Tune into empathy

We are familiar with “Vaishnav Jana To”, the song in Mishra Khamaj that Gandhi loved. It was composed by Narsinh Mehta some six centuries ago. The song is written in a language that is not very different from modern Gujarati, which is quite remarkable because many languages have changed drastically in the last century.

The song communicates the following: 

“Those can be called Vaishnav who feel the pain of others,

and help those in misery: without feeling self-important.

A Vaishnav respects all and disdains nobody.”

There are other things in the lyrics that speak to restraint and purity and so on but they are not as important as this opening sentiment. It is because of this communication of pure empathy that Gandhi chose this song (the melody is, of course, gorgeous and memorable but again it is only incidental). It is unconditional empathy that is aware that the self in some sense transforms when it engages with the pain of others and cautions against conceit. I should clarify here that the use of “Vaishnav” here is not to separate it from “Shaivite”: there are actually no Shaivites in Gujarat, except for the Brahmin migrants (of many centuries ago) from North India. Vaishnav is to separate the Hindu from the Jain and can be generally understood to mean Hindu. So when Mehta speaks of the Vaishnav, we can understand him to mean the Hindu. 

Those of us who know this song and appreciate it and recite it are above all accepting its meaning. Or are we?

I have been thinking about this in this week when momentous events have been unfolding in one of India’s 29 states (though this has now apparently become 28 states). I have a colleague in Srinagar whom we have not been able to connect with because of the turmoil. It is particularly distressing and anxiety inducing because this colleague regularly gets calls from the local police to show up and present himself and answer questions. 

The reason we cannot get in touch with him is, of course, that once again, communications inside of Kashmir and its links with the external world have been severed on the orders of New Delhi. It may interest readers to know that India regularly features at the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index. It was ranked 140 out of 180 nations and dropped two places in the last year. Why is this the case? Surely it cannot be because journalists have no freedom of expression (it is obvious that television anchors, in particular, can say anything they want).

Attacks on journalists are regular in India but episodic. Our consistently poor ranking is for one primary reason: Kashmir. As the index itself puts it, “coverage of regions that the authorities regard as sensitive, such as Kashmir, continues to be very difficult. Foreign reporters are barred from Kashmir and the Internet is often disconnected there. When not detained, Kashmiri journalists working for local media outlets are often the targets of violence by paramilitaries acting with the central government’s tacit consent.”

This is the only place in India where this happens, the arbitrary and constant disconnection from the internet of the entire population. No Google, no WhatsApp, often no telephone (as is the case now), no Facebook. Nothing that the rest of us take for granted as our primary means of communication with each other and the outside world. 

Kashmiris cannot call or message each other to ask if they are okay or if they are alive. This has been the case often in the past as well and what is happening today is not new. The previous government in Delhi had been just as unkind to them as the current one and, from Srinagar, Delhi looks the same and has looked the same no matter who the current Union home minister is. 

It is the rest of the population of India that they are discovering things about in these times. What levels of empathy do Indians and particularly Hindus, have for their compatriots in Kashmir? I would say very low, even non-existent. We have a bitterness that comes out immediately when talking about their problems. 

Can we, without our conceit and prejudices, observe and empathise with other humans, forget other Indian citizens? Photo: Reuters

Our focus is on words like terrorism and Kashmiri Pandit and Pakistan. These are words that speak to what Mehta would call conceit: our own preoccupations. They do not respond unconditionally to the pain and suffering of the other. The fact is that today any sort of barbarism can be unleashed on the Kashmiri with the approval of the Indian public. 

We can have our armed forces tie up one of our citizens in front of a jeep and parade him for hours, goading the citizenry. We will then honour and decorate the individual who committed this act, as if it was one of military bravery. 

We can have the world recoil in horror at the photographs and x-rays of a thousand Kashmiris blinded and mutilated by shotgun pellets that are fired randomly into crowds and might hit bystanders and even the individuals shooting them. But we will have the same visuals justified in India because we can dismiss all of them as “stone-pelters”. 

Mehta’s song is a test of sell-examination. Can we, without our conceit and prejudices, observe and empathise with other humans, forget other Indian citizens? Because if we cannot, then merely mouthing those words, however much we enjoy the tune, is hypocrisy.