One of the strangest images to emerge in the age of social media is that of young men from NCR and Haryana dancing half-naked on snow-covered mountains. It makes you wonder what kind of rush comes from dancing without a shirt when the temperature, like their IQ, is below zero. 

Is this some delayed male response to Yash Chopra films, where heroines danced in chiffon sarees while the cold wind stung their bare stomachs? Probably not. 

These men feel less Yash Chopra-coded and more Vanga-coded. They post this performance of conquering nature on Instagram, expecting comments like “System faad diya”. Instead, these days, the most common reply staring back at them is “zero civic sense (insert clown emoji)”. Many Indians were already struggling with the idea of common sense, and now a new beast has entered the chat: civic sense.

A few days ago, a video went viral of a man from Haryana driving his Thar to what was described as Leh’s highest point and pasting a Gujjar sticker on a milestone rock, right above the BRO (Border Roads Organisation) sign. I do not know whether this was intentional wordplay, but the board now reads like “Gujjar Bro”. 

The internet, as expected, went berserk. 

Arrest demands followed, along with lectures on nationalism and respect for public property. But seen in a wider Indian context, this act also belongs to a long tradition of amateur graffiti. For decades, Indian ASI walls have doubled up as an unofficial archive of unrequited love. Rahul loves Simran. Raju loves Pinky. There is a peculiar Indian itch to deface, as if order, beauty, and neatness provoke a unique Indian form of anxiety. 

We seem to distrust perfection and find emotional comfort in damage, clutter, and chaos. In that sense, we behave like assassins of beauty, always trying to return the world to a familiar state of mess.

This behaviour pattern is everywhere, and in the age of social media, it has only become more visible. On highways, you see ‘Thar Roxx’ coming from the wrong side, blinding you with full-beam dippers. Go on a forest safari, and you will find Indians blasting Karan Aujla on portable speakers, disturbing both animals and humans. Visit a Buddhist monastery in Ladakh, a place meant for silence, and a wanderlust will be playing Yaar Anmulle for an extra spiritual kick. 

Inside cinema halls, people talk loudly about business meetings or take phone calls with lovers, sometimes in extramarital affairs, using the darkness of the theatre as cover. On flights, many watch reels at full volume, completely unaware that headphones exist. And on buses, winter announces itself through peanut shells scattered on the floor, lying like cockroaches after a Kala Hit spray session.

The image of the brash, loud, disorderly Indian, cutting queues, speaking over others, and behaving like a nuisance, now circulates endlessly on the internet. 

The obvious question follows. 

Why is it so difficult to simply behave in public spaces, to stay calm, to do only what is required? For Indians, there is a constant restlessness, an anxiety to perform, to add something extra even when nothing is needed. This becomes most visible during travel. Indians, in that sense, feel the need to perform extra just to convince themselves that they are indeed enjoying and having the best time of their life, while also feeding the reel and WhatsApp status economy, hunting for that one comment that makes the adrenaline spike – “Waah. Fully enjoy bhai”.

In this sense, Indians are desperate seekers of joy, determined to extract value from every ticket, hotel stay, and destination. This desperation, mixed with entitlement, is now becoming a global embarrassment because Indians are travelling abroad in large numbers. Reels mocking bad civic behaviour in the US, UK, and Europe regularly go viral, and Indians are slammed worldwide. 

Sometimes the evidence is self-supplied. A Mumbai influencer couple made a reel that caused outrage on social media. In the video, the wife empties a hotel bathroom body wash dispenser into plastic bottles to take home, captioning it as – “free chiz dekhi, wife ka Marwadi radar turant on”.

But the harder question remains. What exactly is civic sense? One person’s idea of civility can also look like another person’s suffocation.

Civic sense is usually defined as a shared commitment to discipline, restraint, and responsibility. But it really begins with something simpler, the awareness that the other exists. The lack of civic sense is the ‘ghosting of the other’. These are unwritten rules about how to behave in public so that everyone can exist without disturbance. In that sense, the civic sense asks you to restrain your base instincts and build habits that consider others. Indians, however, like to see themselves as truly free birds, or, ethically speaking, cage-free chickens. 

We enjoy freedom in its raw form and resist becoming prisoners of habit.

For civic sense and a sense of community to exist, there must also be a sense of guilt and embarrassment at breaking an agreed public code. In this sense, civic sense is tied to love for your city, its streets, and the country. A society fractured along the lines of caste and class cannot experience this kind of harmony. 

This ghosting of the other can be explained through debates over civic sense and the throwing of garbage anywhere in a society founded along caste lines. In a caste society, you do not see yourself as an individual unit responsible for what you do, but as part of a hierarchy, where someone below is responsible for what you discard. As a result, there is a sense of exceptional impunity, where pride exists in place of guilt.

A few days ago, the man cleaning an airport washroom told me, “yahan itne padhe likhe aate hai lekin fir bhi chewing gum urinal mein thook ke jaate hai” (so many educated people come here, yet they still throw chewing gum into the urinals). This is a common practice. People casually spit out chewing gum, assuming it becomes the cleaner’s responsibility to deal with it. The same logic applies in many cases of throwing garbage on roads, trains, and buses, with the belief that it is not their job to keep these spaces clean and that there are people whose job it is to clean them.

In this sense, there is a vulgar idea of freedom that we want to enjoy, and this vulgarity now appears in many different ways. A Twitch streamer once played a game where he would win if he could find even one Street View image of a street in India with trash visible in any corner. Unfortunately, he won on his first attempt. This trend later went viral on YouTube, where foreigners began taking up a challenge to explore India on Google Earth until they found a place with no garbage, using titles like ‘Exploring India until I don’t find trash’. Surprisingly, none of them succeed. One comment under such a video reads, “Exploring the ocean until I don’t find water.”

Even on the day I am writing this article, a video is going viral on X, reportedly from Almora, Uttarakhand. A local citizen tried to stop people from throwing garbage on the road. An argument followed. International boxer Sweety Boora then slapped the local resident. 

It becomes clear that civic sense is seen as the biggest nuisance to the free Indian mind, and instead of a fine, a slap works as a reminder — do not kill my vibe, buddy.

Thomas Hobbes argued that unlimited freedom produces a condition of permanent conflict and fear. Order, in his view, comes into being when people accept restraint as the price of escaping chaos and gaining a degree of security. At the moment, we live in a state of unchecked freedom, addicted to chaos and disorder, where any demand for order feels like a surgical strike on our free soul. In such a condition, the growth of a nation as a nation state becomes impossible. 

In times of misinformation, you need news you can trust. We’ve got you covered. Subscribe to Newslaundry and power our work.