When I tell Indians that we have immense stamina for useless issues, no one asks me to explain ‘useless.’ Even people who disagree that the issues are useless miraculously know what they are. Including the politician Subramanian Swamy, who began to smile when I asked him why Indians spend so much energy on useless things. He told me identity was not useless.
This helps us frame the meaning of useless issues—things that matter to the cultural upper rungs, but will not alter the lives of most Indians.
Now, something extraordinary is going on. The issues consuming the country are schools, roads, exam leaks and unemployment. The young, including school children, are hitting the streets. Road blocks are stirring anger. Recently, a woman went on a protest for being terminated from work because she took sick leave. And even the affluent are asking for clean air.
Of course, the old abstract issues are still around—politicians are debating how many stanzas of Vande Mataram we should sing; the Supreme Court, which is a very busy place, recently heard a complaint against a comedian who offended the disabled; all offended people continue to be heard; and, yes, some people say there are mosques that were temples once.
But the emotional force of abstract cultural issues, even if they are important, has reduced; instead, what stirs all classes are their prospects for a better life.
In a nation that is lucky not to be in the grip of war, yet has a poor quality of life for almost everyone, there are four kinds of useless issues.
The first kind is pure farce. For instance, thugs who can barely write in their mother tongue claiming to be offended by English name boards, or assaulting women in pubs, or tourists-in-shorts in the precincts of a fort, on behalf of culture.
The second is cultural issues that are important to a small elite, still habituated to a world where what enraged them could enrage others too.
The third issue is not innately useless; rather, it is important, but it would not have surfaced in a mature society. For instance, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge’s anguish at a ‘purification’ ceremony by an upper-caste group for a stage in Haldwani, Uttarakhand, after he addressed a rally there.
The fourth kind of useless issue is an important issue hijacked by politicians who have neither the credibility, nor the intent or capacity to solve those problems.
The most captivating issues in India today are raised by people directly affected by what they are raging against. They don’t look like politicians, or the ‘youth-wing’ of any political party, nor are they the posh do-gooders who speak “on behalf” of victims.
At different points in my career as a journalist, I have written about how Indians protest. It is a public behaviour that was once largely a farce but has now transformed into something that is starting to look like a powerful force of democracy.
In the Madras of my childhood, people travelled in overcrowded buses, spilling onto the footboard from which some of them dangled. In places, cops would charge at moving buses and hit the legs of danglers to make them retreat deep into a bus where there was no space. Yet, there were no street protests for better public transport. Or for schools or roads.
There were protests against Hindi, or against death, perhaps, when a giant public figure died. These protests were also farces; people were paid to break and burn things by those who required a spectacle.
Until recently, most of the big protests in India were over “hurt sentiments” where people who claimed to be offended marched in a festive way, laughing and waving at cameras.
The first time I saw India’s refined crowd protest was around 2005, after an art exhibition was attacked by culture goons, and art lovers of south Mumbai stood with English placards. I wondered who they were talking to.
The first time I saw actual middle-class rage on the streets (outside of Kerala and West Bengal) was after the Mumbai terror attack of November 2008. It sparked an anti-politician movement that peaked two years later when Anna Hazare went on a fast in Delhi. After the rape and murder of a young woman in the capital, there were spontaneous protests as an enraged middle-class demanded safety for women. But it was brief. Many movements since then were stage managed by parties opposed to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
All along, the affluent too were slowly stepping out of their homes to demonstrate. The act of protesting in pubic is an is an oddly humble thing to do— walking with others, accepting your ordinariness, demanding something from someone more powerful.
People don’t realize how much humility you need to protest, especially if you have been programmed to believe you are better than most. In any case, the affluent of India have been humbled by global forces—India is their best bet in a changing world and they need to make it a better place.
Last year, I noticed an odd thing at an Indian protest—there were English placards, which were not unusual, but they had commas. The upper class had joined the struggle.
Yet, all along, even as youth Indians protest, Indian society seems under the sway of useless issues. In February 2020, I wrote a column on ‘India’s immense stamina for useless issues.’ And now, I’m delighted to write that this stamina has declined.
The BJP’s core competency is not in municipal-level issues. It would rather tell us why we must sing all the stanzas of Vande Mataram.
The author is a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. His latest book is ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us.’