Dear India, Your Windows Are Broken

New York City in the early 90s was rife with crime.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Bill Bratton, his police commissioner, famously used the "Broken Window" theory of criminology to make the city safe. Today, New York is the safest large city in America.

There is much to learn for India from the Broken Window idea.

***

The idea is simple. Small crimes beget big crimes.

Broken windows in a neighborhood show a couple things. There is likely vandalism going on and that neither the residents nor the police care very much.

These windows are an invitation to other criminals. More homes are vandalized and more windows are broken. Drug dealers and gangs move in. Abandoned buildings become their den.

Violence follows. People walk around fearful. Boys are bullied in the street and girls assaulted in hallways. Stores are routinely robbed and visitors viciously mugged.

Murders happen.

The neighborhood becomes disreputable. No one wants to buy homes here or set up businesses. Restaurants flee, grocers arm themselves, taxis no longer want to take anyone here.

This is how neighborhoods die. Blight and chaos is what a solitary broken window leads to.

***

You want to keep neighborhoods safe? You must fix every broken window.

This was the small idea with big consequences.

Crime was tracked and statistically analyzed, neighborhood by neighborhood. No crime was too small to be tracked. Every broken window was taken seriously.

Community policing began. Forgive the mixed metaphor but police officers from the community knew exactly how to nip the broken window in the bud. They were no longer chasing headline crimes - they were rewarded for cleaning out the smallest crime in their neighborhood.

Safe and clean neighborhoods became attractive to young families and small businesses. The flight to the suburbs reversed. The local economy strengthened from small business investments.

Criminals were no longer welcome. They had no place to hide.

Murders fell. Sexual assaults fell. Robberies fell. Muggings fell.

The city became safe and remains so to this day.

***

Why am I saying all this?

There is a lot to learn from this experience for Indian Police. But that's a discussion for another day.

I want to draw a parallel to bigotry.

When a society condones small acts of racism or communal hate or gender bias, it sows the seeds for lynchings and riots and rapes.

When a minister mistreats an immigrant, or an MP questions patriotism of an athlete, or when a girl is snubbed in small ways within her family, the broken window cycle begins.

Too many of us dismiss these incidents as small embarrassments not worthy of our attention.

If experience is any guide, this is precisely the wrong response.

When a bigot can get away with small hatred, he is not content with it. Next time he will try to see what more he can get away with. Others of like-minded perspective are encouraged by the non-response to the first instance of brazen bigotry. Before you know it, you have more and more bigots pushing their luck farther and farther. Words become sharper, more hurtful, then - eventually - they stop being just words. Blood ends up getting spilled.

The only way to keep a society from becoming a chauvinistic, identity-riven, churn of hatred is to call out the small transgressions and make examples of them all. This not only discourages the original perp, it deters others from trying the same or worse, and - crucially - it creates a societal norm of not tolerating bigotry.

This is the lesson of the broken window theory.

In a time where bigoted incidents are fast becoming an epidemic, nothing can be more important.

***

Rudy Giuliani went on to lead his great city through the horror of 9/11.

It is a matter of singular pride that the city did not erupt into frenzied violence targeting Arabs, Muslims, brown-skinned people, immigrants, anyone. The mayor told his city to stand together and support each other. And the city did exactly that.

This was probably because we liked what our city had become and did not want to lose it. We also had a leader who did not want either criminal violence or bigotry tormenting his people.

That's civic pride and applies to neighborhood safety as much as to comfort with diversity. And that's leadership.

Something  I think India - whose windows are sadly very broken - has a lot to learn from.  

Enough

Enough

Of screaming babies in the parliament, Of perspiration
In air cooled auto rickshaws glued to unmoving highways,
Of pleading eyes of the man about to be lynched, Of tea
That still smells of the garden of mostly evil, Of Patribal
And Kalahandi and places like Kokrajhar that only exist
In newspapers between stories of starlets and paid blah blah,
Of caterwauling 99 percentiles in boards who still missed the cutoff,
Of grand narratives and great games when the future stands
On the crossroads panhandling at tinted windows and your
Proud heartbeat doesn't skip even once, Of art trapped in sterile
Airports where entry requires a passport obtained through high crimes,
Of being a refugee wrapped in a flag that has long since stopped caring,
Of being only our surnames and the flatness of our noses
And which superstition we will call out to when dying.

Of small men and scared women.

Of the beautiful everything that stayed up all night, every night,
For a decade to earn a green card and run away.

Of sinning so much that the suffering began before we were in hell.

Of words.

Enough

(I am up very very early and I am already tired)

India's Holiday From History

Just at the moment when American political debate had reached a nadir of frivolousness ... the nation's decade-long holiday from history came to a shattering end | George Will, September 12 2001

***

I love India but no longer like much of what I see, I lamented in October 2011.

The 80s and the 00s can't be any more different in Indian consciousness.

80s was when fate switched off the light. We were riven by identity, suffocated by air, vulnerable to theft. Bluestar, Bhopal, Bofors. And most of us were poor.

00s was when fate shone on us. The earth became flat, India became young, the world accepted our bomb. Davos, Demography, (nuclear) Deal. And some of us became prosperous.

On the surface, this is a great narrative. And, yet, something seems amiss.

***

 

80s, as I wrote, was when fate switched off the light. It was our decade of despair.

 

Then the Berlin Wall fell. India may have had to pawn her gold but fate had rolled in her favor. America's heady holiday from history swept over Indian shores as well. We thought, at least for a while when the money was easy, that we had overcome those Oh So Twentieth Century divisions on caste and faith and language and race and economic status. We were all getting rich so none of this mattered.

 

Yes, Babri Masjid, Mumbai, Kargil, Kandahar, Sabarmati Express, Gulbarg Society, Akshardham, Mumbai again, Kokrajhar, and Muzaffarnagar all happened. But the overarching story was more about BRICS, Bangalore, Chandrayan, Commonwealth Games, and GDP than the tales of murder that we wanted to move beyond. Everything became about the vibrant economy that would soon make us a superpower.

 

To understand the depth of our delusion, just look at the current political discourse. One party is defending its economic record, another is running this down while boasting about its own record, and a third is fretting that some (corrupt) people became too rich while everyone was becoming rich.

 

We get it. It's the economy, stupid.

***

But it's never so easy, is it?

 

Recall that I wrote my lament at a time Indian economy was still growing strongly. In every visit, I found a country bubbling with endless optimism and limitless energy. There were no takers for my growing unease with what I was seeing. I myself didn't fully understand it.

 

As India has slowed, the nascent unease has crystallized into full blown despair.

 

Just because we were busy chasing riches doesn't mean we had advanced into modernity.

 

Caste politics still dominates the Hindi heartland. Regional divisions are tearing apart Andhra Pradesh. Liberalism is in all out retreat. Religious bigotry passes for political debate. Racism - to our own people as well as towards foreign guests - is routine. Gay people may not practice love. Gated communities proliferate while children panhandle for change. Khaps are defended by all political parties and rape is blamed on victims by supposed advocates for women's rights. Even justice is accused of lust and the army is sought to be divided by faith. Soni Sori is tortured by an officer who India then decorates and Irom Sharmila still starves.

All this ugliness has been here all along. Dazzled by wealth and blinded by hubris, we willfully denied what was right in front of our eyes.

Well, India's holiday from history is over and the time has come to deal with the ghosts we thought we had left behind.

 

***

 

Some will say that all will be well if only we could return India to economic growth.

 

I am not so sure. Economic growth, as the past two decades showed, is too small a band-aid over a vicious oozing wound. It can't hold back the bleeding any longer.

 

For all the conversation about governance and growth and fight against corruption, the real political issue at hand is discovering who we are as a people. My wager is that we will spend the next decade sorting this out. Indian energies will be spent more on settling identity issues than creating the infrastructure of modernity.

 

Breakneck growth will likely have to wait.

 

***

 

This is not all bad. India has to settle these matters at some point. This is as good a time as any.

 

For India's teeming millennials, who have mostly seen good times, this back to the future sojourn into the our incomplete 80s will be jarring. Maybe, just maybe, this will teach them some humility.

The Great Undeceiving

Had they deceived us,
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?

T.S. Eliot | Burnt Norton

***

I am one who doubted AAP all the way to its crowning. Still, I couldn't help smiling when it won.

There is nothing about Mr Kejriwal's populism that appeals to me. I believe in the conservatism of doubt. When I hear the phrase "this time it's different", I usually head for the hills.

But, I must confess, this time does feel different.

***

By merely winning, Mr Kejriwal has arguably achieved more than his larger political rivals would have were they to complete entire terms in office.

He has shown a path to power that is not laced with the usual cynicism. Middle class India can see for the first time that it can participate in politics in a real way - not as acolytes of a strong man or by complicity in India's patronage system, not by division or corruption, but by activism.

If, as a consequence, good people consider politics as a career choice, that's a huge win right there.

In a country where as much as a third of the national parliament has been criminally charged, what could be more important than this?

***

Sometimes we are too cynical. We dismiss idealism as inexperience. We parse ideology as though its an astral chart. Let me raise my own hand as being guilty on this.

How does one talk of ideology, though, in a country that's been systematically impoverished by corruption, divided by politics of caste, faith, & superstition, and routinely terrorized by the State?

If ideology were to be the shibboleth, few Indian politicians would pass muster. Their only ideology is rent-seeking patronage. Their only difference is who they extract these rents from and who they patronize.

So what if Mr Kejriwal's economic ideas are absurd? One of our leading parties stands with quacks who peddle superstition. Another bans literature for fear of offending those who will never read it. Yet another watches young children freeze to death because apparently "no one dies of cold". And everybody snoops on everybody else.

Is Mr Kejriwal's populism any worse than their superstition or narrow mindedness or callousness? And their all-corrosive cynicism?

***

Mr Kejriwal is likely to fail in delivering his populist promises. Most of these are not affordable or practical. His opponents are gleefully waiting for him to fail.

This is where this time it's different. Many in the middle class are desperately rooting for him to succeed.

They are unlikely to blame him for his failure. He will point to cynical opponents and obstructionist bureaucrats as the villains preventing him from doing what he intends. My bet is that he will succeed in this and voters will stand by him.

The more his cynical opponents fight him, the more heroic he will appear.

***

I believe in the conservatism of doubt. Doubt illuminates understanding. The conservative wants to understand.

When doubt is finally dispelled, however, and a new narrative becomes necessary through the force of moral truth, historical inevitability, or social acceptance, the conservative adopts it with dignity.

Indians have long been deceived into thinking they exercise political choice. In reality, they merely choose a different variant of the same toxicity each time. Perhaps there are good people in this maelstrom but they too have deceived themselves about the merit of unquestioning obeisance to the powers that be.

Deception cannot be the sustainable state of being. A new narrative is necessary through the force of moral truth and historical inevitability.

What happened in Delhi shows this narrative is breaking through into social acceptance.

The great undeceiving has finally begun.

The Conservatism of Doubt

Conservatism to me means questioning the old, doubting the new, yet comfort with necessary change.

***

There is a common arc to all our competing histories. An idyllic universe disturbed by barbarians, vain-glorious battles to right all wrongs, an Elysian future once light has vanquished darkness. The inherited old - our tradition - is thus more theater than theology. To accept such hand-me-down tradition on blind faith, without reasoning through its validity or merit, would be herding together as unquestioning sheep. This is anathema to conservatives.

Naipaul thus is insightful for he questions our airbrushed history. Rushdie matters for he re-imagines his foundational past. Ramanujan is important for his mythology is in plural voices. Lelyveld is interesting for straying from our narrow hagiography of the Mahatma. Hussain is beautiful for liberating the Goddess from the imprisoning confines of the temple.

For conservatives, such discourse is welcome for it disturbs our kitschy sense of inherited self-delight. Without such questioning, history becomes a predetermined flow of time and tradition becomes dogma. Determinism and dogma are the antithesis of free choice and expression. That is the territory of the Marxist.

Doubt illuminates understanding. The conservative wants to understand.      

***

Just because a conservative questions the old, however, does not mean he embraces the new easily.

The new is seldom new. When conservatives hear the phrase "this time it is different", they head for the hills.

It may be easy to market the sizzle of revolution but, if one questioned history one would know, "revolution" is the old game of Three-Card Monte that distracts attention while shedding blood and stealing power. What revolution has not been followed by killing fields and new, even more cruel, emperors?

To conservatives, the status quo - with all its warts - is usually a better place than the untested unknown. Gradual reform is welcome, instant revolution is not. Not for us the caprice of constantly shifting public preference, we are the custodians of stability. Not for us social change imposed by unelected do-gooders in courts, we'd rather wait for society to mature enough to change itself through democratic legislation.

This is what William F. Buckley meant when he famously proclaimed a conservative as one who stands athwart history yelling stop. And, if I may reference it, this is also the core message of The Dark Knight Rises - where a conservative Batman defends his broken city from the shadow of Bane's anarchic revolution.  
     

***

When doubt is finally dispelled, however, and a new narrative becomes necessary through the force of moral truth, historical inevitability, or social acceptance, the conservative adopts it with dignity.

There is this great story about the end of the American Civil War. In Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, there fell a pall of gloom and confusion. At a Sunday service in a prominent church, where the defeated elite had come to God's house, the priest called on the worshipers to come forth and take communion. A dignified black man walked up to the pew and kneeled down, much to the consternation of the shocked audience.

Then, an equally dignified bearded white man rose and walked up next to the kneeling black man and joined him for the communion. He was the defeated General Robert E Lee leading his people into a new post-slavery age.

Perhaps the story is apocryphal, and there are variations on the theme out there, but it is a great story about societal redemption that captures the essence of conservatism.

Another great story is that about John Profumo, the disgraced conservative British defense minister from the 60s whose dalliance with Christine Keeler cost him his job. His fall from the top of the heap was epic. He retreated into the shadows and toiled for forty years in a home for the poor in London's East End, washing dishes and cleaning toilets among other acts of service. He asked for nothing in return and when queried what he had learned from the experience, he simply said: humility.

This was "remorse of conscience" as epic as his Icarus like fall. Let me quote from (Reagan speechwriter and conservative) Peggy Noonan's essay to describe what happened next:

Nothing quite said what needed saying like what happened at Margaret Thatcher's 70th birthday party, in 1995. To show their countrymen what he'd done—and what they thought of what he'd done—they invited him, walked him through, and put him in a particular place. They seated him next to the queen. People wonder about the purpose of establishments. That is the purpose of establishments.      

This possibility of human remorse and societal redemption is also a conservative virtue. A Marxist would have thrown his distinguished life into the dustbin of history and made a forever example of his decadent bourgeoisie fall. Only the conservative establishment could have lent him a hand up all the way to a place next to the Queen in applause for his astonishing humility.

***

Indian conservatives, in my humble view, are full of too much certainty  and too little doubt. Furthermore, they champion idealized illusions of the past, display a (revolutionary) anti-establishment zeal, and have no will for remorse or reach for redemption. Someday, one hopes, this will change for India does need a vital conservative movement.

The Wisdom of Humility

Who writes the extraordinary dissent?
The West Wing, Season 5, Episode 17

***

He was old school Wall Street, the kind who smashed phones when trades went wrong. People were scared of him, he didn't like math geeks, and he couldn't quite comprehend my Indian accent. Walking into an angry lion's den is not how your first day on the job is supposed to go!

He wanted to talk about options. So, I mumbled about delta and gamma and vega, boasted about how I could do integrals in my head (which, at that time, I kinda' could), and raved about IITs.

How do we price options, he snarled? Black-Scholes, of course, I offered.

Wrong.

You think it's your fancy math that prices options? You are arrogant and haven't the faintest clue about how markets work.

Tell me then, I pushed my luck.

It's people like me who haggle and bluff and negotiate and wager who discover the price of options. Black and Scholes were merely trying to model what we do. Their math is imitation. What we do is the real thing.

Don't get me wrong, he went on, math is important. But it won't make you money. Any dumb old computer can do the math. It's understanding of human psychology that will give you the edge.

Your math is a necessary 30% of the game. But this anyone can learn. The remaining 70% cannot be taught. That's where the magic is.

Talk about a humbling first day at work!

***

There are some in India who believe that disciplines like engineering and medicine are somehow more valuable than social sciences and liberal arts.

To such people, life is a series of problems to be analytically solved. Whatever the problems, an army of left-brain quasi-robots can be deployed to write programs to solve them. There must be a process for everything, every process must be six sigma certified, and the outcomes must be deterministic.

One can empathize with this worldview. India is a swirling lava of pure chaos; thirst for order is understandable in this maelstrom.

We absolutely need the engineers to lay the pipelines and pathways for information, energy, water, transportation, sewage, and money. We need the doctors to decode DNA and smother disease. We need scientists and mathematicians to advance our knowledge by falsifying superstition.

But this is not all we need. This is the 30%. The 70% will have to come from elsewhere.

***     

I don't remember very much at all of what I learned in the lecture halls of IIT.

What I haven't forgotten is the moment when an English Lit grad student opened my eyes to T S Eliot. There's no algorithm that can possibly replicate the beauty and wisdom in The Four Quartets.

I haven't forgotten either my classmates who killed themselves over - what now seem utterly trivial - disappointments. There is no program that could have solved their problems nor any medicine that could solder back their splattered brains. Psychological counseling might have saved their lives.

Any suggestion that literature and psychology are lesser disciplines is arrogant in the extreme. 

***

Myron Scholes (who subsequently won the Nobel Prize for his work on options pricing) went on to wager and lose an astonishing fortune in the summer of 1998. Wall Street was brought to its knees.

All the formulas in the world couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

It was also financial engineers whose deterministic certitude brought down the world in 2008. The collapse came as a rude shock to them (although it shouldn't have) for reality did not track their math.

There were dissenting voices sounding the alarm. They understood the fancy models and financial legerdemain, but they also remembered lessons of history and the psychology of markets. They knew about tulips and amnesia, arrogance and humility.

It is in these extraordinary dissents from mechanical models that huge fortunes were made. That's the 70% the old fox wanted me to understand on my first day at work. That's where the magic was.

***

Let me return to Eliot and close the final loop.

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire

Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless

I can only wish they taught humility at IITs and every other engineering school in India.

2000 Indian Rupees

That there is evil in this world is clear from what he did to her.

I've struggled with words on this one. Even my outrage is numb. So I've mostly read and listened.

The most sordid of all the ugly details is about the hush money.

***

What's 2000 Indian Rupees? A couple of pizza lunches? Or a night out with friends in Mumbai?

I paid more for a round trip on Heathrow Express to Paddington last week. My room service for dinner cost almost as much.

I've seen an Indian lady pay 75,000 Indian Rupees, in cash, for shoes at a high-end Delhi mall.

***

Then it hits me. 2000 Indian Rupees is the price for leftover lives.

The policeman who offered this sum to the parents of that beautiful little girl didn't conjure it from thin air. He has no doubt offered the same to countless others to hush up their rage.

She's only a poor little girl, he must've reasoned. She will soon forget. For her parents, this is a month's worth of income.

T S Eliot wrote of lives measured in coffee spoons. Leftover lives in India are not measured at all.

***

What did he see in a five year old? It's inconceivable that it was lust. 

The instruments of brutalization suggest, instead, an impotent rage. He couldn't stand her innocence. So he violated her and tortured her and left her to die.

Then, predictably, he ran back home.

***

She, miraculously, refused to be treated as a leftover life. All I can feel is awe towards her.

She is a tough girl and will survive this.

But can we say the same for the unequal, uncaring, and unconscionable world she will grow up in?

Gross National Grace

In his classic novel, Shibumi, Trevanian describes "the ineffable quality" as follows:

Shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of a man, it is . . . how does one say it? Authority without domination? Something like that

***

Shibumi has stayed with me ever since I read it years ago. 

Spiritual tranquility that is not passive. Being without the angst of becoming. Authority without domination. Do these words not remind us of Gandhi?

And not just Gandhi. Such strength (and beauty) through grace has been the Indian tradition.

Maa Nishada Pratistham Tvamagamahsāsvati Samaa

Yat Kraunchamithunaadekam Avadhi Kaamamohitam

Our first poem was a graceful protest against senseless violence.

I also think of Shabri's ber and the grace with which Ram ate them. And the Bodhi tree under which Siddhartha found his own grace.

I think of the persecuted Parsis who arrived in Gujarat and gracefully made it their home. I think of Somnath that our people built up again and again as a graceful counterpoint to a marauder. I think of Akbar whose Din-e-Ilahi was a nonpareil act of grace.

I think of the universality of Yoga and the syncretic notes of Bismillah Khan.

I think of Ghalib and of Guru Tegh Bahadur.

I think of Rahul Dravid and I think of Irom Sharmila.

Shibumi may be a Japanese word but it is a thoroughly Indian ideal.

***

Modernity has made us less graceful alas.

Our cacophonous republic sees grace as weakness and vanity of intellectuals.

We mistake violence for strength, aggression for assertiveness, garishness for grace.

We pin gallantry medals on police officers who force pebbles inside hapless women.

Our cities are noise, our streets are sewers, our arguments are abuse, our politics is personal destruction.

***

I quite think that grace has been and should remain the eternal idea of India.

It is through grace that we will find balance at home and a place in the world.

We can be humble without being timid, simple yet sophisticated, vocal without being argumentative.

We are better off building reserves of strength, not brandishing the little we have. Indeed, when India eventually achieves Shibumi, she will find she has also become a superpower.

 

***

Lest I am accused of hypocrisy, let me hasten to note that I don't claim to be personally anywhere near this graceful ideal that I write of. It doesn't make me proud but that's how it is.

I do think it is worth striving for. Our reach may far exceed our grasp but at least we can reach for grace.

The Dunciad

Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall
And Universal Darkness buries All | Alexander Pope

***

Mamata Banerjee is merely one more petty dictator in our dunciad full of them.

You see them in buses and airplanes, on bylanes and highways, in pawn shops and palaces. Elbowing for space, clamoring for attention, snarling for effect.

Everyone is an emperor in their own mind. Everyone else is a serf to be trampled on. Our culture's apotheosis of political strongmen is to be seen in this context. They are national role models.

To be credible in this dystopia, Mamata di really has no choice. We should be kind to her.

***

Of course, it's not at all natural for a civilization to be this way. This is a warped way to compensate for something that's broken in the civilization's psyche.

Easiest way to see this is in Pakistan. We find the venom of Zaid Hamid amusing, the baseless boastfulness of her army mirthful, and the stylized propaganda from her analysts absurd.

Still, deep down, we sympathize because we know this lashing out compensates for dreams gone sour.

Much harder is to stare in the mirror. Our petty dictators are compensation too.

***

Going from serfdom to suffrage has not come easy to our profoundly class-obsessed society. Equality of vote has only served to expose every other inequity that scalds the Indian psyche like molten lava.

These inequities are perceived as grievous wrongs which must forcibly be reversed.

For some, the wrongs go back to Manu. For others, to Mohammad bin Qasim. For still others, to Robert Clive. From Bluestar to Babri, Godhra to Gulbarg, Kalahandi to Kargil, Naxalbari to Nelli - wherever one turns, there the wrongs are.

When we stare into history, to coin a phrase, it stares back into us. We all feel wronged in this eternal abyss.

Thence flow envy, bitterness, resentment, and rage - all jostling in a cauldron of deep-seated complexes - inferiority, mostly, which masks itself as superiority in some.

*** 

All humans have some degree of inferiority in us. A healthy response makes us better ourselves. An unhealthy response makes us lord over others.

This "will to power" is perfectly understandable in a traumatized people. This is how we compensate.

Sensitivity to harmless cartoons and disproportionate aggression are just one example of this. Violence against women is yet another. Also road rage. A more trivial illustration are internet trolls who delude themselves into thinking they are equals of more accomplished persons they abuse without provocation.

Once you understand the psychopathy, a lot of behaviors become crystal clear.

Institutional checks and balances can certainly keep a lid on such outbursts. But they can't cure them.

***

There are no easy answers here.

Part of the cure, however, is an honest acceptance of the malady. Dialogs of truth and reconciliation are a crucial place to start.

It then requires a mature people to look ahead, not with a view to reverse or avenge past wrongs but to make a world where all of these grudges have been set aside and buried.

But none of this is remotely possible as long as we keep looking up to leaders who can't overcome their own personal demons.

The Indian Right

National Review, founded by the late William F Buckley, has long been the intellectual fuel behind the American conservative revolution.

When faced with John Derbyshire, one of its prized writers, having penned an astonishingly racist screed, it fired him.

This is what human decency and moral courage required.

It's also what conservatism demands. We conservatives, after all, respect people as individuals. Demonizing people on the basis of their group identities is the very antithesis of conservatism.

***

It's worth contrasting how the self-proclaimed Indian "Right" dealt with a near-identical situation recently.

Subramanian Swamy publicly demanded that Indian Muslims acknowledge their ancestral conversion from Hinduism or forfeit their vote.

When he was confronted, the Indian "Right" reacted with fury. They stood by Dr Swamy over fellow Indians whose right to vote he had brazenly challenged.

They cloaked their indignation in intellectual terms. Freedom of Speech is at stake, they falsely claimed. Then, they welcomed Dr Swamy into their political embrace.

The only morally appropriate response came from Harvard where he will no longer be allowed to teach.

There is no circumstance in which thought leaders of the Indian "Right" would have repudiated someone like John Derbyshire in their midst. Instead, their defensive reflexes would have kicked in and they'd have viciously - and personally - attacked attacked attacked anyone who had the temerity to challenge him.

***

The Indian "Right" is in crisis.

It has no intellectual foundation, no political coherence, and no moral courage.

Intellectually, its views seem indiscernible from social bigotry that litters history's discard pile.

Politically, its machinations seem identical to the establishment it seeks to replace.

Morally, to coin an expression, it has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity to stand up for what is right.

***

The Indian "Right" seems to bundle pride in pre-modern tradition with a wooly notion of modern conservatism.

Not much more needs saying on its intellectual pretenses.

***

A social media star on the "Right" told me once (and I paraphrase) that pandering to India's sub-intellectual communal polity is a necessary means to come to power. Once in power, he asserted, the "Right" would do the right things.

Think about this for a minute.

He was saying that the political support Indian "Right" enjoys comes from people who he didn't think would support anything but the raw meat of soft bigotry.

He was also saying that the rabid views of these supporters could be ignored once the "Right" was in power.

The cynical and patronizing nature of this perspective is breathtaking.

Reminds one of the liberal establishment that this so-called "Right" seeks to displace, doesn't it?

***

The Dr Swamy episode is just one where the "Right" failed a moral test.

There are others.

What if the CM had gone to Zakia Jafri's home and said to her: you are like my mother. I can't possibly fathom your pain but I am sorry that you had to endure it. I can't reverse the horror of what happened and I can't make you less angry, but I can give you justice. This people, this state, this nation - and I -  owe you that.

She would still not forgive him. But he would be a mensch for doing this.

But being a mensch is not what the Indian "Right" does. Instead, its words and actions drip with a cauldron of complexes that are frequently ugly.

Even those who eschew such attitudes feel perfectly at home with those who embrace them.

***

The Indian Right needs to be reinvented.

God knows, we desperately need an intellectually honest, politically vital, and morally strong Right to confront the mediocrity of the Left-Liberal establishment.

But this Right will not emerge from sewers of bigotry, echo chambers of hate, or cultish adulation of individuals. Nor will it ride the horse of establishment mimicry.

Not until the Indian "Right" purges the bigots from its ranks, no matter how seemingly "respectable", will it have the legitimacy to confront the evil of the Left.

Too bad the self-proclaimed Indian "Right" couldn't be more ignorant about this reality.

A False Tryst With Destiny

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die" | Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie

***

The India that emerged from that dark midnight in August was a fantasy.

The elite believed in it for they were the new viceroys. Freedom fighters believed in it for this was their life's work. Everyone else came along grudgingly or with indifference.

Over the decades that followed, these grudging acquiescences became political fault-lines. Kashmiris, Tamil, Nagas, Assamese, Sikhs - all fought in various ways to negotiate their compact with India. Hindus did the same as did Muslims. Every caste and tribe you can imagine got into the act as well.

The Indian elite - like the British before it - used Saam, Daam, Dand, Bhed to manage this manthan.

The Trillion Dollar question is why?

***

India was the jewel in the British crown for she had the necessary resources that powered the empire.

She had wealth buried in her earth, she had labor to man the outposts of the empire, and she had capital.

After the idealism wore off, the new Indian elite saw precisely what the British or Moguls had seen before. It isn't shared purpose or ideas or values that hold India together - it is her exploitable wealth. 

India went from being a colony of the British to becoming a colony of her new elite. Mumbai simply replaced Manchester.

***

In this sense, India's freedom struggle was a profound failure.

Indians fought the British when they should have fought the reasons British were here in the first place.

There hasn't been a shared sense of Indian destiny in at least two thousand years.

The freedom struggle could have shaped this. Instead, it blamed the British for divide and rule, papered over real Indian differences, and talked about a tryst without spelling out the destiny.

Its legacy is two bloody partitions and the kleptocracies that have inherited the severed limbs.

***

People I respect tell me social reform will resolve this original sin.

I am skeptical for I do not see the centripetal force that will compel such reform.

The Government is at best an impotent spectator and, at worst, a tool of the new colonialists. It borrows from future generations to buy time and space for these colonialists to walk away with India's wealth.

The small number of idealists count for nothing.

The vast everybody else is too distracted with Bollywood and Chetan Bhagat and Sachin's centuries or too numb from shock to even bother.

***

Maybe I see through the glass too darkly.

Maybe, magically, India's unified young have moved beyond their fragmented ancestors.

Maybe an Indian superman will fly in from Krypton to change the course of history.

Or, more likely, eternal India will look at the fantasy of our freedom and, in Eliot's words, laugh without mirth.

The Missing Mirror

The Indian State should have been as relentless as Zakia Jaffri has been.

It should have heard every allegation, pursued every lead, tried the accused, and jailed the guilty.

That it hasn't will haunt this nation for a very long time.

***

After 9/11, even as America reeled, it didn't unleash a murderous frenzy on its own people. Even its incensed bigots knew that the American State would not tolerate such murder. 

Indian bigots, on the other hand, knew full well that the Indian State looks away during such pogroms. The consequence was 1984 and 2002.

In the law, the Indian State may not be the accused. On moral grounds, it is fully guilty.

***

I don't know what Mr Modi did or say during those fateful hours.

I do know that Indians were charred by the hundreds and nobody came to their aid. I also know that men in power have systematically hounded those who've accused them of vile acts of commission and omission.

I'm not a lawyer but, just on this, I can argue for a prima facie case of obstruction of justice.

It matters little if the obstructor is innocent or guilty of the original crime. That he takes overt actions to prevent the airing of all possible evidence is in itself an affront to justice. That he does so using the authority of the State makes him still more culpable.

Even so, I doubt if the Indian State will press obstruction charges. That's not what it does.

Instead, it smothers the uncomfortable silences of places like Gulbarg Society and Trilokpuri.

The process of so-called justice takes deliberate decades. In this time, the victims - traumatized widows mostly - fade away into death or shadows. Numbness and forgetting constitutes justice for them.

If justice forces society to confront its own reality in the mirror of truth, India doesn't even have a mirror.

***

History is kinder to victims.

Aurangzeb may have been the Emperor in his time, but his legacy is that of cold-blooded murder.

He wasn't present at Sis Ganj in the November of 1675. Yet, it is he - not the executioner - who we remember. We spit at Aurangzeb's name and revere the unflinching Guru Tegh Bahadur.

That's how history is. That's how history will be.

It will silently record the failures of the Indian State and the cowardice of her people who - repeatedly - have failed to use democracy to show their own moral spine.

It will record that India voted for a leader who rationalized mass murder in 1984. It will also record that Gujarat voted for a leader whose abominable political views, at a minimum, set stage for 2002.

And, history will never forget Zakia Jaffri for her unrelenting efforts to unearth the truth. It will walk in her shoes and see with her eyes.

In her shoes, we would all do exactly what she has done.

***

What about those who wield words to dismiss the wail of widows? For them, history reserves obscurity - its ultimate contempt.

Their politics is cynical pandering to the insecure impulses in human nature. Their justice is clever arguments, brazen intimidation, and a technical reading of the law. Their closure is a self-congratulatory game of blaming the victim for her own unfathomable sorrow.

History will not care for any of this. It will ask where they stood in the deliberate decades of injustice.

With the powerless widow helping her in every possible way to uncover the truth? Or, with the powerful State helping it at every step to delay, deny, and diminish the widow's wail?

And that is the bottom line.

The Wheel of Ashoka

Watching "Inshallah Kashmir" the other day, I had an epiphany.

I now understand why we talk past each other on so many things.

***

All issues worth debating have layers in them. Which layer one chooses to look at frames one's narrative.

There is the human layer. Nothing more personal than raw human emotion.

There is the institutional layer. Nothing more practical than policy prescriptions.

There is the ideas layer. Nothing more inspiring than the force of ideas.

We talk past each other because we talk in different layers.

***

I've often made larger points using stories of humble people.

Personalizing any issue makes it hard for empathetic people to turn away. The stories of the tortured and the exiled of Kashmir are precisely that. Or those of Indians charred to death in their own homes, by their neighbors in Gujarat. Or the human-level horrors in Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Jaffna, Iraq, Afghanistan, Balochistan, Dharavi, Rwanda, and all manner of other places.

Suffering lives where humans dwell. Their stories tell themselves, often ending without closure.

***

Then, there are failing Governments, amoral Corporations, and communal identities to talk about.

Talking at this layer moves the conversation away from personal horrors to policy debates. These stories are about institutional interests, goals, capabilities, actions, conflicts, successes, and failures. They lend themselves to analysis and prescription. It feels great to lay out options, debate pros and cons, and make recommendations - even if nothing is ever done about what one suggests. Kashmir, for example, becomes a discussion of Center vs State, Army and AFSPA, Pakistan and jihadis, NHPC and CRPF, etc etc etc

Institutions are actionable. Their stories are mostly academic, but satisfy like comfort food.

***

Finally, there is the realm of ideas.

Here, we abstract far away from the suffering people or their failing institutions. Our focus is on the eternal story of right versus wrong. There are larger patterns in the ebb and flow of history. These allow us to see the world beyond our own humble existence. Here, Kashmir is not a heaven on earth or hell on people but a battle of big ideas like faith and identity and freedom and modern nationhood.

Ideas are where history is made. Their stories are grand because this is how humans become gods.

***

We talk past each other because we talk in different layers.

Those without authority talk at the human-layer. Those with authority talk at the institutional-layer. The dispassionate talk at the ideas-layer.

For example, I do not like Narendra Modi and his government in Gujarat. My arguments are almost always about human suffering and failure - Zakia Jafri and Sanjiv Bhatt and Mayaben Kodnani and Narendra Modi. His supporters talk about institutional success. Look at Gujarat, look at its governance, look we have data and upward pointing GDP charts. We end up talking past each other.

Happens in every situation. I can write the foregoing paragraph for Kashmir or Salman Rushdie without any effort.

The arguments are all fine - it's just that we aren't engaging at the same layer. Parallel polemics don't a debate make.

***

In my humble view, we should really talk at the layer of ideas. That's what history remembers.

There was a lot of human suffering and institutional failure in Ashoka slaughtering Kalinga. Today, his Chakra is India's national emblem. Not to diminish anyone' suffering, but we don't remember the names of those who died at his sword. We remember his embrace of Buddhism as a consequence. In the end, this big idea is all that mattered.

I believe that some ideas are better than others and, in time, they always prevail.

In my eyes, there are no better political ideas than secular democracy and free markets. All other ideas have had their moment in the sun, and they have always come up short. Always.

Regardless of how I feel at the human and institutional levels, ultimately the only question that really matters for me is this: 

Will my argument advance secular democracy and free markets or set these winning ideas back?

You don't have to agree with the ideas I favor but surely you can see this is an extremely clarifying way to think. It cuts through the heart-rending emotion of human suffering and the never-ending boasts of human institutions. It makes the complex simple.

I think we can make great headway if we all talked at this level.

Black Swan in Dal Lake

The specifics of the CISF shooting will emerge in time. I'd like to make three larger points.

One. The governance capacity of the Indian State falls far short of the demands on it.

Two. This capacity deficit is dramatically exposed in conditions of extreme stress.

Three. Addressing this requires both capacity building and impact mitigation when the State fails.

***

Let me draw a parallel.

In Finance, credit analysts use two independent measures of risk. Probability of Default measures the odds that a borrower will fail to make the required payments in a given time frame. Loss given Default measures what the lender is expected to lose in the event of default by the borrower.

One can have a high probability of default (say, if the borrower doesn't have income to pay his interest) but low loss given default (say, if the loan is collateralized by real assets).

Imagine the Indian State as the borrower. It has borrowed governance authorities from the citizenry. In return, it must provide good governance as interest for the authorities it has borrowed.

Given its means to provide such good governance are limited, the Indian State defaults repeatedly. In other words, the probability of default of the Indian State is high, which manifests itself in a myriad of ways too numerous to list but familiar to us all.

This does not mean, however, that - when the State inevitably fails - the impact should be tragic. The loss given default can be managed and mitigated in the event the State defaults.

***

When the demands on the State are many and it further arrogates to itself a breathtaking array of responsibilities, it can either find limitless resources to satisfy these demands/responsibilities adequately, or cut corners everywhere to make its limited resources appear to be satisfying these.

The Indian State specializes in the latter. It pretends to do a lot while doing very little, and that too poorly. 

This pitiable circumstance is made much worse under conditions of stress. All human systems are designed for "acceptable" fault tolerance levels. They work - more or less - under normal conditions but start fraying at the edges under stress. Even the best of systems will fail, by design, under extraordinary stress. The black swan cannot be evaded.  

A State with means designs systems that fail in extremely rare circumstances. A State without means designs systems that fail far more frequently. What is manageable stress for the former can be extreme for the latter. These are tradeoffs States make based on their political and economic realities.

***

That Indian State is designed poorly and fails - repeatedly and pervasively - shouldn't be surprising. India has a patronizing State that thinks it must supervise and control every aspect of human existence. Its reach exceeds its grasp by a mile, but that doesn't seem to deter its dismaying ambition. 

Should we really be shocked that Indian security forces are simply not equipped enough to do their job professionally? I've written about the Indian police previously here. What these forces lack in capacity, they make up in brutality.

The excesses of poor policing are amplified in places like Kashmir or the North East where war-like conditions have prevailed over extended periods of time. The fault tolerance of the State has a much worse threshold in these conditions.

Clearly, the people who live there know this. Their provocations are partly a means to expose the weakness of the State through its dramatically tragic failures. The fact that a young child dies is supremely tragic - but his death becomes a very powerful stick to beat the State with. Such opportunistic cynicism is at least as bad as the original tragedy.

These tragedies will continue, alas, because the State is weak and brutal AND its foes are not above exploiting the death of a young child to make their political argument.

***

So what is to be done?

Far be it for me to suggest solutions to the cynicism of the human heart.

But, this is not an altogether hopeless situation. We may not be able to stop State failures in the short term but we can and must mitigate their impact. With that in mind, here are a few suggestions:

1. Strengthen State capacity

This will take time and resources and - most crucially - a willingness of the resource-constrained State to focus on the things it must do and let go of things it need not do. Also, merely because the horizon for this is the long-term does not mean the State can make pious noises and go back to its comfort with failure. The long-term after all is a series of short-terms - so the effort has to begin now.

2.  Identify State failures that hurt national interest

Not all State failure is created equal. My parents await their passport renewal four months after application but this is not a life and death issue. A high school kid being shot in his chest, merely for protesting, is.

So, State failures should be analyzed to identify those whose impact is so severe as to damage national interest. Every Kashmiri kid who is shot while protesting non-violently, for example, falls in this category. An innocent Indian dies, the stress on the State rises further causing even more failures, and India is demoralized by the politicization that follows.

Identifying such failures is crucial if India is to prevent them in the long-term and mitigate their impact in the short-term.

3. Mitigate failure impact

Once the State knows its greatest vulnerabilities, it should mitigate their impact. This requires resources, yes, but in a prioritized way. So, maybe my parents can wait another month for their passports but if that delay creates resources to buy rubber bullets for CISF, it's entirely worth it.

India wouldn't have strengthened its governance capacity as the CISF jawan would still shoot at the kid. But, at least, the kid won't die.

***

This is basics of management. Why the Indian discourse doesn't take this form baffles me. All the debate tends to be is about disputes on a specific tragedy, arguments of political oneupmanship, and a transient outrage that solves nothing.

Instead, the conversation should be about how to fight off the Black Swan when it inevitably flaps its wings.

Fire and Rose

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice

T.S. Eliot. Little Gidding

***

Unrelenting hope amidst unfathomable despair.

India was here before. Bofors, Shah Bano, Mandal, Kashmir, LTTE, Masjid, IMF, Bluestar, Bhopal. India endured.

Best part, it wasn't a messianic strongman who led us out.

***

Gandhi spoiled us. We search for superheroes who do not exist.

Democracy spoiled us. We seek angelic outcomes from human institutions.

Vastness spoiled us. We summon strength from our continent-sized weaknesses.

***

It isn't a superhero or an institution or her vastness that will save India, rather the common sense and ability and hard work of ordinary Indians.

I learned this from an illiterate Indian carpenter. Born in caste-riven Eastern UP to parents who could give him nothing, he bootstrapped himself out of despair, went overseas, and became indispensable to privileged hotshots like me. I asked him, why? So that, one day, my children will grow up to be like you, he told me.

I've never been more humbled in my life.

He couldn't care less for patronizing superheroes who saw only his faith and caste and poverty as vanity projects to pad their egos. There were no institutions where he grew up. He was a nobody among India's intimidating vastness. 

But this illiterate carpenter taught himself to be more skilled at what he did than superheroes could ever dream of being. He saved himself with unrelenting aspiration, sheer will, and his own two hands.

This is how India will be saved. All she needs is for superheroes to get out of her way.

***     

Let me end where I started.

And all shall be well and

All manner of things shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one

Happy new year!

Bangladesh

India's median age is 26 years and falling. A majority were born after Bangladesh. The '71 war is a fading memory. Alas.

Forty years have elapsed since that emphatic victory of light over darkness. Bangladesh finally became free. India emerged as a military power to reckon with. Pakistan shied away from overt war since.

The partition of Bengal in 1947 followed a debilitating famine. Its proud people, who share Tagore's music as their anthem, were torn asunder by forces impossible to comprehend. Denied basic human dignity, they asserted their nationhood. The Pakistani Army, which hasn't seen a war it cannot lose, unleashed a campaign of terror - a genocide on its own people that the world looked away from. Tellingly, there were no UN Security Council Resolutions on Bangladesh until December of 1971.

Yet, Bangladesh won the war. She thrives today, a nation at peace with her neighbors. Pakistan never found its footing again.

India did what any moral nation must. It intervened with decisive force and clear military purpose. Few military campaigns have been so effective since the Second World War. Korea remains in armistice. Vietnam burned America. Afghanistan toppled USSR. Other "savage wars of peace" have been costly, prolonged, and bloody. In Bangladesh, in a matter of weeks, Pakistan was crushed and shattered forever.

I look at Balochistan where Pakistan still wages the exact same war that lost it half of its bifurcated nationhood and most of its boastful manhood. But Pakistani Generals, sadly, see no parallels. If there were an exemplar of insanity, surely this is it.

Are there lessons from that great moral and military triumph? At a time when India is mired again in self-doubt and political paralysis, it's instructive and satisfying to note that - when the moment called for it - the nation came together, stared down two superpowers, and demolished the enemy with remarkable ease. It took conviction, iron will, and leadership. I watch Mrs Indira Gandhi's interview from then (http://youtu.be/nRAfs_LPFI4) and take solace that, even in the era of Manmohan Singh and L K Advani, India may yet find a decisive leader among its Billion people.

Let me close by saluting the brave people of Bangladesh who won the war and the triumphant Indian army that made this happen.

The Thunder, Perfect Mind

I am shame and boldness.

I am shameless; I am ashamed.

I am strength and I am fear.

I am war and peace.

From The Thunder: Perfect Mind

***

Veena Malik bared her body and exposed the nakedness of her society.

But she is not alone. In recent weeks, Egyptian Aliya Magda Mahdi posted bold self-photographs on her blog. Tunisian actress Nadia Bostah posed provocatively to promote a film.

Something's happening here. And it could be very significant.

***

We heard the footsteps of what was coming in Naipaul's 1982 classic Among the Believers. We sensed it in 1988 when Ayatollah Khomeini threatened Salman Rushdie over Satanic Verses. We saw it in the 1997 film My Son the Fanatic (based on Hanif Kureishi's short story).

Then we saw it play out on our television screens on 9/11.

The destructive anger, the rejection of modernity, the war on freedom.

Something had gone badly wrong in Islamic societies.

***

Much has been said about how to change this dynamic.

From toppling dictators to killing terrorists, from settling intractable political conflicts to encouraging democracy - all manner of ideas have been proposed to change this ugly bend of history.

There has been some success. Arab societies, in particular, have rebelled against their stagnant status quo. Their dictators have been shown to be paper tigers - they hide in spider holes and gutter pipes when under fire. Their armies are weak - they run from the battle and don't dare defend national sovereignty. These tigers, that roared at home and terrorized own people, turned out to really be mice.

Where change has been slower is social practice. The community's failure to stand with Shah Bano, the illiterate stabbing of Naguib Mahfouz, Salman Taseer's assassination by his naat-singing bodyguard all tell the story of social darkness. Honor killings happen even in the West, Saudi women still can't drive, Ahmadis cannot exhibit the Quran in India, and raped women are still put in prison. The 2002 Arab Human Development Report drafted by distinguished Arab intellectuals is a stunning and powerful lament on the horrendous state of that society.

This sad circumstance is partly due to a community frozen in the glare of excruciating scrutiny. Also, Wahabi and Salafist financing of mosques and madrasas is a major problem, even in secular societies. Finally, the men in this male-dominant community - with rare exceptions - have failed to champion change.

In response, non-Muslims have either taken the multicultural view of "respecting" the community's practices, looked to "moderate Muslims" to make change happen, or (in bigotry) claimed that Islam is somehow incompatible with modernity.

But none of this has led to change.

***

Then, Manal al Sharif decided to drive a car in Saudi Arabia. Prof Amina Wadud led Friday prayers in America. Shaista Ambar released a model nikahnama to protect women's rights in India.

And, yes, Veena Malik, Aliya Mahdi, and Nadia Bostah boldly defied the purdah.

These may seem like acts of small defiance but they are no less significant than an old man making salt to challenge the empire in which the sun never set.

We may be witnessing a nascent social revolution in Islamic societies. Their women have wept through vicious wars and suffered through brutal suppression. Now they are leaping to lead.

This is perhaps the most promising development of the last decade of war.

Social change won't be easy. Entrenched tradition and extreme misogyny are hard to overcome. But, such change is surely an idea whose time has finally come.

It's not our wars or diplomacy or aid that will make this happen. It's not moderate Muslims or reformist Kings who will make this happen. It's the humble Muslim woman in all our communities who will lead this change.

Standing with her as she fights to honor her faith, community, and society is the most important thing non-Muslims can do.

We Are All Soni Sori

Not long ago, I was in mofussil UP for a cousin's wedding. We woke up one day to a commotion. My aunt was arguing with the sabziwallah about a payment she thought she had already made to him. He was pleading she hadn't.

A family friend, a police man, grabbed the sabziwallah by his collar and slapped him black and blue. Didn't ask anything, didn't hear anything, just beat him up. The poor man left humiliated and in tears.

Shellshocked, I harshly protested the violence. My friend told me this is how he and his colleagues deal with "these people" all the time, and that I should keep out.

This is the heartland of India's political culture, the region where several Prime Ministers have found their respective paths to parliament. There's a lot of baggage here - caste and class, history and tradition. The modern State is here too - it wears the wardi and beats people up.

Of course, it turned out, my aunt was mistaken about having made the payment.

***

In his seminal book, The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama told us we were witnessing the end point of mankind's ideological evolution, that liberal democracy had prevailed in the clash of ideas.

Independent India has been on the right side (for most part) in this clash. Whatever challenges the Indian State confronts, we know, it will eventually prevail due to the superiority of its ideas.

All Maoists have is a discredited ideology. Religion-based separatism is not exactly the world's cup of tea. Finally, Hindutva is so ideologically bankrupt, it can't even convince devout Hindus of its purpose.

India is impregnable. This is a wonderful thing. But, it also makes the brutality of its State instruments extremely dangerous. This brutality is here to stay and there is no escaping it. We can endure the murderous ways of all manner of cults and movements because we know they will eventually fade away. But how can we possibly cope with the murderous ways of a State that is here forever?

This is Dante's inferno.

***

India's defense budget in 2011 was ~$36 Billion. The budget for police was ~$9 Billion.

I don't have the data on this but I'd wager more Indians die each year just from murder and violent politics than from war or terrorism by foreigners.

Police in India are resource deprived. This leads to bad recruitment, weak training, sub-standard equipment, stress filled facilities, poor wages, limited accountability, shattered morale, and non-existent leadership. Let's not even talk about outdated laws, political interference, and a broken justice system.

Police find themselves trying to survive in a brutal environment. To this end, they can really only rely on the nobility of our constitution, the authority of their wardi, the command of their superiors, and the brotherhood of their peers.

This must be a highly insular, morally corrupting, and terrifying context to operate in. As Milgram experiments have shown, even moral people can be coerced into "obeying authority figures who instruct them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience". And as William Golding describes in The Lord of the Flies, terror creates the perception of a beast that has to be viciously destroyed for survival.

Does it surprise any of us that men in these conditions would psychologically succumb to slapping an innocent sabziwallah, shattering shins of under-trials, shooting dead college girls, watching passively while mobs lynch Indians pleading for their lives, and now - engaging in the most vile (alleged) sexual torture on Soni Sori?

***

For too long, India's middle class has looked away. After all, the police are instruments of our State, the people they torture are not like us, and they have surely committed crimes for which they deserve to be harshly treated. Besides, they are likely making false allegations any way.

The sheer moral bankruptcy of such thinking is self-evident.

We don't fear evil because it is dancing on the screams of, what my friend in UP called, "these people". What I didn't tell you is that he also said the police could do the same with me - and I, with all my means and vocabulary, could do very little while they trample all over my constitutional rights.

It may not seem it but, at the wrong time in the wrong place, I could be Soni Sori too.

And because my tormentors would be the instruments of a State that will always be here, so will my tormentors. Waiting for me. Waiting for you.

This, ironically, is how impregnable India will fall. From deep within, at the hands of its own protectors.

***

Better men than I have written about this topic. All I can do is plead that we make police reform the highest priority of our nation. Thank you for reading.