The Cult Worship Of Civil Servants
Sonali *
Colonialism / NeoColonialism :: Pix - facebook.com/NegroScopy
While everyone is cheering and merry making about the recent results
of civil something exam, the "success" of eight enlighten souls from
Manipur this year; this girl has a little something contradictory to offer. I
just wonder how it must be during the colonial days in India when an
Indian gets induced into the civil service. Always leave me thinking if it
must be as prestigious as it claims to be now. Celebrations in Manipur
go on like a God has descended from heaven to bless everyone in the
land. Well, very sorry to tell you that you are worshipping the devil, the
manifestation of the causes of your own miseries.
Like in all stories where the devil comes with the lust for power and
wealth, so does this devil. The chair of the civil servant comes with the
best that the colonial legacy can offer: power to govern or rather to rule
a district, a department; the command of the police and administration,
the ability to control revenues or accumulate it and all the remnant
power of a colonial sovereign you can think of. But the question is, why
is everyone acting up like these civil servants like they are going to cure
some incurable disease? Have they come with a cure for AIDS or to free
the life of millions from an inevitable death? Perhaps, a cure for cancer!
Or perhaps they have got the key to curing all floods and famine? May
be they can eradicate poverty and hunger? No no no! None at all.
Well let's start with, why the rituals? Why is there the cult worship of
somebody who is going to be given "a chair with a colonial ghost sitting
on it"? Simply because, everyone wants to be associated with power
and those that can wield it. This is a clear manifestation of a subjugated
mass that constantly seek to hide under the umbrella of power where
bullets and bombs rain cats and dogs. Those that take part in this ritual
of throwing garlands and worshipping those that has made the status of
"high lords" are trying to get a piece of their aura or may be their halo.
It is as I see it a way of building social capital, connections as one may
simply put it. It is really the start of nepotism. So a distant uncle, some
relative, someone from the locality, some organization comes to bask in
the glory with the high lords. Being associated with so and so high lord
now turns them into more credible people with better connection with
state power, hence making them less susceptible to the raining bullets
and easy way through things around. So, the need to say my uncle's
best friend's daughter's husband is one of the "high lords".
So when you
get frisked by a man in green, you can mention their name or ring up
their number if things don't go well. Or when you look for a contract for
construction, seek for employment, beat up a goon; this connection is
certainly helpful. It's always a plus pointer to know the managers of the
state, especially when the state is as powerful as it is in our lives
Now what I am really interested is in the way the middle class
ideologies in the little place called Manipur has been highly successful
in producing these high lords. I mean eight out of about a thousand is a
very high number compared to the tiny population it has.
Max Weber,
the well known German thinker associated the rise of modern day
capitalism with the birth of Protestant Ethics in his studies. Economic
success was regarded as a sign of the calling, a sign that you would go
to heaven; it was a sign of being blessed. Therefore, to work harder for
economic success and invest what you earn, do not sit idle was the
ethics in a brief summary. However, capitalism was able to appropriate
this ethics as it coincided with the logic of capital accumulation and
expansion. Therefore capitalism had at its disposal, the religious force.
Likewise, it is the middle class ethics that has been at the disposal of
colonialism. The middle class ethics if I may elaborate is the idea of
preserving the status quo and sticking under the umbrella of power.
This ethics ensures that their privilege position against the toiling
masses is preserved. But this middle class ethic is haunting the lower
rungs as well. As those under them, try to emulate by taking up middle
class aspirations and dreams. Since the middle class are the ones
directly in contact with the toiling masses, and their material comforts
do seem alluring, their ideologies or ethics, whatever you may call it
exerts great pressure on the toiling masses. So, a peon seeks to follow
the footsteps of their "offisar babus" and make their sons/ daughters
like them, aspire for their position through their children, imitate what
these "offisars" plan for their children. So does a peasant, a rickshaw
driver, a vegetable seller, they all want a piece of the pie.
Sale your land and go for coaching, pawn your family jewelry and go for
coaching, get a mortgage and go for coaching, all in the hope of passing
an exam to become one of the high lords. What about the thousands
that don't make it? For Delhi, well there is the world famous cheap rent
IAS colony where guys hide their bald heads in shame and as for girls
we are not fortunate enough to wait till our heads are bald or skins
wrinkle. We are shipped off to another family when the number
"thirty" rings on our age.
But what let us get back to the high lords and their colonial chairs. Let's
establish some facts here. So, in the spirit and the race to become the
high lords many scientists are killed, philosophers are obliterated and
critical thinkers face oblivion. Most of the time their parents are the
killers while at other times they commit suicide. How? One may ask.
Someone who can go on to become a scientist at NASA finishes their
potential by shuffling some paperwork at some lousy old fart filled
office filled with obsessed clerks fattened from the offerings of people,
putting on inaccurate zeros wherever possible.
A deep thinker is
mocked until his philosophy has any use for the exams of the high lords.
Critical thinking is a very dangerous game and not one which the state is
willing to play, so I'll be damned if thoughts of Frankfurt school or
critical theories of Post modernism will have place in the thoughts of
our high lords.
In another word the middle class seeks to occupy managerial positions
in the state. The toiling masses seek to emulate themselves by seeking
power though the means the middle class seek. They look to them as
mentors. And this is their biggest blunder. The state does not organize
absolute power for its managers, especially colonial states.
The state
cannot risk an overthrow since the middle class has a potential to
overthrow it with much resources at their disposal. So it is a distant
dream for the masses to grasp power through the middle class ethics
because it does not have the resource just the numbers and numbers
do not mean much when they are in competition among themselves to
emulate to middle class following their ethics. When they do emulate to
the middle class they loose their number, their material deficiencies and
sufferings. This is how I believe the ideological and material circulation
of the state works.
Maybe we hear a few stories of a rickshaw driver's son becoming a high
lord, a peasant's son for one. What about the 998 out of the 1000, if
you look up, most of their economic belongings says middle class;
maybe I might be accused as putting down my assumption but I urge
the readers to do the research on that. The high lords are not placed on
their chairs to end our sufferings, end poverty or eradicate diseases.
They are guided by the colonial ghost that works on the logic of master
servant relation. Their only accurate function was to strengthen the
colonial state. They were the most effective means to centralizing
power by the state.
As for the present situations, I will let the readers judge the nature of
the state and the role of the civil servants. By state I do mean the
organized form of authority, hierarchy, domination and power, not the
territorial divisions of states. Colonization was in all is essence deeply
patriarchal, it seeks to subdue its subjects as a patriarch subdues
women. Therefore even if a woman becomes a civil servant, she
becomes a high lord not a lady. Her biology says woman, her political
anatomy spells "PATRIARCH".
As for the rituals of garland throwing and merry making in these few
days, it is a symptom of oppressed mentalities seeking to emulate
themselves by extending its relation to the managers of the state. The
middle class ethics of becoming a high lord is dictated by the colonial
ghost that sits on their chairs.
Will it ever stop the reign of the men in green and the rain of bullets
and bombs? No! Will our enlightened lords cure the mentally retarded
parents of Manipur that thinks their children would lying in a field shot
by men in green if they do not return by 10 pm? No! Well certainly I do
not think the high lords are messiahs but rather they are the one who
pulls out a pen to put a signature for the systematic violence of the
people. They are the embodiment of the colonial legacy.
(The writer is a nobody; just one among few thousand voices that thinks that cult worship of any colonial legacy is plain disgusting)
* Sonali wrote this article for e-pao.net
The writer can be contacted at kapoor(DOT)1533(AT)rediffmail(DOT)com
This article was posted on May 15, 2016.
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