Celebrating Indifference

Today is 2nd October - another one of those national holidays. I had written the following on the 15th of August this year, but did not get a chance to post it. It talks about the need to more actively engage ourselves in public life. Alas, not much has changed since then. Rather, my doubts have further been confirmed through a series of personal experiences. Almost as a supplement to my reading 'The Great Indian Middle Class' by Pavan Varma, a book that very interestingly documents the development of this seemingly ubiquitous feature of contemporary India and the dillemas it faces, small incidents with friends at home have seemed to demonstrate the inherent callousness towards, even shirking away from, a responsible public life. Rather than trivialise a larger thesis, personal experiences only suggest that what is true for societies is true for individuals, or even the converse. There is not only ignorance, but also a desire to remain so. Perhaps, the real roots of despair about the state of the nation do not lie in the inactivity of public authorities, but in willing slothfulness of our own selves. I don't write of my recent experiences here, I will later on. But this should provide something to reflect on - may be help us see the little things that we unknowingly do everyday that only indicate that we are too happy getting on with our own narrow lives. A beginning thought owing to the day - We revere our leaders enough to only revere them. 

62 years on from 1947, we have enough reasons to rejoice. So we must make it a point to celebrate, and celebrate the moment of our independence with both gusto and grace. This, however, must not be an excuse to shy away from the purpose of celebration. Rather, it must be a motivation for us to contemplate as to why do we celebrate? Celebrations are a manifestation of happiness, an expression of the view that we are grateful for what we have. But does that not push us enough to at least give a second thought to why should we be grateful?

If we like to remember and exult in something that happened years ago, it is only because at that time we had hoped that the achievement will help us realise our dreams. ‘At the stroke of the midnight hour’ 62 years ago, India ‘woke up to a new dawn’ only with the expectation of a new day. That is why we celebrated then, that is why we must celebrate now. But do we really have a new day? In my view, we are partly clouded at 10 am. Nonetheless, we all hate to let moments of celebrations slip away because we want that extra holiday. Well, there is something, then, that we need to do to compensate for that holiday: we need to make sure that we have some legitimacy in taking a day off. If that does not happen, then we are a shallow people, and we will not like to be known as a shallow people.

If this day brings to our minds the memory of great men who laid down their lives to build what they sought to, then we must seek inspiration from them. If we take this day off so that we may remember them and pay homage to them, then, it is obligatory on our part to emulate them, or at least make an effort to do so and make humble beginnings. If we do not do so, we do not respect them; instead, we mock their efforts and legacy.

I watched ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ with my family a few days back. There was severe dismay at the way India was presented in the movie. ‘What business does a foreigner have giving a derogatory picture of our land to the world?’ ‘And are we not an emerging giant? Oh, right, maybe it’s just jealousy.’ Such a reaction is scary. It is a kind of complacency that shrouds reason and turns meaningful patriotism into a sort snobbish jingoism. Or is it something more than complacency, something closer to despair? When gory pictures of deplorable slum-living appeared on the screen, young cousins were asked to look away. There was disgust and disbelief. An effort was made to make ourselves believe that such a thing existed ‘only in the movies’. And such a reaction is dangerous. Envisioning a free India, Nehru once said that “as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over”. We are far from this. In a diverse and unequal setting like India we at least want some degree of mutual empathy between its people. Instead of fostering this, we are willingly trying to be indifferent to reality so that it does not byte. We are unknowingly cultivating in our social psyche a ‘culture of apathy’. And this will clearly not do for us because deliberate inaction on the part of those who are conscious of a problem is tantamount to deleterious action on the part of the wrongdoers.

I do not contend that we all be saints. We could just be ordinary people, with all our material and personal pursuits, but at least with a conscience. And this conscience should prove to be basis enough for us to indulge in public affairs. All that I contend is that it is a feasible human possibility to get public and private lives to coexist because they always did in our land, and still do but only in an ever shrinking measure. Sadly, when the need for this renaissance is more than ever, we seem to too unwilling to make a definitive start towards being active participants in civil society. If we could set a moment apart to think about problems, ponder over their solutions and based on that make a small move somewhere – only if each one of us could individually act in our own small capacities rather than just crib – it would stir the soup. Gandhiji said that we must be the change that we want to see. Let us not be the change, let us restrain our ambitions in the public sphere, but at least we could harbour dreams to have that change some day. And the dreams would be strong enough to mobilise the latent effort. But to dream those dreams, we cannot turn our backs on reality but will have to face it – for it is only if we face reality that we will be able to empathise with those who have the worst of it, and empathy is where it all starts. So let us make these small beginnings, each one of us, and try and explore the roots and the consequences of what we so innocuously celebrate each year, try and make sense of our independence.

In saying all this, I am not trying to be idealistic. I’m just trying to be a little hopeful. And perhaps being hopeful is terribly difficult for all of us, because being hopeful entails some bit of commitment to effort on each of our parts, or else it starts to stink of hypocrisy and guilt. And we do not like to be outwardly hypocritical, nor do we wish to unravel upon ourselves any form of self induced guilt. However, much to our convenience, we love our lethargic lives and comfortable sleep. So let’s get all of this together, get on with our own little private affairs, and continue to revel in despair.