One thing has just about disappeared in today’s India.
Respect.
It was everywhere, among all of us, no matter how poor or wealthy we were. No matter how down-and-out or ‘up there’ among the powerful.
And by ‘was’ I do not mean some bygone age. I am not thinking of the time when Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo were among us, or Tagore the Gurudeva or Gandhi the Mahatma lived as one of us. I am thinking of more recent times.
Mother Teresa of the Missionaries of Charity and Swami Ranganathananda who headed the Ramakrishna Mission were part of the ecology of respect in Calcutta until just the other day. And, not confining myself to the spiritually elevated, let me invite the reader to look at the world of teachers and academics. We had amongst us till about a decade or two ago great economists, historians, philosophers and scientists teaching fortunate and grateful students. And in the world of law, likewise, advocates and judges commanded the respect not just of their peers in the Bar and on the Bench but of the general public. Many doctors and surgeons were regarded as being ‘legendary’. And public servants whose professional and financial integrity was ‘beyond doubt’ were held in esteem, which is a close cousin to respect.
And though many readers would disagree with this, let me say we had even among the ranks of politicians not a few but quite a few whom we could speak of with respect. “Alright,” I can hear an imaginary reader interject, “Name one such, just one” and as soon as I say the names of Jayaprakash Narayan, Aruna Asaf Ali, and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, I am corrected and told “No, no… those are long gone… give me one name of a politician you respect who has been around from, say, the year 2000.” And though that makes me pause to think of such examples, I can come up with some names, Sitaram Yechury whom we have just lost being the first among them. Now he was an exact contemporary of ours for whom I had respect, true and real respect, for the honesty of his politics and the ardour of his commitments to socialism, secularism and democracy. But even more for the transparent goodness of his heart. I hate to have to use the word, ‘late’, to describe that man who had years of work waiting for him. “Granted,” the questioning reader continues. “Yechury… yes… but then he is now lost to us… Name any other from among those who are around.” Feeling a tad trapped, I persevere in excavating names from the desert that covers the rare finds of ‘respected’ names. “Well, though she is not a typical politician,” I say “Aruna Roy enjoys respect, wide respect, for the determination with which she has worked for social justice, for the rights of the rural poor. But for her the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act would not have come about. And but for her again the Right to Information Act would never have been passed. I am one of hundreds who respect her unreservedly.”
“Hmmm...” goes the reader.
And I add more names of men who are political but not politicians, starting with Jean Drèze. The Belgian-born development economist and social scientist has, through research and investigations of ground conditions, pioneered action to ameliorate the human condition in hunger-ridden, health-deprived, gender-unequal rural India. No one who has seen him work can fail to respect him. In the same league is another sharply political activist and writer, P. Sainath, whose bringing to national and international attention the phenomenon of farmer suicides guarantees respect for him, if also controversy fabricated by the complicit. And we have the examples of Chandi Prasad Bhatt and Sonam Wangchuk who have done Himalayan scale work to save the Himalaya in their regions — Uttarakhand and Ladakh, respectively — and beyond, by the force of their example. All these men receive respect un-selfconsciously, even unmindfully.
Is Amartya Sen, who enjoys respect in an uncommon degree globally, political? He may not accept that description but would not deny that he has influenced politics.
These and others like them who have worked with politics without being politically partisan are keeping respect alive. And there are many others, on the margins of politics, who work with tireless zeal for the amelioration of the human condition, receiving generous and spontaneous respect from the people they are amongst. The reader-querist is, I believe, not convinced yet that politics can still be the home for respect. Overarching all these names, is His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is severely, solemnly and by official arrangement self-proclaimedly non-political. But so hugely impactful is the moral quotient of that great man that he has lent to India’s political stature vis-à-vis China its single-most potent asset.
But to return to the theme of this column — that respect is now not to be seen in our land. All those I have named have stature which is totally independent of status.
Status has long since ceased to draw respect. By status I mean high office. Incumbents of what is called ‘position’ command deference but that has little to do with respect which comes from sheer admiration bordering on awe. Skill does command appreciation, even applause, but stops short of what may be called respect for skill’s aim is to show ability, talent, deftness, all of which are scarce and require hard work which commands hearty appreciation. Respect seeks attributes other than adroitness, ability. And it seeks it increasingly in vain.
As with individuals so with institutions. The number of institutions that command automatic and unconditional respect is now small if not absent. Among these, the judiciary stands tall as when it protects the right to privacy and when Justice Indu Malhotra, on September 6, 2018, with four other judges of the apex court, declares that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was unconstitutional and says on the occasion memorably: “History owes LGBT people an apology.” The defence forces, I would say, spontaneously evoke it, so much so that I find it sad that special powers should be so needed for them. As does the nursing profession and — curiously — the fire brigade, all of whose personnel risk their lives for us. And when policemen show heroism of the kind they did on 26/11 2008, they do so at once and for all time.
The public is no fool. It judges. Be it tea-stall owners, vegetable vendors, hair-dressers, paanwallas, they know what respect means.
And it really is just this: respect is given to those and to that which occasion trust — bharosa, vishvas, aitbar or, in Tamil, nambikkai.
Respect rushes to that which can be trusted. It recoils from that which cannot be trusted and even more so from that which has forsaken trust.
If respect is unquantifiable, so is trust. Can anyone define vishvas? It is, like respect, either there or is not there. The smallest of persons can say who is trustworthy and who is not. And in doing so will respect a governor or a gardener, chief minister or chiropodist, judge or janitor, atomic scientist or an auto-driver, if that person occasions trust.
Credibility and trustworthiness are in retreat in our land. And that has rendered respect scarce.
The public, as I said, is no fool.
