India yelling

Angela Carson’s blog –(Why are Indians heating up and getting pissed off? (http://angelacarson.wordpress.com/) -  has an insight into the reason that is, frankly, pleasantly surprising coming from a SoCal Gal, an area whose USP is not other consciousness. So, well done Angela. She posits that the reason Indians get so pissed off in public is that it works; the job gets done. I hesitate to suggest that, insightful as the observation is, it falls short of a full explanation. But, I’m going to anyway. Suggest, that is.

It’s like this, Ange.

It’s a class thing; a social hierarchy marker. A feudal holdover. Your Airtel lady was letting everyone know that she was a person of means. A person who didn’t have to punch a clock to ensure her daily, uh, (I was going to say non-veg meal but then I realized that doesn’t hold true for all the more-than-enough-to-eat aristocracy so...) her daily sustenance. The servitor, on the other hand, needed to be reminded that ‘We are inconvenienced’. And further, had the Good Lord meant for Us to be inconvenienced He would have ensured Our birth into the lower orders.

What you’ve got to understand is that India is new to this equality business. (Oh all right, you don’t have to understand but it might help.)

India, as a Republic, is only, let’s see subtract 1949 from 2011, carry the 1, oh, 60 something years old, you do that math. To further complicate matters, that step from feudalism to democracy had to pass through the mezzanine landing of socialism with its hierarchical methodologies. Which, since those methods eschew overt symbols of status, make do with yelling as a way of establishing precedence. Which in turn is a holdover from the way kings, queens, and their administrative coterie, dealt with the shortcomings of their subordinates. Implicit in that yelling is the threat of the serious, neck stretching consequences of non-compliance. (Had the Airtel employee not, skillfully, allowed the lady to vent her spleen before suggesting a remedy, the lady’s next step would have been to call for the hang... manager, who, She had no doubt, would then summarily execute the offending peasant.)

Should you care to, you’ll find evidence of this in everyday governance. For instance, Gandhi Jayanti mandates, by way of a Governing Fiat, a meat free day for all of Karnataka. Gujarat is dry state because it is the Mahatma’s birth place and He was a teetotaler. Mind you, as far as I can tell those prohibitions do not come by plebiscite. The Governance of Karnataka and Gujarat have decreed that state of affairs. B’luru’s early closing hours are a police order. (That administrative coterie? Unh-hunh.) You can lay the blame for the strictures against alcohol and music in the same place at the same time squarely at the door of some Big Cheese who decided that the so called common man (n.b. lower case) needs to be protected from the combination of music and alcohol, and the bodily celebrations it can lead to. There are documented cases of Administrative Big Cheeses physically attacking the common man for having had the temerity to overtake, (pass) their convoys. On any given day you will see ranked Police Officers berating some common driver for some traffic failing or the other. That peroration, that traffic blocking castigation, will not be taken to the side of the road and common traffic cleared because the Officer will be sending that same message to those waiting commoners on their interrupted way to their commoner destinations. (The same does not obtain if Big Cheese convoys are in the offing.) And the message is this. “I am superior to you. You are inferior to me. Whatever it is you have to do, is not as important as what I’m yelling at you. And, this is for your own good.” Repeated and re-repeated.

I think the pattern got established most firmly during the British rule of India; the centuries long British Rule of the sub-continent. I know from personal experience that English speaking folks seem to think that repeating what was not understood the first time around, in louder more aggressive tones is the way to go. India’s democratically elected, (Hah. That’s a wholly different, um, rant.), and appointed kings, queens, and satraps think that’s the way to get things done. Yell louder, make references to parentage, threaten, and maybe the message gets through that the peasant’s job is to do, not think. The concept that commonality is not a question of birth right, or rather, birth condition, has not taken root. Yet.

The thing is, back home, we went from feudalistic subservience to a ‘Sez who?’ way of doing things right from the get go. That attitude was subsequently reinforced by the various people’s movements that regularly yell ‘Sez who’ and ‘Hell no, we won’t go’ at irrational and unjustifiable constraints on a person’s right to be. In spite of that, it has taken us pretty close to 250 years to get it right. (That said, I must add that the recent antics of the Tea-baggers and fellow travelers have given me pause for thought.)

India, for a large part, for a substantive large part, seems to be doing it in less than a quarter of that time.

So take heart. The times, they are, indeed, a-changing, as Mr. Zimmerman would have it. I have much hope for, and faith in, India Youngistan and their understanding of Democracy and its affect on social behavior.

Cowabunga.