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?

  
Labels:

Comments

  1. Aunt MaryFebruary 4, 2015 at 7:34 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 4, 2015 at 8:45 PM

      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. Anita SabatFebruary 4, 2015 at 9:19 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 4, 2015 at 9:37 PM

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

      Delete
  3. UnknownFebruary 4, 2015 at 11:41 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 5, 2015 at 10:31 AM

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

      Delete
  4. MeenalSonalFebruary 5, 2015 at 11:00 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 5, 2015 at 12:33 PM

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

      Delete
  5. Saru SinghalFebruary 5, 2015 at 9:21 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 5, 2015 at 9:38 PM

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 Being topical, they became outdated soon.

      Delete
  6. Abhijit RayFebruary 5, 2015 at 9:54 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 6, 2015 at 7:03 AM

      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

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Kailasnath the Paradox

AI-generated illustration It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me. Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty. The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the wa
9 comments
Read more

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
7 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
16 comments
Read more