The colonial legacy of subordinate culture
On November 15, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, in an address to the Supreme Court Bar Association, spoke of the deep malaise of “subordinate culture” in our society. Such a culture, a colonial legacy, breeds an unedifying obsequiousness and an acute consciousness of status, a toad-eater, toad-eaten syndrome.
I have observed this, both as a bureaucrat and a politician, and seen closely the behaviour and body language of an Indian in the presence of someone hierarchically superior. A bureaucrat will consider it blasphemy to call his senior anything but sir; most times, a sentence will begin and end with “sir”; if the minister is seen approaching, he will move to one side with alacrity; in conversation, he will try to avoid direct eye contact; when the boss speaks, he will keep his head deferentially bowed; he will rarely question or contradict him; he will always keep a certain physical distance as if his “junior” status would be defiling; and, if his boss cracks a joke, he will laugh with exaggerated pleasure, as if it is the best joke he has ever heard.
In ordinary life, when two Indians meet as strangers, the encounter is often a duel to ascertain the auqat (real worth) of the other person. In the superior-subordinate mentality, to meet someone without knowing the coordinates of his status is like entering a pool without knowing its depth. Where hierarchical pre-eminence is not obvious, such as earlier with caste, Indians have mastered the fine art of ferreting out details by uninhibitedly asking a series of increasingly intrusive questions: What does your father do? Where do you live? Where did you study? These are understood by both parties as a necessary prelude to establishing the right hierarchical equation between themselves, so that the accepted lines of deference and familiarity are not crossed.
Justice Chandrachud said that when a high court judge eats lunch, the district judge stands and serves him. This ability to efface self-esteem is as strong as the proclivity to assert it with one’s subordinates.
I recall an incident in New York when the wife of our then foreign minister arrived at JFK airport. The private secretary ( PS) to the minister, an Indian Administrative Service officer, conscious of his status, was five minutes late in receiving her. When he met her, she exploded: “Ullu ke patthe, ye time hai anne ka [Bloody fool, is this the time to show up?]” The senior officer quietly swallowed the insult and continued to occupy the coveted post of PS to the minister.
Sometimes, the subordinate culture is so ingrained that it can lead to hilarious consequences. When I joined the foreign service, I was sent for a short stint of grassroots training to a district in Andhra Pradesh. The atmosphere in the district was distinctly feudal. The collector was akin to God and I, as assistant collector, was demi-God. One day, on my motorcycle — given to me by the department of drought relief — I hit a man who had turned without warning. The man fell down, but was not injured.
However, his anger was uncontrollable since he was the local policeman. There was nothing to indicate that I was the assistant collector, and the policeman unleashed a vituperative barrage of abuse in Telugu. I did not understand Telugu, but abuse in any language sounds like abuse. Just then, my peon, by chance, came cycling down the road, and immediately informed the policeman who I was. A particularly luscious abuse had formed on the lips of the policeman. But even as the abuse popped out of his mouth, his right hand flew to a salute!
Alas, one aspect of this subordinate culture is that when a person falls on bad times, he is deserted without much ado by those who cravenly fawned him. A rising star is greeted with disproportionate adulation, a fallen hero condemned with unjustified vehemence. At Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s funeral, I saw the daughter of his most powerful political colleague stand throughout the ceremony because now that her father was not in power, no one offered her a chair.