“The offence of sedition cannot be invoked to minister
to the wounded vanity of the governments,” declared the judge who granted bail
to 22-year-old Disha Ravi recently. Disha was arrested on charges of sedition.
She was supposedly working with Greta Thunberg to undermine the Indian
government! The only thing that she did which provoked the government was to
support the enduring farmers’ agitation.
Disha is just one among hundreds of people being
victimised in India merely because they have wounded the vanity of the
government. The vanity of the present Indian government comes from what
psychology and philosophy call naïve realism.
Naïve realism is the belief that one’s view of events
is unbiased and correct and when others disagree they must be wrong. Naïve realists
assume that those who disagree with them are uninformed, irrational and biased.
A whole lot of politicians in the ruling party in India now seem to be naïve realists
with vanities wounded by the ghosts of history.
“Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sedition charges
have been deployed as a clear tool of intimidation,” The Washington Post
wrote
while discussing Disha Ravi’s bail. The Post added that “96 percent of
sedition cases filed against 405 Indians for criticizing politicians and
government officials were registered after 2014, when Modi assumed power.”
The naïve realists of the ruling Bharatiya Janata
Party have degraded Indian democracy to such an extent that the latest
Freedom House democracy report listed India as a “partly free” country.
Indians are not free in Modi’s regime, not even free to express opinions, let
alone eat what you like or wear the dress of your choice. The BJP has a simple
worldview in which India is the greatest country, Indian pantheon has the only
true gods, and Narendra Modi is the saviour of the country and its gods. Anyone
who questions that is a traitor. As simple as that. As naïve as that.
We know – or should know – that reality is never so
simple as to bestow all truths to any one individual however long and white his
beard may be growing. Reality is an intricate complexity. Mysteries inside
enigmas, if one may borrow Churchill’s analogy. Anyone who approaches reality
with the notion that his own view is the only right view is fit to be in a
lunatic asylum though he may be sitting in the king’s throne. For all sane
people, perception must be marked by two qualities: openness and awareness.
The moment you blindly believe certain scriptures
written centuries ago as the foundation of all truths, you have closed your
mind to living truths. How can any awareness enter into a mind that is closed
once and for all to new realities, new possibilities, inevitable changes?
Writing about naïve realism decades ago, Bertrand
Russell observed, “We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that
snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness
of stones, and the coldness of snow are not the greenness of grass, the
hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow that we know in our own
experience, but something very different.”
Reality is not what we think it is, in simple words.
Reality is not just what we perceive. Truth is multi-dimensional. If you insist
on looking through a peephole at a minute fraction of a colossal entity and
claim that what you see is the only and entire truth… well, you need to check your
vanity for the number of wounds on it. At least.
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Naïve realism is the sad reality of today's government. You correctly pointed out the facts.
ReplyDeleteDeepika Sharma
People choose to be dumb sometimes. We live in one such historic times.
DeleteYes, being a naive person myself I whole heartedly supported BJP in 2014. But within two years I was totally disillusioned and completely vexed when they started reconverting people through Ghar Wapsi and started telling people whom to marry and also banned Beef. India is in for troubled times.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned a few of the evils - the tip of the iceberg.
DeleteYou have hit the nail right on its head. The ruling party and its leaders won't change but we can avoid Naive Realism in our own thought processes and dealing with the other ones. And we should.
ReplyDeleteWe should. My prayer is that we may.
DeleteA very good post mirroring the reality of the times!
ReplyDelete🙏
DeleteThis is a poignant portrayal of the draconian era that Indian democracy is facing currently. Your article puts facts as facts and makes one think of the grave times ahead.
ReplyDeleteWe are faced with dark days in many ways. The pandemic is an additional burden.
DeleteI read your post first thing in the morning and it reads like a wake up call. When the power of social media is employed to perpetuate naive realism, it becomes harder to resist its lure.
ReplyDeleteThat is why posts like this one should be written and read.
Thank you.
Glad you endorse my way of looking at reality and writing about it. Most writers today prefer expediency or siding with those in power.
DeleteNaive realism wasn't this prominent until a few years ago, although it has existed across ages. With the current situation of the pandemic in the country, naive realism has reached alarming heights. Not just with the government but even with their blind followers.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Thinking people are being victimized today like in medieval Europe. We are so obsessed with the past that we have really reached there!
Delete