India Whining

The bad news just kept on coming. One ridiculous controversy after another.

There’s really no one to beat us Indians when it comes to walking around with a chip on our shoulder. We are forever bristling with righteous indignation and are offended by the tiniest of cultural slights. It’s official. We have turned into a nation of whiners.

And things only seem to be getting worse.

And as if to confirm my sense of pessimism, the Shilpa Shetty – Richard Gere kissing story broke this morning, along with the resultant spectacle of Shiv Sainiks frothing at the mouth with self-righteous angst, doing what they do best…vandalilzing property

An ageing Hollywood actor comes to town, purportedly on a mission of spreading HIV/AIDS awareness, gets theatrical on stage, and does the swoop, scoop and plant routine on Ms Shetty, who, of course, is no less a drama queen herself. All part of a by-now-standard Gere routine. And that, by most sane people, should have been that. Ok, considering that this was Delhi, maybe a few tut-tuts from the crowd could be expected. But no, before you could say ‘Big Brother’, our Morality Police were out in force on the streets of Varanasi, burning an effigy here and vandalizing a shop there, you know, the standard stuff. Marching under the banners of legendary cultural organizations such as the ‘Vande Mataram Sangharsh Samiti’ and the ‘Shilpa Shetty Fan Club’, these valiant protectors of our culture demanded that the gora Gere leave our sacred nation immediately. Our enterprising Shiv Sainiks in amchi Mumbai, not ones to be left behind in what seems to be a pretty competitive line of work, promptly organized a raiding party and let it loose on the sets of Ms Shetty’s new movie. What, with the next Valentine’s Day almost a year away, they were kind of short of work anyway. Enterprise, self-motivation, sense of purpose…the cream of our youth, I tell you.

Now, I’m no fan of Shilpa Shetty. Her acting skills are enough to make you lose your faith in humankind’s ability to portray emotion. She most definitely is eye-candy, but not a bimbo by any stretch of the imagination. She has been derided as opportunistic after the Big Brother fiasco, but you don’t make the leap from mediocre actor to international celebrity without grabbing at SOME opportunity! And I think she did that with considerable skill and finesse. Perhaps the entire Richard Gere thing was just an attempt to keep herself in the limelight. But by refusing to apologize to the cultural taliban, she has earned my deepest respect.

This episode of cultural policing comes on the heels of another totally unnecessary and almost surreal controversy. That of Narayan Murthy and the national anthem (maybe I should capitalize the words before the guardians of patriotism come after me too…). This guy went from being the country’s most admired business leader and potential Presidential candidate to a despised, India-hating corporate blood-sucker in the space of one day. His crime? Replying to a pointed question by a journalist during President Kalam’s visit to the Infosys campus, that an instrumental version of the national anthem was played instead of singing the song because not knowing the words to the song would ‘embarrass’ the foreign guests on the campus. The merits of that answer are open to interpretation, but in a matter of days we had every politician worth his angavastram asking for his arrest, calling him a traitor and asking him to be ‘expelled from Karnataka’ (just how you do that within the legal framework of our country is a bit beyond me, but anyway…).

Sample these gems from the shining lights of Karnataka today, Dharam Singh and Siddaramaiah:
Dharam Singh: “Government should not tolerate such insults to national anthem. Action should be taken, however mighty the guilty may be.“
Siddaramaiah: “This man has not even an iota of patriotism. He was a nobody 20 years back. Having exploited the government tax concessions, lands and the abundant talent available in the State, he is now cocking a snook even at the State and Central governments. He is a misfit to be an Indian and it would be better if he leaves the country.”

I sincerely believe it’s a sad sad day when we have to take lessons in patriotism from the likes of Dharam Singh and Siddaramaiah, men who would sell their souls to turn a political trick. Their stellar record of taking the state and nation forward is, of course, well known. If Murthy was not supposed to ‘exploit’ government tax breaks, what were they there for? To be added to some grand ‘achievements’ file to be distributed before elections? And if Murthy and co. didn’t ‘exploit’ the state’s talent pool and kick-start the IT revolution that made Karnataka what it is today, Siddaramaiah would still be raving about his state’s ragi crop and HMT watches.

Then, software engineers, that lazy, overpaid, over-indulged, self-absorbed breed that personifies selfishness and pseudo-patriotism (yes, yes, the other three fingers are firmly pointed towards me), joined the attack on Murthy. This is by far the most blatant example of hypocrisy I have ever come across in my life. These twenty-something and thirty-something spoilt brats whose lifestyle, career, prospects, money, everything they are today, whether in Bangalore, Hyderabad, the United States or any other country in the world, exist and are made possible today because of the pioneering efforts of men like Narayan Murthy, have the gall to question the committment of this man to his country! Yes, he is a businessman first, not a philanthropist. He and his contemporaries did not start out to do social work. But they had the vision to exploit opportunities, the talent pool, the cost and time differential, Y2K, our grasp of technology, and create an industry out of nothing. And in the process generate unimaginable amounts of wealth (surely, by Indian standards even ten years back) for millions of people, and the nation. And then there are the intagibles…a new confidence in our ability to compete on a global stage, a belief that we could pull ourselves out of the rut that was the Indian economy. I don’t believe it is too far-fetched to attribute all this to the pioneering spirit that Murthy and his contemporaries like Wipro’s Premji and HCL’s Nadar brought in. To question his patriotism because he didn’t serenade the President with the national anthem just defies sanity!!

Moving on, another day, yet another controversy. This time, a holy cow, who suddenly finds himself not so holy any more. Staying true to our glorious tradition of kicking those who are down and out, ‘social activist’, Subodh Jain, has filed a police complaint against Sachin Tendulkar for ‘dishonouring the Indian flag’. And in what circumstances did this ghastly act take place? Well, Tendulkar had the temerity to cut a cake in the colours of the Indian flag with a knife (the horror!) at the Indian High Commission in Jamaica.

No, really, what do you say about something like this? There’s ridiculous, and then there’s ridiculous. At least the cops had the good sense not to register a case…yet.
As for Mr. Jain, let’s hope he’s had his orgasm with his fifteen minutes of fame and that his days of spamming our legal system are over.

What is it with us? Is intolerance on the rise in Indian society? Or is all this just a result of too much time on our hands? We either seemed to be pissed off or cribbing all the time. Be it burning effigies (a bona fide national pastime) of Mandira Bedi in Ludhaiana or stoning cricketers’ houses or forcing our morality down others’ throats, the streak of meanness seems to be growing stronger every day. Hyper nationalism and loose interpretations of what actually constitutes ‘Indian culture’ have given rise to a dangerous mixture of arrogance and ignorance. From my immediate experience among desis here, I have seen people able to reel off twenty different contributions of Vedic India to the world of mathematics and science, and yet feel right at home calculating the amount of dowry they can demand, or indulge in blatant casteism and regionalism. We want to have our cake and eat it too. We want to be respected as a mature , modern democracy, but at the same time find it difficult to practice a lot of the civility and tolerance that comes along with that label. We want to be looked upon as an inclusive society, but model our behaviour on the fanaticism found among the more fundamentalist societies around the world, be it burning books, vandalizing movie sets, harrassing couples, tormenting gay people, or taking offence at any number of real and imaginary insults to our ‘culture’.  We’re not only reluctant to put significant effort towards any meaningful purpose, we are always waiting to pull down those that actually do.

Why has this boorish behaviour become part of our cultural ethos? Is this the result of endless hype over the mythical place in the sun that India is supposed to take, the Indian Century, the new super-power? Because there are actually people who have bought into this propaganda, who sincerely believe that we are on the fast track to the head of the table, and anybody who casts doubts on that is either a traitor or a moron. And that, I think, is at the root of the problem.

~ by Shubho on April 17, 2007.