Hi,
We had talked about hypocrisy in people during one of our long talks. You and I were so strongly critical of duplicity and hypocrisy and we’d said that it was the first turn-off for us in a person. I still remember you saying “how can people do this, be like this?”
I recently read a couple of essays which brought that conversation to my mind. The first was George Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’.
By the way, I came across his essay while reading an anthology of essays in which I didn’t expect to find him. I knew of him as the great author who wrote 1984 and Animal Farm. But this essay is his personal memoir. Also, an interesting thing to note is that George Orwell was Anglo-Indian. He was born to a British father in India and his father was also an Anglo-Indian. His works are referred to as such ‘classics’, that I never dreamt he could’ve had Indian roots. In those times, all these authors came from England or US. He was educated in England but during the time of this essay, he was a police officer in Burma. Unfortunately, here the glee ends.
By the way, I came across his essay while reading an anthology of essays in which I didn’t expect to find him. I knew of him as the great author who wrote 1984 and Animal Farm. But this essay is his personal memoir. Also, an interesting thing to note is that George Orwell was Anglo-Indian. He was born to a British father in India and his father was also an Anglo-Indian. His works are referred to as such ‘classics’, that I never dreamt he could’ve had Indian roots. In those times, all these authors came from England or US. He was educated in England but during the time of this essay, he was a police officer in Burma. Unfortunately, here the glee ends.
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| Credit: Vanity Fair |
In the essay, he turns out to be a sympathetic Anglo-Indian who does not believe in the Empire but still upholds its laws. Because we have such strong nationalist sentiments, it is hard to be unbiased about his actions. I tend to vilify him for his statements about the Burmese, especially when he calls them ‘yellow-faces’. He also refers to a Dravidian man as a ‘coolie’, another insult which reverberates all the way to Gandhi’s treatment in South Africa. But when I put myself in his shoes, I wonder whether I would have been any different? What would I have done given his situation and the options he had? He has narrated an incident in which he has to take action against a mad elephant. When he finds the elephant in a field, the elephant seems to have become peaceful as its ‘must’ attack has passed. Yet, just to fulfill the expectations of the native crowd around him, and to not appear a fool, Orwell shoots it. To a girl who was a member of both WWF and BNHS, the shooting of a calm elephant is abhorrent. But that is not my main pique here. After all, in those times, hunting was a common sport. Orwell takes up the death of that coolie as the justifying reason for the elephant’s murder while the actual cause was just social pressure. This senseless killing just to uphold his face in society rankled me. Also, the fact that he does have some sympathy for the natives, but that emotion does not get translated into any of Orwell’s actions. Even when he sees the dead Dravidian man, he is very passive about the death of a ‘coolie’. These two instances where his duplicity is glaring struck me in the essay. While I do not hold Orwell responsible for them, I do despise the acts and emotions; going by the hate the sin, not the sinner philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.
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| Credit: Tibettruth |
I am writing to you after a long time, because not just this essay but another made me think of social hypocrisy. This one is by an Indian author, Amitav Ghosh. Have you heard of his Glass Palace or Sea of Poppies? Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Padma Shri in 2007 and Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for Man Booker Prize in 2008. Now that you know a little about the author, let me tell you about the essay. It’s called ‘Tibetan Dinner’. Amitav Ghosh is at a glittering social dinner in New York hosted for the Tibetan cause. This dinner is attended by many socialites and celebrities. What I felt was that on the face, they are donating to a cause, in reality, there are just on the circuit: ‘Tibet’ today, ‘save the penguins’ tomorrow. This is evident because Ghosh had been brought to the dinner by a friend solely because it was the most “in” place to be. He asks about the cause only because he notices a Buddhist monk, out-of-place among the shimmer. After somebody vaguely mentions “The Tibetan cause”, his friend goes on to explain that “The odd thing is …he really is very sincere about this”, where she refers to the Hollywood actor hosting the dinner. A stratum of society so used to hypocrisy that true belief is unnatural. And it is perfectly acceptable that the actor “probably doesn’t know much about Tibet, but he wants to do what little he can”.
Amitav Ghosh also points fingers at the dumplings that are served. They are stuffed with salmon and asparagus and decorated with slivers of vegetables. This “nouvelle cuisine” was actually the plain mo-mo that Ghosh ate as a student outside Delhi University. Reading between the lines, Ghosh uses these to tell how the cause itself has been dressed up to be palatable to Americans. Ghosh saw the struggle and resilience of Tibetans in Delhi. I was reminded of the Tibetan market that we have in Shahid Smaarak every winter. But, the Tibetan cause in US is just about plain commodification, good old marketing.
These two instances of duplicity and hypocrisy are set in very different scenarios but at the root, they show basic human nature. While I despise such actions, I still wonder about what I will do if placed in the same scenario. Will I be able to hold my ground or go with the flow to end up in a pool of sludge?
Let’s talk about this soon i.e. whenever our schedules permit us to.
Best,
With reference to the Tibetan Dinner thingy:
ReplyDeleteStrangely, that's how public policy works. You decide to achieve something, devise a policy and then present it to different audiences in the manner most likely to appeal to them and win their support. It's a perfectly legitimate tactic, and every policy maker worth his salt better be damn skilled at it if he wants to see his efforts bear any fruits. If you want the support of American celebrities and thus catch attention of the world, you wrap the contents in the package of their preference. One can get into an endless ends versus means debate here but remember, the correct answer always begs to know the context and involves an element of subjective personal judgement.