The Societal Stockholm syndrome
" It is this gradual and participatory restoration of faith
in the institutions of governance that is the most important task in the
reconstruction of a society ravaged by terror." KPS Gill in "Freedom
from Fear"
"India was the mother of our race and
Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages. She was the mother of our philosophy, mother
through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics, mother through Buddha, of the
ideals embodied in Christianity, mother through village communities of
self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us
all."
- Will Durant
by Kaushal Vepa PhD
Introduction
In the last few
decades we have become accustomed to seeing certain peculiar modes of behavior
in India, seemingly unique
only to the subcontinent. For example there is a tendency to be too quick to
rationalize the behavior of terrorists and find all manner of excuses to
justify their behavior. Furthermore there is great reluctance to call a
terrorist a terrorist. In fact the word is almost taboo in the English language
press in India, which prefers to use the more innocuous term 'militant' to
describe the behavior of these demented individuals who rarely balk at
committing heinous acts such as the killing of women and children.
Such behavior extends
to remarks about India's main adversary in
the world, namely Pakistan. The refrain is
always that India should make
concessions to Pakistan and not vice versa.
There are all kinds of analysis done to explain away the behavior of
terrorists. This behavior extends to incidents such as Godhara, where a Muslim
mob of several hundred men set fire to several bogies of an Indian train
and burnt alive at least 50 people most of whom were women and children. The
aftermath of this was there were riots in major towns in Gujarat resulting in the
death of about 1000 people (including over 150 policemen. It is commonly
acknowledged that 20% of those killed in the aftermath of Godhara were Hindus,
unlike Godhara itself where not a single Muslim was killed and the perpetrators
of the crime were almost exclusively Muslim. The point is that none of these
facts are ever brought out. In fact more than likely there is usually little or
no mention of Godhara as the triggering incident and the resulting aftermath is
usually always referred to as a Pogrom. This revisionist story is peddled
mostly by the dominant English language press which rarely has a harsh word to
say against any terrorist, particularly if the victims are Hindu. Any statements
made in support of the then prevailing governing dispensation are dismissed as
examples of jingoism, a word that has ubiquitous usage in India.
I have termed these
behaviors, manifestations of a common malady called the Societal Stockholm
Syndrome and in fact the behavior is not unique to India. I cannot claim
originality in coining this phrase which is an extension of a much more
commonly used term , namely the Stockholm syndrome and has been used to
designate maladies exhibited by some individuals on a more global scale than
the behavior exhibited by individuals in certain common place situations. But
we are getting ahead of ourselves. What is this Stockholm syndrome and more to
the point what is the variant we are terming the Societal Stockholm Syndrome
and why should we as Indians care about this Stockholm syndrome.
The Stockholm Syndrome
The Stockholm syndrome
is a term used to denote the behavior a small group of 3 women and one man who
were kidnapped in a bank in Stockholm, Sweden on August 23, 1973 and held hostage by 2
kidnappers who happened to be ex-convicts. There was an explicit
threat that the hostages would be put to death instantly should there be no
payment of ransom. There was also kindness shown by the captors towards their
prisoners. The astonishing behavior of the hostages started almost immediately
after the kidnapping. For starters, the hostages were none too keen to be
rescued from their hostages after an initial period of 2 or 3 days. Even after
their release, the hostages strongly resisted attempts by the government to
prosecute the kidnappers. Several months after their release the hostage
continued to harbor warm feelings towards their kidnappers who had quite
unambiguously threatened to take their lives[1].
After the initial
reaction to such behavior, journalists and social scientists started
questioning whether this behavior was far more universal than was suspected.
The question was whether the emotional bonding between the captors and the
captives was a freak incident or was it a manifestation of a much broader
phenomenon that occurred in oppressive situations. Lo and behold, they
discovered that the phenomenon occurred in disparate situations whose main
common denominator was that there be an oppressive element inherent in the
situation. The term Stockholm syndrome was used to describe this family of
situations. It was realized that the situation occurred in a variety of
circumstances such as concentration camp prisoners, cult members, civilians in
Communist Chinese prisons, pimp procured prostitutes, incest victims,
physically and or emotionally abused children, battered women prisoners,
victims of hijacking, and of course hostages[2].
What then are the
conditions that are conducive to the development of the Stockholm syndrome?
These are listed below
|
 Perceived threat to
survival and the belief that one's captor is willing to act on that threat
The captive's
perception of small kindnesses within the overall context of terror
Isolation from
perspectives other than those of the captor
Perceived inability
to escape
|
It is important to
realize that the Stockholm syndrome is a survival mechanism.
Finally, the men and
women who get it are not lunatics. They are fighting for their lives they
deserve compassion, not ridicule.
Perhaps the most
famous early example of Stockholm syndrome was the celebrated case of Patty
Hearst, kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (a left-wing radical cadre)
in 1974. Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of the newspaper tycoon Randolph
Hearst, reportedly identified so strongly with her captors that she appeared to
have become one of their numbers, and she was famously photographed carrying a
semi-automatic rifle as “Tania” in an SLA bank raid in San Francisco some months later.
The much more recent case of the Indian Airlines hijacking from Katmandu to Kandahar is another instance
of the Stockholm syndrome at work where several of the passengers had only good
words to say about the hijackers even though they slit the throat of one of the
passengers[3]. Another very common
example is that in the case of emotionally and physically abused children, it
is usually the case that the child will favor the parent who is the habitual
abuser rather than the parent who is not.
The Societal Stockholm Syndrome at work in
India
Psychologist Dee
Graham has postulated that a version of the Stockholm syndrome occurs on a
societal level[4].
By a Societal Stockholm Syndrome we mean the prevalence of self destructive
behavior after exposure to an oppressive environment on the part of large
sections of society rather than a handful of men and women as in the case of
the Stockholm kidnapping. Arguably, one of the most
appropriate examples of a societal Stockholm syndrome is the submissive
behavior of the German people when confronted with the terrorist regime of
Adolph Hitler. Well after Adolph Hitler had come and gone, in fact 17 years
after the end of the world war, I found large numbers of Germans who had only
good words to say about him. Of course most would ascribe this to anti Semitism
on the part of the German people, but I have a strong suspicion that there was
a societal Stockholm syndrome (SSS) at work. Another
example of a SSS is the reaction of a section of the Israeli
public to their five decades long conflict with the Arab nations surrounding
them[5].
Psychologist Graham
believes that all women suffer from it--to widely varying degrees, of course.
But as we will elaborate the societal versions of the Stockholm syndrome are
not restricted to women alone and fit the behavior of large sections of the
Indian populace very nicely. What are some of these examples we are talking
about. We have already alluded to a few, early in this essay.
The romanticization of
bandits in India is a good case in
point. For the most part bandits in India, like their cohorts
elsewhere have few redeeming qualities and are extremely ruthless when it comes
to taking of human life. Yet, the very villagers upon whom they prey act as
their best defendants and will go to the extent of hiding them should the
occasion so demand. This is similar to the reluctance of the villagers in the
movie The Magnificent Seven, a reluctance to stand up to the bandits even when
faced with debilitating, destructive and predatory actions by the bandits.
Another similar
example is that of Kashmiri villagers who initially refused to adopt the
"Village defense council" set of procedures in defense against
marauding terrorists aided and abetted by the Government of Pakistan. We will
let KPS Gill[6]
(the erstwhile super cop of India) himself explain the
mechanisms at work here,
"It is nonsense
to talk about the ‘will of the people’ under the shadow of the gun. There is,
in fact, a "societal Stockholm Syndrome", a pattern of submission,
resignation, acceptance and eventual justification that becomes a necessary
survival strategy under extreme, lawless and pervasive threat. Terrorism – even
by small but well armed, and especially externally supported groups – has the
capacity to produce, in large masses of men, a widespread belief in the
futility of resistance and a loss of faith in the state and its agencies and
their ability to protect life, liberty and property. These patterns of thought
gradually create a denial among the people of their own fear, and an increasing
justification of the terrorist cause. However outrageous the extremist demands
may be, the "logic" of these demands begins to find sympathetic
echoes among the people, the media and the "secular" or
"moderate" leadership as well. Gradually, this is also translated
into an increasing willingness to provide, at least, non-terrorist support to
the activities of the terrorists – feeding, harboring, sympathetic bandhs,
dharnas and protests, the creation and operation of Front Organizations that
take up the "cause" of the "human rights" of arrested
terrorists, etc. To believe that these are the acts of a free people, willingly
undertaken, is to utterly and completely misunderstand the very nature of terrorism.
Indeed, the most tragic, the most pathetic, symbols of terrorism are not the
mutilated corpses that are so often projected through the media, but the images
of members of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat singing paeans to their own enslavement
and the homage that the Hurriyat pays, from time to time, to the mehmaan
mujahiddeen, the foreign mercenaries, and to Pakistan, whose ambitions and
machinations kill thousands of innocent Kashmiris every year."
Yet another example of
a SSS at work is the election of known criminals,
murderers and gangsters to elective office. This is especially true in the
state of Bihar in India but is present albeit
to a lesser degree elsewhere. There is currently a case of a convicted felon
under indictment for further crimes who was elected to the Lok Sabha (the
Indian parliament). The case draws some amount of attention in India but there is a
visible lack of outrage that something like this is allowed to happen. Even as
we speak the Bihar government is squashing all cases against this murderer
so that he can sit in the Lok Sabha despite the orders of the Supreme Court to
the contrary.
But the most glaring
example of the SSS in the Indian
subcontinent is in the way the Indian public and the government handles the so
called 'communal' problem. A word about terminology is in order here. As with
many things Indian, words in the English language have a nuanced meaning in India that is in some cases
quite distinct from their usage in the rest of the world. The word communal is
a word with a pregnant meaning in India, generally referring
to any action that is perceived to be against the best interest of the Muslim
community. Communal is often used as an antonym for secular, which is the
highest accolade of praise in India. To qualify for this
accolade and to inoculate oneself against the constantly lurking charge of
communalism one must be certified as a strong supporter of the Muslim
community. But those who have fallen over backward in order to qualify, have only
found that the bar or Lakshman rekha is constantly moving and like the bandits
in The Magnificent Seven, their avarice for more knows no limits. The communal
problem gets significantly more complicated in the subcontinent, due to the
presence of the Islamic republic of Pakistan as the immediate
neighbor of India, a republic only in
name. Now that we have established the terms of the debate, let us get on to
the substance.
To set the stage for
what follows it must also be recalled that the Islamic conquest of India which took several
centuries to instantiate was an extremely bloody one. In the words of Will
Durant the historian the Islamic invasion of India was[7] "probably the
bloodiest story in history ... a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is
that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom
can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and
multiplying from within."
There are many
examples of the SSS at work here. At its
most basic level there is denial - a denial that the atrocities related to the
conquest ever happened. Even a discussion or debate on this topic is taboo in
certain parts of India such as the state of West Bengal which is run by
communists. One recent commentator Hari Chandra writes about the resulting
impact of the debilitating impact of seven centuries of continuous warfare and
conquest in his column on Resurrecting India's True History[8]
"The debilitating
and deleterious impact of these two outside influences(British and Islamic) on
the Indian psyche runs very deep and the wounds are very raw despite the
doctoring of history by the professional secularists, and despite afflictions
of the Stockholm Syndrome and of Dhimmitude on the gatekeepers of history and
the ruling political class of the yesteryears. So great is the fear of truth by
these professional secularists that in their heyday they ensured that the 1982
directive from the National Council of Educational Research and Training
(NCERT) for the rewriting of school texts clearly stipulated that the
“characterization of the medieval period as a time of conflict between Hindus
and Moslems is forbidden.” The state of denial of a past reality is astounding
given the vast amounts of archeological, epigraphic, and literary evidence.
However, this does not prevent the reality-distorting historians from adopting
negationism as policy, and giving all sundry attributions and flavorful
explanations highlighting the supposed positive contributions of the Islamic
invaders/rulers and the British colonizers even if their practices were largely
to sustain their tyrannical regimes rather than for the direct benefit of their
subjects. The issues under this format range from defending the destruction of
temples and religious conversions under the Islamic rule to the laying of the
railway network and the practice of slave trade under the British. “So the
first line of defense is to deny the history altogether.
The second level at
which the SSS operates in India is to say that while there
may have been atrocities such as carting away thousands of slaves over the
Hindu Kush to the markets of Samarqand , Bokhara ,Isfahan and Damascus, but
then they were no different than the actions of pre-Islamic rulers in India.
And then with a flourish we are told that Asoka indulged in a lot of killing in
a manner no different than the more recent marauders. The problem with this
statement(s) is that first of all it is a lie of Goebellian proportions. The
scale of the holocaust perpetrated in medieval times is so massive, some
estimates put it at least at a minimum of 70 million people, leading to a
definite drop in the population of India during those centuries, that it is
simply mind boggling and there is no historical parallel or evidence that such
a massive holocaust took place in pre Islamic times. The data behind these
numbers is obtained from Muslim historians themselves who wrote gleefully about
the scale of the slaughter. Secondly if Asoka indulged in killing on the
battlefield, he quickly repented and refrained from war thereafter as a means
of statecraft. In fact it was Asoka who adopted Buddhism and its associated
tenets of non-violence and was in large part responsible for the spread of
Buddhism to a major portion of Asia or at least the
beginning of such a dispersion of the Buddhist tenets.
There is no record of
any Muslim sultan repenting of the slaughter that he had wrought. And finally
if we think the holocaust of medieval times was a thing of the past, we ought
to be reminded that it occurred as recently as 1971 in Bangladesh where a
minimum of 2 to 3 million, mostly Hindus
were put to death by West Pakistani goons otherwise known as the Pakistani
army. In Pakistan itself there were at
least 10 million Hindus at the time of partition. Assuming 5 million walked
away to India in the exodus and the
aftermath of partition, what happened to the remaining 5 million? The reduction
in percentage of Hindus in Bangladesh is similarly
unexplainable unless one postulates that there is a massive effort at ethnic cleansing
going on within that country. The shunning of these topics as a legitimate
subject of inquiry into these and related matters is another instance of the
Stockholm syndrome at work.
The third level at
which the SSS operates is the denial of any kind of
civilization in the Indic peninsula and to the extent that they admit of the
presence of such a civilization there is a constant attempt to shorten its
antiquity. A prime example of such a modus operandi is the concocted story of
the Aryan Invasion or the AIT for short. The theory
being that marauding Aryans came in chariots drawn by 4 horses, in a manner
similar to Ben Hur, across what is now known as the Khyber pass and destroyed
the indigenous civilizations of the Indus Valley as characterized by Harrapa
and MohenjoDaro. The theory has several holes, not least among them being the
invention of the mythical Aryans. The word Aryan is never used as a noun in the
Vedas, only as an adjective Arya. Never mind also that there is not the
slightest iota of proof or archaeological evidence to back up this cockamamie
theory. The theory is solely based on the existence of a large family of
Indo-European languages spread over a wide area of Europe and Asia. While nobody denies
the cognate nature of the IE language family, it is of course unclear why one
needs to postulate invasions or large scale migrations as the only mechanism by
which language is dispersed over a wide area and over prolonged periods of
time. Migrations have of course been the norm over long periods of time; due
mostly to the recession and advance of the ice ages, but there is no evidence
in the Indian historical record of any migration to the Indian subcontinent
during the time period in question and neither is there any such evidence in
the mythologies of other civilizations.
There is another point
to be made. If in fact the Vedas were composed elsewhere than in the Indian
subcontinent as is alleged by those who support the AIT, why are there no
remnants of such a people who are capable of chanting the Vedas any where but
in India. After all even after
1300 years there are a remnant of Parsees in Iran, albeit a dwindling
and miniscule number who can chant their Avesta.
It is abundantly clear
that the motivation for such a concoction as the AIT was to deny an
autochthonous historical narrative to the Indic people[9],[10] and to paint the Indian
subcontinent as a place where conquerors constantly came and conquered, but
nothing of any substance was developed in the native soil of India. Coming as it does
mostly from Indian Hindu intellectuals, we can only surmise that there is a SSS at work here.
Finally (and this is
by no means an exhaustive list) the handling of the so called communal
situation in India is a prime example of
the SSS at work. I know of no country where a
minority is as pampered as is the Muslim community in India with the numerous
special privileges that it constantly extorts from the rest of the population.
Neither do I know of any country where vast sections of the population are so eager
to be classified as minorities or as backward sections of the body politic in
order to avail themselves of affirmative actions programs which are in
profusion in India today. We have
already given examples of the instances where there is a special attempt to
avoid 'hurting the sentiments of the minority' such as the whitewashing of the
Islamic conquest. There are numerous other examples such as the opposition to
the adoption of a Uniform Civil Code of Justice, abrogation of special status
for Kashmir and the reclaiming of the 3 most important
sites (Kashi, Mathura and Ayodhya) in the
Sanatana Dharma so that the temples which once stood there could be restored.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as the official
custodian of Muslim holy places, has pronounced that it is un-Islamic to build
masjids over existing temples, but it remains an article of faith among Indian
Muslims that no site is turned over to Hindus for rebuilding of destroyed
temples that once stood in the place of the masjid. This despite the fact that
it is widely acknowledged that well over 10,000 temples were destroyed by the
marauders over the period of 6 centuries and the only temples left standing in
the north from that period are those in dense jungles like Khajuraho. This
process of temple destruction continues even today in many parts of Pakistan and Bangladesh and in the Kashmir valley. Not only is there no talk of any remorse at
the widely acknowledged atrocities committed over the past millennium, but a
significant section of Hindus, afflicted by the SSS, demand that
special privileges be given to the
Muslim minority.
If this is the disease what is the cure[11]
What is the point in
giving a name such as SSS to the malady that
seems to afflict a large number of Indians? The purpose in identifying a
disease and its symptoms is to find a cure. The goal of such a cure is to
restore the self esteem of the Indic people, so that they will not blame
themselves for every ill in the world and more importantly they do not become a
doormat for every Western Indologist who compares
Ganesha’s trunk to a phallic symbol. The first step is to educate the children
correctly about India’s past and her vast
undiscovered heritage, so that future generations are not afflicted by such
symptoms. Education, especially K thru 12, is too important to be left to the
governing agencies, who as we have mentioned have their own axe to grind. It is
fitting that the large NRI community in the west
should take up the challenge to rejuvenate the Indian educational system at
least at the elementary level. An important quality Indian Hindus should imbibe
from their cohorts such as Israelis and Scandinavians is to constantly toot
their horn in an unobtrusive manner and to be reassured that there is nothing
jingoistic about doing so and even if it were so construed, the question is so
what.
Education is only the
first step. Greater numbers of people from the educated portions of the
populace need to take part in elections. Furthermore the refutation of dubious
‘facts’ such as the AIT needs to be taken up
by those who have the knowledge and the communication skills to challenge these
long held shibboleths. India is one of the few countries, especially among
those with a long and continuous civilization, whose History has been reinvented
and retold by colonizers who have a massive axe to grind and little incentive
or motivation to maintain the integrity of the narrative and to wish the Indic
civilization well.
But for all of this to
happen there must be tacit acknowledgement that there has been a mechanism such
as the SSS at work that has robbed the Indics of their
capability to question long held dogmatic beliefs. Vedantic techniques offer us
the means to once again become a discerning and sophisticated body politic. A
little bit of shravanam, mananam and nididhyasanam can go a long way to
mitigating the destructive effects of the SSS. We will dwell upon
these issues in a sequel to this article.
Footnotes