Salman
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children won the
Booker of Bookers. I have tried to
read this greatest book several times. After umpteen attempts, the furthest I
got was page no. 35. I tried many of his other books, with similar results.
Since I was unwilling to consider myself as intellectually inadequate, I called
Rushdie a pseudo-intellectual. Like certain avant-garde artists, he relishes in
creating literature that will be praised because it is not understood. In a
lighter vein, I had suggested Satanic
Verses should have been banned for poor writing, not for any other reason.
When I
began my anti-Rushdie tirade at a book club which I had just joined, the female
readers pounced on me like vultures (metaphorically speaking). One lady had
read Midnight’s Children more than
twenty times, and had enjoyed it more and more during successive readings. One girl
called him the greatest existing writer. An MBA executive recited entire
passages from memory.
To be
fair, there were other readers there, both male and female, who disliked his
writing and agreed with me. We clearly had two camps. One passionately hating
Rushdie and the other loving him.
Fish eaters and fish haters
Fish is
as polarizing as Rushdie. I hate fish; I can’t sit in a room where somebody is
eating fish. By a freak DNA distortion, my brother loves fish. I don’t
understand how he can love fish; neither does he understand how I can hate it.
The world is full of fish lovers and fish haters. But I have never heard of a
riot happening between them.
Nobody
calls the fish haters leftists or liberals, fish lovers don’t unfriend them on
FB walls; neither party forwards floods of WhatsApp messages giving links to
articles endorsing or condemning fish-eating. I don’t think Cambridge Analytica
knows I hate fish, neither have they tried to convert me to fish-eating. Fish
lovers and fish haters don’t start doubting the intelligence of each other, or
stop talking to one another. Why are Trump, Brexit and Modi different from
fish?
The only field
Fish is
not the only polarizing subject where two sides coexist peacefully. In the book
club mentioned above, sixteen years after my joining it, Rushdie haters and
Rushdie lovers continue to be good friends. In literature, art, music, science
and most other fields, healthy debates happen, differences in opinions persist
but they rarely result in violence or wars.
In 2017,
following Trump’s election, hate crimes in the USA grew by a record 17%. Brexit
so polarized the UK that a week before the referendum, Jo Cox, a young MP, was
murdered in broad daylight. In India, after the introduction of a
discriminatory law, 53 people were killed in Hindu-Muslim riots in Delhi. In
this week’s diary, I will attempt to explain why Trump, Johnson and Modi create
a different kind of polarization from Rushdie or fish.
The food chain
Ecological
scientists have classified the food chain into four key levels.
Level
1: (Producers): Plants.
Plants make their own food and are therefore called the producers. Naturally, plants
are the most non-violent species.
Level
2: (Primary consumers): Herbivores
or plant-eaters. For example, rabbits who survive exclusively on
plants. The world is full of vegetarian animals like rabbits.
Level
3: (Secondary consumers): Carnivores that
eat herbivores. Rabbits eat plants, and foxes eat rabbits. So
foxes belong to this level.
Level
4: (Tertiary consumers): Carnivores that
eat carnivores. Wolves, bears, even eagles and owls eat foxes.
They are the tertiary consumers.
You
will notice that species like foxes can be predators
as well as prey. Like a worker
getting harassed by his boss, later beating his wife on returning home.
Species
such as tigers or lions are called the apex predators. At the top of
the food chain, they are nobody’s prey.
Trump, Brexit and Modi
The
modern politicians understand the food
chain well. In order to become predators,
they need to identify their prey.
Johnson,
Farage and other Brexiters identified European migrants as prey. The British,
particularly the English, are inherently superior to the continental Europeans,
but these outsiders were taking away their jobs. EU fishermen were catching
fish in British waters. A danger existed that Brussels would represent a
super-state and enslave Britain.
In
India, the Modi-Shah combination belied hopes their party will focus on
governance. Hindu predators have long identified Muslims as the prime prey.
Destroying a 16th century mosque to build a temple, whatever the
rationale, was an animal act. Introducing laws and actions to harass or
imprison Muslims suggests Modi-Shah trying to find a well-defined object in the
food chain that can be subjugated.
Donald
Trump is the apex predator. An American, rich, white male with nuclear weapons
at his fingertips is undoubtedly at the top of the food chain. He has
identified several species as prey. Muslims, blacks, gays, Hispanics, Chinese
and immigrants in general.
Supremacists and herd mentality
Social
psychology explains a concept called Group
polarization. It says collective thinking and decisions of a group are more
extreme than its individual members. A single person hating immigrants or
Muslims, when joined by another thousand, can become vicious as a group member;
is genuinely angry and hateful, is willing to drive them away or in extreme
cases imprison or kill them. Since we are discussing animals in this article,
this phenomenon is aptly termed: the herd
mentality. Social media facilitates forming of such herds.
The
winning formula discovered by modern politicians is to become a predator, and
then appeal to voters willing to join the predator gang by forming herds. The
two top prey species are immigrants
and Muslims. Both are easy targets.
Trump
started by calling Obama a Muslim. During the election campaign he advocated
issuing ID cards for Muslims. After becoming a president, he imposed a visa ban
on several Muslim countries. On the other front, he wants to build a wall to
stop Mexicans illegally entering the USA. The laws for new legal immigrants are
suffocating; many high caliber immigrants are subjected to a lottery.
Trump’s
anti-immigrant stance is particularly amusing, because he and his white
supremacists’ base are all immigrants themselves. The earlier immigrants’
attacking potential immigrants is similar to the hypocritical nuclear club: We
(USA, China, Russia, UK and France), the members, will produce as many nuclear
weapons as we wish, will exercise a veto power over every critical global
decision, but no other nation should dream of producing a single nuclear
warhead.
Narendra
Modi is more suave than Trump or Johnson. He delegates inflammatory speeches to
his Home Minister. On Modi’s watch, beef-eating has become a grave sin and
crime, love jihad has entered the vocabulary, a saffron monk is appointed as
the chief minister of India’s biggest state, Allahabad has been renamed as
Prayagraj. Bangladeshi immigrants are called termites by the home minister, and
a recent law advocates discrimination based on religion.
These
days we often hear the term “Supremacists”. It’s nothing but declaring yourself
as a predator, identifying your prey, and screaming to the world that you are
superior to your prey. Whether they are the White Supremacists in the USA or
Hindu Supremacists in India, they display a behavioral pattern. They usually
belong to privileged classes, are economically well-off, white or Brahmin
males, pigeonholing immigrants or Muslims and hating the entire class. They
usually bully or dominate their subordinates, wives or house maids. They readily
believe in false statistics, in history devoid of facts, and specialize in whataboutism.
(When I opposed India’s anti-Muslim legislation, one reader defended it by
asking me: what about the female genital mutilation practiced by Muslims in
Africa?)
Immigrants
Most
immigrants, the Mexicans in the USA, the Poles in the UK, and the Bangladeshis
in India do jobs the locals are unwilling to do. The lowest paid; the dirtiest
jobs are often the only ones available to them. They face racism, humiliation,
harassment, uncertainty and still diligently carry out their work. Their
contribution to the economy is significant. In the next five years Britain will
face a true crisis because of the shortage of plumbers, carpenters, gutter
cleaners, barbers, waiters, bartenders and all low-paid jobs. Bombay’s Hindu
supremacists, when they book an Uber, usually find that the driver’s name is
Mohammed.
Instead
of being grateful to the immigrants, the predator politicians declare them as
prey; the voting herds applaud those politicians. All that Trump, Johnson and
Modi have to do is to invoke the animal spirit. A winning formula is created: the
animal instinct elevates the politician and his followers in the food chain,
and the hunting game begins.
Evolution
Each of
us has an animal sitting inside us. Civilization is about moving from that
animal stage and becoming human. For 70+ years, we have lived without a World
War. That is a stupendous human achievement. In every election, the voter needs
to ask a simple question. Is the candidate a predator? An excellent clue:
Does he talk about immigrants and Muslims? If he does, he wants us to
become predators and join him in this hunting game.
Predators
play a violent game. That is why Trump, Johnson and Modi are so different from Rushdie
or fish.
Ravi
