War Of The Attitudes

The foundations of Political Correctness (PC) are creaking. Small tremors are threatening to upset the apparatus of "appropriate speech". As the chattering classes complain that they are not being able to chatter freely enough, Political Incorrectness (PI) is gradually becoming quite fashionable.

Businesswoman Asha Dasgupta points to the new dilemma that confronts the Bloody Mary brigade. "It's getting impossible to speak," says Dasgupta. "I used to think twice before I said anything that could be labelled as racist, sexist, anti-backward, anti-India, communal or fundamentalist. So now I just say what I feel and damn the consequences."

Newsreader Tejeshwar Singh was once confronted with feminist outrage at a history conference when he asked why historians did not choose "our" story over "his story" or "her story". Defence analyst Aabha Dixit was accused of "elitism" and "racism" when she tried to debate the merits of affirmative action in universities. And columnist Gillian Wright says that even a casual reference to the words 'Ram' and 'devi' provokes an embarrassed unease at polite gatherings.

PC requires--indeed demands--a stentorian rejection of religion; it dismisses arguments of "merit" as an elitist manoeuvre; it spurns any possible compromise between the sexes as a sell-out to male domination; it elevates "alternative sexuality" as the final stage of human evolution and absolutely rebuffs Absolute Truths. PC is the manifesto of the modern and the Bible of the broad-minded.

Yet it has also become a rather rigid set of rules that does not permit any dissent. So the self-deprecating humour that keeps us sane, the sense of irony that should restore a balanced perspective and the honesty that should enable us to detect fraudulent posturings are sadly no longer fashionable.

Those impatient with the dictates of PC orthodoxy are swelling the ranks of the Politically Incorrect. Metropolitan Indian consciousness is in a bit of a predicament. Does firing the domestic help necessarily mean that one is insensitive to Does a bit of mornings inevitably imply that one wants all religious minorities to be deported from India? Or does entering into an arranged marriage naturally suggest that one believes that all women should be treated as second-class citizens? PI says no to all these questions.

If you are Politically Correct, God is out. As a reaction, therefore, PI dispenses with too much rationality. "Take the Ganesha miracle," says Geetika Chaturvedi, a lecturer in English literature. "I, as an educated intelligent person was almost forced to say that I didn't believe it. I had to make it clear that I have no belief in God. But what if I really felt that this was the working of the supernatural? What if 1 wanted to say, that yes, 1 believe in miracles. If I had, I would have been branded as a BJP supporter or some sort of freak. It is simply not Politically Correct to believe in divinity.

Wright quotes from Diana Eck's book, Encounters With God . There seems to be, she says, a tremendous hostility to even taking a stand on anything, to really putting one's ideas at risk. "Why on earth do people scoff at faith?" asks Wright. "Faith is a lovely thing."

PC is also about faith, but in different gods. The environment is a holy shrine that the votaries of PC defend with almost messianic fervour. Tejeshwar Singh points out that as far as protecting the environment is concerned, a black and white picture is often projected. "Let's face it," he says. "The average man on the street is hardly environment-friendly." In Singh's view the problem arises because people try to define themselves according to too many "isms". "I used to call myself a humanist at one time just in order to avoid being part of any camp, but then I discovered there was something called humanism as well."

Sadia Dehlvi, a media personality, voices similar Politically Incorrect impatience. According to her, the "isms" that govern the discourse of the "thinking classes" are often entirely western in inspiration. "For a long time we adapted to the intellectual categories of the West. We now need to find terms that suit our culture and ethos more accurately than those we have been living by," she says. Dehlvi's article, Misinspired Feminism , reflected her own disillusionment with feminism. "I used to call myself a feminist but have since had the courage to understand my mistakes. If I had to describe myself now, I would call myself a 'womanist', nothing else."

Perhaps PC was always unsuited to the parameters of desi debate. After all, the phrase was invented in transatlantic campuses and is uniquely western and rationalist in inspiration, a continuation, in fact of 18th century Enlightenment thought. As a child of the Enlightenment, PC is contemptuous of what it regards as ancient truths and critical of the fundamentalism of the more brutal darker ages.

But paradoxically, the troops of tolerance have become the high priests of dogma. In the name of greater openness, the debate has been closed. Now the universe appears divided into a rigid hierarchy of Correct vs Incorrect. The environment is Politically Correct, flower arrangements are Politically Incorrect. Feminists are Politically Correct, housewives are Politically Incorrect. Philosophy is Politically Correct, but religion is Politically Incorrect. Domestic servants are Politically Correct but government servants are Politically Incorrect. Even cotton fabric is Politically Correct, but chiffon is decidedly Politically Incorrect. The list is almost endless.

Most Incorrect of all, the icon of Individualism Unbound is probably Khushwant Singh. "The margin of tolerance in society is very thin," he says. Indeed the Liberal left is not alone in its demand of absolute acquiescence: "It is not only the Bengalis who have demanded action against me about my innocuous remarks about Tagore. In Maharashtra, the RSS threatened to throw acid in my face after I said certain things about Veer Savarkar. A criminal case was filed against me in Jammu when I spoke my mind on the Sikhs of Kashmir. It seems to me that one has to say things in so convoluted a manner that no one takes offence."

But PI is not as low profile as it was once forced to be. Mani Shankar Aiyar, MI: says questions are being asked today that people dared not ask a few years ago. "We are living in a much more open culture than what I remember in my youth," he says. In the period between 1947 and 1977, a column like Mani-Talk could never have been written. Aiyar says he doesn't necessarily approve of the criticism being voiced nowadays of Nehru's India or of Mahatma Gandhi, but believes that such criticism would have been unthinkable in the past.

PI not only criticises Nehru's India but sometimes even advocates a return to monarchy. "We need one strong leader who can lead the country himself," says garment exporter Rakesh Singh. "Democracy in its present form only benefits of class of political bosses. These people are not accountable to the people. We need a quasi-king."

In the hilarious send-up of PC, James Finn Garner's book Politically Correct Bedtime Stories locates the sexist, racist, nationalist, regionalist, heteropatriarchalist and phallocentric urges in witches, goblins and fairies. In our own modern Indian domain, Shiva is denounced as patriarchal, Parvati is co-opted by tradition, Ganesh is decidedly unmindful of the rights of elephants and what is Ravana, but a narrow regionalist. Durga, of course, is resoundingly PC, as is Kali, icon of female publishing power.

PI is demanding a place in the Indian debating arena. Here the Hegelian dialectic is well manifest; for every thesis there must be an antithesis. So if Political Correctness is to prosper, it will have to stand up to the armies of Political Incorrectness.