SNOBBERY OF THE ELITE – A GLOBAL PHENOMENON

In response to the trolling of our now famous placard lady, Gurmehar Kaur, the famous Urdu poet and Bollywood lyricist and my respected college senior from Colvin, Javed Akhtar tweeted “if a hardly literate player or a wrestler trolls a pacifist daughter of a martyr it is understandable, but what is wrong with some educated folks?” This is what I call ‘the snobbery of the elite’. It doesn’t matter whether you are a champion in any other field, you are not of their class if you do not have a University degree, if you do not think like them, recite like them, write like them, perform like them and speak like them you have not achieved their class! They are the blue blooded superior race of Left and Left of Crntre Thinkdom (LLCT remember!) and they are a class apart.

The LLCT believes that they are the only ones who have understood the essence of India and what is good for all Indians. This naturally bestows upon them the right to rule and elections are just a festival that come once in a while simply to distract them from doing what they have been doing all these years i.e. serving the hapless and rudderless poor and the underprivileged by governing them and keeping them in status quo – poor and underprivileged as ever. But unfortunately for them the world was changing and they failed to pick it up on their fact blinding seismograph. ‘Performance’ was a word alien to them and the un-smart and uneducated electorate, who did not belong to their class, suddenly started demanding it!

If you were thinking that this is an Indian peculiarity then think again. The ‘I know what is good for you and I will do the needful’ syndrome is today a global phenomenon, as are the snob and educated elite. In the recently concluded American elections for months, the so-called liberal elites were writing articles, having radio and TV discussions, giving sermons and making speeches in which they struggled to understand those strange creatures: ordinary people. Again in U.K the same ordinary people left the elite completely bemused by what drove them to make perverse decisions about Brexit. So whether in India or in the U.S or in U.K, the elite and the educated are today a worried lot. What has happened to the ordinary classless people they wonder - are they racist, narrow-minded or just stupid? Whatever the reason, ordinary people have frankly been a disappointment.

Let’s try to understand why members of the elite get so cross when others don’t take the same view as they do. It’s partly a sense of entitlement. People talk of a culture of entitlement among those who live on benefits. But the elite have their own entitlement culture. They think that because they studied English literature at St. Stephens they understand the world better than a plumber in Lucknow. They think they are superior and therefore their view should prevail. They also think they are morally superior because they hold to the views which they were told were virtuous. Anyone who appears not to subscribe to these views must, of necessity, be a sinner or else appallingly misled by the Saffron Brigade or some other evil force. It is outrageous to the elite that the work of the Devil should prevail. They are virtuous. They know best. They are the chosen ones. They have only a token belief in democracy. They expect and intend to prevail. But suddenly all over the world they have stopped doing so and are wondering what the hell has happened to mankind?

So now that the classy elite are unable to understand the ordinary people, the aam aadmi let us try to understand what drives the liberal elite. The elite persist with some very strange and disturbing views. Are its members brainwashed, snobbish or just so remote from real life that they do not understand how things work? What is the pathology of liberal eliteness?

Why would anyone support Congress and the LLCT including their media arm after their infamous tryst with corruptions, scams and inaction? Why do lawyers, churchmen, the BBC and, indeed, most educated people support the EU — an organisation as saturated with smug self-righteousness as it is with corruption; one which created the euro, which in turn has caused millions of people to be unemployed; an organisation which combines a yawning democratic deficit with incompetence over immigration and economic growth?

The elite are supposed to be educated. So why are they so silly? What do they have which the ‘classless’ ordinary people don’t? Ah! There is a clue. That word ‘education’, their brand of education. What does ‘educated’ mean today? It doesn’t mean they know a lot about the world. It means they have been injected with the views and assumptions of their teachers. They have been taught by people who themselves have little experience of the real world. They have been indoctrinated with certain ideas – the Left and Left of Centre ideas!

They have been taught that capitalism is inherently bad. It is something to be controlled at every turn by an altruistic government or else reduced to a minimum. Meanwhile the pursuit of equality is good. It does not occur to them that this socialist pursuit of equality has brought the world terror and tens of millions of deaths along with terrible economic failure. It has been given up by even Russia and China. The latter has adopted more pro-capitalist policies and capitalism there has caused the biggest reduction in poverty the world has ever known. You may know that, but it is not taught in schools. Schools actually teach that Stalin’s five-year plans were a qualified success! It took the courage of the recent Indian government to finally bid farewell to the Nehruvian 5 year plans.

The academic world is unfortunately overwhelmingly left-wing and the textbooks spin to the left. They distort the facts or omit them. What the literate elite have been led to believe is that governments make things better. ‘Market failure’ is taught; ‘public-sector failure’ is not. But misleading education of this and other kinds rubs off even on those who are not studying history or politics. It comes through in the NDTV, India Today and CNN IBN in India, Times, the BBC Guardian in U.K and CNN, the Washington Post or New York Times in America.

Ordinary people have been subjected to the same kind of indoctrination as the elite. They have just had less of it. They were in the hands of the propagandists for a shorter time and have been in the real world for longer. They do not read the ‘quality’ papers or subscribe to NDTV, CNN, IBN and BBC. For their understanding of the world, they rely more on what they see for themselves and experience. This is what the snobbish educated elite, who indulge in high voltage political debates in air-conditioned television studios, do not possess. The opinion of the classless ordinary people is not formed by their education but by their life experiences. If their villages are not electrified and do not have drinking water they speak through their vote. If their primary school doesn’t have teachers and primary health centre doesn’t have doctors they speak through their vote. If  their children don’t get employment and their farm produce doesn’t fetch good remuneration they speak through their vote. They cannot we swayed by stupid debates on secularism and they cannot be fooled by virtual privileges like ‘right to education’ and ‘right to food’ which mean nothing in their real world. The snobbish intellectual elite can debate endlessly on these issues but the real India will not allow them to be reflected in the ballot – and neither will the real America or the real U.K.

The fact that education has become a fundamental divide in democracy – with the educated on one side and the less educated on another – is an alarming prospect. It points to a deep alienation that cuts both ways. The less educated fear they are being governed by intellectual snobs who know nothing of their lives and experiences. The educated fear their fate may be decided by know-nothings who are ignorant of how the world really works. Bringing the two sides together is going to be very hard. But snobbishness of the educated elite will surely not help.