Why pulling each other down is not helping Indians

Out of all problems that we have or come with as Indians, the single-most dooming one is that we hate our own people. Indians hating Indians is one of the most common sentiments (comes in infinite varieties) one sees within the country’s physical and virtual landscapes. Based on my life experiences and critical thinking faculties (in other words “source:me”), I have deduced that- as far as other nations go- we appear to be quite unique in having a highly self-detesting population. Thanks to this phenomenon, we will always remain a nation of impoverished, casteist, communal, classist, bickering, raging, revenge-driven, power-hungry humans who are incapable of resolving any of the problems that most nations have been able to deal with effectively. 

The varieties of divisions that cut across the Indian population are too many. We spend huge amounts of our time and mental energy arguing that some or the other caste doesn’t need social benefits, that the poor of the country don’t need government help because they are lazy, that this state or the other is receiving too many benefits or that water from a river belongs to some other sub-group, or that the Indian who goes out abroad and litters or makes a mockery of themselves is definitely not linked to me or my family, caste, community, state in any way but belongs to the other one! We are quicker than anyone else to denounce, degrade, disown, and dissociate with another Indian because that one is most certainly of another kind (Indians come in so many varieties that disowning and mistrusting one another is a skill we learn easily). I’ve seen people from oppressed castes experience upward mobility- acquire wealth and power- and immediately begin to treat poorer people from their own castes like filth because now they choose to identify with a class and not a caste! From our childhood, we are taught to be suspicious of other Indians, women of men, men of women, one caste of another, one language-speaking population of another, one religion of another, one class of another. How can this country progress? Solidarity, the desire for collective upliftment, and welfare policies are basic requirements for national development. We absolve ourselves of this simple responsibility to feel solidarity with fellow citizens when we choose to blame all the ills of the country on the politicians and those “other Indians” who are “stupid and illiterate” enough to elect them. 

Call me naive, but being more compassionate and kind towards each other is the only thing that can save us (even for the right-wing uncle who you think is the cause of all the problems of the country, or that left-wing urban Naxal who is out to spoil your kids, or those dancing Gujaratis in Vietnam who seem to have taken up causing national embarrassment as a travel hobby, or those poor people who like to sleep on roads and footpaths instead of tucking themselves somewhere out of the sight of foreign tourists, or those villagers who resort to throwing their trash on the streets because no one comes to collect it instead of hiding it inside their homes forever). Thanks to all the other wounds and gashes that we have inflicted on each other throughout history, we tend to forget that we are still very much a post-colonial nation. In the very recent past, for over 200 years, we collectively experienced oppression, rape, humiliation, subjugation, loot, and slavery of unimaginable degrees (bonus info: listen to the excellent podcast called “Empire” by William Darymple and Anita Anand for more context). In all those years, we learnt to fight for our lives and our survival by turning onto each other, by learning to carry various bits of identities as badges of honor in our otherwise deprived, emasculated lives. We carry the wounds and trauma of this subjugation even now, and it shows in the way we treat each other. Yet, we are all children of the same soil, the same jigsaw piece of Earth nurtures us all, and we cannot live peaceful, better lives unless we learn to co-exist. Each person, on every level of the various identity spectrums- privileged or not- carries trauma, and a past that deserves empathy, acknowledgement and compassion. 

This is a plea to be a little kinder, less discriminating and more open-minded towards the stories and experiences of those around you- children, neighbors, workers, vendors, relatives, strangers…individual action leads to collective outcome.