Buddha and the art of PC

Are we seeing the return of political correctness? There was a time, until quite recently, when you couldn't say the words without couching them in invisible inverted commas, to suggest how absurd and precious the whole approach to marginalised sections of society had become.

Ironically, the term had been introduced into public consciousness through the Communist Party when during its Leninist phase it began to crack the whip on what it perceived to be people who did not toe the 'party line'. (Following this party diktat here in India, some of the brightest and best members of the party began to be described as bourgeois and politically incorrect for acts as innocuous as listening to Western classical music and studying law!)

Be that as it may, in the late twentieth century, the term had come to mean something quite different when conservatives in America used it to ridicule those they regarded as subverting time-honoured Western traditions.

Calling female actresses 'actors', short people 'vertically-challenged' and air brushing the hapless Golliwog out of Enid Blyton's books were all seen as overly precious attempts to set right the traditional inequities of gender, race and disability. That's when political correctness became looked down upon as something absurd and unnatural.

But now, sitting as I write this in New York, I have begun to sense that out of its collective heart of guilt, political correctness is making its way back in the American psyche, and hence it will not be long before it enters the international narrative.

Here on the streets of Manhattan, I see the return of political correctness in small and subtle ways: members of ethnic groups are handled with kid gloves, no one makes sexist jokes any more and people of different appearance and ability are given right of way.

But, as everything the Americans do, in this area too there is a sense of patronising and entitlement. The patronising comes with its sense of privilege: "Here we are the world's most powerful nation being good and kind towards lesser beings who we expect must behave in a certain manner." The underlying message is: we will afford you a seat at our table, but then you must follow our table manners.

It's a little like the built-in expectations thatcome with donations and aid. And what I perceive as the expectation of countries like India right now from the seats of government and media in the USA is that it gets its act together by becoming scam free, upholding democratic values and a market economy.

Of course, this is not a bad thing if it did not come with the assumption that America knows better and its interests in India are altruistic. America and its people have self-interest and self-preservation built-in to their DNA and this new political correctness ultimately is a cynical exercise. "Make the world a safer place for our goods, services and citizens" is what they are saying.

I am reminded of an old Buddhist teaching: when asked who is the truly evolved being, on entering a room, one who belittles, notices or helps a differently abled person among his midst, the Buddha is supposed to have said: "A truly evolved being would not have noticed the difference."

Wonder what the Buddha would have said at America's latest jab at PC!

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com