The Many Shades of Patriotism

OME years ago, I was briefly in the Netherlands. The taxi from the airport was a faded green Mercedes. The driver, in a suit and skull cap, was a burly man with a white, flowing beard. He turned out to be a Pakistani and hummed a Dilip Kumar-Vyjayanthimala song: "Teri husn ki kya tareef karun." He said he was happy—happier than he had ever been in Pakistan.

- C P SURENDRAN

He had been in his adopted country for 22 years and had no intention of going back to the land he once loved enough to flee. He was content to prefer the Netherlands because, as he put it, his two children's education was free, he had community housing, the state covered his medical bills, and, when he retired, he would be the state's responsibility. "Why would I not love this country?" he asked.

In his latest work, Why the Poor Don't Kill Us, Manu Joseph fixes in his crosshairs the latent psychological contract that sustains inequality—an unspoken pact in which the marginalized refrain from revolt, thereby protecting the privileged. He examines how the fragile order of the privileged is not built on justice but on tacit understandings and carefully staged illusions. The poor, he argues, abide by this unwritten contract, suppressing anger and rebellion—at great moral cost. The question he poses is not 'why they don't rise up', but 'what keeps the oppressive structure intact?'

To my mind, it's the idea of life's insignificance—a very Indian instinct. From birth, we are told this life is secondary to the one after. The here-and-now cannot be helped. You could call it tolerance, or a resignation so deep it borders on a quiet despair. We call it 'fate'. And who can fight fate?