I had a minor revelation today while debating with an upholder of the “great Indian culture”. A very common phrase I keep hearing is “you people”. As in “You people are destroying Indian culture” or “You people have no morals” or “You people support love marriages” etc etc. A mentality of “They are the enemy” and anyone belonging to this group is responsible for whatever real or imaginary crimes someone else has committed. I’ve heard this before as well when supporters of the Godhra riots say “It was only a push back against the train incident”. But targeted towards whom? The entire Muslim community? Most people who were killed had nothing to do with violence and were innocent. How can a massacre of a mass of individuals be justified in the name of vengeance?
But I now realize that this way of thinking is a defining feature of our part of the earth. Lots of people don’t view justice in the way the rest of the civilized world does. To my mind, justice means punishment of individuals who have committed a crime. Punishment of those specific individuals alone and no one else. You don’t hold a son responsible for the acts of his father or take revenge on a daughter for what her brother did. And yet we keep reading about incidents where a girl is raped out of revenge for what her relatives did.
In my opinion if at all there is disharmony in India amongst people, it’s because we don’t view each other as individuals. We look at them in the context of which group they’re in. Which family do they belong to? Which caste? Which religion? What gender? Which state? What skin color? Hardly ever is a person taken for who they are alone. This seems to be a pretty common phenomena for most cultures. But it’s taken to an extreme in places like India where we stoop to taking out our venom on individuals from a certain group if we can’t get our hands on the actual person we’re pissed off with.
A mentality of ‘They are the enemy’ and anyone belonging to this group is responsible for real or imaginary crimes someone else has committed
Communal riots are course the poster child for this kind of illogical thinking. I’m betting many of you have heard statements like “These Muslims etc”, “These Atheists etc”, “These westerners etc”, “These girls etc.”, “These Biharis etc” It’s a poisonous way of living and one that we need to jettison as soon as possible. When you direct hatred towards an entire group of individuals most of whom have done nothing to harm you, then you turn it into an “us vs them” issue.
It works both ways as well. People perceive any harm to their group as a personal insult to themselves. Doubtless a hangover from our clannish ancestry and it has its uses. Injustice against a family member will quite justifiably enrage me. The problem I feel arises when that “group” spans hundreds or thousands of people whom you’ve never met, and will never know. That’s when it becomes unhealthy.
To progress and become mature each and every one of us needs to detach from the larger groups we associate ourselves with. Our country or city, our caste, our religion, and our gender. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pool our resources to fight for causes we believe in. Like the movement for women’s rights for example. But the moment it starts to become an “us vs them” relationship, that is the time when everyone just needs to take a step back consider the others as individuals, and not merely as part of some larger “group”.
Very well put. Pink Floyd sang ” Us and Them” in a similar vein!
I especially agree with this mentality of looking at people as part of the group, the YOU PEOPLE and not individuals. However, whenever any question of justice towards a specific marginalised group is raised, it is always assumed that the individual should somehow rise above circumstances!! YOU PEOPLE SHOULD WORK HARD if you want to be rich!!!
Very precisely put !!
In reply to indianfeminist101
Been a long time since I heard that song :)
I find nothing untoward in banding together in order to demand equal treatment for a specific group. The problem in my opinion arises only when they starts looking at other groups as the enemy.
When you look at it closely it is a strategy or a method to garner support. Or else something would just remain an opinion. Only when you have group behind you it becomes a ‘a cause’. The sheer plurality of the population added with the number with signicant number being jobless it is a strategy which works to perfection. So there is a method in this madness.
In reply to nandagopal k
True. There are so many groups that India is particularly ripe for this kind of thinking. I don’t feel its’ a deliberate strategy though. For many, this way of thought comes naturally…
That is reality. IT will ALWAYS be us and them. Even if EVERYONE were the same nationality, ethnic background religion, etc., the fact that you have “family” and “non-family” continues the whole “us and them” mentality.
“You Yankees Fans”
“you dirty punk rock fans”
“you uptight Beach Boys fans”
If you can think of something that can group a bunch of people together, you get the “us and them” phenomena.
And you know what? To a degree, this is somethign we NEED.
Think of it this way…
“you pepsi people” forces the “coke people” to make a better product, right?
Extremism is bad, but doesn’t the attached group allow for its adherents to do a better job at something?
I’m sure Merck has a “You Pfizer people” mentality, which has allowed Merck to make better drugs in order to compete with “those pfizer people.”
“To progress and become mature each and every one of us needs to detach from the larger groups we associate ourselves with. Our country or city, our caste, our religion, and our gender. ”
Absolutely brilliant. Welcome to thinking like a libertarian :)
I really hope you pursue this idea further. However, I hope you do realize this kind of thinking will lead to a massacre of left wing holy cows: like affirmative action and
progressive taxation…
In reply to Abhishek
I don’t subscribe to any set of specific guidelines. As Samuel Butler said “Extremes are alone logical, and they are always absurd, the mean is alone practicable and it is always illogical”.
Any “ism” when taken to an extreme is illogical. Including libertarianism. But I’ve always been closer that that philosophy than any other.
I have always balked at anything that ends with an “ism” cause the moment I do that, I cease to be free and will be obligated to subscribe. I find freedom in the fringe, that not belonging, that not being complete in any definition.
In reply to Mysoul
Exactly. You should be free to make up your own mind about any particular issue – not be dictated to by a specific philosophy. Of course, we can take inspiration and principles from many types of ideas, but the final choice must be our own to decide.
In reply to bhagwad
I found that I cant apply blanket principles to any set of events. Each has to be individualized no matter how much they affect a Group or Set. So, even if I like a Philosophy, I cant apply it at times, cause when we take a Whole view of the event, it doesn’t start and stop at that particular event, but from a past which is unique to each and every small event and the individuals involved in the present event. I found that a solution that is relevant only to the present event, never puts an end to the undesirable after-affects of the solution, if the past events are not considered within that solution.
In reply to Mysoul
I had written about this a while back. Dilemmas of a Liberal: http://www.bhagwad.com/blog/2011/philosophy/dilemmas-of-a-liberal.html/
In reply to bhagwad
“This confirms my belief that no “system” can ever blindly dictate complex issues such as governance. Each case is unique and though we can use ideology to guide our decision, the truth is never a simple matter.”
That pretty much summed it up for me. This is probably why I enjoyed reading The stories of Vikramaditya and wished we could have clones of him in our Judicial System. From the stories, it felt like he really understood what Justice was. He never used a single principle to judge the conflict, his solutions were never “blankets”, never took the beaten path yet never hesitated to walk on the beaten path when needed.
The first time you’ve the majority loose their jobs, their freedom, their sense of security. The first time you’ve the majority living in fear – you’ll hear these phrases – ‘You people’, ‘You Biharis’ etc. Nobody spreads this hatred. Its nothing but a direct implication of bad financial policies on part of the Govt. (And in our case the Autocratic Socialist Congress party for the last 60 years.
So its not about somebody spreading hatred – its about spreading Poverty and development imbalance. Its lesser in the US & Europe – not because they’re morally superior to us. Its just that they’ve followed better economic policies. The first time they’ve economic troubles – you know very well who’s going to be the ‘They’ for them.
In reply to Mir
The US is showing some economic troubles lately. The “You People” Culture has grown quite rampant here. “You liberals.” “You Californians.” “You blacks.” “You obama people.”
In Europe–because of “You Muslims,” We’re going to ban Burqas (which doesn’t make sense since a lot of Catholic Nuns wear something similar to a hijab).
Poverty and using a “scape goat” seem to correlate quite well.
BTW, libertarianism? Even if followed to the extreme, you still get better results since people alone can fulfill their needs without the assistance of ANYONE.
India is and will always be a casteist society. And it’s not any better in our so called cosmopolitan cities. If villages and towns rely on the age old gotras and surnames, we use education, bank balance, colour of the skin to discriminate.
It’s a complex state we are in. The ‘you’ people, defiant and itching to move on and the ‘they’ people becomimg paranoid and sometimes resorting to violence.
In reply to Purba
Well, at least bank balances and education are not set in stone. Rich people become poor and uneducated parents can strive to get a great education for their kids. Caste is perverse because it’s immutable forever and ever no matter what you do or how many generations pass by. Also, at least the laws of the land are the same for poor people and uneducated individuals. Again, this is in opposition to caste where the basic rights of the “lower castes” are themselves snatched away.
In reply to bhagwad
If you are apart of a system that requires castes, get out of that system.
The system has EVERY right to impart a caste system and its adherents have every right to follow the caste system.
I’m a Muslim, yet I am all for the Hindu caste system. It isn’t perverse. It is just there. Don’t like it? Don’t be apart of it, that is it.
The fact is, lower caste members are different than upper caste members. Even in America, we know that poor people in South Central are just different than rich people living in West LA. We accept it. We move on. Those who like the system stay apart of the system. Those that don’t do something about it (work hard, move, etc.)
Even so, in India, lower castes are protected and I am glad they are so.
The “you people” system allows for great competition and allows for people to force themselves to better themselves. Its capitalism at its finest.
In reply to Western Point of View
There was a time when the laws themselves discriminated against castes. Lower castes’s didn’t have access to public property etc. For your system to work, the laws have to be he same and everyone should have the same rights.
In reply to bhagwad
well yes and no. The laws would apply to all people in PUBLIC arenas, but in a libertarian society, the concept of anything public doesn’t exist. This includes police and security even. Perhaps only courts, but even those are incredibly limited.
Roads, transport, jobs, school, medicine, and I’d say the air you breath would be privatized.