Fear & Loathing in our Soft State

Fear and Loathing in our Soft State

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” 
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

We have invented Ahimsa in our time, when India was Bharat, an idea as much as a conglomeration of kingdoms, with its mahaan moments. Later, in the 20^th century, we, via the Mahatma, put non-violence on the map, and to the test, as political weaponry.

But day by day, as 2012 comes to an end, it is apparent, wrapped in inchoate outrage, that India is in a moral crisis.  This is now of endemic and epidemic proportions, threatening to destroy our social fabric, and reduce us to a version of anarchy, unless we have already crossed that border.

People in our country, up and down the ladder, demonstrate little respect for human life. We routinely abuse and kill each other in manifold and bestial ways. We maim, strangle, abort, torture; our men, women, children, and animals. We run over people. We crash cars drunk out of our skulls. We cheat, lie, intimidate, corrupt, and brazen it out. We don’t worry much about consequences, because the way things work here, there are hardly any. Our justice system is outdated, cumbersome, ponderous, over burdened and altogether easy to subvert. Our conscience is dead.

This latest rape case, with its horrendous cruelty, is however only the latest in similar rape and kill outrages that have become routine. There is hardly a law which is not freely broken in India, and very few of the outlaws are ever effectively punished.

The perpetrators of crime and violence in India are savage, sadistic, brutal, super confident, remorseless and belligerent with success. They demonstrate their callousness with increasing audacity. They hold the soft state in contempt as well they might.

Paradoxically, we are quite effective when aroused out of our lethargy, but a nation cannot live at crisis point every day and expect to survive. So, most of the time, we are incredibly vulnerable. In America there have been no terrorist attacks since 9/11. We have seen scores since 26/11, and Mumbai is just as unprotected as it was then.

The powers that be are discomfited and embarrassed in the face of murder and mayhem, public anger and anguish, rather than livid with rage; and this by itself is telling comment. They try to contain the damage, even as they no doubt wish they did not have to defend the indefensible. But you can see it on their televised faces, their infuriatingly dulcet tones, and hackneyed anodyne offerings; that all they are waiting for is the next headline to get them off the hook. And the problem, the latest in an unending procession of unacceptability, gets referred to a committee, and thereby goes into the limbo of self perpetuation rather than solution.

We seem to be committed to protect only the political classes, and not terribly well at that. Rajiv Gandhi would not have been assassinated as an Opposition leader seeking re-election, nor his mother as one of India’s most powerful prime ministers, and some say even his bold as brass brother, if we were any good at protecting their lives.

And this is the fate of what has effectively been the ruling family of the republic. It was also the end game for the Father of the Nation. As for the rest of us, starting from the senior bureaucracy and armed forces, particularly in retirement, to the ordinary citizen, it is a daily story of every man for himself. Our heroes are taken for granted and their families ignored after they sacrifice their lives for us. But our villains strut around untroubled by the authorities.

Rape and death here are first cousins. They often assume each other’s fate. It is not just because of poverty, ignorance, upbringing and degeneracy. The US, across their demographics and racial topography, has at least ten times the number of rapes. They murder with abandon too, with everyone allowed to bear arms; but not necessarily as accompaniment to rape. But still nothing can excuse our statistics, because, after the US, albeit a long way behind, India is still the rape capital of the world.

So, if you count yourself as a “mango person”, you are fair game in the jungle. Not that anyone is safe in a soft state. The Maoists want to infiltrate the cities. Perhaps they need to think again and send in their cadres for training to our metros. Besides, the violence in our land, both urban and rural, does not seem to need any ideological justification. The Maoists and Jihadists may need to brainwash themselves but the rest of us don’t. We are medieval and modern, rich, poor, and in-between; but we are all capable of routine wrong-doing, and at the extremities, almost anything at all. In India everyone is a target. All one has to do is fall between a rock and a hard place to fulfil this destiny.

With a population of a billion and a quarter, and millions more born every year, there is plenty by way of replacements and spares. Besides this is the land of karma and reincarnation. Everything heinous has deep causes and can go beyond one lifetime. After all, it is assumed, the good stuff also does. And all of it in timeless India provides a handy excuse for inaction and acceptance.

What can we do about it? No, summary lynchings, castrations, death penalties and zero tolerance will not necessarily cure us.  These might be deterrents to some, but by itself and in isolation, retribution has never effectively controlled crime. The malaise is in our inability to enforce the law, of which God knows, we have more than enough.

To improve our lot we have to get better at everything, and actually mean what we say, and do what we promise. We need to reinduct some imandari and integrity that seems to have gone missing along the way. Our political classes sound fake to be sure, but the rest of us are no better.

If all this protest over the last few years is to achieve anything apart from a tamasha and televised vicariousness, we need to make ourselves more accountable. The State we have, only mirrors our own Dorian Gray faces.

To get a better handle of governance, civic sense, public spiritedness, cleanliness, truthfulness, professionalism, progress, pride, etc. we all need to chip in. Pointing fingers is no doubt fun, but much of the responsibility for the current state of affairs falls to the venality of every man. The girl in the hospital is paying for our sins, so is the policeman.

(1,103 words)

25^th December 2012, Christmas

Gautam Mukherjee