Social hypocrisy – a national trait

Our society is a strange amalgam of truths and lies, falsities and pieties. Many versions of truths have been released, over time, by the state machinery of our nation and they keep evolving, changing and sometimes moving in a diametrically opposite direction than their former self. To a common individual who is a part of the society, the first version comes off the textbooks – the state’s chief tool of moulding minds.

To take a bird’s eye view, the chief notions a student’s mind collects from such books are fairly clear and general: that India is our greatest enemy; that Pakistan is the most exalted nation; that our neighbour has been hell bent upon destroying us since ever; that the Indian army always sneaks up at Pakistan at night and Pakistan is able to defeat them in broad daylight with a mere fraction of equipment as compared to them; and finally, that being Muslim makes us the most pious of all beings; that the infidels don’t deserve humane treatment and so on and so forth.

And it is in consequence to such academic biases that we are able to raise such ‘intellectuals’ and ‘scholars’ who have an expertise in identifying the ‘conspiracies’ of nearly all non-Muslim nations around the globe – all bent upon harming Muslims in general and Pakistan in particular. And that, as a result, brings frequent releases of uncovered ‘secret’ Jewish/Hindu/Freemasons meetings, societies, plans and conspiracies aimed at destroying us.

While that gives one good food for a non-fiction joke and musings in one’s idle time, that is very opposed to the productive mode of thought. For dwelling in the Orwellian delusions, those myths of insecurity, resistance, conspiracy etc leaves no space for a rational understanding of things.

To cite an example, the common practice around our nation is to denounce ‘Amreeka’ most enthusiastically. While that barely does anything to ‘Amreeka’ itself, that does however, stop us from viewing our own wrongs. We are so occupied in identifying other’s mistakes and wrongs and so content with self-contained exaltations of piety that we fail to look at the dishonesty, corruption, falsity and other traits that have become a permanent part of this pious, Muslim nation.

We miserably fail to see that while the bloody ‘kafirs’ stick to all good traits that a being may possess, those of truthfulness, honesty etc, we are terribly bad at work ethics, absolutely undeserving to do business with, in light of our repute on the honesty index, and have the general temper of losers. We are no success at science and technology and a shame to the religion we love to associate ourselves with.

Coming to India, while a smooth democratic system continues and prospers there and it becomes one of the fastest growing economies, we earn the position of a failed state in the eyes of the world – not because of the so-called conspiracies set up against us. Not at all. But entirely because of our refusal to see how wrong we are in thinking ourselves right. And how wrong, indeed, in failing to identify the drawbacks we contain and failing to remove them. As a nation, it’s our favorite hobby to deny anything that concerns us and to keep our cannons too busy firing at others to realise the black that’s seeping through our hearts.

I pause for an instant and think: how good it would have been had Pakistan and India been enjoying great relations, having economic ties and strategic partnership – that necessarily would have profited both and would’ve made the region a prosperous one, possibly a developed region in near-future?

But the state of denial on our part never lets the opportunity be. I’m not disputing India’s lack of readiness for such measures but that certainly does not exempt us of an equally radical take on the issue for decades.

As for the faces of piety we wear, let’s see how sincere these are. A general outlook of our society reveals it to be a very religious one. With mosques springing up in every other street and madrassahs set everywhere, an apparent view makes one believe that ours is a society which is a strict adherent of a religion and a follower of it. The practical demonstration, however, reveals quite the contrary. While religiosity is an ever-increasing part of our society, it comes in inverse proportion to the traits of honesty and morality. The basic traits of goodness only decline in face of this dogmatic, empty religiosity.

It is an acute state of denial mixed with arrogant ignorance and hypocrisy that wouldn’t let time deliver us to rational grounds. Unless we finally except that as a nation, we have receded along moral decadence down to the lowest level and as adherents of a religion, we are a shame to that religion itself, we can’t evolve into a better nation. Unless we realise the hypocrisy that has been deployed on our part to all the issues we’ve faced, we can’t shun it and face the bitter truth. And without that, we can’t progress for change only succeeds through realisation.