When ignorance is other than bliss

A few days back at the Andheri Sports Club, as I sat outside the squash court changing shoes, I happened to overhear a conversation that this girl in the next chair was having with someone on the phone. She was explaining that she hadn’t known about the sms ban, and had been repeatedly trying to send a sms and failing, until someone informed her that she could send all of 5 messages in the course of a day. It’s because of Assam, she said. She didn’t know exactly what, but something had happened in Assam, she explained, because of which the government had imposed the ban.

The next day I attended the book launch of Sudeep Chakravorty’s ‘Highway 39’. In the question answer session that followed after the introduction and reading, someone asked Sudeep a question about the Khasi tribes, and the Naga situation. Sudeep and other panelists were quick to shake their heads, and he began his response with the correction that Khasis belonged to Meghalaya, not Nagaland. Never make this mistake with someone from the Khasi tribe, or for that matter from Nagaland, he said.

There is nothing new or novel about either incident. If at all it points to how similar the two people were- both were from middle class Mumbai, one was apparently very ignorant, to not have heard of Assam in spite of it being constantly in the news, and the other was apparently not just well informed, but well read enough to know about the book launch and interested enough to land up for it, and yet didn’t know a very basic fact about the NE- different levels perhaps, but ignorance just the same.

I have often heard this refrain- that we know next to nothing about the NE, that we don’t take enough interest, that we distance them by this attitude of 'us and them'- and all of it is true. Sudeep started his introduction by saying that the seven sisters comprising the NE and its people are so dissimilar, that it’s almost unfair to club them together under the umbrella of the ‘North East’. (According to him they should be called the Far East to begin with, they are not really the North; though I have a feeling that the term probably got coined as a result of the North- South divide, which is very strong in India. The seven sisters are in the North *relative* to the South.) At this argument I found myself thinking, but the South is made of different peoples with different cultures, but we do club them together and say South India. Heck, India itself is such a mix of people, but we all live under the umbrella of being Indian, don’t we. While I see the point he tried to make, it held only so much significance for me.

Coming back to the general level of ignorance about the NE, thing is, from all I can tell, people seem to be ignorant in general, and not just about the NE as a special case scenario. Yes, they know less about it than about other things, and to that extent there is a certain kind of isolation. But they probably also know less about any number of other things that they should know more about- even stuff that concerns them directly- such as the amount of pesticide in their food for instance, or how many local train accidents happen daily in Mumbai. I’m not trying to make a case for ignorance. I’m saying ignorance is non discriminatory. People are too caught up in their own lives and troubles, or maybe it is that they can process only so much information, and their own surroundings fill up that capacity, but also, we have all been deliberately and considerably dumbed down by our schooling system on the one hand and the media on the other, and a culture of curiosity and of questioning has not been allowed to develop. This indifference then extends towards everyone- towards the farmers in Vidarbha, towards Kashmiris, towards tribals fighting for their lands, towards rural populations fighting for their right to traditional livelihoods- the list is a long one, and yes it includes the NE. And wherever the situation is complicated, such as is in the NE, it becomes even easier to ignore- it just takes way too much effort to engage!

Seen in this light, the reaction of the girl on the phone and the man in the audience questioning Sudeep, are completely understandable, are they not? Maybe not entirely acceptable, but at least understandable? Can we really demand that people (presumably more privileged by virtue of being from the mainland) know about the problems of communities in the NE, when they are struggling with enough of their own? Conversely, do we apply the same standards to them? At the risk of inviting much wrath, could I question the NE-ers- their stand on the Koodankulam anti nuclear movement, or Kasab’s sentence, or just about any other issue from the 'mainland'. This is not to take away from their struggles and grievances in the least. All that I am saying is that it is unrealistic, and an impossible dream to expect everyone to be both informed and hold an opinion about everything (this statement even sounds ridiculous, but hopefully the point I’m trying to make comes through.) In any case, for a number of reasons- the very diverse and complicated histories of the many communities of the Indian state being the foremost- it is unrealistic to imagine that the common man, from the NE or mainlander, from the North or the South, the Kashmiri or the 'Indian', can possibly be aware of issues that seem of burning nature to communities that suffer them. We can hope that there are enough in each case- aware and willing to question and demand justice- to form a critical mass, so that issues don’t get overlooked. And that responsibility does lie more with those who are privileged to have had say an education, or are otherwise empowered, maybe by their wisdom, traditional or otherwise. It does lie more with those who are in positions of power, or in positions of being able to drive change.

Perhaps just about the only thing we can hope we can be, perhaps the only thing to be done, is to be tolerant. To view the world through the filters of love and compassion, and perhaps much of the dividing lines will dissolve away. And the question of us being different from them won’t lead to a display of power, to control and persecution, leading in turn to retaliation as a consequence. And that perhaps, is the only thing we can and should teach our children as well- to see the beauty in diversity, and to respect and accept differences. If we could succeed in doing that, then we would raise a generation that would view everyone- whether they be from another state or another country- with kindness and compassion. And then being ignorant would not be such a serious malady.