Truth does not belong to the one who shouts the loudest

By Chitra Subramaniam During a recent conversation in Bangalore, I earned the wrath of some friends when I suggested that compared to the Congress party, the BJP was a (mere) pick-pocket. Before I could complete my sentence which was “…because they have not been in power for as many years,” accusations flew far and wide, tempers flared, names were dropped and selected robberies were recalled.  Never ceases to amaze me how people think history begins with what they know! [caption id=“attachment_1282619” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Twitter is an example of how a tool can be turned into a thing of terror by stupidity.[/caption] And that is most worrying. National frustration is fanning stupidity all around. It has spared few and tarred many. Several others will follow. Is corruption related only to money? Stupidity is violent. It always wants to have the first word and the final argument. Stupidity is always either about accusing others of something or blaming them for all things wrong – because stupidity is afraid of being found out. Stupidity is self-righteous - it cannot stand another point of view, even a stupid one because it cannot spot the difference. And stupidity is dangerous because stupid people destroy not just themselves, but everything around them. During an animated discussion with friends on how we would re-structure the world and redistribute wealth when we were students at Stanford, USA, my husband – then my fiancé - told me to read The Fundamental Laws of Stupidity as explained by Carlo Maria Cippola, an eminent Italian economist-historian who lived in the last century.  I am still wondering why I was asked to read it. You may want to read it here. The rich, the poor, the middle class – creamy upper, lower and even lower – in India live outside the law. The Congis, the Namo Bhakts, and all the others between them know this and perpetuate it. There may be the few odd people here and there who are different – that’s why they are called odd. If you work within the law you are an idealist dictator. If you work outside the law it’s because that’s the way it is. The educated, the urbane, the cultured tell each other that the important thing is to get the job done. So deep is the rot that those who don’t need to break any rules to survive, do, and then blame the village tehsildar for asking a bribe of Rs 100. It has to start somewhere, so why not start with the obvious, the visible – the one you can count. So many things are so obviously wrong in the way we live our daily lives that in one desperate stroke, we have called it governance. Corruption is a governance issue. Governance is a corruption issue. Which comes first – electricity or roads, food or medicines? It is when you don’t feel desperate to prove a point that knowledge unfolds and reason prevails. It is only when people stop trying to save India that India will be able to breathe. If that doesn’t happen, another generation of Indians – secular, insecure, insular, inclusive - will choke. Our leaders do not emerge from thin air. They are thrown up by us. We can pick the mirror we want to look into, but a thousand mirrors will also be held up to us. Twitter is an example of how a tool can be turned into a thing of terror by stupidity. Almost everybody on Twitter (especially in India) is either abusing someone or getting abused and more recently, a lot of history is being shared in 140 characters. It’s not just political parties that are organised in this follower manufacturing process. Twitter bhakti has struck all. Corporate leaders tweet about their increasing followers, tweeters self-congratulate on reaching a few numbers. Everybody on twitter is an expert, a keeper of the nation’s conscience, an interpreter of India. Leitmotif – as long as you agree with my view of India, you are a true Indian. Here’s a personal example. My interest in history has several geographies, and a few languages. There is a dangerous drift across political parties and their cronies to dominate the conversation about the history of India. History does not begin where someone decides it does – geography may. History has to be constantly revisited to ensure that the second time it does repeat itself as a tragedy. It was only at the end of the last century that the modern world’s oldest democracy - Switzerland - woke up to the full extent of the country’s collaboration with Hitler’s Germany. This time last century, Europe was preparing to go to war, making the continent one of the bloodiest in history. A course correction was sought when Yugoslavia was split at the turn of the last century, to set right what was called “the fault lines of history.” France still remains in denial and Austria sent Nazi Kurt Waldheim to head the United Nations (UN) with the approval of the international community. It is never a wrong time or a right time to question knowledge or conventional wisdom. But it is patently stupid to think truth belongs to the one who shouts the loudest, is the richest, has the most friends or the biggest reach. I recently tweeted that we were compiling the works of my great grandfather, Prof V Subrahmania Iyer, former registrar of Mysore University and the king’s counsel of the erstwhile state of Mysore. A student of mathematics and physics by training and a philosopher by quest, he travelled to Switzerland in 1937 to meet Carl Gustav Jung, who also visited him in Mysore. The purpose of the tweet was to connect a few dots. That happened, but so did something else. My message was tweeted as proof that the west had stolen Indian philosophy and recycled it as its own without a trace. I responded that it was unkind to speak ill of the dead. I was swiftly informed that the tweet was not aimed at my great grandfather. Carl Gustav Jung is alive. So is stupidity. PS – The latest entrant to the world of stupidity is the phrase – small town boy. A small town in India is half a continent elsewhere. Just asking - hashtag. Chitra Subramaniam is a journalist and author.