Why Would A Peaceful Indian Slap Sharad Pawar?

You get older. It is expected that you will evaluate your life. What you are trying to do is to look for the things you would not have done but did anyway. It is called atonement. We all want to go into our next life with as little baggage as possible. If you are not a Hindu then you want to meet the maker with similar liability. That is how a normal human being behaves. Of course if you are a sociopath who is completely lacking the empathy gene, the kind of person who looks at misery and death with an amused curiosity, the kind of person who cannot tell “paap” from “punya” or right from wrong then retrospection is not your cup of tea.

Based on this one would expect our politicians, especially the ones who are getting up in age to look at the man in the mirror once in a while. I don’t think these guys do that. If they did then their morality will change, seismically in some cases. However, no one has changed. Every single one of them is the same person they were. The only conclusion we have is that all of them are amoral sociopaths. Not very comforting, is it?

There is some recourse left for the aam aadmi. Voting them out is one. But that would bring the next set of bastards in. Then what? Even though I do not condone violence, one cannot overlook the extreme importance of symbolic acts of violence, the kind that humiliates rather than hurt. Hurling a slipper or lashing out with a slap. Indian society and others used to do that. When a person was caught doing something immoral they were made to sit on a donkey with shoes around their neck. In the west, they used to tar and feather. Since our politicians are sociopaths who enjoy and love their facade of respectability, shame would be a powerful punishment. It would send an unmistakable message that not all is right even if you scream so.

In that light, one can see why Indians who are by and large the most peaceful people on the planet would take the extreme step of lashing out on fellow human beings. The protest against politicians used to be limited to negative “naarey-baazi” or sloganeering. However, in the last two UPA regimes, things have gone form extremely bad to putrid. Even the most peaceful and laid back India is getting angry and feels pushed into the corner. One such Indian lashed out and slapped Sharad Pawar who epitomizes institutionalized corruption. Of course in this case, my sympathy and I am sure yours as well lie with our Sikh brother who took this extreme step. I hope that we all would come out in support of our brother if he were to be tortured or punished in any other unlawful way.

Meanwhile I hope this is a lesson for all of the Indian politicians. I hope they realize that in today’s India, drug dealers and petty criminals have much higher credibility than them. If they do not get their act together, the aam aadmi reserves the right to come after them with pitch forks and other farm equipment like the medieval times. They are the ones responsible for these times.

An article on the subject can be read here.