Tales of decadence

AVIJIT PATHAK

Sociologist

IT is not a nice feeling to experience the wound of this violent society, and live with shame. What else can we do when we see the way all great ideals fall apart, and eventually society loses its conscience as it allows itself to be brutalised by casteist and patriarchal violence, triumphant majoritarianism and arrogance of power? Indeed, at a time when everything is turned into its opposite — vice into virtue, hatred into religion, and narcissism into leadership, how do we say with a reasonable degree of self-confidence that we are civilised, and we value human dignity? Amid the recurrence of demonic masculinity, brute sexuality, stigmatisation of the Dalits and the minorities, and above all, the criminalisation of dissent, is it possible to say that what happened at Hathras was just a minor aberration in an otherwise good society? The fact is that ours is a decadent society without moral foundations, and the ‘supreme leader’, despite his avatar-like image, can’t hide it anymore. We are decaying from inside.

It is no longer impossible to have a democratically elected authoritarian government.

Why is it so? A possible reason is that we have forgotten the agenda of psychic, cultural and social transformation. Well, great social reformers, revolutionaries and social activists — Kabir and Guru Nanak, Ram Mohan Roy and Syed Ahmed Khan, Savitribai Phule and Pandita Ramabai, or Ambedkar and Gandhi — sought to awaken our sensibilities, eradicate the seeds of violence sanctified in the name of casteist/patriarchal ‘tradition’, and create a humane, egalitarian, gender-sensitive and spiritually enriched social order. Even our freedom struggle was inseparable from this agenda. In other words, for both Gandhi and Ambedkar, politics was inseparable from the educative programme of socio-cultural transformation. Ambedkar’s invocation of Buddhism or Gandhi’s cross-religious conversations attempted at some sort of inner revolution. They realised that democracy would fail if we remain hierarchical, exclusivist, divisive and brutal. Despite differences, politics, for both of them, was essentially a kind of liberating pedagogy.

The tragedy is that in post-Independence India — especially after the end of the Nehruvian era — we began to lose this vision. Politics lost its agenda of social reconstruction; it became crudely instrumental, election-oriented and manipulative. See its consequences. With this sort of politics, we refused to eradicate the caste system; instead, we played with it, stimulated it for immediate gains, and kept it alive. Likewise, even ‘secular’ politicians became diplomatic as far as their orientation to the orthodox clergy or priestcraft was concerned; and we failed to resist what we have been witnessing these days: the politics that stimulates one’s caste/religious identity, the politics that is inherently violent. Furthermore, as politics began to lose its grand visions and ideals, the quality of our ‘leaders’ (barring some remarkable Gandhians and Marxists) began to deteriorate fast. In fact, some of our films like Govind Nihalani’s Ardh Satya have captured the trajectory of this decadent politics with all its toxic stimulations and hyper-masculine gestures.

Likewise, we witnessed the increasing deterioration of the moral fabric of our society. Despite the external symbols of modernity and global capitalism (feel the smell of the urban/aspiring middle class — the mix of French perfume and Starbucks Coffee — in a fancy mall), we became more regressive. Religion became gorgeous and loud; Nathuram Godse, as the recent Twitter war indicates, became our hero; soap operas became our epics; celebrity babas became the new champions of salvation; and the likes of Honey Singh shaped our cultural choices.

Politics too became an act of consumption. Possibly, we loved to consume the package of smart cities, bullet trains and techno-savvy hyper masculine ‘saviours’. And for the downtrodden-alienated, exhausted and crippled, it was not easy to see the hollowness in the promise of achhe din; furthermore, the magic of stimulant nationalism made them believe that the root of every problem lies in the conspiracy launched by the ‘enemies’ of the nation — Muslims and Kashmiri terrorists. Under these circumstances, it was not difficult to use democracy to destroy its own spirit. Hence, it is no longer impossible to have a democratically elected authoritarian government.

Yes, the consequences are obvious. Yogi Adityanath symbolises the new normal; police officers and senior civil servants begin to behave terribly rudely without the slightest trace of decency; or for that matter, young, idealist students are sent to the prison because they critique the ‘chronology’ of the CAA and NRC. The message is clear. Spread the psychology of fear, and destroy the backbone of the civil society. Not solely that. We are led to believe that the Dalit girl at Hathras was not raped; nobody demolished the disputed structure at Ayodhya; and university professors conducted riots in Delhi. Nothing shocks us anymore; the retired Chief Justice becomes the Rajya Sabha member so quickly; and immediately after the voluntary retirement, the top police officer in Bihar joins Nitish Kumar’s JD (U).

Well, the Hathras case will be politicised, and possibly, some ‘compensation’ will be provided to the grieving family. But then, as the traumatic journey from Unnao to Hathras suggests, there will be yet another incident of caste violence, rape, mob lynching or police encounter. Because the society we live in breeds violence; we are violent. Our crude ‘pragmatism’ has deprived us of even thinking of what the likes of Tagore and Gandhi used to strive for— education as the activation of the moral self, religiosity as love and compassion, and politics as anasakti yoga. Instead, our education will transform us into mere ‘employees’ or selfish careerists with all regressive ideas; we will continue to remain preoccupied with our survival strategies; and the politics of Hindu versus Muslim binary will excite us. Possibly, in the coming days, we will demand yet another temple, another statue, another surgical strike, and another ‘Hindu’ messiah— smarter than even Mr Yogi.

For how long do we live with this decadence?

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