Over the past three years of living in India, I studied a larger and more diverse sample size of people and their conversations. I found, of course, plenty of honest discussions and disagreements as well as genuine aspirations to act in accordance with deeply held commitments. Many did engage in fascinating deliberation and dialogue because they were open to the possibility of other opinions.
But I also observed something else. I realized that the pretence—in cases where it existed—of upholding a certain virtuous ‘image’ played an important (and perhaps necessary) part in conforming to the dominant vision of the way ‘we ought to be’ in a country as diverse as India. This brings us back to the argument I earlier made about our guilt at being ‘barbaric’. Indeed, to be self-interested, lazy, unfaithful and deceitful is considered barbaric, and so we are coerced by our own collectivity (society) to conform to more ‘civilized’ ways. But when we are unable to conform to these so-called civilized ways, we merely pretend to others that we do.
I also discovered that this apparent pretence is not necessarily always bad for society. As every ‘hypocritical’ public utterance declaring the pretence of an unpractised virtue, the strength of that virtue is reinforced, albeit deceitfully. For example, uttering lofty words about business ethics would sometimes be a lot of eyewash to cover up corrupt practices. Expressing pride at working hard to run a thriving business could be a massive exaggeration of the reality. Long charades about fidelity in marriage could, in reality, be nothing short of a cover-up for an arrangement full of deceit. Those who went to great lengths to talk to me about the virtues of living in a joint family, I would discover later, were the ones who were most miserable and guileful in that set-up. In certain social contexts in India, I found that making public statements like this was the best that could be done. In some other cases, the pretence—of being ethical, persevering, faithful and so on—served as a constraint to the deviant behaviour, sometimes leading people to appreciate and eventually perhaps be transformed into the version of themselves they had pretended to be. In this way—for good or bad reasons—social pretence had a moderating effect on the diversity of thought and actions in Indian society. I have written earlier about our desire for preserving traditional community values.20 This, in reality, can be very hard to do. And so, what many might decry as hypocrisy towards values in Indian society—where people preach and practise different things—has at times been useful in maintaining some sort of societal harmony. At the same time, let us bear in mind that this silver lining of pretence is only a slim one.
So how else have our dissenting voices been enfeebled? I have discussed earlier in this chapter how the project of building a nation requires a certain collective equilibrium among citizens, not chaos. Various governments in India have taken measures to control freedom of expression because they fear the diversity and audacity of the voices in our country. Politics has emphasized that more or less everyone needs to accept, believe and practise certain core values—which often change in a democracy, depending on the political leanings of the government in power—that become the defining traits of the nation, at least for that time.
Further, we form a collectivity called ‘society’ that often puts pressure on individuals to abide by certain ethics, morals and behaviour patterns, which make up a ‘proper’ code of conduct. Nationhood and proper social conduct, we are told, are the paths we need to take to move away from our barbaric ways and become civilized like the West. Individuals fear that non-compliance to these dominant values, ethics and morals established by politics and society might lead to dire consequences. In our history and all around us today, there are enough examples of punishment meted out to dissenters not just by the government, but also by society.
This is precisely what leads to the other side, the ugly side, of hypocrisy. In India, the diverse and rapidly evolving contexts that individuals live in preclude the slightest possibility of everyone honestly believing, voicing and practising the same set of values at any point in time. It is not possible for such a vast, diverse population to speak in the same voice. Ironically, while being most in need of honest expression as a virtue, politics and society in India produce the conditions that in fact undermine that virtue. This results in a never-ending cycle of lies and more lies because the only way to ensure political and social harmony is for individuals to compromise as much as possible to conform to these dominant values, ethics, morals and behaviour patterns. When individuals fail to conform, they can unceasingly lie, leading to unending deceit, corruption and betrayal.
In a society that loves to talk, silence is not an option. Conversations that could have been chaotic, diverse and therefore constructive can become platforms for people to zealously prove themselves—truthfully or not—as conformists to the expected dominant behaviour. But this hypocrisy need not continue if the grip of political and societal authority on what we say is loosened.References
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