The Quintessential Outsider

Traitors? November 8, 2010

Posted by chitranshu in Society & Politics.
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Firstly, I hope all of you had a nice Diwali weekend. In this long weekend, with the Obama visit to India and the India-NZ Test series lined up alongside the festivities, it is an unusual time for me to be writing on such a topic, but it has so happened once again that I have been thinking about some issue, trying to decide whether to write about it, and there came a comment from a friend with a link to an article, which convinced me that I should put down my thoughts.

It happened earlier when I posted on this blog with a link on cases against the Indian Army of human rights abuses in Kashmir, and the very next day, the controversy on Arundhati Roy’s and Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s seminar at New Delhi erupted. I began contemplating a more detailed post on the Kashmir issue and what exactly is Arundhati Roy’s problem, but waited to read more and understand the issue better.

A comment from a friend with a couple of links on Kashmir convinced me to respond through my next post, on the problem with Arundhati Roy and her ilk.

Two days ago, my friend commented again, this time with a link on how India’s elite are the real traitors, not people like Arundhati Roy, which convinced me to respond through this post.

To begin with, if posting links to others’ opinions is a good way to present counter-arguments, then here are some that I found:

Why should India not give away Kashmir, but instead be more assertive in using its power.

How Pakistan and China are exploiting Gilgit-Baltistan and its people, and no one is paying the slightest attention to that issue.

Why should ordinary Indians beware of these shameless activists who have a vested interest in hindering India’s progress.

How India is withering away under attack from all sides.

I know how my friend would respond to such articles – he would look at who the author is, form an opinion based on that, and maybe not even read the article fully once that opinion is formed. I would also look at who the author is and form an opinion, but I would still go ahead and read the whole damn thing, and at times, feel compelled to argue against it on my blog. I did that recently with Tarun Vijay’s article on how India is an “Ayodhya nation”. Tarun Vijay has been the editor of the RSS weekly, Panchjanya, for two decades. On any other day, I might have argued similarly against the last two of the four articles above, which were written by RSN Singh, a former Indian RAW officer.

For my friend, it is not necessary to express his arguments in detail against the words of people like Tarun Vijay or RSN Singh. Their professional or political affiliations are enough for him to not take them seriously, call them names and summarily dismiss their arguments. My friend and I are still very young and unknown, so let’s look at some more well-known people.

That is also the typical approach of Arundhati Roy and her ilk, to form an opinion based on where a person works or has worked, what is his/her socio-economic status or background, what are his/her religious beliefs, or in case of organizations, where are they funded from, among other things. And then, based on this opinion, you call them names and just ignore their arguments. For example, Pankaj Mishra in his article on why the world is silent over Kashmir, uses these terms for the Indian mainstream media – “choleric TV anchors, partisan journalists and opinion-mongers of India’s corporate media”. Or for example, they might look at the author in the second link out of the four I posted above, on Gilgit-Baltistan, an activist originally from Gilgit-Baltistan, but they might see that he is now an expatriate and has been selected as a fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, Delhi. Is that reason enough to doubt his credibility or not take him seriously? If that’s the case, then let us examine Arundhati Roy and her types through the same lens.

Arundhati Roy is half-Bengali and half-Keralite, and both West Bengal and Kerala have been known as bastions of Communism. Her mother was a women’s rights activist, so her critics will argue that rabble-rousing runs in her blood. Her father was a tea planter, she studied at reasonably good and well-known schools, and her Booker Prize winning novel ensured financial stability for her.

Indra Sinha, who talks about how India’s elite are the real traitors, is half-English and half-Indian. He was educated in England and now lives in southern France. Seems like he is one of those Indian elites as well against whom he points fingers.

Similar “background checks” can be done on many other writers, activists and thinkers who have come out in support of Arundhati Roy recently and in the past. Coming from well-off families, products of a privileged education, many of them now residing abroad. This reminds me of the film “Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi”, where Kay Kay’s character, Siddhartha Tyabji, makes the most noise about a Marxist revolution and people’s rights and so on. Shiney Ahuja’s character, Vikram Malhotra, a typical middle-class ambitious youth, criticizes his outlook, saying that he can afford to think that way because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Eventually, it is Vikram who ends up in the villages of Bihar, while Siddhartha, faced with torture and disillusionment, gives up his revolutionary ways and goes off to England.

Doesn’t that seem to be the case with all these activists today as well? They can afford to think the way they do, because they have been brought up in fairly insulated and privileged environments, and they always have the choice of going away from India if they find things getting uncomfortable for them here. Whether their obsession with the “have-nots” and their problems is a product of being ashamed at their own privileged upbringing, or a means to seek public attention, I do not know, but I do know that in this quest to paint everything as a struggle between the “haves” and the “have-nots”, they forget that there is a large middle which falls in neither of these two classes.

However, instead of continuing to point fingers at such thinkers/writers/activists, let me say some good things about them as well. Indra Sinha has been a passionate campaigner for justice for victims of the Bhopal disaster, much like Arundhati Roy has actively campaigned for several causes. There is a lot to learn from their experience, but it is lost when they are more interested in rabble-rousing and finger-pointing than in offering any solution or inspiration for others. Why is it lost, on me at least? Let me try to answer that by turning that lens of “background check” on myself, and talk about who I am and how that shapes my thinking.

I am an Indian. I want to see my country progressing, but that progress should be for all Indians, and it should not be at the cost of putting other nations or the entire planet in peril. I am well aware of the challenges that each of these clauses brings, and I respect those who actually work at different levels to deal with these challenges, whether it be a grassroots activist, a bureaucrat, a politician, a journalist, an entrepreneur, or an ordinary citizen who goes about his/her daily life as usual but finds some time out to do some good work. Even those “ordinary citizens” who don’t have the time or inclination to do any “good work”, but do their own job well, are worthy of appreciation.

I have no respect, though, for those who sit in their comfortable cocoons and point fingers at others for sitting in comfortable cocoons.

I am a Mumbaikar. I have lived most of my life in Mumbai and will identify with this city wherever else I may live in future. I have traveled in this city’s crowded trains and buses, and met thousands of its residents from all sorts of social, economic, religious and linguistic backgrounds. Having lived in India’s biggest city, I am aware that I may not know a lot about the most backward regions of India, even though I have traveled extensively, but I would rather know more about it from someone who has actually visited or lived or worked in those regions than someone sitting in a cocooned environment like me and shooting his mouth off.

I am a Hindu agnostic. I have my own beliefs and opinions regarding religion, but I do not force them upon others. And I don’t think anyone else should either. If I am against those who use their definition of “Hindu pride”, “Hindu culture” or “Hindu heritage” to go berserk on the streets, I am also against other types of ideologues, brain-washers, proselytizers or evangelists who find fault with everything “Hindu”, or those who claim to be liberal and secular but ignore incidents like this one.

A couple of days back, on the day of Diwali, my old Christian neighbour rang the doorbell and gave me a greeting card on behalf of the “small Christian community” of the housing society where I live, which has mostly Christian residents. This attitude of mutual respect and tolerance, or to “live and let live”, is also an important part of being Indian, according to me.

I have two tags – IIT and IIM – which apparently put me in the “cream of the nation”. However, my experiences both at an IIT and an IIM have shown me that except for the academic brilliance, these places are just microcosms of India, with all its faults and virtues. And most people in these places, just like elsewhere in India, only want better lives for themselves and for those who matter to them.

What do we mean by “better lives”? It may mean different things to different people, from two proper meals a day to new clothes to a permanent house to a steady job to a range of appliances, gadgets and luxury items. It may also mean a life of dignity and self-respect, and a recognition of one’s legitimate rights, and most people would want to achieve it peacefully. When they do not get it peacefully, they might be forced to try other ways, which is what has happened with Naxalites, but that still does not justify their violence, or calling them “Gandhians with guns”.

Some people in charge of security and administration in Maoist-affected regions have stated that the best way to deal with this problem is to provide the tribal families with television sets and make them “consumers” in the modern sense. That might be an oversimplification, but so is this whole notion of a perpetual class struggle based on the teachings of a two-century-old German thinker.

Arundhati Roy once stated the following, and Indra Sinha quoted the same:

“What we’re witnessing is the most successful secessionist struggle ever waged in independent India – the secession of the middle and upper classes from the rest of the country. It’s a vertical secession, not a lateral one. They’re fighting for the right to merge with the world’s elite somewhere up there in the stratosphere.”

I would like to say to them, that what we are actually witnessing is each of these classes fighting for the right to merge with the class above them, and that is part of human nature. You cannot change that, but you can definitely make some positive changes by offering constructive solutions to the problems you claim to know so much about. If instead of that, you choose to point fingers, you only need to remember that the remaining fingers are pointing back at you. You seem to be telling ordinary middle-class Indians that just because they are economically in the top x% of the population, they are traitors. No wonder they are calling you traitors instead.