Wednesday, October 15, 2014
The whys and wherefores of #abillionidiots
This is going to be a long series of short posts(I hope), each touching on a particular aspect or reflection on India and Indians which contributed to my acerbic blog title. In the first of these posts, the reader might want a broad view of what led me here.
When I first returned to India after a long absence, I was- typically of the NRI with memories sweetened by absence and airbrushed by sentimentality- irked only by the little things, but willing to overlook the bigger maladies in order to keep the precious mirage from fading. I complained of this and that, no doubt, but I kept aloof of the bigger issues because I was, after all, only here for brief spells and could afford to ignore them and soon return to my safe, well-run, organized western life.
But as the trips became more frequent, the stays longer, and the engagement with local issues less tangential, I began to examine both the issues as well as the "normal" responses and attitudes of Indians toward them. In the beginning, I tended to be forgiving with the usual "Indian" excuses: colonial hangover, the complexity of this multicultural society, the relative "youth" of the nation, the resistance to change and modernity, and so on. You know the routine- or you should, if you are honest with yourself.
The past three years have found me spending an inordinate amount of time in India, and therefore having to acquire the accoutrements of a semi-residential existence in India. I was thereby forced out of my complacent western cocoon, directly into the maelstrom of everyday Indian life. Being a person driven by logic(I have a compulsion to re-arrange things to a pattern, and I don't get what passes as abstract art), and that logic having been honed by decades of exposure to well-developed western systems, I found myself irked by the irrationality of Indian behavior, reflected in both work as well as public interactions, and infuriated by the apparent lack of thinking that extenuates the glaring problems in this country.
I thus began a process of examining issues, or rather, problems, which I encounter in the public space, trying to discern why the problem arose, how it is perceived, the relative interest in solving it, and the possible reason/s why it wasn't being solved. After looking at literally hundreds of issues, I came to the unavoidable conclusion that the fundamental cause of the problems was a failure- or refusal- to think. Detractors would say that, like NRIs of the "western bootlicker" model, or a "child of Macaulay", or a "self-hating Indian", my observations are colored and driven by viewing through western eyes. But criticisms of that nature would only be reinforcing my conclusions, by refusing to think, and engaging reflexively in a completely mindless and regressive defense of stupidity. Whether this alacrity to dispense with the burden of rational thought is a cultural, metaphysical or other trait, I do not at the moment conclude. But this I have concluded, without any room for doubt, as I will show in future posts: this country possesses an overwhelming abundance of people conditioned to do without thought, to abhor even the semblance of logic and rationality, to eschew the basic traits one would expect in a civilized society. A billion idiots.
When I first returned to India after a long absence, I was- typically of the NRI with memories sweetened by absence and airbrushed by sentimentality- irked only by the little things, but willing to overlook the bigger maladies in order to keep the precious mirage from fading. I complained of this and that, no doubt, but I kept aloof of the bigger issues because I was, after all, only here for brief spells and could afford to ignore them and soon return to my safe, well-run, organized western life.
But as the trips became more frequent, the stays longer, and the engagement with local issues less tangential, I began to examine both the issues as well as the "normal" responses and attitudes of Indians toward them. In the beginning, I tended to be forgiving with the usual "Indian" excuses: colonial hangover, the complexity of this multicultural society, the relative "youth" of the nation, the resistance to change and modernity, and so on. You know the routine- or you should, if you are honest with yourself.
The past three years have found me spending an inordinate amount of time in India, and therefore having to acquire the accoutrements of a semi-residential existence in India. I was thereby forced out of my complacent western cocoon, directly into the maelstrom of everyday Indian life. Being a person driven by logic(I have a compulsion to re-arrange things to a pattern, and I don't get what passes as abstract art), and that logic having been honed by decades of exposure to well-developed western systems, I found myself irked by the irrationality of Indian behavior, reflected in both work as well as public interactions, and infuriated by the apparent lack of thinking that extenuates the glaring problems in this country.
I thus began a process of examining issues, or rather, problems, which I encounter in the public space, trying to discern why the problem arose, how it is perceived, the relative interest in solving it, and the possible reason/s why it wasn't being solved. After looking at literally hundreds of issues, I came to the unavoidable conclusion that the fundamental cause of the problems was a failure- or refusal- to think. Detractors would say that, like NRIs of the "western bootlicker" model, or a "child of Macaulay", or a "self-hating Indian", my observations are colored and driven by viewing through western eyes. But criticisms of that nature would only be reinforcing my conclusions, by refusing to think, and engaging reflexively in a completely mindless and regressive defense of stupidity. Whether this alacrity to dispense with the burden of rational thought is a cultural, metaphysical or other trait, I do not at the moment conclude. But this I have concluded, without any room for doubt, as I will show in future posts: this country possesses an overwhelming abundance of people conditioned to do without thought, to abhor even the semblance of logic and rationality, to eschew the basic traits one would expect in a civilized society. A billion idiots.
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