Mumbai, April 27: India is on its edge! An unlit matchstick can spark a riot, an accidental stare can cause a scuffle, and a rumour can cause Gods to drink milk. We are highly suggestible today, and a million so-called triggers, many imaginary, are waiting to manifest on social media platforms or on the streets. In this background, one needs to look at the alleged Lenskart, Air India, and the TCS controversies.
Cultural Dominance:
Religious symbols worn are no longer extensions of one’s attire, or calming spiritual objects, but today they are ideograms of identity, power, and also assertive weaponry. This may emanate from psycho-social insecurities, desire to show religious dominance, or a consequence of cultural slavery from within and without for hundreds of years.
Conspiracy of Silence:
To me, the issues here are not about religious coercion, rape, denial of cultural rights, and a conspiracy to crush a religious identity and force them into religious conversion alone. It is the conspiracy of silence of the larger populace that is hugely worrying.
Many would have known the torment early, but they kept quiet. Unconsciously, in the deeply embedded loudspeakers of the brain in all, the screams heard aloud are ‘It is all my fate, my karma, God will punish them, it's my destiny’. Learned helplessness is embedded in many of our DNAs.
The shame, the fear, and the indifference of the silent majority emboldens the minuscule criminal gangsters. The believers of Karma forget that the K word does not provide free anticipatory justice without legitimate action.
Lord Rama did not sit in meditation and in obeisance in the presence of Ravana, but used his bow and arrow to free Sita. The alienation of the globalised world, along with the disconnection experienced, tightens our lips and makes us indifferent bystanders.
The Chronic Stockholm Syndrome:
This is an unhealthy coping mechanism where victims of abuse, kidnapping, captivity develop loyalty and feelings towards their abusers. This was described by criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot in 1973 after hostages of a Stockholm bank theft defended their captors and feared the police.
Are we suffering from the same? Have the multitude of invasions by those from all over the world made us largely culturally fearful? Has our heterogenous structure, with a million gods and a trillion ways of worship, made us weak while responding to greater dangers? Inspite of 1965, 1971, Kargil, Uri, Surgical Strike, and Operation Sindoor, are we selectively weak while facing an atrocity that resembles selective embedded memories of the past? I do not know, but it is a topic for research.
The Merchants of Venice & Healing:
The corporates involved have no heart! Hiding behind dark cloaks of their legal teams and offering explanations and insensitive statements do not help. Humanitarian hurts need simple, human, and heart-filled apologies. If they do this, they are not opening their doors to healing.
The law will take its own course, but the communication needs to be genuine and not an attempt to save their backside. In my experience and long interactions with corporates, I find the hearts are evaporating and the brain cells, both the white matter and the grey matter, getting harder.
The slogans on their white boards are touching, the sales technology are top class, but they are losing touch with the common man. They believe that as time passes everything will settle down.
This won't! The honchos have to realize that they are dealing with a different India today. It is a million-layered sandwich where the difficult layers are embedded with progress, tumultuous angst, transformation, and pressure cookers that can explode anywhere, anytime.
Mental Health Status in India
1/7 Indians are mentally ill. We are in the middle of a mental health epidemic. 1/3 people who die of suicide have family problems. Let us all focus on it. The events uncovered in the last few days are not about POSCH but gross negligence of the companies involved in detecting it early. The difficult mental states provide a fertile ground for such crimes and practices to thrive.
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Viruses thrive in malnourished human bodies, and similarly criminals will thrive in companies following blindly inclusive discriminatory practices of the west or that nudged by their financers.
Hijab or Bindi is not the quest, but the mind behind both of them need healthy nourishment and equanimity. Let us all contribute towards the same.
Dr Harish Shetty |
(The author is a noted Mumbai-based psychiatrist)
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