Recent comments made by a local councillor blaming Indians for the litter crisis in the city of London has caused tremendous heart-burn amongst litter-ate Indians residing in the British Isles.
Miss Ivimy, 53, who sits on the Tory-run Hammersmith and Fulham Council in London, outlined her concerns in an email to Nick Johnson, chief executive of H&F Homes housing association. “I know that in India throwing rubbish out of a window and total disregard for the cleanliness of a public area is normal behaviour and I dare say a number would change behaviour if firmly told that in London this is not acceptable behaviour,” wrote Lucy Ivimy.
Though the Tory councillor later apologized for her comments after being accused of racism by Indians (who when in India treat all Africans as drug-peddlers), it has also brought into focus the habits of vast majority of Indians who firmly believe that every inch of open public space outside the door-steps of their homes is part of huge garbage dump built exclusively for the purpose of littering.
While Lucy may have erred in blaming couple of Indian families for the litter around the garden at Woodford Court, she certainly doesn't deserve to be called a racist. At the very most, she deserves only a mild rebuke for her ignorance of the glorious Indian culture, her lack of sensitivity in assuming that we need "an educational exercise" and her inability to understand the philosophical foundations of all our activities (and also inactivities).Yes, Madam Ivimy, it is perfectly normal in India to have total disregard for the cleanliness of public areas and completely acceptable to throw garbage at every available place. But we don't disregard cleanliness out of sheer apathy or laziness as you perhaps believe. There is a reason behind everything we do and if you were aware of the complex set of factors that lay beneath our seeming acceptance of dirt, filth and garbage, you would have at least been very sympathetic, if not appreciative of the uniqueness of our culture.
We Indians being philosophical in nature have the unique ability of amalgamating philosophical propositions into our day-to-day existence. Long before the chaos theory became fashionable in western scientific circles, we had not only understood the principles behind this theory but also decided to apply them in our lives to appreciate the theory better. According to the chaos theory, chaos and disorder is the natural condition of our universe and all material things are in a state of constant decay and ruin. According to one prominent Indian philosopher-cum-televangelist Asaram Bapu, we should be like a leaf or a twig floating in a river going along graciously with the flow of the water rather than a rock who resists the current of the water but eventually breaks up into pieces under the relentless pressure of the strong currents.
While western societies struggle to maintain order and work hard to prevent natural decay of their institutions, towns and cities, we believe in taking the path of least resistance and letting the universe take its own course. We also don't mind helping the universe with whatever means available to us. Since garbage is the only thing that a poor nation like us can afford to throw away freely, we throw garbage all around and help the universe in its quest for chaos and disorder.
A mark of greatness is not just the ability to embrace philosophical axioms into our daily lives, but also to effortlessly merge contradictory ideologies into a holistic whole. Quite many westerners who visit India find it odd that while the general landscape of our country is dilapidated, yet most of the homes of people in the middle and upper class income bracket are clean, appropriately chic and well-maintained. The contradiction in the spruceness between the public and private spaces of the country can easily be explained if we take into account another ancient axiom that we believe strongly in - that our body is our temple and hence should be well-maintained. Since we treat our homes as extensions of our bodies (both being our private domains where we are kings and all that), we take great care to keep our interiors in good condition and leave the chaos theory to take care of the exteriors. Quite ingenious, right? Greatness comes naturally to us.
But every once in a while, universe throws to us people or situations that complicate matters for us. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was one such fellow who was dropped down from the heavens to make our lives difficult. This queer little fellow didn't understand the chaos theory and insisted that we should keep both our private and public space free of garbage. Not just content to sweep the streets (despite being a high caste hindu) to show people the way, he went ahead and proclaimed that 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness'.
Since we take our godliness very seriously and since destiny forced us to take this queer fellow seriously, we were forced to take the alien concept of cleanliness very seriously. But being clever folks, we found a brilliant way out that allowed us to bestow equal respect both the theories - the chaos theory and 'cleanliness is next to godliness' theory. We decided to keep our towns and cities clean symbolically.
(An important part of being Indian is belief in value of symbolism. Symbolic tokens often serve as good substitutes for the real thing in our country. The symbolic value of, say a Nobel prize won by an Indian often exceeds our interest in knowing the reason why the prize was conferred and allows us to feel pride in the achievement of a fellow Indian without the hard work of having to understand the mind of the genius to whom the prize was bestowed.)
Realizing the importance of symbolism, our government found an easy solution - as a mark of respect to Gandhi's beliefs, our government started naming everything after his name. Statues of his bust were erected at every corner and every third road of the country was named MG Road. A splendid way of honoring Gandhi's cleanliness mantra without actually doing the dirty work of keeping our corners and streets clean.
In conclusion, it needs to be stated resolutely. We don't need an "educational exercise" to prevent us from throwing our stuff out of our windows. But arrogant western lawmakers and citizenry need an educational exercise to understand how admirably India manages to straddle conflicting worlds, philosophies, ideologies and beliefs without falling apart.
