Intolerance, a new social order?

What you read, see, and eat (and even think) is under gaze of self-styled moral custodians of social and cultural behaviour.

If freedom of expression is what democratic societies aspire for, then the use of ink to smear faces and the might of pen to spew hate can only reflect violent behaviour. Though uncalled for, such incidents have become more of a norm than exception in recent times. Triggered by ideological underpinnings, intolerance is threatening to emerge as a new social order. Make one mistake or crack a joke on the social media, and a merciless gang is likely to ruin your life.

What you read, what you see, and what you eat is under gaze from self-styled moral custodians of social and cultural behaviour. Why is it that the ‘otherness’ of the others has become so disturbing that the disruptive forces have gone on an overdrive to shame them into submission? How is it that there has been sudden spurt in public shaming as a new social vocation, that is not only sweeping the social media but its coercive nature is increasing in speed and influence? 

From authors to anchors, from academicians to activists, discontent is brewing among public figures to stay off social media, especially Twitter, to avoid invective.  Since social media offers anonymity, there has been general escalation in such hostilities. Researchers have found that anonymity not only shields ‘abusers’ but helps people aligned to a particular ideology to commit acts of violence that they would never dream of committing individually.

The act of shaming others, as this is understood, has been used in the past to correct peoples’ behaviour albeit in a transparent manner without being anonymous. Never before it has been used the way it is currently being practiced; it has indeed gone global in recent years. Public shaming has become a potent tool, called ad hominem attack, wherein unknown attackers take on the criticiser because they are unable to defend a criticism against their ideology.

Is it that the internet has given power to those who otherwise would be powerless or has this tool of social networking gone into those hands whose sinister aim is to manufacture consent? Need it be said that most of us are vulnerable to shaming, chronically ashamed of how we look, or how we feel, or what they said, or what they did. For Jon Ronson, the author of ‘So, You Have Been Publicly Shamed’, shaming has only been working because the shamee is playing a part in being ashamed.

Following on many high-profile recipients of public shaming in recent years, Jon has drawn some interesting observations that reflect upon our current predicament with what is normal and what is not. 

Are we not defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart those who are out of it? It would seem so as we are unknowingly creating a world where the smartest way to survive is to be bland. One will hesitate to accept such a world where making the others look stupid abounds.

The trouble is that not what all ‘others’ say or feel is stupid all the times. Take the case of Ravish Kumar, host of a daily chat show on a private television channel who has been at the receiving end of hate mongers on the social media sites for his differing opinion on recent political developments. While the average male does receive his share of virulent remarks, the choicest threats are often reserved for women. There are many people, both men and women, around who are being forcibly shamed into submission.

The question that begs an answer is: has the social media created a new opportunity for locating other persons’ flaws (even if there is none) or has it been a psychic trait that is now fully blown? Since people often wear emotions on their sleeves, public shaming can have deleterious effect on many of them. James Gilligen, who served on many UN high-powered committees on the causes of violence, concludes that shaming can lead to deadening of feelings which can provoke serious act of violence in many cases.

Curiously, it is easy to declare other people insane than to admit one’s own insanity. For good or bad reasons, there are cases where people have not only lost their jobs for virulent campaign on the social media but many had to hide themselves from public gaze for several months. Internet is a tricky beast and social media a moving target. What it does though is make an iota of lie into a mound of truth. Since no one checks on the authenticity of what gets posted, the same goes viral in seconds.

In a culture where we feel constantly under surveillance, people are becoming afraid of being themselves. This is undoubtedly a disturbing trend. While hosts of de-shaming services are now available that ensure that much of the malicious content doesn’t appear in internet searches, the challenge is to address this deeper psychological malice from both sociological and political perspectives. 

Unless act of public shaming is nipped, humiliation can have far-reaching impact on individuals as well as the society.

So, You've Been Publicly Shamed
by Jon Ronson
Picador, UK
Extent: 278 pages, Price: Rs 599

These reflections were first published in Deccan Herald on October, 29, 2015.

The forgotten princess

Avoiding self-pity, the forgotten princess emerges as a woman of courage and conviction as she conducts herself independently for fourteen long years of separation from her husband. 

One wonders why Valmiki devoted only four lines in Ramayana on Urmila, Sita’s sister and wife to Rama’s devoted brother Lakshman, who was asked to stay back while her husband escorted his brother and her sister to the forest for fourteen long years? Legend has it that despite being ready to accompany him, Urmila was advised against it as her husband would have little time for her, other than serving the couple in the forest. She was found missing from the rest of the epic, apparently in deep sleep, only to be woken up after fourteen years to witness Rama’s coronation. 

Unseen and unheard, Urmila is considered one of the forgotten heroines of Indian literature by Rabindranath Tagore. Valmiki may have considered Urmila as a minor character, but in his poetic version of the epic, noted poet Mythili Sharan Gupta has made Urmila the central character in Saket. Even in Telugu literary play Urmila Devi Nidra, Urmila has been placed on a higher pedestal than Sita as an ‘ideal wife’. Intriguing, however, is how must have Urmila negotiated the situation when she was neglected by those two whom she loved the most, husband Lakshman and sister Sita?  

In her absorbing narrative recreated out of mythology and folklore, Kavita Kane narrates the story according to Urmila in Sita’s Sister. Despite being left out and let down, Urmila did accost Lakshman on his unilateral decision, wondering why he would need to go when he wasn’t exiled. Even while accepting the inevitable; Urmila does not shy away from seeking her legitimate rights knowing well that her sacrifice will help Lakshman earn nobility by serving his brother. Yet, she avoids wallowing in self-pity and emerges as a woman of courage and conviction as she conducts herself independently over the following fourteen years. 

Urmila may have been wasted away in sleep, as folklore has it, for fourteen long years, but the author fleshes out a hitherto unknown character of Urmila by using the metaphor of ‘sleep’ as an interpretation for ‘self-realization’, dismissing the symbolic representation of sleep for a married woman sans her husband is supposed to sink into. Instead, she excels herself as a devoted daughter-in-law, an astute administrator, a talented painter and a great scholar.   

Sharing space with respected scholars like Vashishta, Markandeya and Jaabali at the prestigious brahmanyagna, Urmila questions the rationality of religion and its influence on the nature of religious truth rather than seeking the divinity in religion. Waking out of her proverbial sleep, Urmila discovers herself not just the woman of passion as her name so defined but one whose heart and mind had come together in intellectual and spiritual enlightenment. Could she have discovered the scholar in herself without experiencing pain, separation and detachment? In fact, her separation from Lakshman became her meditation, her spiritual birth and her salvation.  

Sita’s Sister discovers many facets of Urmila, which never got a respect of place in the grand narrative. In her fresh interpretation of the epic, the author delves into the life of a woman who is forced to put her life on hold. Like a tower of strength, Urmila not only tended her feminine duties towards women in the palace but lent administrative hand in the affairs of the kingdom in the absence of Bharat. Her role gets acknowledged by members of the palace as the one ‘who made it the home one wants to return every single day’. Urmila performed the dharma of a wife, a daughter-in-law but never got an answer to her nagging question ‘what is the dharma of the husband to her wife’? 

By giving a fictional spin to the grand old story, the author peeps into the life of one of the prominent unsung characters and offers insights into her mind and her actions. Urmila offers contrasting images of parents’ home and the one she gets married into. While she enjoyed freedom of thought and action at her parents’ place, the royal palace in contrast was just to its people but cruelest to its own family members. Yet, she rarely resented her existence in the palace. Dissension to her was part of seeking light at the end of the tunnel. 

Valmiki had reasons not to delve deeper into the psyche of Urmila who, in her own way, helped everyone in the royal palace to smile. ‘Learn to smile, that small curve can straighten lot of things’. Sita’s Sister is an immensely readable and absorbing story that lets the reader get to see other side of the story, relevant to our times. 

Sita’s Sister 
by Kavita Kane 
Rupa, New Delhi. 
Extent: 311; Price. Rs 295

This review was first published in Speaking Tree (The Times of India), on Oct 18, 2015.

A symbol of prodigious tolerance

The narrative strengths of epics and legends lie in their varied renderings, to suit changing times and diverse thinking. 

It is through such individual interpretations that epics not only retain their contemporary relevance but are kept alive across generations. No surprise that there exist as many as 300 versions of Ramayana. As long as these multiple awakenings are viewed without prejudice and subjectivity, these can contribute to enhancing the philosophical underpinnings of the texts. 

Ramayana is not only a story of the saintly Ram, the morally upright Sita, the dutiful Lakshman and the devilish Ravana, but it is as much a philosophical discourse on moral issues as an epic battle between the good and the evil. Ironically, the glorification of war to annihilate the ‘evil’ subsumes subtext of mental tussle its many characters have had to undergo to uphold the fabrics of a so-called ideal society. One amongst them was Angad, who had to overcome moral predicament of supporting Ram, who had killed his father Vali. How young prince of Kishkindam may have negotiated the burning fury of revenge in discharging his duties towards the state, under his uncle Sugriv’s regime who was accomplice in the killing of his father remains a riddle? 

To forget Angad in our understanding of the epic is to be callous with both mythology, as well as history. In The Vigil, translated from the Malyalam modern classic Oorukaaval, Sarah Joseph explores the distress and dilemma of Angad, who had to suffer ignominy and the insult heaped on him by his father’s killers. Not only was there a denial of justice, but the young boy was forced to carry on his shoulders the one who had killed his father. Was that the price Angad had to pay in the quest for building the ‘Ram Rajya’?

By giving a fictional spin to the grand old story, the author offers a comparative assessment of the historical and political dimensions of the three kingdoms of that era – Ram’s Ayodhya, Angad’s Kishkindam and Ravana’s Lanka. Much like in the present, it offers the familiar story of forcible annexation, territorial expansion and political control. Kishkindam was as much humiliated as Angad. Its lush green bamboo forests were destroyed for making quivers, and for meeting the requirements of Ram’s army the region had to suffer an unprecedented famine. 

Angad was firm that war could not bring any greatness to his country. Yet, he was forced to take part in it because avoiding the war could have brought greater misery to his people at the hands of Lakshman. By connecting the events of the bygone era with the happenings of the modern age, the author brings some of the contemporary ethical, social and environmental concerns to light. The unheard viewpoints reflect that there is more in the story than mere song of the victor.  

Notwithstanding his own humiliation, Angad was witness to the shocking humiliation Sita had to go through at the hands of Ram. In responding to her husband’s accusations after the war, Sita had gently reminded Ram that he has only thought of her as a body without a mind. Angad saw the consent to Sita’s fire ordeal as an act of injustice, to which he had become accustomed to in his life. These are fresh interpretations the book raises, some of which may remain questionable, letting the reader get hitherto unheard viewpoints to draw his/her insights on the contemporary relevance of the greatest epic of all times. 

Angad is a peripheral character in the epic, yet viewing the story through his eyes offers radical interpretations of the episodes. Angad found solace in the company of Maruthi who instilled much needed tolerance in his young mind: ‘there is some right in the opposite point of view too’. Much of what Angad might have gone through remains unsaid and unwritten, yet he emerges a gentle, caring and dreaming hero without whom the story of victory could not be completed.

The Vigil 
by Sara Joseph 
Harper Perennial, New Delhi. 
Extent: 287; Price. Rs 350

This was first published in Speaking Tree (The Times Of India) on October 4, 2015.