We are a nation filled with contradiction, diversity and humour. We are selective about our philosophy and possessive about our arguments. We are prisoners of our past surrounded by pygmies. We revel in the mediocrity of our individual existence and forsake the collective.
We are, or claim to be, citizens of a nation, yet our birth certificates identify us by religion and caste, markersso irrelevant that they should not even be in the public sphere.
We participate in major public events and our scriptures have a definitive focus on women in various roles: as mothers, daughters, wives and sisters. We are expected to revere, worship, love and protect our women. Yet we are capable of incredible misogyny, voyeurism and torture when it comes to women, young and old, and wantonly murder female childen.
Strange contradiction
We believe sex is a private matter, and the innocence of love is romantically treasured. We also believe this is not a subject of discussion or education, yet somehow we have a population in excess of a billion.
We believe in the omnipresence of the divine and yet we manage to ignore the divinity in the child we employ or the destitute we deride outside our houses of worship. Gandhiji said cleanliness was godliness; if he were to visit our cities now, he would conclude that we deny the divine.
We spend millions on looking our best. We try to chemically alter the amount of melanin we posses by purchasing products from companies that make millions, even as they earn similar millions selling tanning products in other parts of the world.
Confused values
We accept that our children are our greatest responsibility and work tirelessly to provide them with every advantage, yet when they develop an independent mind we become intolerant.
We teach them to value their individuality but expect them to conform to the neighbours’s expectations and trade them as commodities in exchange for monetary consideration. And we lie to them that honesty is the best policy, despite evidence to the contrary.
We respect the aged and infirm by mundane demonstrations of obeisance and public displays of humility but manage to heap insult on injury by not arranging for specialised access or service.
Alcohol consumption is scorned as a social evil, but the largest distributors and beneficiaries are the State governments.
We claim to respect our educators and address them as ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam’ well into our adult lives, yet remain oblivious to the conditions of their existence.
We claim to remember all that was taught but we forget the lessons of character our teachers imparted.
We claim to respect each other’s religious beliefs yet the moment our friendships are challenged by matrimony we claim our differences are far more real than previously believed.
We are, therefore, hostage to our perceptions.
We can, however, find solace through humour: wry, self-deprecating and liberating.
(The author is an independent consultant.)