Insignificant Events Keep Adding Layers Of ‘Normal’ Till We Reach The New Normal Of Blatant Bigotry
By Rakhshanda Jalil
06 Nov 2020
‘Creeping
normality’ (also called gradualism, or landscape amnesia) is a process by which
a major change comes to be accepted as ‘normal’, even ‘acceptable’, if it
happens slowly through small, often unnoticeable, increments of change. A
change that might otherwise be viewed as objectionable if it were to take place
in a single step or short period, is seen as quite all right – as we living in
21st century India can bear witness to the slow-building horror some of us have
felt over the decades.
Slow,
small, seemingly insignificant events, beginning with the country-wide Rath
Yatra of the 1980s, kept adding a layer of ‘normal’ till we reached this stage
of the ‘New Normal’ where blatant bigotry, bare-faced communalism and
publicly-aired prejudices are considered perfectly all right.
‘Creeping Normality’: How Has The Urdu Poet
Looked At ‘Gradual Changes’?
The
American scientist Jared Diamond describes ‘creeping normality’ in his book
written in 2005, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Diamond
gives the remarkable example of the natives of the Easter Island who, seemingly
irrationally, in just a few centuries, chopped down the last of their trees,
wiped out their rich ecosystem, drove their plants and animals to extinction,
and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism. As Diamond
writes:
“I suspect,
though, that the disaster happened not with a bang but with a whimper. After
all, there are those hundreds of abandoned statues to consider. The forest the
islanders depended on for rollers and rope didn’t simply disappear one day—it
vanished slowly, over decades.”
How has the
Urdu poet looked at gradual changes, so gradual that they creep up unannounced
as a fait accompli?
As Shaz
Tamkanat admits, often there’s a self-denial that this will not happen, not to
me, not now at the very least:
Abhi
kyunkar kahun zer-e-naqab-e-surmagin kya hai
Badalta hai
zamane ka chalan ahista ahista
Why should
I say what is under the grey veil
The ways of
the world change slowly, slowly
And Ateeq
Asar is ruing the gradual absence of trustworthy voices which is possibly an
early warning signal that goes unheeded:
Utthe jaate
hain dida-var sabhi ahista ahista
Ye duniya
mo'tabar logon se ḳhali hoti jaati hai
All the
connoisseurs leave one by one
This world
empties of wise men slowly
‘Look At
The Speed Of Revolution... So Slow, Yet So Swift’
And the
much underrated but marvellous poet, Asad Badayuni, who died tragically young,
speaks as though he has foreknowledge of what the future might hold. As is
often the case in Urdu poetry, it is implied, obliquely, rather than stated
directly, and the references to roses and thorny bushes is implicit rather than
explicit. In a sher, eerily reminiscent of what happened at Easter Island, he
writes:
Ye dharti
ek din banjar zamin ban jaaegi jaanan
Gulabon ki
jagah lenge babul ahista ahista
This earth
will turn into a barren land one day, dearest
Thorny
trees will slowly and steadily take the place of roses
Sometimes,
the poet draws solace from placing the blame squarely on Time and, therefore,
absolving himself of all culpability as, for instance, in this sher by
Shahryar:
Waqt teri
yeh ada mai aaj tak samjha nahi
Meri duniya
kyun badal dii, mujh ko kyun badla nahiin
Time, I
have till today never understood this trait of yours
Why have
you changed my world, but not changed me
Firaq
Gorakhpuri has the last word when change, especially revolutionary change,
manifests itself:
Dekh
raftar-e-inqalab 'Firaq'
Kitni
ahista aur kitni tez
Look at the
speed of revolution, Firaq
So slow and
yet so swift
What We, In
India, Must Dwell Upon
Coming back
to where we started, to gradualism and creeping normality, it is never about
pulling down one advertisement, renaming one road, removing one book from a
syllabus, issuing one letter of apology, retracting one seemingly benign
statement, dropping one member from a committee… and so on and so forth in a
long list of solitary acts.
It is,
rather, about the cumulative impact of these solitary acts of omission or
commission. It is about the Sorites Paradox (also known as the Paradox of the
Heap).
Imagine a
heap of sand, from which grains of sand are methodically removed, one at a
time. One might think that removing a solitary grain here or there makes no
difference to the heap. But what if this process is repeated over a period of
time with persistence and regularity? What if only one grain remains from the
original heap? Will it still be a heap? If not, when did it change from a heap
to a non-heap? Was it that first time, when the first solitary grain was
removed?
These Are Questions We In India Need To Ponder.
How Naushad
Noori, Bangladeshi Urdu Poet, Drew Our Attention To The ‘Mound of the Dead’
Naushad
Noori, one of the most remarkable Urdu poets from Bangladesh, draws our
attention to the ‘Mound of the Dead’ and the lessons to be learnt from it. An
ardent supporter of the Bangla language movement and the creation of a new
country based on linguistic and cultural affinity rather than religion and
jingoistic hyper-nationalism, Noori seems prescient, pointing towards the
disaster waiting to unfurl in this poem entitled Mohenjodaro written in 1952:
Ho sakta
hai, koi toofan
Ho sakta
hai, koi darya
Ho sakta
hai, koi faateh
Ho sakta
hai, koi lutera
Shehr-e
tamaddun dhool ke neechey
Dhool ke
neechey boli bhasha
Aur issey
tarikh-nawees
Log kahein
murdon ka teela
Koi vaba to
phooti thhii
Koi bala to
tooti thhii
Mere shehr ke
rehne walon
Apni Pothi,
apni Gita
Apni apni
lok kathayein
Apni apni
geeti mala
Apna apna
harf-e tahajji
Apni apni
boli bhasha
Pattey,
patthar, poste, papyrus
Tambe,
lohey par likh rakhna
Wahi waba
phir phooti hai
Wahi bala
phir tooti hai
It could
have been a storm
Or a river
Or a
vanquisher
Or a
plunderer
That buried
an entire civilisation
Under a
mound of dirt
Languages
and dialects
Under a
mound of dirt
Today, the
historians call it
The Mound
of the Dead
Perhaps an
epidemic broke out
Or a
calamity fell upon it
O people of
my city
Hold on to
your Geeta and Pothi
Your folk
tales and fables
Your songs
and ballads
Yours
letters of the alphabet
Your
languages and dialects
Inscribe
them on copper and iron
And on
leaves, stones, skin and papyrus
That same epidemic
has broken out again
That same
calamity has befallen.
-----
Dr Rakhshanda Jalil is a writer, translator and
literary historian. She writes on literature, culture and society. She runs
Hindustani Awaaz, an organisation devoted to the popularisation of Urdu
literature.
This is an
opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. New Age Islam neither endorses nor is
responsible for the same.
Original Headline: How India Marched Towards
the ‘New Normal’ of Bigotry, Communalism
Source: The Quint