By Swapan Dasgupta
Maybe there will come a day when the National
Capital of India chooses to have its very own coat of arms and a matching
motto. The college of heraldry is best suited to design a crest appropriate to
a city that a former Viceroy (who opposed the transfer of the Capital in 1911)
described as the “graveyard of empires”. However, when it comes to the motto,
nothing would please me better than the commonly-understood phrase: Jaante nahin mein kaun hoon?
If there is a single phrase that defines the ethos
of a city built to flaunt the grandeur of political power, it is the imperious
assertion by the few to the many: “Don’t you know who I am?”
In most cases we don’t and so we have to be educated.
How does a harassed parking attendant at one of Delhi’s celebrated hotels on a
Saturday evening know that the rude 20-something who has blocked the flow of
traffic is the favourite younger son of the minister who controls a formidable
caste vote bank? How does Mr Ordinary Middle Class who protests against the
queue jumping at airport security know that preferential treatment must be
accorded to Mr Self-Important, IAS?
And how is a spirited young women brought up to
repudiate patriarchy and the ‘commodification’ of women, believe in feminism,
women’s empowerment and so on to know that when the high priest of progressive
thought makes a crude sexual advance at her in a hotel lift, the answer has to
be yes? After all, Jaante nahin mein kaun
hoon?
To view the ongoing saga of an individual who forgot
where influence and self-importance ended and where ordinary decencies took
over as an unfortunate aberration caused by an excess of drink is to misread
the social context of the incident. Goa may well be a place where inhibitions
are supposedly abandoned and where it all hangs loose, but this was no ordinary
misreading of a situation. What took place was an act of brazenness brought
about by the belief that power, influence and grandstanding generate
exceptional entitlements.
It may have begun with fighting the good fight
against the dark forces that were hell bent of taking India down the slippery
slope of bigotry and hate. Even though the means may have been contested, that
was a democratic right, guaranteed by the Constitution. However, from battling
for so-called liberal values to embracing sharp financial practices and taking
full advantage of political cronyism was a leap into another league, into the
world of the Jaante nahin. It didn’t
matter that this was not accompanied by the seedy and very vernacular social
ambience of hard drinking and disreputable assignations in hotels with hourly
rates. In essence, the assembly of beautiful people in festivals celebrating
the cerebral but underwritten by dodgy liquor barons and victims of extortion
also turned out to be a cover for an empire built on the counterfeit. Once
values had been mortgaged to self-fulfilment, the descent to moral corruption
was near-inevitable.
In a libertine world where anything goes, consent is
somehow taken as implicit. But whether groping-gone-wrong was consensual or
forced begs a larger and more disturbing question. What is the mentality of an
individual who thinks nothing about making a lunge at a junior colleague who
also the friend of his daughter? Did it stem from the licentious groupthink of
people who flaunted their rejection of conservatism and moral orthodoxies? Or
was the process also aided by a belief that in kaliyug the law is an ass, at
least for those who, like the character in T.S. Eliot’s Cocktail Party can say: “You
know, I have connections—even in California.”
The ‘crime’ was despicable enough; even more sordid
was the attempted management of its inevitable fallout. For some, the veneer of
religiosity was a cover for preying on female devotees; for others, a damaging
charge of rape can be debunked as a political frame-up. Rape, radical feminists
used to say is always political. Now we are told it is an anti-secular
conspiracy.
The hallucination doesn’t stem from the fogging of
individual minds. It happens because some people have internalised Delhi’s
overriding philosophy: Jaante nahin main
kaun hoon?
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