By; Naseer Ahmad Khan
I don’t intend this piece as a reaction against a specific event. I don’t intend it as fanfare directed at someone who displays haughty high-handedness on the highway of democracy. I speak because the strategy of silence is turning into a licence: a licence that someone exercises over my body, my space, my integrity and my sense of being. I write to express defiance against such haughtiness and arrogance, expressed in the lexicon of our institutions. I write because I believe I have a right to dignity. I am responding to linguistic slurs and behavioural braggadocio. I write against the cockiness in official decorum. My teacher is Allama Muhammad Iqbal, who teaches me:
“That nation is like a sharp sword in the hand of Destiny
Which continuously holds itself accountable for its own actions”.
And this accountability is an axis around which democracy revolves. Theoretically, it makes the common man sovereign. In necropolitics, a term coined by Mbembe, there is Foucauldian ‘biopolitics’, which decides not only the question of “who shall live” but also the question of “who has to die”.
In democracy, there is no such fear. Everything has to be done through a Constitution that draws power from the people. This is how it is. This is how it builds a perception among the people that makes them love the idea of democracy. If perverted, it becomes what Aristotle calls “the worst form of governance”. To prevent the perversion of values that form the basis of the democratic structure, accountability is a golden rule. In a democracy, everybody is accountable for their acts and words, and nobody has a licence for misconduct or inappropriate language.
The painful paradox is that the guardians of democratic institutions and shrines have forgotten this lesson. When they occupy chairs and public offices, they carry a halo around their heads that makes them behave like Baboos and Burra Shahibs of colonial rule. They have a wrong perception of power: that they can give a dog a bad name and kill it. They believe they are VIPs and, in the name of official protocol, can monopolise roads and public institutions. When they walk, they think they are their own “highness”, and the rest are like flies for fun. This is a pernicious way of thinking that guardians and public servants need to guard against.
In democratic institutions and spaces, the choice of language is not a privilege or prerogative but a responsibility towards decent conduct, a feeling of comfort, a way to build trust, a pathway to an independent and honest opinion, and a right to differ and dissent against coercion and intimidation. In democratic institutions, you cannot silence your “subordinate” or junior official through tirades and shouting. Even the word “subordinate” is used in a legal sense, and the world’s liberal democracies minimise the use of such a word. The word servant does not mean “servant” in a demeaning sense. The bureaucrat is a civil servant, a public servant. So is a public representative.
In a democracy, the common man is a prisoner of hope. He believes in his own individual freedom. This freedom guarantees him certain things he deeply values. It gives him a feeling that he will not be subjected to cruelty. He believes that language will not be thrown at him as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o puts it, as a kind of “cultural bomb”. A democratic space is not Prospero’s Island, and the relationship between the rulers and the subjects is not that of master and slave. It liberates him from the feeling that he is like a Caliban, “half man, half fish”, facing the slurs of Prospero and retorting: “You taught me language, and my profit on it is, I know how to curse” (The Tempest). He has the guarantee that he or she shall not be subjected to the pain of words, such as being called a slave, an Oriental (Said), a Subaltern (Spivak), or “a sullen human race” (Kipling). He believes that the constitutional right to equality has set a standard under which he shall not be judged on the basis of colour and race. He is no more a carrion eater but a citizen enjoying fundamental rights. He is of the opinion that the civil servant or public servant is acquainted with the rules of decent conduct that include the right to dignity and honour of place, labour and person. He is under the impression that the civil servant and government official, the faculty member in an educational institution, a doctor on duty and an engineer of public works know Rules 3 and 3A of the Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964. He believes that the Hon’ble Supreme Court and the CAT define inappropriate behaviour in terms of linguistic misdemeanour, and that no one can address him as “Tu”, “Arey” or “Abbey Chhokra” (Mulk Raj Anand).
The language of democracies is not an expression of power and hubris. It is different from colonial discourse. The astonishment of a citizen in a democratic setup is genuine when he reacts to linguistic taunts and gibes. He is not a “brute” in the postcolonial sense, someone who will not reply when a bureaucrat calls an entire teaching fraternity “Animals” and says, “he found no difference between animal husbandry and higher education”. His shock is natural when he beholds two legislators throwing a volley of abuse at each other just to deplore the other’s character. His bewilderment is real when he finds an academician circulating an order indicting a community because he believes they are precarious workers with no future. He is repelled when he finds his campus turned into a panopticon cage. He knows, at least, that he has dignity which cannot be eroded and that nobody will intimidate him with words and slurs as if he were a second- or third-rate individual. Nor, in his wildest imagination, can anyone call him a “barnshoot bucking Bandar” (Ghosh, Sea of Poppies). The language of democracies is not the language of colonizers. Everybody must be made accountable for the register they use in public spaces and institutions. This would require a certain orientation, starting from the cradle to the courtroom, to the pulpit of Parliament and the streets. A good civilisation cannot allow a barbaric tongue. Let this be taken as an alarm against the growing indecency in the manipulation of language in public institutions; otherwise, it will become part of the structure. Silence over indecency will normalise it. It will come as a shock to democracy and become a rule, as Edward Said argued, showing that “the Oriental”, “the native” and “the savage” are not descriptions; they are inventions to justify rule.
(Author is a teacher by profession and can be reached at [email protected])
(NOTE: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Kashmir Dot Com, its editorial staff, or its affiliates. KDC does not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of any claims made in this opinion piece.)