Yes, we are Indians but we are also more

Like many others around me, I am a Hindu. When I hear the Aachman mantra followed by the Om vishwaani deva savitur duri taani paraa suva chant, I can recite along fairly comfortably.  The words roll off my tongue because I grew up in an environment where every event – Birthday, Diwali, New Year, homecoming etc was kicked off with a havan. The seasons or days I associate with festivities, holidays etc are all Hindu. My default setting is Hindu.

Also, I’m a man. I find many sexist jokes funny. I have spent most of my formative years surrounded by men in all boys’ boarding schools and then as part of a very oriented peer group . Because of that I tend not to be very careful about the language I use, which is liberally littered with expletives, many gender-insensitive. Some would call me sexist. I’m most eloquent when using profanities and struggle when I have to sound decent and respectable in a meeting or presentation with ladies around. My default setting is foul-mouthed male.

Putting the two together my default setting is – slightly sexist, foul-mouthed Hindu male. Hey! I should automatically get entry into a Modi-bhakts online troll team. But alas, it’s not to be.

We all have our default settings based on how we have been socialised.

My partners and I have been running a production house for over a decade and we make TV shows. A few years ago, when working on many TV shows simultaneously at a particularly busy time, we scheduled several shoots during a week – only to find that most senior members of our production department would be on leave. Why? Because the shoot was scheduled at a time that Muslims celebrate as Eid (which has never been on my and my Punjabi Hindu partners’ radar), and our production team consisted of Najmus Saqib, Ali Ahmed and Shanoo Sheikh. All excellent professionals: motivated, Muslim youth for whose families Eid was as important as Diwali havans are for mine. We were screwed. As a result, we now have meetings to include people from other communities as well in our production teams, and also ensure that a more representative team meets while deciding shoot calendars.

I drove across the country directing a food and travel show for seven years. I never had to worry about anything as far as locations went, because we had an all-male crew and anchors. We stopped wherever we wanted to relieve ourselves in the vast Indian countryside. The first time I had a lady as part of the crew, it messed up my entire production plan because there were many considerations (other than “is there a loo on location?”) which had never crossed my mind. Not because I think women should not work in production or be part of an on-the-road travel show, but because when I’m in the middle of a gallop at work, I’m thinking with my default setting – man who can pee where he wants, when he wants. However, now when we plan shoots, there is a location manager whose job also includes ensuring shoot locations are conducive to women crews.  Now, decisions made by a team with other default settings have made us more efficient.

Having someone else with a different default setting as part of a team makes for better decisions.

Wall Street has for decades been criticised for being a male-dominated, misogynist and brutally ruthless place. This talk by Halla Tomasdottir argues why the world of finance needs more women. Wall Street’s testosterone-driven, competitive male culture needs “feminine qualities” to make the financial world less turbulent and destructive. It needs gender representation for better decision-making.

A panchayat in Gujarat created a system where the Dalit and Harijan community would get to draw water only after what they call “higher castes” had drawn theirs. They also want to build a caste-based water pipeline. I doubt a Dalit-only panchayat would create this time-table. They’d probably reverse it completely. It’s best if both communities get representation while creating systems. Competing interests are inevitable.

This panchayat and this one banned women from wearing jeans, using cellphones, shopping etc. These panchayats are full of patriotic Indians. They aren’t ogres with horns on their heads who want India to perish. But they are products of the environment they grew up in. A panchayat with more female representation from different ages and different backgrounds would take better decisions.

Earlier this year, an incident of Michael Brown, an African-American man shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, US, spiraled into a standoff between the local police and community. I don’t know whether the police officer in question or the Ferguson police force is racist or not. It may very well be true that cops there are an excellent force and act with the kind of consistency and integrity that would make them completely colour blind. But consider this. This is just one of many pieces about the lack of diversity in the Ferguson police force that made headlines for a while. The town’s population is 29 per cent white and its police force 94 per cent white. Also, five of Ferguson’s six city council members are white. Its mayor, James Knowles is white. Yes, this matters. Not just for the optics, but also in decision-making. The way the all-white council and the mayor handled the media spotlight was a disaster. Not because they don’t want what’s best for their town, but because they can’t see how their utterances would be received by non-white people. And if they can’t even play that right, chances that they will make decisions which address the concerns of the black community are slim. It’s the default setting syndrome.

It’s why so many argue that the developing world be represented in inter-governmental committees on climate change or at other powerful decision-making bodies under and outside the United Nations. Can’t we all just be human beings and not American or German or Indian? Won’t human beings do what’s best for the species?

They might want to, but one point of view may not address the concerns of the developing world. Our representation is important because no matter how brilliant the minds of the leaders of the developed world, they won’t be able to do justice to the concerns and needs of developing countries. It could be ignorance because of the default setting syndrome or then ensuring one’s own interests are addressed at the expense of another group. Competing interests are inevitable in any complex situation and Indian policy and society is as complex as it gets.

A group that will be making laws, drafting legislations, deciding on regulation etc is most effective and fair with adequate representation from all communities, genders and religions. Not because people are evil and prejudiced (even though many are). It’s because we often can’t see things that we have never experienced first-hand based on how we were socialised.

This is the fundamental basis of democracy being considered the most desirable system of governance. If citizens of the largest democracy in the world don’t get this, it’s clear we take democracy for granted without really understanding it.

Slogans like “Why can’t we say 66 Indians in council of ministers instead of breaking them into caste and religion. We are all Indian”, are well-meaning but about as smart as similar lines used by Sunny Deol in Gadar or Border or Yamla Pagla Deewana.

Would you be comfortable with a penal code being drafted by an all-male, Muslim-only committee? I know I wouldn’t, even though there’s a chance I will be extended the primitive privilege of having four wives.

So when someone says religion, gender or community representation in a group of decision-makers at the highest level, like the council of ministers is irrelevant, I don’t know whether they have the objectivity and all-encompassing knowledge of God or whether it’s the cluelessness of a ___________ __ ______.

I won’t bother filling in the blanks because I know this piece will be edited (and my choice of words removed) by a decent, mindful, female editor whose default settings are more appropriate than mine for this forum. If you think it’s terrible now, you should’ve seen it before.