Friendship in the time of ideology

We are at one of those moments in our history, we in India, that is, when nations have acute, often troubling conversations with themselves. These are not times for comfortable certainties, nor unquestioning warmth.

For months now, I have met people whose cosy networks of consensus and support have been wrecked by the churn of history. Naturally, my own do not exist anymore.

Friendships have fallen, families split — but such is the drowning cacophony of the rise of new narratives. Ideologies are not quiet creatures. What then, someone asked me recently, does one do with relationships? How do intractable debates end, what does one do with obdurate arguments? One of the options that has been suggested to me is to keep quiet (and smile), to avoid what is often called a confrontation, but this is a problematic thing because essentially the quietude is for transactional gain, a boss pleased, a suitor charmed, it is not passion but profit and loss.

But why do such questions arise? Because in societies that are built upon carefully filtered, negotiated consensus designed with a neat keep in/keep out switch, any change in status quo unsettles the myths, and as everyone knows, nothing disturbs contemporary history more than the shattering of fragile myths.

What does this really mean for you, indeed what does it mean for me? It means that you might notice, with not a little irony, that many people who celebrate the notion of ‘The Argumentative Indian’ are extremely displeased when faced with actual refutation in real life.

What this means is that if you take a contrary position to ‘popular truths’, you will run the risk of ostracism and acrimony. In our label-filled world, you will face generalisations, semi-facts and tags. These are what I call revivalist hazards — when civilisations start to question who they are, what they do, and where they come from, they risk unsettling the status quo. You may have heard that one cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs, and similarly, you cannot re-contemplate your history unless, as it were, you live it again.

One of the familiar tropes is to equate cultural revitalisation with chauvinism — what this does is that it picks up every stray negative of the process of revivalism and compares it, unfavourably of course, with the very best of status quo. It is like comparing Yo Yo Honey Singh to Bade Ghulam Ali Khan because, you know, they are both singers! Needless to say, this is intellectual dishonesty.

But having said this, what does one do about friendship is a new world of ideology? Well, first, understand that ideology is like romance, every generation must reinvent it for themselves, especially if they are going to re-comprehend their own history. Then, see that cultural upheavals are great filters to determine which relationships would last, and which would crumble. The great lesson in all this lies within and not without. It is only you who truly knows whether you are plural or liberal or chauvinist.

Yesterday morning, breakfasting with my Pakistani singer friend, I discussed how we have remained close friends in spite of the many challenges and hurdles that naturally crop up between a Hindu Bengali from India and a Pathan Muslim Pakistani, each deeply culturally rooted and nationalist in their own way.

And we realised that it is our quest to ever so deeply understand who we are, and where we come from, and not be swayed by elitist labels, that strengthens our friendship because you cannot truly ever hope to understand a friend until you understand yourself.

No matter how strident your argument, ultimately in any true friendship it is your generosity of action that ought to count. If it does not, then perhaps you are better off without that friendship. If a friendship seeks to subservient an intellectual position to thrive, then surely it is debilitating?

Western civilisation rose on the back of a confidence in the inherent achievements of man, of those men, that is, and for India to rise, a new generation must reclaim the confidence that is rightfully ours. But modern India (and Indians) don’t even, largely, know what they have.

As my Pakistani friend said (and here I must say that I felt that she as a Pathan and a Pakistani instinctively understood my position and argument much more than many, many people I meet in Delhi), it is only now that South Asia has truly started the process of decolonisation.

The journey will be argumentative and perhaps fraught with losses, but to surge forth is to attain the only thing that matters — yourself.