The New Heights of Moral Outrage

I’m glad to report that human civilisation has lately evolved to an altogether new level. The sign of this is that outrage is now going meta; there’s outrage about outrage. It goes like this. Some awful thing happens somewhere, or some loon on this planet of 7 billion says something outrageous. This gets reported. The news spreads. It goes viral. This is where proof of human civilisation (which is about more than mere technology) having reached the next level is routinely provided.

Everyone is now an evolved moral being, and simultaneously also a politician; we are all Mahatmas. Naturally, we issue public statements. Most of us are in public life, after all. We have Facebook and Twitter accounts. To not issue a statement is risky.

Then Stage 2 begins: The people who are outraged start to get outraged at those who are NOT similarly outraged, and vice versa. Usually, those who are not outraged hide their embarrassment at their lack of outrage – a moral failing – by resorting to what is fashionably referred to as “whataboutery”, which essentially consists of asking uncomfortable questions that start with “what about”. The commonest kind of “what about” question is “what about that other time a similar thing happened”.

A Twitter user who calls himself Meghnad (@memeghnad), who’s also a Newslaundry columnist, put out a helpful list of possible responses for “Where were you when xyz incident happened? Why no outrage then? Huh?” If it was an incident before 1989, he had not been born, he explained. If it was before 2005 he was a “dumbass school kid”. Before 2007 was the Stone Age of social media. “Even if I were a genius child political analyst, where would I express myself?” he wrote. Now, in 2017, he’s all grown up. “Tell me what you want my opinion on and I’ll provide it to you”, he says.

This is very smart of Meghnad. I would advise at least all my friends to Be Like Meghnad.

You really don’t have to express outrage at every outrageous event in the history of this country, or this general region of the world (after all maps kept changing) because – I’m sorry to break this to you – there were a lot of years in history, and most years had lots of truly awful stuff happening. Even without going very far back in time, we can come to some pretty awful cases about which (despite your doubtless stratospheric morals) you probably neglected to express outrage.

Did you express outrage at the rape and murder of Gauri Dey, the young woman who was raped and lynched by a Khasi mob in Shillong in 1987 for the crime of being Bengali? Did you ask for justice for her, even though there was never a single arrest in the case? What, you didn’t know? Why didn’t you know, you uncaring privileged ignoramus?

We could probably go through the records and find thousands of cases of horrific crimes committed around the country in the past 30 years that have gone unpunished. We could list the crimes under various heads: As crimes against women, crimes against Dalits, crimes against Hindus, crimes against Muslims, and so on. We could also try listing some less usual categories. For instance, what is the tally of crimes against men?

Oops! Before anyone gets outraged, let me take that suggestion back. No, we must not list crimes against men, because patriarchy. Men ruled the world for thousands of years and they were horrible. Even if (hypothetically) they are dying or getting killed in great numbers now, well, about time. They deserve to be punished for the crimes of their ancestors going back to the last Ice Age.

Maneka Gandhi, our honourable minister of women and child development, has informed the country recently that she has never heard or read of any case of men committing suicide. I would like to add to this and say that they probably do not die either. They certainly do not feel pain. I have proof. You can hear it yourself, from Amitabh Bachchan, who in a documentary called Mard informed us, “Jo mard hota hai usko dard nahin hota.”

This brings me to a confusing point. We cannot be outraged about bad stuff that happened before we were born, since “whataboutery” is really uncool. But we also should be outraged about bad stuff that men did to women, high castes did to Dalits, Hindus and Muslims did to each other, whites did to blacks, and so on, going back through the ages.

I mean, the Babri masjid was built in 1527, which is before I was even born. So what if it was built over a temple? What was the need to get excited about it 465 years later and break it down? When the mosque itself was demolished in 1992, I was still a dumbass high school kid. Should I be outraged about it now, or not?

Settling the accounts of history by balancing the ledgers of collective crimes and punishments would take eternity. In fact, that is what is happening – it is taking eternity.

Part of being modern is about discovering that we are individuals with individual identities, not merely members of a group. As individuals we presumably represent ourselves, not our castes, tribes, religions, genders, classes. If Maneka Gandhi says something, even as minister of women and child development, does she speak for all women? Is there anyone who speaks for all men, or all Hindus, or all Muslims?

It is a basic dictum of justice that as individuals we are responsible for our own actions. Even if your closest relative commits a crime, s/he will go to jail for it, not you, unless you had a role in it. This is an idea of justice that is seen even in religious notions of sin. We pay for our own sins, or earn rewards for our individual virtues, in the Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist moral universes. There are however stories of collective punishment such as the Great Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to be found in the Old Testament.

The Communist worldview and its offshoots primarily view people in terms of their group identities, as members of certain classes. It sees these classes battling through the centuries, from slavery through feudalism to capitalism. It then posits that a war must be waged by the oppressed as a class against the oppressors. Its goals are primarily material – the control of resources.

Practical politics, whether revolutionary or democratic, Left or Right, is about group identities and the control of resources. It is not about righteousness or salvation. The reason we still get into groups and fight is not morality but power.

I find something a bit Old Testament about all the folks brimming with righteous anger who, from their perches on very high moral grounds, want to drown their pet hates in a Great Flood of tweets. For the sake of brevity, I have encapsulated some usual positions on the higher elevations of the holy mount of morality.

“Begone Bhakt!”

“Die, Libtard!”

“Bloody Manuwadi”

“Patriarchal dog”

Since virtue and identity are now signalled by who we hate, I would like to assure occupants of all those high moral ground positions that I hate them all with relish and gusto. In homage to a crazy old sardar, I would like to say that my position is one of malice towards one and all.

I look forward to receiving your gaalis on Twitter, Facebook and everywhere else.