Dr Varun Kumar Tripathi
Is not it an undue trouble that the demonetization has caused to people who were busy in their mundane affairs, ignorant of any such possible move by the govt.? – I happened to ask a fellow queue-mate at a bank in Varanasi suburbs. What trouble! It was only the Modi govt. that had the guts to take such decision, one takes pain for number of affairs of personal life, why should one not take a little pain for the country – was his quick reply with a stare at me as if I was an alien. I tried to understand the people’s minds through my numerous casual quarries with people from different strata – from scholars to labourors, from young to old. My quandary was not about the economic or political aspects of the demonetization but about how people maintain resilience. My feeling was that had it been the case with any other country in the world, perhaps it was difficult to predict people’s reaction. Here I am not counting the reactions of political parties, but on the contrary the masses have shown greater equipoise as compared to the proportion and weight of the decision. Not that the masses have no feeling of inconvenience but that inconvenience has not been intense enough to break through their resilience. Undoubtedly, the conduct of the Indian masses is laudable and exhibits national integrity par excellence.
People standing in queues, managing their affairs with minimal and unavoidable expenses with their recalibrated economic behaviour and are usually appreciative of the govt. decision – what I call resilience; has a deep psychological background behind it. When one peeps into the background upon which the appreciation and resilience is based is not just made up of mere helplessness but upon certain beliefs and presumptions that was made to creep in their minds for years. The belief that there are people who possess bulks of ‘black money’ – the black a demonic colour, of ‘demons’, whom one doesn’t actually know much about; the belief that a neighbouring country prints fake Indian currency in billions and inserts in Indian market to nourish terrorism; the belief that the poor’s money has been looted by a few percent of people of our society for ages; the belief that demonetization is the only solution to all problems; are at operation in the backdrop of the minds and give strength to tolerate numerous difficulties arising due to the decision. The belief that the decision punishes all those ‘unknown culprits’ – the unknown others whose faces are unseen, an imagined tragedy with whom is the real source of comfort to those standing in queues, presumes that the punishment has really taken place. The belief is not a scholarly belief, but a folk belief, constructed by media, tea-stall gossips, colloquial chit-chats and political propaganda deliberately floated for political gains. Further, the presumption that the gap of rich and poor has minimized, that those unseen demons will learn a lesson, presumption that the decision will not be counterproductive, altogether translates into a readiness of the people to grant fifty days – to bear with odds for fifty days. These presumptions also engender an unusual reverence for their political leader, not for what he is, but for the aura that has been created around him – for the deified leader. For an incapable ‘poor’ or a common man who dreams but cannot avenge his unseen exploiter, such a political leader emerges as an incarnate who establishes the dharma – the moral order in society. Moved by the sheer ad populum (appeal to public emotion – that their leader renounced everything of his personal life for the country), people do not just support their leader but show an additional trait of mercy or sympathy for the leader trusting that he is doing something good for the country.
The unexamined assumption of the common man that the miseries of their life is caused due to some ‘other people’ of high strata who take away the common men’s social and economic advantages and entitlements and that they got some setback by the decision, engenders some sense of ease. This sense of ease is not sourced in any positive or creative psycho-state, but in the unconscious abhorrence for those ‘other people’ – the people who feed on the sweat and blood of the toiling multitude; the abhorrence that sediments along with a suppressed unconscious will against those unseen wrongdoers for ages, the abhorrence that is philosophized with moral justifications. The ‘common man’ presumes himself to be the ‘moral man’ too. The common man is a patriot – others not. And, the exhibited resilience linked with a kind of patriotism – a political patriotism, which exhibits in those who supports the govt. decision politically. This patriotism cannot be felt by people following the ideologies of other parties. This is not a sentimental patriotism that one exhibits when the nation is under crisis or that arises upon listening to ‘ai mere watan ke logon’ on national festivals. This is also not a constitutional patriotism that noted philosopher Jurgen Habermas calls upon so as to construct an abstract patriotism that can overpower the sentimental patriotism often coloured by religious, caste and ethnic allegiances. The political patriotism is a patriotism that necessarily presumes that there are non-patriots who do not share appreciation for the decision of a govt. for political reasons. This patriotism is used as an argument to advocate the govt. decision and that in turn stealthy strengthens resilience.
Moreover, if the tendency of drawing pleasure from causing pain to others is defined as sadism, and if the govt.’s sadism is to punish those involved in malpractices – the traitors of folk perception; the common people also share the same sadism under presumption that the happiness of the rich grows always on the cost of the happiness of the poor or the middle class people – the common man; and also on the popular presumption that ‘no rich have fair-earned money’. This popular presumption precludes the fact that the common Indian populace does have a tendency of keeping some cash (though fair-earned) as part of the household management simply because there is no trust in the function of institutional or technical machinery – there may be a bank-holiday, ATMs may not work when there is emergency in the house – when old parents need care, daughter’s marriage is suddenly fixed, and if educational loans are not processed overnight, and so on. This lack of trust in machinery is not unfounded; rather it is strengthened by experiences in every walk of life. People facing the crisis of exchanging the hard-earned money (though not legally accounted for) are left with no choice but to tolerate the situation with several suppressed anxieties, complaints and curses. This is a form of choice-less resilience. Therefore, it is difficult to say if all resilient faces are happy faces.
The aforesaid beliefs that are yet to be justified by the future course that the country’s economy would take, yet to be rendered true by the actual consequences upon the growth-rate and numerous factors alike; and the presumptions which are yet to be validated by the future correction of behaviour of people, are at present capable of giving space to a mere ‘hope’ (of good days) – the hope which is utilized for self-consolation, for mitigating the discomfort caused by the decision. This undercurrent of optimism, mixed with the satisfaction that bad people have received a blow, operates as a measure to suppress one’s own discomfort and resentment. The resentment is though in the minds of the common man too, but gets diluted because the discomfort is shared by all – all people of the largest democracy. A suffering shared by all becomes tolerable, if not an adventure. What a beauty of the operation of the unconscious!
The moral support to the govt.’s decision is also based upon this unconscious and must not be misconstrued that it will necessarily translate into political support during elections – as the ruling party-men might be imagining. Not just because the nature of minds that are ever-changing and that the folk-memory is exceptionally short-lived, but also because the support or opposition to a party or contestant in elections rise upon the personal interests, considerations and calculations, and turns into seer callousness if no such interest is on the surface.
The moral sense of support (which is a mere intellectual and situational support) has no edge over the personal interests and has not enough strength to break through the electoral apathy of typical Indian mind-set. Further, since the moral support is rooted in the unconscious assumptions, it will fade away or hibernate upon the disappearance of the situation in which it was triggered. Upon the disappearance of inciting situations, minds fall back to the usual political apathy – the pseudo-equilibrium in which one bothers not the political order of the society. The resilience is also a subtle expression of individualism and the ‘apathy’ associated with it – the apathy that shuns any sudden up-rise of emotions – quite opposed to the rationalistic reactionary tendencies of the revolutionary mind-sets of some European societies. In our society one tends to deploy all intelligence in managing one’s own affairs as best suitable steer-through in a given situation. In the conglomeration of such individual tendencies the resultant portrayal of behaviour makes it difficult to call it resilience even.
(The author is Associate Professor and Head, Dept. of Philosophy & Culture at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, J&K)
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