Some months ago in Delhi, I was early for an appointment, so I wandered around Connaught Place, window-shopping. On the pavement outside a fancy pub, that looked tacky in the glare of daylight, lay a young woman. Clothed in filthy rags, hair matted, face streaked with grime, she was so sound asleep at 11 a.m. that I suspected she was stoned. One hand lay on her stomach, near the waistband of her ghagra, which had slipped below her navel. Her vulnerability as she lay there made me stop short, the breath catching in my throat. I wondered if I should wake her. Then, I suddenly realised that not one other person was seeing her. People streamed past steadily like she was invisible.
The destitute, the battered, the vulnerable are part of our scenery; we don’t see them. That’s why those men in Pune had the courage to drag a young woman out of her car at 5 a.m. and assault her. That’s why a cop in Bihar can watch calmly when a politician’s son shoots a man for overtaking him. Beatings, killings, powerlessness: we are used to these. We have this fond idea of ourselves, encouraged by Orientalist babble, as a race of somewhat spiritual, non-violent peaceniks. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are easily and comfortably capable of some of the worst inhumanity imaginable. What is more frightening is that we do it not in some outburst of uncommon rage, but simply as part of the everyday. Life teaches us ordinary cruelties very early and very effectively.
As children, we’ve learnt that it’s okay to ostracise some people who live on the fringes of our lives like animals. We have seen a young colleague go home to cook for the father-in-law who will rape her that night. We have known the neighbour who beats up a 12-year-old maid because she burnt the dal. We watch passively when men are lowered into sewage drains to clean human waste.
Entire Dalit villages are razed to the ground, their women paraded naked, but it leaves not the slightest mark on us. We don’t tremble with indignation when a spurned lover pours acid on a girl’s face. Young men casually hack a couple to death in a market square for marrying outside their castes, and we create political parties to spawn more such men.
In a recent piece in this newspaper, social scientist Shiv Visvanathan said, “As a nation, India is deeply violent.” I sometimes wonder where it comes from, this nameless, feral rage. It is clear that through the centuries — of a brutal caste system, extreme poverty, extreme inequality, colonial oppression and an inadequate democracy — we have internalised violence as normal. But many societies have walked down the same rough road.
Is it then the mark of a lawless land, where you know justice will never be delivered to most people? Government is a contract by which societies hand over the administration of their lives to a set of people in exchange for protection and welfare. But our Government has continually and spectacularly failed to keep its side of the bargain. At every stage, from village panchayat, elected representative and minister to constable, magistrate and judge, the average citizen gets neither administration nor protection but indifference at best and intimidation at worst. I wonder, then, whether we behave like animals because our Government has ensured that it remains a jungle out there.
Whatever the reasons, these are the classic symptoms of a failed society. And as long as lynching and rape and public slaughter continue unimpeded, no amount of razzmatazz about yoga or smart cities or digital empowerment can help us pretend that we are a civilised nation.
