Barun Roy: What are we, really?

We can't take criticism, have an aversion to jokes and can't stand differences of opinion. We are a bunch of fanatics

What’s wrong with us? Are we turning into a land of hypocrites and intolerant, narrow-minded nationalists? We can’t take criticism, we can’t tolerate differences of opinion, we can’t take a joke, we can’t laugh at ourselves, and we can’t stand being laughed at. What are we then? A bunch of fanatics disguised as democrats and liberals?

Why does M F Husain, an Indian, have to live in exile in a foreign land? Why does he have to suffer for exercising his right of artistic expression, when other artists, in other times and ages, have enjoyed that privilege? Why is his creativity criminal while others’ isn’t? And why don’t our leaders and democratic liberals come out firmly and clearly to proclaim that all creative activity should be beyond the pale of law? Who are we afraid of?

Why is it that Taslima Nasreen, the Bangladeshi writer, has permission to stay in India but not to move around freely or express her opinions? She has chosen India as the country of her exile. Why can’t our government decide once and for all if she can stay here permanently or not? If we are so afraid of Muslim public opinion, why keep up the pretence of renewing her visa every six months? So that we can keep our liberal image? It doesn’t help. It only exposes the depth of our hypocrisy and the shallowness of our democratic faith.

And now it’s Shashi Tharoor. What he said about “cattle class” and “holy cows” was only a private joke, but the entire nation is up in arms. Tharoor has apologised for his remarks, made in the context of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government’s recently launched austerity drive, but the controversy simply won’t die. We won’t let it die. Why? Because we all want to prove to the world how deep our concern is for the so-called aam aadmi, the ordinary people of our country, and how rightfully angry we are at this so-called dig at their expense, and we want the aam aadmi to take note of our anger and give us his vote when the next elections come around.

There lies the hypocrisy. Don’t we know how the aam aadmi travel in our trains and buses? Look at any local or passenger train, or any unreserved compartment of any so-called express. Are those who ride those trains any better than cattle herds in a stockyard? Are those who ride a bus in Delhi or Kolkata, or in a village in Uttar Pradesh, any different from a pack of sardines? Has anything been done to ease their travel conditions and give them the minimum dignity they deserve? Do we care? We are the shepherds, they are the cattle. That’s how it has been. That’s how, it seems, it will be, because without the cattle, the shepherds will lose their jobs and importance.

That’s behind our holy anger and holy tears in support of the aam aadmi. They are aam, they should remain aam. If they become khaas, how will we demonstrate our holy sympathy or devise yojanas for their welfare to win votes at elections? It’s all right to treat them as cattle but it’s condemnable to call them so. They may wait like beggars to be treated at our health centres or hang out like dogs on hospitals floors, but don’t compare them with animals. They may die of hunger or commit suicide, drop out of school, or be dragged like carcasses by police bikes, but they are never to be classed with cattle.

We know why. Cattle are more precious than the aam aadmi. They produce the milk we drink, the meat we eat, the leather that makes our shoes, handbags, and winter jackets. They power our rural transport and help till our farms. We may not be like Mongolia (60 million cattle in a land of only 3 million people), but we surely don’t have as many cattle as we would have liked to have, which makes them rarer and dearer.

On the other hand, we have far too many aam aadmis. What are aam aadmis good for other than breeding and multiplying beyond control? Why should we spend our concern and precious money on people who only eat up our resources and won’t let us be a developed nation by 2020? The more they die of floods and pestilence and medical neglect, the more they drop out of school, the more they remain poor and at the receiving end of our neglect, abuse, torture, and generosity, the more they die of hunger or commit suicide, the happier we are. The louder can we then proclaim our pro-poor democratic intentions, the more can we have publicity photos taken of eating at dalit homes, and the better can we jazz up our next election campaign.

rbarun@gmail.com