Recently, The Indian PM had a horrible overseas visit to the UNGA in the USA. He was ignored by the media and global leaders, and at one point, even publicly chastised by the VPOTUS. The UNGA was more or less empty when he addressed it, and no business of note came off the entire hyped-up trip.
It would have seemed that at least those that had access to the internet and could see the obvious failure would realise that it just didn’t work out. Right? Ha! There were articles and Twitter threads about how his trip was actually a success, despite every indication to the contrary.
Then, a couple of days ago, we heard that on 30 August 2021, Chinese troops entered India on horseback and destroyed a bridge deep inside Indian territory in the state of Uttarakhand. You’d think this would wake the media and the administration up, force the government to come out with a statement denouncing this and setting up a committee to find out and correct border security, that the defence minister, the foreign minister, and the PM would have strong words to say about this, and of course that the army would have strong actions to back it all up. Right? Wrong. It is 01 October 2021, and not a squeak from anyone important about anything substantive. Recently, Shiva Shankar Singh, the author of ‘The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities‘, wrote a Twitter thread about why he thinks the PM or his council of ministers is not commenting on the matter. In his words, ‘…even if PLA enters Delhi, the focus will be on getting people to cheer Modi’s strategy.‘ And I agree.
Why do we tend to ignore bad news to the point of self-harm?
I think that the subcontinental obsession with ‘honour’ is the root of this. We see ‘izzat‘, its preservation, and the prevention of its loss as our raison d’etre.
Whether it comes to women, family, society, community, religion, even education, it isn’t the human that matters. It is the reputation, the optics, the ‘log kyaa kahenge‘ part that does. Indeed, the notion of ‘honour’ distorts reality itself. We refuse to confront, accept, and resolve the difficult truth that is literally in front of us, and choose the more comforting, easier to digest, blind lie, if it just means saving face, even if it means (as it does in many cases in India and Pakistan even today) killing your own daughter!
I am not claiming I or my family or my friends have none of this uniquely subcontinental character trait. I am sure we all, by virtue of our genes, our collective history, our culture, our traditions, and our social conditioning, have this in some form or the other. This post is therefore not about pointing at the speck in someone else’s eye, but actually owning up to the beam in our own.
Interestingly, this social conditioning was used by our founding fathers and those that led our freedom movement, by pointing to our long and distinguished history of civilisation, culture, intellectual and spiritual thought, and tradition, and asking the common Indian to look inside and better themselves to be worthy of such ancestry. (Caveat: Whether such a history existed or not is irrelevant to this discussion. I am only noting the use of its conceived existence).
Today’s politicians, media personalities, religious leaders, intellectuals, celebrities, and other influencers and occupiers of our mind-spaces, and their fan following and support base talk of ignoring ‘negative news’ and focusing on the positive, on turning a blind eye to inconvenient truths and painting only rosy pictures, on not just denying the existence of bad and troubling news but actually claiming it’s neither bad nor troubling in the least, indeed of disavowing reality itself in return for a feeling of soft, warm, squishy comfort, like the serene, calm one feels when having shat oneself in public.
In the first case, the focus is on using how the world views us as an inspiration to become better humans, to face up to reality, and to recognise we have a long way to go to live up to the expectations of the world. We better be good, this approach states. Otherwise, ‘log kyaa kahenge‘?
In the second case, the focus is on keeping up appearances and not on either accepting that one has shat oneself. The emphasis is not on the acknowledgement of the problem, focusing on cleaning up that shit, finding out why it happened, and then finally correcting whatever was broken so it is never repeated. Why such a self-destructive approach to something so simple to understand? Because the moment we confess to have had an ‘accident’ or made a boo-boo, we have lost ‘honour’. And so we smile. And wave. Even as the brown goo leaks from under our pantaloons, onto our socks and into our shoes, and finally on the carpet, with the entire world watching in horror, and wondering how to tell us delicately that we are full of shit. Even if some try, some international media houses write or talk about it, some global influencers tweet about it, and it is even visible in the actions of various actors on the international stage, we do not take it as someone helping us out, but more as an insult to our civilisation, our culture, our nation, and our pride. Our ‘honour’ is hurt, our ‘izzat‘ sullied. And instead of discovering and correcting what actually brought us disrepute, we focus on the messengers telling us about it, denounce them if out of our reach, persecute them if within, and rouse our fan base to drown out their voices while ignoring reality, insisting on denial initially and eventually, once denial become untenable, on claiming that the problem was resolved through a masterstroke, even when everyone involved knows that it wasn’t and everyone can literally see and smell the shit. Because, ‘log kyaa kahenge‘?
Both instances are clever usages of and appeal to the same conditioning regarding honour. Just that one is more, for the lack of a better word, honourable, than the other.
Which one you think is which basically decides what kind of a human you are.
