Delusions

Ever so often one hears of some defamation suit being filed or protest being held because someone’s sentiments were hurt. Oh really? Oh reallllllllllllllllllllllllllllyyyyyyy?

Why is it that the ‘leaders’ and social busybodies who claim to represent those whose sentiments were hurt never get angry about other things as well?

Why don’t they get angry about the poverty in this country? Or the filth in which most of our people live? Or the fact that even after 60 years of Independence we still do not have anything close to 100% literacy (am not even talking about education.. just literacy)? Why don’t they protest about people being malnourished while food grains rot in the Government’s godowns? Doesn’t the site of the widows of slain soldiers weeping on national TV make them want to do anything about this country’s security issues?

I’ll tell you why.

It’s because we’re a bunch of hypocrites. A nation of whiners and over-sensitive adolescents masquerading as adults. The only time we act tough is when we’re in a mob.

We like to talk. About our glorious ancient culture, about how democracy has failed us when we compare ourselves to China, anything that makes our cushy little worlds a little less cushy. Oh yes we like to talk. Getting out of our armchairs and doing something to help is something that we’re not up for. The only time we’ll get out of our chairs is protest about something that hurts our sentiments.

Awwww. Don’t feel bad.

Feel ashamed.

Ashamed that we cling to twin illusions of ‘safety in numbers’ (hope they get the guy next to me instead) and ‘ostrich mentality’ (as long as my family and friends are okay, who cares what happens in some far off village). History tends to repeat itself in our land. The same scams, the same corrupt politicians, the same gullible electorate and tadaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.... the same inefficient, inaccessible, unaccountable system.

H.L. Mencken said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”. I think the same sad truth could apply to us as well. Our leaders prefer rabble rousing and mob justice to judicial and constitutional channels. Their logic is impeccable. Why spend years fighting for something when you can grab it right away? All you need is to convince the people that in some way their culture, religion, caste or these days – statehood has been insulted.

And this is why the system doesn’t work. Everyone wants to take, no one wants to give back. We demand our constitutional rights, but how about our duties? Duties to ourselves and to those less fortunate than us.

We have one of the world’s largest population of those who live below the, outrageously named, ‘poverty line’. And yet we feel proud when we see 4.. or 5.. or 2.. who cares... Indians being named in the list of richest people in the world. Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong about feeling proud at the sight of obscene wealth & yet being indifferent to obscene poverty? Hypocrites I tell you.

Now take literacy. Most of us have been born after Independence. Which means we were born to a sovereign and independent country which claimed to be socialistic as well. Or at least some of us were. There are many others who were born into the same feudalistic, caste riddled, male dominated societies that their ancestors lived in hundreds of years ago. Which probably explains why we have such a pathetic record when it comes to improving literacy.

We want to host the Olympics, while we can’t put together a decent hockey team.

We want the world to recognize us as an emerging superpower. Yet we can’t convict a terrorist who was caught on CCTV shooting people, including a policeman.

We take pride in the fact that our economy was resilient during the Great Recession. But don’t seem to mind that most of this ‘resilience’ was due to the parallel economy.

We want to be a destination for medical tourism but don’t think it’s necessary to provide basic healthcare to our own countrymen who can’t afford it.

We believe that we have a glorious past, but think nothing of scratching our names on the walls of the monuments that were built during that glorious past.

We get touchy when our neighbour hurts our sentiments, but we don’t mind if the Chinese treat us with disdain; mainly because we bend over backwards to not antagonise them.

At the end of it all, I don’t think that we suffer from delusions of grandeur. We suffer from delusions of competence.