Bad Parenting: Vegetarian Bullying

[This follows Bad Parenting- Insensitivity and Indecency]

Where do we get our prejudices?  How do we form our biases against certain kinds of people?  How does discrimination perpetuate through generations? 

The answer lies in bad parenting.

The parents indoctrinate their kids with habits, ideals, values and most importantly prejudices.   I argue in Indian values are actually habits I and Indian values are actually habits II that Indians equate habits with values.  What this means is that Indians give precedence to dietary habits, like not eating meat or not drinking alcohol over other values such as honesty or integrity, or not taking bribes. 

 

Who to blame when a girl child is born? The mother or the father?

No girl child, please! We are Indians!

In India, the arrival of a girl child is not always the welcoming news.  Certain families go to the extent of equating the occasion to a funeral.   Some families refuse to let anyone know that a girl child is born, and they try to hide the news.  Those others who get to know the news may even convey a message of condolences.   When my wife delivered the second girl child, the nurses around her expressed their deepest sympathies as if it was a natural thing to do. 

Though it is illegal in India to determine the sex of unborn child, many clinics in India provide these services to the eager parents.  And if it turns out that it is a girl, some families go for an abortion.  Some Indian clinics are notorious for carrying out such operations or a large scale.  Occasionally, a bag full of girl fetuses found in the backyard of such clinics makes it to the newspapers and TV channels.  There are certain states in India where the female-to-male ratio is so bad that it has started to turn into a sociological disaster – creating villages where men don’t find brides.

Internal party democracy (Part I)

Though India has embraced democracy as the form of government, it is now frustrated with the current system because it has not produced the desired results, and definitely it has not made the common man feel that the government is ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’. 

Over the last sixty years, India has reduced the scope and definition of democracy to such an extent that it has now become synonymous only with general elections held every five years.  Most Indians, when asked what democracy is, would now quickly respond, ‘elections’.  Elections, held every five years, have therefore become the only event when the common man of India gets to feel that he plays some role in forming the government.  He feels empowered only on that day, and that day alone.  Once that day passes, the common man is forgotten, and he doesn’t figure in the later workings of the government.  The elected leaders become the rulers, who are in turn ruled by their party bosses. 

The common malaise of Indian political system is that the elected leaders are not accountable to the common man.  They shun him.  They refuse to meet him.  They refuse to mingle with them. They refuse to consider his participation.  Many elected leaders in India do not have offices in their constituencies.  Instead they live and reside in the capital city close to the party bosses, showing their true allegiance. 

What’s the problem with Indians?

Look at this attitude:

#1. “This is how I live.  This is the right way of living.  You have to live like me”

Many problems in India come from the above attitude.  Many Indians believe they have an idea what a good and moral life is, and they believe they lead such a good and moral life that they take the next step of imposing it onto others.   Contrast the above attitude with the one below:

#2. “This is how I live. That is how you live.  You live your life. I will live mine”

We would solve many social problems with attitude #2.  However, most Indians go with attitude #1 because we tend to believe that we Indians lead a moral life which derives its strength from our Indianness or Hinduness, and we believe it is our prerogative to safeguard our lifestyle by imposing it onto others and correcting other’s lifestyles.

Idiocy on TV

You don’t have to go really far from your home to discover the kind of idiocy that pervades India these days. One wrong flip of the channel, I suddenly land inside a new world – which happens to be the world most Indians are living in. Indian news channels, especially in the Indian regional languages, can be quite crappy, and give you an insight into the kind of drivel Indians are being fed on a daily basis.

In addition to the news, which is posited as facts, and hence undeniable truths, these channels also indoctrinate Indians with superstition, blind belief and orthodoxy on a daily basis, as if it is coming from an authoritative source. The whole charade should not be dismissed as harmless. It is carefully constructed, arranged and engineered to make people dumb.

Most of us are familiar with how the real news is relayed to us by someone sitting behind a desk who is peering into a computer or another document talking in an authoritative voice. Most viewers take news pretty seriously. If the news says, there is a bomb blast in Kanpur then there is a bomb blast in Kanpur. Nobody questions if it actually happened or if it was just a hoax being telecasted by this TV channel. If they said that Prime Minister resigned, then PM resigned. They don’t question it. The stock markets tumble accordingly based on such news. The stock brokers don’t wait and ask themselves – ‘hey may be, this TV channel guys are just kidding’.

So, when these TV channels talk about astrology, there are quite a good number of viewers who take it pretty seriously. One such wrong flip landed me into such Hindi News Channel (Star News or something like that). An astrologer who looked more like a college professor was sitting behind a laptop. The viewer would dial in and give details of their birth – the date, the time and the place of birth. This astrologer would type in the details into his computer. The viewer would then relate his/her problem.

Here are some of the problems. A lady called to say that her family is losing money in all the investments they have made and looks like there is no way of recovering them. The astrologer looked into computer and answered her. It seems a Rahu or Ketu or one of those goddamned planets is in some wrong house. And therefore she will see this happening for the next few months. He even asked her not to invest her husband’s money directly or indirectly during the next 45 days or so. He then gave the solution to get over the problem. He asked her to visit the temple for the next 45 days and donate jaggery and ghee. He asked her to feed crows, and also get rid of old coins and coal from the home.

The other caller told him that her health is not good and she is constantly worried about the job promotion. The astrologer solved it for her. He told her that Shani is now in a different house. She should put some paste on her head everyday and put black powder on two animals which have two different colors, bury some ingredients in the home and do some puja on daily basis.

No wonder India continues to remain superstitious and blinded.

Not only this, most viewers don’t seem to object to the crass TV shows. There is a TV ad from Reliance. A wife is talking to her husband on the phone. The wife is at her home. The guy is traveling in a posh car somewhere on a hillside close to Simla. They are talking about their old memories. The guy walks to an old monument. He says everything is the same. He looks at an etching on the monument – Raj loves Sneha – something like that. Both of them dolefully remember the great old moments. Indian audience completely identifies with that moment and gets swooned.

Nobody bothers to ask a simple question – isn’t writing on old monuments, etching on them, vandalizing, etc, a habit we want Indians to refrain from?

Indian Moral Code

Many self-appointed groups in India are now defending what is called Indian Moral Code. Well, we know about Legal Code and Penal Code, but what is this Moral Code?

India’s idea of democracy is interpreted as the rule of majority where majority can impose its ideas, notions, dress, language, and habits onto others. If these others do not acquiesce, then it is forced down their throats. They get things done by popular movements. They can send millions of SMS to get their favorite cricketer acquitted.

They also feel obligated to come up with a set of rules, traditions, and habits which are considered morally superior and they give it a name called Indian Moral Code. This Moral Code derives legitimacy from all sections of the society because it promises to protect Indian Culture, dignity, morality and sacred traditions. It gets legitimacy from patriotic and religious groups at the same time. The way a State imposes its Legal Code and Penal Code onto Indian citizens, these upholders of Indian Moral Code impose their morality onto everyone.

When Sexy Shriya donned a revealing dress for an evening outing, some Tamilian organizations believed it was against the sacred and honorable Tamilian traditions. When Khushboo and Sushmita Sen talked about women’s sexuality, marriage and virginity, the upholders of Indian Moral Code rose up to challenge them.

In small towns of India, this is even bigger problem. Most girls get their freedoms restricted by their own families, and where necessary the mohallah people, who are out there to defend Indian Moral Code from getting sullied. When I attended a well-known engineering institute in India in 90s, girls were restricted from mixing with boys. Some professors took up this task to punish the girls who were seen talking to boys by deliberately failing them or giving them low marks. All this they did with great concern and care for upholding Indian Moral Code which is more sacrosanct than the marks these girls received.

In many Indian towns, couples are targeted by youth, social outfits and sometimes the police force, for seen together. The fact that they held hands or were seen hugging is good enough for these people to act.

In a rare show of solidarity, which happens in India only when it comes to imposing idiotic notions, both Hindu and Christian organizations in South India cracked down on people who were seen as ‘violating the moral code’.

According to THE HINDU, there have been many such cases where some groups resorted to ‘punishing individuals’ who ‘violated the moral code’. Hindu outfit Bajrang Dal, and a Christian outfit, Social Action Committee, and some members from Karnataka Forum for Dignity (KFD) took it upon themselves to defend the unwritten Indian Moral Code. To do this, these groups targeted young men and women who were seen together, especially if they came from different religions. THE HINDU writes [emphasis mine]:

In one case, a young woman was attacked because she went to the house of a young woman from a different community. The Bajrang Dal has claimed responsibility for seven of these incidents.

The district head of the organisation, Sudarshan Moodabidri, claimed that the outfit had “solved” over 200 cases in the last two months where Hindus were “caught” committing the “immoral” act of interacting with members of other communities.

Mr. Moodabidri said, “Sometimes it becomes necessary to use force. Fear of such action should deter such misadventures. Girls reform themselves once they are thrashed and humiliated in public, but boys are tougher to control.”

These groups even carried out a ‘joint operation’ in one case proving idiocy is the most common binding factor for all these upholders of morality.

Moral Code in colleges

These days it’s fashionable for many colleges to proudly impose a dress code on its students. There are many colleges in India who don’t allow jeans and t-shirts for girls. The code prohibits them from wearing sleeveless and tight-fitting clothes as well. They strictly enforce wearing Indian salwar kameezes. The principal of such colleges proudly wear this ideology as a badge since he knows the kind of audience he is talking to. Parents gleefully admit their kids to such schools believing they are contributing to upholding of the Great Indian Moral Code.

"We are only trying to ensure that students dress decently and modestly, in a way that befits our culture. A dress code will also pre-empt harassment of women students," says Dr. Viswanathan, Vice-Chancellor of Anna University.

Indian Feet and National Flag

Sacred Flag

For a long time Indians did NOT have access to their own national flag. There were so many DON’Ts that people didn’t feel free to even wave their own flag. Even after Jindal’s efforts, the flag still remains a sacred symbol. Looking at the number of ‘Insult to National Honor’ cases these days, I feel it’s better to lock it up in some museum and restrict it to hoisting on government buildings. Anything you do can be considered sacrilegious.

Sania Mirza and Indian Flag

Sania Mirza, India’s celebrated tennis player was accused of insulting the national flag, when in a recent photograph she was seen putting her feet up in the background with India’s National Flag in the foreground. It has become common these days to accuse every celebrity of insulting national symbols making the whole charade ridiculous.

First, we don’t even know if those feet were close or far away from that flag. Because it is quite probable that the photographer thought it was a nice shot and hence framed them in the same picture, though apart.

Second, many cultures and societies in the world would not consider propping one’s feet up next to their flag to be an insult. Indians are one of the rarest breeds who have funny notions on how to use their feet. They think that touching someone with feet, showing your feet to someone, or even waving them around is a gross insult.

My books and my feet

I love my books. I am an ardent reader. I read everyday and I buy lots of books. And I hold onto them as if it’s my treasure. I take good care of them. You will see my books in their original condition even after many years though they may have been read many times. I love them and respect them for what they are – source for information and entertainment.

At the same time, I move them around with my feet. If there is a book on the bed, I move it with my feet, nonchalantly, without feeling remorse or guilt.

However, it does not go very well with people around me. They always tell me that I am disrespecting my books. And I get this remark even from people who never read books. Their reading stopped when they graduated from college long ago. Yet, they make it a point to instruct me not to touch books with my feet.

It’s not that they care for the books or what is written in them. They never bother to know its contents or value the contents. Yet, they feel they can tell me what I can or cannot do with them. And my peeve is – ‘who are they to tell me how I should be taking care of my books?’

Books are sacred

For most Indians, books are sacred. What it means is these books will be prayed to, honored and put on the same pedestal where their gods stand. For many, books are incarnate of Goddess Saraswati. Some people believe this so strongly that it also means they are NOT going to question what is written in those books. They learn by rote the contents, to memorize them, to spew forth in one continuous incantation, verbatim. [You can also see why they remain idiots even after reading their books.]

Feet are impure

And also, for most Indians, feet are impure. If you touch something with your feet, you defile that thing. Many Indian habits come out of this belief. Touching one’s feet is showing your obeisance. To throw oneself at the others feet is to convey your subordination and sometimes extreme respect for the other. Many Indians get offended when you touch them with your feet or show your feet to them.

Many in India will do some weird action if they happen to accidentally touch you with their feet. They blurt out a sorry or use their hands to show a sign of praying to ask for forgiveness. I grew up in India, but I found this ritual rather amusing since I was a young boy. Unlike most others, I don’t feel guilty, ashamed, apologetic or embarrassed when I touch my near or dear things with my feet.

I like to use my feet

I find that using my feet gives me more than two limbs to move things around. I am completely comfortable using my feet for various purposes.

Many people find that objectionable, and some of them give me some silly ‘scientific’ explanations- that feet are unclean since you go around in the world, full of shit, waddling through the pile, with your feet. Hence, the impurity!

My feet are usually clean. I never go out of home without wearing shoes even when I go on a short errand. Many a times, I feel that my feet are cleaner than my hands. So, my response was, 'well, since I keep my feet clean, can I touch my books with my feet?' Even after this explanation these people would object to it. They cite more reasons why it should not be done- like, what kind of example I would set; like, certain things should always be sacred no matter what etc. No matter how you explain, the end result is – one should not touch books with feet. It’s a blind belief at the end of the day.

Feet are discussed in mythology too!

According to some Indian mythology, Brahmins came from head of Brahma, Kshatriyas from his torso, Vaishyas from thighs, Shudras from his feet, and untouchables from the soil below the feet. Even in this characterization it was clear why Shudras and Dalits were considered inferior- they have something to do with the feet!

Head is OK, hands are OK, torso is OK, even the penis is prayed to. The breasts of a goddess are prayed to. No mention of assholes, so I don’t know its status. But the feet are NOT OK. They are impure, disgusting, and filthy.

Therefore, Sania propping her feet next to Indian flag is akin to putting impure things next to a sacred thing. Therefore, it’s an insult. No arguments!

Guide to Indian Idiocy I

I have come up with this article thanks to Siddhartha Shome. The discussion I had with him recently in California, over a lunch, has triggered few observations that I would like to codify here.

Siddhartha has raised an extremely important and interesting observation. According to him (not in his words), Indians have a peculiar way of looking at pursuit of knowledge. For most Indians, knowledge is directly proportional to one’s age or one’s qualifications. Therefore, it is a given fact for most Indians that a Professor knows more than the student, an older man knows more than the younger man, a boss knows more than the subordinate and so on. There are no arguments about it or doubts about it. This is a cardinal rule applicable to all domains of knowledge.

From this discussion, I come to the first law of Indian Idiocy.

1. Knowledge depletes with each generation.

One can extrapolate the above observation to say that Indians also believe that our older generations knew much more than what we know. For Indians, knowledge keeps depleting with each generation, not increasing as is conventional wisdom in the West. Indians believe that our ancestors, during Vedic times, knew almost everything. They knew how to solve Quantum Physics, knew how to build airplanes, knew how to build an atom bomb. In fact, their knowledge was infinite. As generations went by, our knowledge kept reducing.

In a local sense, a professor will always know more than the student – forever. A parent will know more than the kid – forever. And so on. So each subsequent generation knows lesser compared the older one.

Taking the cue, I wanted to explore few other observations and codify into laws. Here’s the second law of Indian Idiocy.

2. Wisdom is Knowledge.

For most Indians, Wisdom is nothing but Knowledge itself. And knowledge is directly correlated with one’s education. And education is directly correlated with one’s degrees. For most elite and urban Indians, there is no difference between knowledge and wisdom. They are synonymous. Hence, a PhD is supposedly wiser than a Masters Degree holder is wiser than a Bachelor’s Degree holder and so on. At the bottom are the rural (and therefore 'illiterate'). Invariably, all those who went to IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, etc, are all wise for the rest of their lives.

One educated NRI (non-resident Indian) I recently met in US was of the opinion that giving voting rights to Indian illiterate and rural people was one of the worst mistakes India did after getting its Independence. According to him, Indian rural people should not be the decision makers. He opined that Indian urban people (and therefore 'literate') are more qualified in selecting the Indian leaders. He even proposed a model where only literate Indians should be allowed to contest elections, and a literate voter should get more votes- a bachelor’s degree should be given two votes, while a PhD should be given four votes, and so on.

Though I found his idea utterly ridiculous, I described it here for a reason. That’s because the above sentiment is shared by many Indian elite, urban and literate in different shades, may be not so grossly, but may be little subtly. Look at the present campaign by TOI called Lead India. It is nothing but a reflection of this sentiment held by most urban people. All those who got selected are urban, well-educated and comprise mostly upper caste, and Hindu. When describing them, TOI uses many words and sentences to talk about their qualifications, which college they went to, which MNC they worked for, etc. According to me, most of them have completely vacuous opinions on socialism, on caste-issues, on secularism, right to vote, coalition governments, etc. In my opinion they are inane and downright dumb. However they seem to reflect the sentiments of these urban Indians very well that Wisdom = Knowledge = Education = College Degrees.

Here’s the third law of Indian Idiocy.

3. Experience is Age.

Older a person, it is naturally assumed, the more experienced he is. Even if that person has not traveled anywhere outside his city, Even if that person has not met people of different cultures, even if that person has not tasted different cuisines of different lands. Just because he is old, he is considered more experienced.

A friend of mine, to counter this notion, said, ‘it is not experience, it is the capacity to experience that should matter’. Two people going through similar situations can come out quite differently just because one had more 'capacity to experience' than the other.

For most Indians, a person sitting under a tree all his life meditating is vastly experienced and wiser than a person who has sailed oceans and seas. No wonder, we have codified this law into our religion itself- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, before he left for England to study, had to combat this all-pervasive belief that he is going to lose his caste if he sailed the seas. For most part of our history, our opinion on experiences was quite skewed. For Indians, Experience = Age.

A note on methods of learning - as I see it:

A person can learn through three different ways

1. Through books and other sources of education.

2. Through experiences of others- which includes discourse.

3. Through one’s own experiences.

Knowledge is a combination of all the above three. We cannot say which one is better than the other. It is usually sum of all the above three in various proportions.

Three days of ‘No Honking’

On last Sunday, we took a trip in our car to a nearby hill, and on the way, we met with a minor accident involving hitting a dog. The dog scurried away, but for some reason, my horn stopped working. I didn’t get a chance to get it fixed, and hence I have been driving my car without a horn for the last three days.

I didn’t think that it would be possible to drive the car without a horn in this country, but well, to my surprise, I am beginning to like it. So, what’s the big difference driving without a horn? Well, now I am extra careful when I am driving since I cannot expect the other person to move away. This experience is very similar to what I had experienced when I was driving a motorbike in USA. One has to train oneself quite seriously to ride a motorbike in that country. The reason being that USA is mostly a car driven country and there are very few motorbikers. A motorbiker has to ride extra cautiously. The onus of being made visible to other drivers on the road lies with the motor biker. The reason is simple- If you make a mistake, you die. And if the car driver makes a mistake, you die. One has to anticipate other people’s movement, be always on alert and take precautions beforehand. Being casual about it can result in a fatality. There are no seatbelts or airbags. And the helmets sometime only act as a cage to contain your brain from spilling over.

Driving without a horn for the last three days has made me drive my car extra cautiously- when I saw few kids playing in the nearby yard, I was extra careful to make sure none of them enters the road. Earlier, all I did was just honk and keep driving. Now, I have to make sure I keep distance from this lady who seems to walk very loosely and who shows disposition to cross the road anytime now without ever looking my way.

A friend of mine tells me that Indians are the most trusting people on the planent. No other people handover the responsibility of deciding the fate of their lives onto others the way Indians do each day when they drive on the streets. They just honk and hope the other person would swerve from their original path to save them from getting into a major accident, they just enter the mainroad without even looking believing that the other person would screech to a halt, they just overtake and keep blinking their lights and hope that act alone would save them from a direct collision.

If all the horns on every car and motorbike gets bust, we would definitely have a more peaceful nation. I also believe that many of us would take back that responsibility that we gave away of saving our lives, and start behaving more responsibly taking charge of our own fates. That would build character and we would see more and better leaders.

Instead of the current charade of creating leaders by debates and SMS votes, I think TOI should just campaing for no horns! That would spawn more leaders in this country.