02 January 2013, 05:53 PM IST
A columnist recently called the protest against the heinous rape in Delhi a manifestation of "insolent India." Though his context was different, he is right: transforming from a subservient and feudal culture, the growing neo middle class India has chosen insolence as a response to the times. They have shunned all civil niceties to indulge in rhetorical curses and violent protest.
One measure of this is the media's propensity to refer to all public figures by their first name. Not even in the USA, where first-name familiarity is part of the culture, do media call the President, Barack or the Secretary of State, Hillary. Heck, even in Chicago, the mayor is called Mayor Emanuel and in New York, Mayor Bloomberg. You'll never hear a print or broadcast journalist call them Rahm or Michael, never mind Mike. Just read the stories in the newspapers; watch the news shows on television. It is Sheila this, Manmohan that, Sonia, Rahul, Kapil, Salman and horror of horrors Chidu, for the finance minister. It is Rattan and Mukesh and Anil and Adi and Sachin and Saurav and Amitabh and Jaya and Kat and Kareena and what have you. It is amazing also to witness at soirees in Delhi, Bombay and elsewhere, the breezy familiarity with which people use first names.
Such behavior seems to have originated in one-upmanship and is now an indicator of insolence.
Just troll social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and the insolence is compounded to infinity. Even as we speak, some misbegotten people are circulating what purport to be photos of the young woman who was raped December 16 on a Delhi bus by ruthless criminals; such men seem to fester like sores at the margins of India's ramshackle urbanization in the major metros and the Wild West style small towns. I am deeply aware of this because I live in a place surrounded by lawless but wealthy villages infested with illiterates, who threaten you with death and destruction if you challenge their scofflaw ways.
Coming back to the photos on Facebook, the circulation of these photos is not just distasteful but illegal. It betrays a lack of sober judgment and indicates an excitable mind that is easily carried away by emotions of the moment and is a prime candidate for hopping on cultish bandwagons.
This emergent neo middle class in India appears to lack civility and grace; plus, it seems to be infected with the virus of authoritarianism. The very word "civil" has been subverted by the likes of Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal, who pass themselves off as "civil society" activists while using the foulest of rhetoric and crudest of means. Not that different than the rabid M S Golwalker, who wrote India's "Mein Kampf." Only he called it "We, Our Nation Defined."
Even the bald prejudice of Golwalker's Hindutva, which reserves hate for minorities, takes a back seat in the face of the insolence of the neo middle class. This segment is much larger than the middle class of yore and its reckless rhetoric and behavior threaten long-held societal norms of tolerance and compassion, values have enabled Indian culture survive despite the Mughal and British conquests. Its modern-day avatar, India's globally-admired constitutional democracy, with its adherence to the "due process" tradition of law, has held firm despite the onslaught of Hindu fundamentalists; anarchists with a Luddite agenda; votaries of Soviet-style socialism; poor human development indicators like persistent poverty, lingering illiteracy and preventable disease; now, inept governance The Sanskrit word kripa is worth understanding. In transliteration, it combines the meanings of several English words: grace and especially mercy. It was used in the liberal Bhakti tradition that arose as an alternative to the Vedic mainstream. It is a word we would do well to remember as the baying hordes call for all manner of capital punishment for the men who mercilessly raped and killed the young woman in Delhi. The horrendous crime set off protests all over India. One strand of the protest was valid in that it raised public consciousness about the plight of women in India. Even in America, there are of gender bias cases reported among Indian immigrants including one in which a woman forbade her son's wife to enter the kitchen during her menstrual cycle or a family that insisted on a sex determination test or others who indulged in rampant gender prejudices. Back in India, there are uncounted cases of female infanticide, dowry deaths and honor killings.
Another strand, which includes the bulk of the protesters, is a vicious call for revenge. Capital punishment, torture, castration are bandied about as options. Sounding strangely medieval, the neo middle class protestors have directed their unfocused anger at the government, the easiest target given all its angularities. In the view of the neo middle class protestors, the government is venal.
What's admirable is the protests did galvanize the government to take action. Whether this citizen action can be sustained and actually makes cities safe for women or will it peter out is a question worth pondering. Soon, the media will move on; that's when the logic of these protests will be tested. Late and slow, the government nevertheless responded; now it's the turn of the citizen.
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