- Prema Jayakumar
One of the maxims that one was given for writing in the copy-book was ‘The path to hell is paved with good intentions’. Recently I have been wondering if one more pavement stone should be added to that path. You know the one that says, ‘Don’t disturb things, let it be, you’ll only make matters worse.’
We live in a world where everyone is lying in some way or the other. Polite lies like ‘I was just thinking of you, thinking that it was a long time since we met,’ ease social give and take and are fairly harmless. And I think the saying should be ‘Lies, damn lies and poll promises’. But lies to oneself and the people around where things matter, with the excuse, ‘It will be all right’, could result in trouble, sometimes even catastrophe.
When someone does not let it be, when someone disturbs the settled order of things because they cannot bear the way things are, and feels the need to speak out, to tear down the masks, the world is shocked, not because of what they have seen behind the masks (which is horrifying enough, but they always knew that the mask covered bad things), but because someone has disturbed the status quo. It is as though they fear that if once the natural order of life is interrupted in its unquestioned progress, chaos is the result and it would be difficult to restore calm. That the calm covers up a multitude of sins of omission and commission is not thought to be of moment. Like the courtiers of the emperor who was naked, each person is afraid to raise a voice, to stand out in the crowd.
‘Don’t rock the boat, it is dangerous’, is a warning that is often given. In any big organisation a suggestion that could bring about a change for better efficiency in any part of the system is greeted with suspicion. The change might be obviously for the better, but why change at all when things have limped along, if at less than efficiently. The spoken or unspoken comment is, ‘It has served us and fairly well all these years, why change it and take a risk?’ As for criticism of an action taken it is met with horror and denial.
And then there is the accusation of letting the side down. If you do not enter the conspiracy of silence that holds on to status quo, that sees every finger pointing at a mistake as a threat, you are considered someone who lets the side down, someone who is a traitor. The more disciplined the organisation, the worse the sin of calling out an injustice or even inefficiency. There are only two groups – us and those who speak against us.
Why are we so afraid of disturbance that we let a very bad state of affairs continue? It is not just the fear of personal peril that calling out an injustice or even just an endemic inadequacy entails. That fear is there. And there is always a closing of ranks that makes an outsider of the person who raised their voice against the settled order. Perhaps in this reaction, for a short while at least, the existing order becomes defensive, more entrenched, more difficult to dislodge. But one voice raised, even that of the small child who called out that the emperor was naked, even that of a junior person, may make people more aware, may make people think, and so more voices might sound and there is often a change for the better.
E. M. Foster once wished, ‘If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country’. Even now such a statement would be controversial. Because, patriotism is supposed to be a virtue that should be automatic. If we called into question some act of the government of the country, even ordinarily, but definitely in times of war, we would be branded traitors, accused of being an ‘enemy of the people’. So should we paraphrase Forster and wish that one would have the guts to betray an organisation rather than expose a vulnerable person to its entrenched mistakes?
