Skip to main content

India and Hypocrisy


In 1999, Thomas L Friedman argued (in his book, Lexus and the Olive Tree) that no two countries that both had a McDonald’s had ever fought a war against each other since it got its McDonald’s.  The decade that followed disproved Friedman.  However, the point he was trying to make was valid.  He was using McDonald’s as a symbol of the middle class.  The presence of McDonald’s in a country indicated the rise of the middle class.  And the middle class is not interested in violence and war.  The middle class would rather relish a chicken burger than feel patriotism flowing through their veins when some semi-literate sadhu demands that the women give birth to ten children so that the population of a particular religion rises.   

The middle class is essentially hypocritical.  Its religion is not about spirituality at all; it is about social encounters, social niceties and mutual utilisation of social connections. The middle class is interested in improving their social and economic status and religion is merely another tool for that.  The middle class is not interested in the ancient scriptures and other mumbo-jumbo unless it serves some very practical and mundane purpose (such as getting married or getting buried).

Friedman’s next book was The World is Flat in which he presented another theory: the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention, according to which no two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain (like Dell) will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain.  Once again, time disproved Friedman.  But, once again, what Friedman wanted to suggest remained valid.  Cross-border trade improves international relationships. 

India, particularly under the present Prime Minister, is encouraging all sorts of countries to cross its borders with investments.  India is not averse to Christians or people belonging to any creed or sect setting up industries in the country.  And, be sure, India will have good international relationships too.  And the country has a sizeable population with the typical middle class aspirations.

Why, then, are we Indians not able to maintain good relationships with the non-Hindus in the country?  Why do BJP and its allies insist on retrogressive practices such as ghar vapasi and attacks on non-Hindu religious places?  Why do they call for their women to undergo the agony of lifetime pregnancies?  Why do they preach hatred and strife in the name of absurd notions that nobody takes seriously anyway? 

Is it the typical Indian hypocrisy that motivates and sustains the BJP and its allies?  We can regard our rivers as sacred and yet throw all our waste into them.  We can worship the cow as Gaumata and drive them in herds on to the national highways to find their fodder.  We can uphold the most sublime utterances of the Upanishads on our national insignia and perpetrate the most brutal assault on them in our actual deeds.

Hypocrisy runs freely and copiously in the Indian veins.

When the BJP has officially posed some 25 questions to AAP, I would like to pose only one question to it:  when will it shed its shameless hypocrisy and ideological opportunism?

  

Comments

  1. Very good question and a very thoughtful post .
    you have such a wonderful blog :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unpleasant realities make a writer sharper. We are passing through a critical period in Indian history.

      Glad you found my blog worth returning to. :)

      Delete
  2. I'd say hypocrisy is sadly present in every aam aadmi. All the political parties also display it as they are constituted by aam aadmis...
    Wish we can uphold honesty & Satyameva Jayate.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm questioning the institutionalisation of hypocrisy as a national pastime if not a virtue.

      Delete
  3. Quite a thought-provoking post. While I do not follow politics, I do agree hypocrisy and whispered gossip (on a large scale, I mean) seem to be a part of the Indian genetic make-up or something!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Too many of us living in too little spaces - that could be one reason. The wider the area, the broader the vision!

      Delete
  4. A post which made me to ponder, I think now a days we are getting used to hypocrisy and accepted as part of our lives

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hypocrisy was always there as a part of human nature. But hypocrisy has become a religion now :)

      Delete
  5. I was not aware of those books and you are right, middle is just like you described. About BJP, as I always say - fanatics.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Friedman's books were best sellers when they were published. Being topical, they became outdated soon.

      Delete
  6. I condemn attack against any community. Those uttering statements like ghar vapsi are doing a great disservice to prime ministers development centric agenda. They should be put behind bars. I have read prime minister had chastised a few members of parliament. Finance Minister has also expressed his displeasure on the events in NDTV interview.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Action speaks louder than words. It appears that the entire Modi team has two faces: one with which they utter platitudes and a hidden one which is seen by the fundamentalists.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

You Don’t Know the Sky

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...

Insecurity and Exclusivism

“ Hindu khatare mein hai.” This was one of the first slogans that accompanied the emergence of Narendra Modi on the national scene. It means Hindus are in Danger . It reveals a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity. Hindus constitute an overwhelming majority in India – 80%. All the high positions in governance, judiciary, academics, any significant place, are occupied by Hindus. Yet the slogan was born. Strange? It will be facile to argue that Modi used this slogan and its concomitant hatred of Muslims and Christians as a political weapon for winning votes. True, he was successful in that; he rose to the highest political post in the country using minority-bashing. But the hatred did not end with that achievement; rather it spread outward and became more exclusive. Muslim and European rulers of India were booted out from the country’s history books and wherever else possible like the names of roads and institutions. With vengeance. Now there is a concerted effort going on to place In...