SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA
ARCHIVES

But we do need a morals havaldar!

Not very many years ago, a certain Mr Navalkar would have reserved the most resounding of his cultural remonstrations for me. In the bright-ideas and strut-stuff world of the business school, culture is not the best preserved pickle, and I can recall many an instance where I would have crossed pretty much any rekha Navalkar can draw up. So it dawned as quite a surprise to me when I found myself disagreeing substantially with Prem Panicker's article, titled Morals Havaldar.

Prem's article, to my reading, had a two-fold thesis. First, that the depravity on our movie and television screens far outdoes anything we might ourselves do in the streets, and two, that there are numerous other problems that pervade our society which indirectly debase our morality far more. The first part is simply an observation, and we'll return to that presently. For the moment, we'll merely enter into the record that the gyrating women on these screens are of considerable interest, whether as artistes or as objects of sexual desire.

The other contention Prem put forward is hardly as simple. I agree only too well with the need to address a thousand problems that plague our society. The poverty, forced prostitution, casteism, malnutrition, lack of proper sanitation, and sundry other evils that Prem referred to are indisputable. The need to build public lavatories and ensure a proper childhood for our children are self-evident enough. What I do not agree with is the notion that those problems must be addressed BEFORE one embarks on a moral crusade against those perceived to be deviant.

We do not tell patients waiting for cough medicine to hold on while we treat the terminally ill. We do not stop law enforcement while we wait for nutrition programs to take hold. And so on and so forth. Quite simply, the various arms of government are all supposed to act simultaneously, not sequentially. Ideally, of course, they would act cohesively as well, but that's altogether another matter. I merely question the notion that Navalkar or the Shiv Sena-BJP government ought to have better things to do.

Nor is such a claim even helpful to Prem's point of view. The contention that Navalkar's assault on moral decay is ill-timed is ultimately self-defeating, for it grants that at another time, he might be right in espousing it. I have no doubt that if, after myriad problems have been solved, Navalkar comes back with his message, he will face just as much opposition. "Not now, there are millions of more important things" just doesn't wash.

So much for logic. Now to the graver side. However much one may disagree with Navalkar, we cannot escape some truths. It is quite clear, for example, that unregulated fondness, whether it be love or lust, eventually casts women in a poor light. Whether we speak about it openly or not, knockout babes are about knockers, and I've been in school and college long enough (and quite a bit more recently than either Prem or Navalkar) to know that is not merely some closet-fantasy-imagination of mine. With a little honesty, you'll admit as much just as readily. If you don't believe that, you'll die waiting for the 40-40-45 woman in a two-piece suit to sell soap on prime-time.

Check out your everyday television commercial, and you'll see for yourself what I mean. Toothbrush, jeans, beer and paint don't sell because of fantastic design or superior quality alone. The kissable lips, sexy posterior and invitingly buxom babe are all equally on sale. Advertisers make no effort whatsoever to even conceal the true message -- "drink this beer and I'm yours" or "try rubbing this soap over me". Even our measures of looking good, for the most part, are not noticeably different from the ones used to decide if we look desirable. And for the most part, it is not men who are being judged this way, but the women. [Incidentally, check out how many of those who wrote back to say they agree whole-heartedly with Prem are women. Take a guess first, and then look.]

On the face of it, promoting sexual and physical desirability might be modestly unwelcome, but what of it, one may ask? What's so wrong with looking desirable or trying to? Lots, and mostly because the desirability on Indian television promotes completely the wrong ideas about what makes us sexually attractive. How many people do you actually know who are as fair as the model on television, or as endearingly built, for example? These are not trivial considerations, either, although I won't dwell on them here, but will leave you with those posers.

The inescapable truth about a woman being hot property is that ultimately, she is just that -- property. The toothpaste peddler and the gyrating film-artistes are, to put it very directly, bimbos. Whether they are well-known heroines or washed-out wannabes makes no difference. Nor should we shrug away the fact that for every Dixit or Agnihotri in the limelight strutting her fancy stuff, there are a few dozen also-rans gyrating in the background. Would the great protectors of our expressions care to profile one of them, just so we can get a more complete picture?

Perhaps you resent my tagging your favorite filmstar as little more than a cover girl for sexual fantasies. My point exactly. I cast her as a bimbo because she wants to tell me what's under her blouse and bra. Inevitably, I wonder which director or producer she slept with. And by her own prompting, I wonder what the stuff she struts really looks like. How am I expected to think that this is a mature, decent and knowledgeable individual with her own identity, character, and pride? All I can really think is "sure baby, anything you say".

To be sure, plenty of women themselves would gladly take up the cause of self-expression against Mr Navalkar and his ilk, but plenty more end up being judged by the shapes of their bodies and the accessibility of their private parts. At least a few of them are bound to resent that. Nor should we overlook the sultanas of bimbo-chicdom who occasionally learn what date-rape is, or find out that unexpected pregnancies are complicating and quickly restore one's senses, albeit shockingly.

I don't agree with Navalkar at all, but I'm glad he's around. The former is the natural rebel in me, telling him that I am as capable of arriving at a moral standard as he is. The latter is the realist, reminding me of the times when, despite this professed ability, I arrived at entirely the wrong standard. We'll always have the rebels among us, pressing hard at the gates of moral deviance in the name of self-expression. The question is -- do we gain or lose by banishing the Navalkars of the world?

Society does benefit from having a morals havaldar. You don't have to agree with him, but knowing that he exists does provide a standard of morality that we can demand adherence to. Through the decades, zillions of us have seen Mom and Dad in the havaldar's suit, frowning at their inability to understand why astronomy sessions have to begin at midnight with plenty of gazing thrown in, or to accept that we know just as well how to protect the integrity of our own bodies and minds. That didn't stop the vast majority from going on to exactly the same positions at a later stage of their lives. Why?

The truth is that we all need a morals havaldar. Navalkar may not be that man, and he may not have right ideas. Clearly, he ought not to enact any of his ideas into law, for society includes such a wide spectrum of behavior that too many of us would fall foul of his definitions. But if he reminds you of grandpa blasting your unseemly cut-offs or your aunt commenting on your girlfriend's somewhat immodest attire, be glad. We can ignore him all we want, but merely calling his card doesn't make us the smart ones. The absence of a moral standard is not necessarily better than one we think is wrong. Been there, know that.

How Readers reacted to Ashwin Mahesh's last column

Ashwin Mahesh