Indians are Hypocrites?

  Indians Are Hypocrites?

In the past, it used to be the bashing of Valentine’s Day or any objectionable content from a book or a movie that could pop up this debate.  Some current issues have raised this debate once again. One of them was the “porngate” controversy of Karnataka that is well known as it has been highly publicized by the media.  Television personalities described watching porn as an act performed by mentally unstable people who need treatment. We completely squashed that pornography has arrived and stopping it may not be possible. This is, in fact, hypocritical.

Wikipedia defines hypocrisy as a state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have.  Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie.

Earlier when I was young, I had firm belief in our culture.  My heart used to overflow with patriotism after watching movies like Purab Aur Paschim, but then the faith started to shake a bit, and today the big idea of cultural superiority has completely vanished.  Today, I feel that more often we try to hide behind the word “culture” and practice cultural jingoism to cover facts, which we conveniently want to hide or protect for our own interest.

Let me share with you a few experiences of my life, which have shaken my faith in our culture. These are true stories that have taken place in very recent past and do deserve mentioning.  They might choke you a little.  One of my neighbor’s son had an accident.  The boy rammed head on directly into a standing truck while he was riding his bike.  He fell on the road and was fatally injured.  Here comes the sad part, the locals who were present at the scene started robbing him. They took his gold chain and mobile phone, and threw his sim card.  The boy was “brought in dead” in a hospital just 100 meters away.  The kid was in his 20s. Same thing happened with one of my friend when he had a car accident.  All four people from the car were seriously injured, but were robbed off cash and jewelry by the people.  They were lucky…. they all survived.  If we are so culturally great people, then how come we do such horrible things?  These people made money on someone’s misery.  Which culture teaches you that?  Sadly, we belong to the same culture.

If we go back in the past, I distinctly remember that in early 80s, AIDS had just started to make some noise around the world.  In India, one subject that started huge debate was that of sex education in schools and colleges, but the culturally blind people were not ready to accept this reality.  The WHO predictions about the spread of HIV in India were very disturbing.  The warnings were pretty clear, but the hypocrites argued that polygamy and homosexuality were not in our culture and therefore there is no threat to us.  Today, India has cases of full blown AIDS, possibly second only to Africa.

Coming back to the “porngate” scandal from Karnataka, whether we like it or not, let’s accept that porn is a reality.  Though, I strongly feel that there is a time and place for everything and watching porn should be a very private affair.  What the ministers did was disgraceful, and they deserve to be out of the state assembly.  Having said that, the fact remains that many people love to watch porn and that is a reality, and we must accept it.

Treating women has also exposed our hypocritical nature to a large extent.  Throughout my life, I have heard and read a lot about how we in India treat women, and they are like goddesses and we should respect them, but here is the truth, we do not like to have a girl child, our sex ratios are horribly messed up; we tease girls on the streets; rape them in record numbers; and abuse them and burn them at home for easy money (dowry).  Thomson Reuters' Trustlaw Women, a hub of legal information and legal support for women's rights conducted a survey, which lists India fourth primarily, due to female foeticide, infanticide, and human trafficking.

Secularism is one such farce.  We sing Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isai, aapas mein hain bhai bhai, but we are far, far away from the idea of sarva darma samabhav.  Today, there is huge trust deficit between communities.  We are together, but we lack fondness or emotional bonding.  We merely get along, but do not share anything.  It is a fact that people try to live in pockets or clusters just to feel safe and that is what is left about secularism in India today.

I hate to say this, but today, I do feel that most Indians are hypocrites and/or unrealistic.  Both possibilities are equally bad for us. Running away from reality would keep our problems where they are.

Hypocrisy takes us away from reality.  The more realistic we become, the sooner we will find solutions to our problems, so let’s stop being hypocrites and face our problems........... Jai Hind.