” (which represents the color as well as the substance) for a motley bunch of trouble-makers. Members of Side A keep coming up with inane remarks or pronouncements once in a while, usually with distorted notions of what being a Hindu means and often with little or no impact on the society at large. (But the media adds turbo aviation fuel to their puny fires and makes the whole affair seem like a conflagration. More on media in the Side D part below.)

On another side are the majority of “common” people, Side B. In India you can see them everywhere: on railway platforms, in bustling markets (not malls), in buses, toiling in the fields or at construction sites, in factories and offices, and several other places where “the milling crowds” can be spotted. They belong to multiple religions. One way to define their commonality might be that the wealth manager of a bank wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole. Constituting 70 to 80% of Indian population, they are primarily busy worrying about the next meal or sticking to their work or job. Mostly, they have no business about this “proud Indian” thingy.

Let’s call the political class, Side C. What? Why are you laughing?? It’s we, people of the page, who have elected them (in whatever fallacious ways democracy works in India). With two of them, Arvind Kejriwal and Narendra Modi, hopes of positive change surged among the electorate in recent times—but more recent events concerning both these “special characters” are quickly dashing those hopes into the dust. (Now a third character, a curious sort, is going around on padyatras (walking journeys) after taking a two-month-long holiday and flip-flopping about what he should be doing or should not be doing—and the eyes of the nation are watching his handsome face with bewilderment mixed with suspicion or sycophancy, take your pick).
It is an open secret in India how its political class has failed every test: be it making India an egalitarian society, controlling population (or pollution, for that matter), achieving self-sufficiency in defense or technology, or any other parameter of the human development index. Yes, there’s one thing they have excelled in: filling their own coffers and making sure their next seven generations are taken care of, especially at the cost of common citizens they are supposed to “serve.”
Side D can be considered to comprise media folk (for the sake of simplicity, I’m including both mainstream and social, though it’s not so simple, I know). Barring some very, very few kindred souls, whose hearts ache for real, investigative reportage (though they may not be able to produce much “journalism” for want of financial or editorial patronage), the majority are happy-go-lucky, shouting, rash, brash, prejudiced, hurried and harried types. The kind you see on TV shoving mikes in people’s faces for “bites,” or trying to out-shout a battery of “personalities” speaking simultaneously in ominous voices from small squares on the screen, or the ones belting out quickie articles without much thought or corroboration of facts...You get my point, right.

The growing, prosperous class of entrepreneurs, businessmen and industrialists can make up Side E. They are not bothered about who is in power: they want electrical power for their machinery. They are not bothered about corruption: they want their things done. They are increasingly losing patience for long-term planning: they want quick results (read money). To be fair, there are a few conscientious, honest guys (and gals) in this category, but they are too few in number and just too difficult to find, especially in a “developing” India.

The majority on Side E are like the storied baniya (person of a caste in India thought to be shrewd at business since old times) who told Yamraj (an Indian deity said to appear at the time of one’s death, a la Grim Reaper) when the latter asked him whether he would like to go to heaven or hell: “Jahan do paise ka fayada ho wahan le chalo bhai!” (“Take me wherever there’s some profit to be made!”)

I have often seen such businessmen chant “Mera Bharat mahan” with an impish twinkle in their eye rather than pride in their heart.

There’s another, much smaller class, though. Side F defies stereotypical categorization but you can be sure they do exist. I’m not supporting or endorsing anyone, but I’m talking of the Anna Hazares, the E Sreedharans, the MS Dhonis, the Khemkas of India who are doing what they must to salvage, nurture or enhance whatever pride India is left with after centuries of foreign rule, exploitation, ignorance and misdirection. Here I would also include people with some sense of discretion and a modicum of education and decency in their head who can perceive all the histrionics going on at the moment. They may lack monetary means or political capital or influence but they have wisdom in ample supply.

Sure, there are overlaps and inter-connections among the above sides. But the point is, before you go batty over the question of hurt pride, you may want to look at which side you are on. And, along with that, consider how you would like to answer these questions:

* Who are the people in India who have the right to take pride in being Indian?
* What are the specific things to take pride about India—from its glorious past as well as its jumbled present?
* Is there a proud future for India as a whole in the next 10, 20, 30 years? (Don’t quote GDP only, please!)
* What are the various ways in which that pride can be hurt? Which of those ways are most harmful to India in terms of real impact? How much time should be spent on discussing minor hurts versus that spent on taking effective measures?

Maybe it’s high time we stopped getting on our high horses every now and then and, instead, started putting things in their right perspective. No short-cuts but long, even arduous pathways; no slanging matches but exchanging well-reasoned arguments; no shouts, nor murmurs but just the right tone to convey the right sense of pride in the right context.