Identity Issues

This post is seriously overdue. 

My friends have commented on the previous post and raised pertinent issues. One of the foremost of these  being a displeasure with my interpretation of the Gita. As I had stated earlier, I am not claiming that mine is the definitive interpretation. However, I will not accept it to be wrong. An interpretation cannot be declared right or wrong; the critic can at best ask for a justification or an argument to support one's hypothesis. 

It is generally agreed that Arjuna was advised to do his duty. While I go with that part of the common interpretation, I would like to ask the following questions: 

1. Duty towards whom?

2. Duty for what?

3. Why should I not worry about the result (and in some cases the outcome) of my action?

4. If I do something how can I shrug off the responsibility of the results of my action?

5. Where does my rationality figure in all this?

The last question is the most important one. I am not demeaning faith here. I have immense respect for the faithful. It takes a lot of courage to believe in an abstract concept and to let your faith guide you through life. Also, it takes a lot of courage to hand over your rationality to an abstract concept. Even Arjuna, the Nar of the Nar-Naryana duo and therefore our preceptor, didn't do that. He believed in his hero, a human form whom he could perceive with all his senses. But his descendants outdo him. 

Most of the faithful, follow some interpretation of one or more of our religious texts. Very often they believe or are led to believe that the interpretation they follow is the most authentic one. This leads to fundamentalist thoughts and practices. While the people who identify with the group that is usually recognised as the intelligentsia feel there is not an iota of fundamentalism in them, I believe all of us are confused, for we are straddling between contradictory group identities.  

Take the case of Nirupama Pathak, a member of a professional class that is considered part of the intelligentsia in most societies. Her story is rife with contradictions. Not just the kinds of contradictions that make investigation difficult but also the kinds that make life difficult. The media tells us Nirupama was told by her father that the Sanatan Dharma precedes the Indian Constitution. He was not stating a historical fact. He was revealing the group he identifies with. Dharmendra Pathak was telling his daughter that his identity as a follower of Sanatan Dharma is more important to him than his identity as an Indian. Making such a declaration is not an act of treason in our country; nor is it an instance of disrespect to the constitution. The very same man was spending hard-earned money to help his daughter crack a rigorous set of tests to join the elite group that formulates public policy in our country. This sort of ideological confusion in more a norm than an exception in our country. His daughter was prey to similar confusions. This girl trained to become a journalist at one of India's most competitive journalism schools. She moved from a small town in a backward state of our county to the capital of the country to join a demanding profession. Probably, she set an example for dozens of girls in her town to think of careers. The very same girl addressed her lover in the form that is reserved for husbands in traditional Indian marriages. Her lover, who reminded her that she was a journalist and therefore cannot be coerced into anything, was fully aware of her rights and power as a journalist. Parallely, he seemed to have accepted her formal way of address and thereby endorsed the power imbalance between them. And as we all know, this power imbalance arises from age-old perceptions of gender roles in our society. This young journalist couple, with one of the best training in their field, were mimicking the power-structure that their parents followed; at least in form. Here is an instance of education leading to good careers but not to radical change in personal choices of social practices.

Poor Nirupama lost her life due to her confusions. There are those also who thrive in them and glorify them. The less said of the leaders of the khap panchayat the better. These men are committing atrocities in the name of duty towards their culture. Most of them might not be able to state the religious source for their diktats on the kinds of alliances they will endorse and the kinds they will condemn. They get self-righteous about practising obsolete customs and do not feel the need to give their declarations even a semblance of rationality. The leaders of these khap panchayats wield an immense amount of power under the guise of culture. And once again, the most vulnerable are the women. With their rules, these men efficiently ensure that a woman marries into a village where she has no support; a place where there are no chances of finding a connection with her natal family. With such customs, a bride enters a domain where she cannot find the comfort of familiarity, will have to set out to be amiable and create a support structure. No wonder they cry as they do towards the end of the wedding ceremony. And the few who dare to defy these culture czars are killed. 

And these culture czars of Haryana are very clever. They have declared that tradition is on their side. They now want the law of the land to support them too. And they have roped in a few representatives of the people to speeden their goal. While one would not blink an eye over their getting an Om Prakash Chautala in their team,  Navin Jindal was a total suprise. He stumped his party by identifying with his electorate rather than with his public persona of a progressive, educated, cosmopolitan young man. No wonder they have asked him to explain his group identity. 

So, Mr. Jindal which group do you identify with more? The urbane man or the jat?

Group Identity

I have just stepped out of an academic presentation of some serious research on the link between memory and self-identity. When I saw the notice for this presentation, I felt that it would not interest me at all, couched as it was in social science jargon. I gave in to a gentle nudge to 'waste my time' over it only to realise that it gave me well-researched answers to questions that have been plaguing me for over a week now.

Before all of you who have no interest in academia or academic debates stop reading, let me clarify, this is not a blog championing the cause of academia or an appeal to intelligent young people to consider academic careers. This is one more post adding to my corpus of such posts, on the need for young people to spend some time thinking: thinking about issues around them, issues that affect their lives and their choices. It is easy to take the "beaten path" and reach one's goal within the time-frame set by oneself but can one live with that kind of success if it involves trampling upon family and friends? Old question, I know. Most Indians would immediately think of Arjuna, Krishna and the Bhagvad Gita and various interpretations of Krishna's legendary advice to Arjuna. So, here is my version of that famous dialogue, it went somewhat like this:

Arjuna: How can I wage a war with my elders for a kingdom?

Krishna: Kingdom, you are not fighting for something as paltry as a bit of land, I created a kingdom for you, remember, that can always be taken care of; you are fighting for your right.

Arjuna: But is my right greater than peace?

Krishna: Well, your right might not be greater than peace but your duty of fighting the evil in the world is. These people you see in front of you are perpetrators and / or supporters of evil. Fighting them equals fighting evil. Now that, as you very well know, is a good thing. So, while you seem to be doing an evil thing you are actually doing a good thing. Go ahead, fight your family, teachers, cousins, nephews, childhood mates for this will lead to ushering a better world.

I know many of you will tell me that is an extremely simplistic interpretation of an important part of the great song. Yes, I know that. It was deliberate. Simplistic never means incorrect. Let us start with simple stuff first. Anyway, this is not an exposition on the Gita; I am using my interpretation of this famous conversation to illustrate my point.

In this famous instance, the warrior was convinced by his political advisor that he should identify the group he belongs to and act accordingly. The legendary warrior is not the only one who learnt his lesson well enough to lead his group to a Pyrrhic victory, most Indians learn this lesson rather well. We pick the groups we belong to and live by the rules of the group. Sooner than later, we learn to identify with some social groups and accept its rules. We then internalise those rules and develop our persona. People we interact with regularly can usually predict our behaviour and our reactions to social situations. That is possible because they learn to recognise the groups we belong to. The problems and discomfort begin when we shift allegiances from one group to another. Say, Arjuna decided that his allegiance lay with peace and not with helping in destroying some people identified as evil. What could Krishna have done then? What advice would he have given to Arjuna? That would have changed the Mahabharata significantly. It would probably have changed the Indian mindset also quite a bit, for we are a nation that takes our legends very seriously. Unfortunately, asking such questions borders on blasphemy. My intention, though, is to ask such questions and ask them of people whose behaviour affects the lives of millions in this nation.

Watch this space for on how group identities killed Nirupama Pathak and many more young girls in the recent past.

One more crash

Early in the morning my husband was recalling the first time he saw the new Boeing advertisement in a newspaper. It seems he noticed the image of a flying plane before he registered the name of the brand being advertised and was suitably impressed that the latest model from Boeing was being used in the ad. Having read about a plane crash a few seconds before our conversation began, I was struggling with memories of another plane crash and was not in the mood to appreciate his obsession with aeroplanes. I skeptically remarked on his recognition of the specific model via the miniature image in the advertisement. That was just the impetus he needed to launch into a tutorial on aircrafts. Within a few minutes he complained that I was not listening and that I was simply not interested. He had forgotten that my first ambition was to be a pilot.

It is just that as a child I had not heard of women pilots in our country. Considering that I grew up in an airport colony, this kind of ignorance is appalling, in retrospect. The concept of real women navigating planes was introduced to me by my English textbook through a story about Amelia Earhart. Around the same time, Saudamini Deshmukh captained an all-women crew and once more I began to dream of navigating aircrafts. Soon my career dreams changed. I went through a range of them before picking up the area that I am trying to build a career in. Over these years I kept hoping that at least one girl from my airport colony will choose to become a pilot. I heard that a girl whose parents lived in our airport colony, before she was born, is an Airbus pilot now!

I have had a long association with aeroplanes and aviation in India, through this airport that grew as I was growing up. I was witness to its transformation from a small airstrip to an international airport. This transformation involved awesome stuff like installation of new technology to enable landing of planes after daylight hours, new radar machines and a brand new air traffic control tower along with expansion of the runway. I remember going with a bunch of kids to see the inside of a plane. I was about five years old then. It was a Boeing 727 that had developed a technical snag. The pilot gave us a guided tour of the cockpit! We couldn't stop showing off at school the next day. I remember the sudden beefing of security after Indira Gandhi was assassinated. I remember the drama of a mock highjack staged to drill the then new Black Cat Commandos. I also remember running to the airport gate to see the first international flight that landed there. It brought the then French President Francois Mitterand to promote an Indo-French Friendship Program. I vividly remember climbing a neem tree to get a closer look of the wheels touching the tarmac of the first flight that landed there after nightfall. These memories are very dear to me.

The one memory, though, I'd like to erase permanently is that of a plane crash at the said airport. This was in 1993. It was the 26th of April. A very hot summer day. I was, unusually for me, cooking. My mother was not in town. My father had gone out. I heard some kids chanting noisily about a plane falling. I had barely heard a plane takeoff and somehow did not associate that plane with the children's chatter. I rushed out to the garden only after I heard the fire engines. To my utter horror I saw a tower of fire and smoke at the eastern horizon. Within seconds the fire engines whizzed past. My father was driving at top speed towards the control tower from the direction of the fire. He halted at our gate to tell me that the plane had not crashed into the airport wall and that it had fallen somewhere near an acquaintance's farm. Being at his storeroom opposite the airport wall, my father had heard the snick of the rear wheel and left wing against the stationery truck. He had hurriedly advised the truck driver to call the owner of the truck anticipating the hullabaloo that would ensue. He, then, rushed to appraise the airport manager about the probable cause of the crash and the general location of the crash site. In a few minutes he was back at our gate wondering if we should go to the crash site. I agreed that we should. And we did. The scene at the crash site is best forgotten. I cannot forget, though, that one of the airport employees was trying to convince me that the charred stump we spotted was a tree trunk while I was vociferously arguing that it was surely a woman's leg. Ironically, this sensitive man was one of the few who lost their jobs after a departmental inquiry into the crash.

To this day I don't know why we went there. For years I have wondered why my father and I felt the urge to go to the crash site. My current theory is that we felt we needed to be there because it was happening at our airport– a place that we saw changing and growing every day of our lives.

Each time I read about a plane crashing anywhere in the world memories of that crash come rushing back to me. I wonder why we are not more careful while using sophisticated technology. There could be a hundred thousand reasons for a plane crash. Many of these are admittedly beyond our control. Some of these occur due to human error, some others are caused by perverted humans and a few others owing to human greed. But the thought that hurts me most is that no prophylactic measures are taken to prevent such mishaps. Why are faulty planes not grounded? Why are technically unsound aircrafts bought for our defense personnel? Why are aviation norms flouted by builders and town planners? Why cannot people take up suggestions for constructive use of space. Check this article written by a friend around two years ago; it has some wonderful suggestions to use the old Begumpet airport. If only someone had taken it seriously this crash would have been prevented. Two pilots would not have lost their lives and the lives of three families would not have changed for the worse within a few seconds.

Process Flow

What do these three questions have in common? – Why was APJ Abdul Kalam frisked at New Delhi airport by the staff of an American airline company? Why was Shah Rukh Khan singled out for a ‘secondary interrogation’ and put through a finger print and retina scan at an American airport? And why was Henry Louis Gates, Jr. arrested from his Harvard home?
There is one answer to all these questions – process flow.
The men who executed these acts are likely to be entry level officials who were thoroughly following the procedure given to them. They were not being deliberately malicious. They were just doing their duty. They are probably actively discouraged from thinking about the process. And they are forbidden from making any changes in the process-flow. Their job is to follow the process, not create it. We can hardly target a Sgt. Crowley or any of those anonymous airport workers for being racist, prejudiced or paranoid.
We should, however, question the processes that instruct these people to behave in the ways they have. We should haul up the creators of these processes. We should criticize the lawmakers who let these unintelligent processes take over serious issues such as a country’s security. We should condemn all acts that push these problems under the carpet, methods like ‘beer diplomacy’. Ironically, it is being celebrated! The problems within the processes of the police force of the world’s most powerful nation cannot be settled over a few mugs of beer and small talk. Sgt. Crowley will maintain that he was doing his duty, and rightly so. For that was what he was doing. If we overlook the fact that lack of deference towards the uniform bothered Sgt. Crowley so much that he arrested a man who showed a valid ID card to prove that he had more of a right to be in that house than Sgt. Crowley did. Well, if the entire government mechanism of the US, including its President is ready to overlook this fact, should we be bothering?
Yes, we should. But for the moment, let us also overlook that slight human emotion that got into Sgt. Crowley’s uniform-clad person. Let us focus on the fact that this policeman reported to a place where someone broke into a home. Being a good policeman he has to go through the checklist set in the procedure given to him. He does that. Mr. Gates, being a scholar of African-American studies reacts as any person obsessed with race issues would. A regular check done by a policeman quickly snowballs into an issue of such gigantic proportions that we see two sides of the world’s most powerful man. As a knee-jerk reaction, he is as astonished at the process as any average citizen of a liberal democracy should be. He is quickly reminded that he is not an average citizen but is the citizen who is responsible for the validity of these unintelligent processes. He retracts with speed. Stylishly sharing a few mugs of beer with the dramatis personae and his deputy on the lawns of his official residence, he indicates that the policeman was doing his duty. He validates a process that had astonished him. The policeman is vindicated. He got to have beer with the president of his country for having stuck to his checklist, if not his guns. That is a big pat on his back for following the process. And the police force in America, now knows, there could be a good incentive in scrupulously following the process.
Similarly, the staff of Continental Airlines and Newark Airport will be appreciated for doing their duty, without letting human elements like thought, courtesy and diplomacy disturbing the process flow. They might actually be penalized if they are caught overlooking the process flow. They will not make compromises in the process for anyone, when they know that changing the process flow might lead to punishment. They will proudly declare that their senators and a former vice-president of the country have had to go through special checks at their airports. They do not see anything wrong with the process. Sadly, their lawmakers also do not see that deifying process is turning it into a Frankenstein’s monster. It is targeting as indiscriminately as any unthinking but powerful monster will.
A process cannot think for itself. And the people who are supposed to think for it have declared it their superior. They cannot recall it without admitting serious system failures. An acceptance of failure will raise an expectation of repair. Instead of admitting failure and promising repairs, they will let faulty processes go out of control. Moreover, they would like everyone to join them in calling their processes fool-proof. They will pour beer over the chinks in the process, as had happened in the Harvard incident. What kind of fool-proof process lets a policeman expect deference for his uniform but will not allow an African-American scholar to react sensitively to being subjected to a police interrogation for forcing open the door to his residence? There is an obvious imbalance in this process. If there is scope for human error in a process, as this one has, is it fool-proof?
It isn’t. And there are two ways to correct this. Either work real hard to make all processes fool-proof or encourage people to use processes intelligently. Show them that processes are frameworks that should guide instances of action. That every action need not have an analogy in the process-flow chart. That every instance that does not fit in a slot in a process flow chart needs to be subjected to more processes.
The process flow chart should be a grammar book not a compendium of every possible sentence in a language!

Would you agree with me that Eliot is extremely quotable? Somehow, I have always noticed that 'scholars' usually throw Eliot at you and hold their breath expectantly. When they see that particular light of vague recollection in your eyes they start talking to you in their language. If they see blankness in your eye, you can bet they will start their patronising act and if you beat them at it with "oh, not old Eliot again" they will promptly recognise you as one of their kind.

I started with Eliot, at the risk of being labelled a 'scholar', as I remember lines only from Eliot; the exceptions being "...dances with the daffodils" and parts of "The Second Coming". So:

"There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;"

(By the way, I googled that to save myself from pedantic friends who will insist on correcting it to the coma in a comment for this post)

Now, why am I talking about faces and preparing faces? I am surrounded by faces, prepared ones. And I watch them go about their act for that one moment when that face slips or is undermined by a gesture. That one moment when Aishwaraya Rai tripped on her evening gown and went on to become Miss World rather than Miss Universe.
Where do they come from? These people? I often wonder. And how can they go about replacing one face for another seamlessly till they their bedroom lights are switched off I imagine. Would you call this an art or a skill? Whichever it is I am rather awed by it. Having not acquired here in all these years and having given up the hope to acquire it.

So, I go about collecting all those little moments when these faces fail. And I do not mean catacylsmic or even dramatic moments. Completely insignificant ones where a very tall, stern and thoroughly professional manager of a section of a multi-national company casually brushes his hand against a silly piece of office-decoration and a glamorous scholar tastes a new flavour of ice cream and can only utter a shocked "where do they make this?" and a scholastic friend crunches dry leaves under his cycle-tires while seriously discussing Matthew Arnold. These little moments remain in my mind. As I feel a little closer to these people then. That little slip where the face shifts enough to see a less grown-up face gladdens me.