Saturday, 12 August 2023

THE MEASURE OF THE MAN By Mitali Saran

An accurate portrayal of Narendra Modi. A must read.

The trouble with manufacturing a larger-than-life persona for a man of averagely limited personality is that he will forever after be on the run from his own reputation. He must dodge and weave endlessly to avoid exposing his true measure, else people might begin to question the outsize shadow it casts. That is why Narendra Modi doesn’t risk open press conferences, it is why he won’t face questions in Parliament, why his speech is jealously controlled one-way monologue, why all his ministers’ primary responsibility is to defend the PM at all costs, and why he’s so much happier preening on the election-free foreign stage than on the domestic one that comes with scrutiny—or would do, if most of the Indian media weren’t such enthusiastic cogs in his image-building machinery.

And the trouble with constantly running and hiding is that eventually people will see that as his true measure: he is not much more than a man incredibly determined to gain and hold on to power, devoted to his image at the cost of actually doing the job.

The blood-drenched crisis in Manipur, and the Prime Minister’s tone-deaf and cowardly refusal to face, address, and answer the Indian public, his inexplicable refusal to speak in Parliament about the nightmare unfolding in the state, is only the latest instance of his dereliction of duty, but it is the worst.

His image has allowed him to weather what many democratic leaders would not have: holding massive election rallies as covid ravaged India (suck on that, Partygate Johnson!), denying Chinese intrusion as the Chinese built villages in Arunachal Pradesh, and the worst unemployment numbers in half a century to name just a few. He’s weathered the death of all his vaunted promises—achchhe din, 50 days to end corruption, maximum governance, minimum government, sabka saath, sabka vikas. Lately it seems that the public is becoming more watchful. but old habits die hard, so with Manipur on fire, Modi is still brazening it out. His silence has been punctuated by just one, brief, mealy-mouthed comment comprised of hollow whataboutery. It is the most devastating instance of his contempt for democratic accountability.

Democratic leaders around the world possess varying degrees of actual relatability and empathy, but they have learned to at least be seen to be trying. When a domestic crisis blooms, they drop what they’re doing, cut short whatever trip they’re on, and show up for their people. They hold and comfort the suffering, wipe tears, listen, understand, talk, offer aid—and make sure it’s on camera, because they have to at least be seen to be trying. The people gave them power, and can just as easily take it back. That’s democracy.

Narendra Modi has substituted accountability—the bedrock of democracy—with the projection of unassailability. Perhaps he has bought into his own myth so far that he experiences his own tone-deafness as strength, and his remoteness as splendour. But people mired in blood and terror want empathy, dialogue, and sensitive action. They will remember that the prime minister said and did nothing.

In Manipur, in Haryana, in minority communities, in the barbaric sexual terrorism of women—in every instance of violence that flares along the seams of ethnic or religious or sexual chauvinism, the PM’s echoing silence looks like incompetence at best, indifference, or complicity at worst. People will remember that the man whose X (previously Twitter) handle is on a permanent hair-trigger to tweet birthday greetings and sympathy for the most distant troubles in the most distant countries, the man posturing as the wise and peaceable world leader of democracy, has publicly ignored a months-long civil war raging in his own country.

Trying to figure out whether he’s complicit or indifferent or incompetent is just nitpicking.

*The bottom line is, he’s not fit to be the Prime Minister of India.*

Thursday, 20 July 2023

BUDDY BENCH

A friend recently told me, "Walking through my son's schoolyard, I noticed a bench painted bright red.

I asked my son,

"Is that the only place to sit around here?"

He said, "No, that's the Buddy Bench. ..When someone feels lonely or they have nobody to play with, they sit there, and kids ask them to play."

What an inspiring idea ..!!

I then told him how wonderful that was and asked him if he ever used it.

He said, "Yeah. When I was new I sat there and someone came and asked me to play. I felt happy. And now, when I see kids on it, I ask them to play with me. We all do."

This simple anecdote teaches so many things*.

1. Don't hesitate to ask people to give you company if you are feeling lonely.

2. Don't be immersed in your own self so much, that you don't notice another's silent cry for help. Look around.

3. Everyone needs someone at some point in life. Step up and help someone when you can.

4. Appreciate life giving you new friends. For that to happen, you need to welcome new experiences.

5. Be childlike and innocent, and don't overthink. Ask for what you want. Life has a way of giving you what you want when you help yourself.

6. What you give comes back to you, manifold. Give someone love and a little of your time. You will be blessed.

The Best Helping Hand is at the end of Your own Arm... Help Others, and You Help Yourself .. We all need a Buddy .. Let's keep a Buddy bench for All* ...!!!

REMEMBER ..

KIDS AND SENIORS ARE THE SAME

Wednesday, 19 July 2023

DO MEDICINES REALLY EXPIRE OR ARE WE BEING TAKEN FOR A RIDE?*

A Family of Doctors in England & in Mumbai* have been hammering the point that *medicines don’t expire....*

By Richard Altschuler

If a bottle of Tylenol, (Paracetamol) for example, says something like "Do not use after June 1998," and it is August 2002, should you take the Tylenol? Should you discard it? Can you get hurt if you take it? Will it simply have lost its potency and do you no good?

In other words, are drug manufacturers being honest with us when they put an expiration date on their medications, or is the practice of dating just another drug industry scam, to get us to buy new medications when the old ones that purportedly have *expired* are still perfectly good?

These☝ are the pressing points I wanted to investigate.

I immediately scoured the medical databases & general literature for the answer to my question about drug expiration labelling. And voila, no sooner than I could say *Screwed again by the pharmaceutical industry,* I had my answer.

*Here are the simple facts:*👇🏻
FIRST, the *Expiration date, required by law in the United States, beginning in 1979, specifies only the date the manufacturer guarantees the full potency and safety of the drug -- it does not mean how long the drug is actually "good" or safe to use.*

SECOND, *medical authorities uniformly say it is safe to take drugs past their expiration date -- no matter how "expired" the drugs purportedly are*

*Studies show that expired drugs may lose some of their potency over time*

*Even 10 years after the "expiration date," most drugs have a good deal of their original potency*.

*One of the largest studies ever conducted that supports the above points about "expired drug" was done by the US military nearly 18 years ago, according to a feature story inThe Wall Street Journal (March 29, 2000), reported by Laurie P. Cohen*

"The military was sitting on a $1 billion stockpile of drugs and facing the daunting process of destroying and replacing its supply every 2 to 3 years. So it began a testing programme to see if it could extend the life of its inventory.

*The testing, conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), ultimately covered more than 100 drugs*, prescription and over-the-counter."

The *results showed, about 90% of them were safe and effective “even 15 years past their expiration date...”*

In the light of these results, a former *director of the testing programme, Francis Flaherty, said he concluded that expiration dates put on by manufacturers typically have no bearing on whether a drug is usable for longer period.*

*The expiration date doesn't mean, or even suggest, that the drug will stop being effective after that, nor that it will become harmful*.

*"Manufacturers put expiration dates for marketing, rather than scientific reasons," said Mr. Flaherty, a pharmacist at the FDA until his retirement in 1999* "It's not profitable for them to have products on a shelf for 10 years. They want turnover."

The FDA cautioned there isn't enough evidence from the programme, which is weighed towards drugs used during combat, to conclude most drugs in consumers' medicine cabinets are potent beyond the expiration date.

However, *Joel Davis, a former FDA expiration-date compliance chief, said that* with a handful of exceptions -- notably nitroglycerin, insulin and some liquid antibiotics -- *most drugs are probably as durable as those the agency has tested for the military*.

"Most drugs degrade very slowly," he said. "In all likelihood, you can take a product you have at home for many years."
*when Bayer had tested 4-year-old aspirin, it remained 100% effective*,

Bayer has never tested aspirin beyond 4 years, Mr. Allen said. But Jens Carstensen has.

*Dr. Carstensen, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin's (US) pharmacy school*, who wrote what is considered the main text on drug stability, *said, "I did a study of different aspirins, and after 5 years, Bayer was still excellent.” Aspirin, if made correctly, is very stable.*

Now I think I'll take a swig of the 10-year dead package of Alka Seltzer in my medicine chest to ease the nausea I'm feeling from calculating how many billions of dollars the pharmaceutical industry milks out of unknowing consumers every year who discard perfectly good drugs and buy new ones because they trust the industry.

Monday, 15 May 2023

THE GUJARAT STORY

The Gujarat Story

SYNOPSIS:

The state of Gujarat has reported over 40,000 missing women over a span of five years, says the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data. In 2016, 7105 women went missing; 7712 in 2017; 9246 in 2018; 9268 in 2019; and 8290 in 2020. In the NCRB data (2022), the total missing report amounts to 41,621 in Gujarat alone.

LINK:

https://youtu.be/QdJt5fBLo64

https://www.siasat.com/over-40k-women-reported-missing-in-gujarat-in-last-5-years-ncrb-data-2584068/

Sunday, 25 December 2022

The psychodynamics of lynch mobs: Grouping, ganging or lynching

Stuart Stevensonhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-8494-0686

Abstract

This article engages with human groupings when they are operating at their very worst. These are human groupings enacting a particularly insidious, enduring and specific set of ‘othering’ dynamics that occur within and between in-groups and out-groups. This is known as lynching and these vicious and destructive human groupings are known as ‘lynch mobs’. I attempt to bring a psychodynamic lens to explore the complex issues that constitute the particular group dynamics enacted by ‘lynch mobs’ that usually target members of marginalized communities. I consider the meaning of the assault in the context of white supremacy and, whilst foregrounding race in the discussion, recognizing that members of other marginalized groups such as gay men and women are often lynched. The article shows how psychodynamic ideas can contribute to our understanding of this most horrific and inhumane phenomena, and can provide clinicians with some conceptual tools to manage the myriad of complex issues related to lynching and how it presents currently. Can lynching dynamics be compared and contrasted with bullying and scapegoating dynamics and, if so, can they be paralleled and operate more subtly and interpersonally in our psychotherapy groups and within our organizations and work teams? If so, do we have the theoretical and conceptual skills to work with them? I argue that there is now more than ever a need to remain relevant to the diverse and often-marginalized communities we serve and that we must develop our theories and practices to address such phenomena. To do this requires group analysts and, indeed, all clinicians to urgently scrutinize and develop theories and techniques in working with these very dangerous othering dynamics in our practices and clinics. A lack of intervention equates to by-standing or turning a blind eye, which is a significant factor in lynching dynamics, and a complicit collusion with the traumatization of marginalized communities.

Keywords

lynching, white supremacy, racism, group dynamics, homophobia, rape, gangs, mobs

Introduction

In the middle of Main St in a Southern American town there stood a majestic tree. It held a sacred place in the hearts of the town’s people . . . It blocked traffic . . . It was the potential cause of many accidents . . . And yet it could not be cut down. It was the local lynching tree, and it was performing its duty to perpetually and eternally remind the black town’s people of whom among them had last been hanged from its limbs and who could be next. The tree was awaiting its appointed hour, and the white townspeople were willing to risk inconvenience, injury, and death, even to themselves to keep the tree and the subordinate caste in their places. The tree bore silent witness to black citizens of their eternal lot, and in so doing; it whispered reassurances to the dominant caste of theirs. (Isabel Wilkerson, 2020: 90–91)
The method of force which hides itself in secrecy is a method as old as humanity. The kind of thing that men are afraid or ashamed to do openly, and by day, they accomplish secretly, masked, and at night. The method has certain advantages. It uses Fear to cast out Fear; it dares things at which open method hesitates; it may with a certain impunity attack the high and the low; it need hesitate at no outrage of maiming or murder; it shields itself in the mob mind and then throws over all a veil of darkness which becomes glamor. It attracts people who otherwise could not be reached. It harnesses the mob. (Du Bois, 2008: 677)

The ‘mob mind’ and ‘the method of force that is as old as humanity’ and the group dynamics that ‘harnesses the mob’ of which Du Bois talks in the above quote is the subject of this article. At this time of Black Lives Matter and the Me Too movements my motivation for writing this article is due to the huge amount of hate crime and murder at the hands of individuals and groups that is happening currently. Crimes driven by hatred and consequent violent enactments often represent the culmination and crystallization of decades, perhaps even centuries, of painful attacks on marginalized communities who are attempting to negotiate a place of dignity and equality and power within the broader community.

I, along with many others, watched with horror the police publicly murder an African American man, George Floyd, in the US despite his plea for mercy and the voice of another African American man, on and off camera, also pleading with the police officers to stop, only to be met with what seemed to be a response of deadened eyes from the white police officer with his knee on George Floyd’s neck. I will return to the eight minutes, 46 seconds that it took to murder George Floyd at the very end of this article, as at that stage I hope to have demonstrated the ‘lynch mob state of mind’ of the police officer and his colleagues and the group dynamic operating at the time of the lynching. Confronting the legacy of lynching and understanding the psychodynamic processes that drive it is critical to our understanding of racist, misogynist and homophobic violence when it occurs within a group, or indeed, ‘mob’ or ‘gang’ context.

When does a ‘work group’ of police officers, whose primary task (Hirschhorn, 1999) is to ‘protect and serve’ in the case of George Floyd, different from a group of drunken adolescents, transform into a ‘lynch mob’ that murders a black man?’ What constitutes the binding force of a lynch mob in terms of its exclusively destructive and harmful function? What type of destructive group dynamics are we experiencing? The level of dehumanization during this public lynching was sickening, but I believe that the dynamics that enabled the dehumanization to lynch and the more subtle manifestations of this phenomenon are commonplace and need to be understood.

I am a gay man of colour, born and raised in Liverpool, a city in the northwest of England, that has a significant slave trading history and a very old black community descended from enslaved Africans, slave traders, and African sailors pre dating the larger UK black community who arrived from the Caribbean in 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, I am a descendant of this black community. Belonging simultaneously to two very marginalized groups, being a man of colour and, also, a gay man, I grew up all too well aware of violence toward people of colour, women and gay people. ‘Paki bashing’ and ‘gay bashing’ were almost a right of passage for the adolescents in some communities (Hobbs, 2016). The police in the UK have had a very poor reputation for responding to hate crime against certain marginalized groups, preferring to criminalize, rather than protect them (Macpherson, 1999; Akala, 2019) which, I suspect, is a tacit collusion with the violence toward these groups.

I vividly recall as a child being told by my parents about an incident of lynching in my hometown of Liverpool. The victim of this particular lynch mob was a black man named Charles Wootten. In 1919 a lynch mob chased him through the streets, down towards the city’s docks where he jumped into the River Mersey to escape them. Whilst struggling in the cold sea, he was stoned, and eventually drowned. For weeks later there were lynch mobs marauding the streets of Liverpool attacking groups of African sailors and black families, to the point that many black people had to be taken into police protection.

Additionally over the years I have personally known many gay men who have been seriously hurt and at least two murdered in similar circumstances. I do not know a gay man who has not suffered physical or verbal attacks by hate groups at various points in their lives. The same extends to gay women who are simultaneously vulnerable due to being both women and gay. I recall reading about a night bus attack on a lesbian couple by a mob of four teenage boys in November 2019. There was a picture in the newspaper of the two traumatized women covered in blood. Being bullied is in my experience a significant part of being gay. So, as well as there being racist terrorism there is also homophobic terrorism with both communities living in constant fear of violence as an everyday part of their lives, often victimized by groups or mobs who specifically hurt and murder people who are considered different.

I was also reminded of my recent clinical work with people who have witnessed, or have been the victim of, racist violence, sometimes at the hands of a group, and the trauma this has caused. In one case, an Asian woman in her 70s was standing at a bus stop. A young white woman in her early 20s was also at the bus stop with her three-year old child. The Asian woman was set upon by a group of white youths. She was verbally and racially abused, spat at, punched in the stomach and head and kicked in the genital area before they ran off, laughing. Meanwhile, the young white woman and her child stood, frozen. The child did not make a sound during the attack, which lasted less than a minute. I have often wondered about those young men and their state of mind when they attacked the Asian woman and I have written about the impact of this racist violence previously (Stevenson, 2019).

History of lynching

In the US, slavery was prohibited in 1865 and formerly enslaved Africans, at least in principle, were granted full citizenship, the right to vote, and under the 14th Amendment of the US constitution, protection from racial violence. However, the lived reality was somewhat different as this level of emancipation angered many white people in the southern states who did not want African Americans to have the same rights and many turned to violence as a response. Across the US resistance to racial equality resulted in the re-establishment of racial subordination, through biased laws, disenfranchisement and terrorism, most dramatically enforced through the public murder of African Americans by lynching. At this time lynching was directed at African Americans to enforce compliance with racial hierarchy and white supremacy and ensured racial segregation and denial of equal rights. These prejudices are still embedded in society and institutional structures (Wilkerson, 2020). A deeper examination of the history of racial violence and a more honest and reflective understanding of the history of racial injustice is essential for us to engage with issues like police violence, excessive punishment in the criminal justice system and even harsh and punitive treatment of children of colour in schools and on the streets (Ifill, 2018).

Although lynching has not always been exclusively directed at African Americans, they soon became the focus of the lynch mobs that became the unofficial execution and assassination squad of white supremacist ideology. 5,000 lynchings took place in the United States between 1885 and 1960 and part of this function was to enforce white supremacy by instilling terror into African Americans and was a response to the threat of African American advancement, independence and citizenship. The burning and destruction of African American businesses and homes and African Americans being chased out of economic communities were often accompanied by the lynchings of individuals (Ifill, 2018).

Lynching is one of the most violent aspects of ‘racist erasure’ in a white supremacy. It is used to reinforce white supremacy on an interpersonal, group and societal level. Racist erasure ranges from subtle micro aggressions, like rolling one’s eyes when a person of colour starts speaking of an experience of racism, to the public lynching of George Floyd in the US, by a police officer who put his knee on his neck until he later died, whilst other police officers, standing by, looked on. Within this systemically and structurally racist context, the projections and projective identifications directed toward those that have been racially othered will receive powerful institutional and group reinforcement and drive the dehumanizing perceptions of the lynch mob.

Projective identification (Klein, 1959; Segal, 1957) is a defence mechanism used to maintain psychic equilibrium. It is an unconscious mechanism in which aspects of the self or an internal object are split off and attributed to an external object. When malignant it is used to evacuate unwanted parts of the self or control the object rather than communicate states of mind. That is, the phantasy of who the ‘other’ unconsciously represents dominates and organizes behaviour toward the other, and this was well described by the African American psychoanalyst Kirklands C. Vaughans in the documentary Black Psychoanalysts Speak (Winograd, 2014). He gives the example of his work in a school when the white teaching staff described having to take four adults to hold down an angry and upset 10 year old African American old boy. Vaughans points out that it was in fact ‘the four adults having to hold their unconscious phantasy of this 10 year old child and not the child himself’. This symbolic equation (Segal, 1957) demonstrates a tendency of the unconscious phantasy, when dominating, driving the dehumanization, leading to excessive and dangerous responses and clearly parallels the behaviour of the police that lead to the death of George Floyd and other black people due to police brutality.

Here in the UK ‘Paki bashing’ and ‘gay bashing’ were common growing up in Northern England and in the East End of London (Hobbs, 2016). They had a degree of respectably in some areas and these communities remain vulnerable today. The high-profile lynching of a young black man, Stephen Lawrence, by a group of white youths put a painful mirror to British society. Investigations and public inquiries have severally criticized police responses and found them to be institutionally racist, which is the collective effect of bias that marginalizes people who are not white and who suffer a structural disadvantage in the way that they are treated by the authorities, who prefer to view them as criminals even when they have clearly been victimized (Macpherson, 1999).

A report titled LGBT in Britain: Hate crime and discrimination: ‘Stonewall’ (2017) reported 21% of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people have experienced a hate crime or incident based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity in the last 12 months. 81% who experienced a hate crime or incident did not report it to the police. 29% avoid certain streets because they do not feel safe there as an LGBT person. 58% of gay men and women say they do not feel comfortable walking down the street while holding their partner’s hand (Bachmann and Gooch, 2017).

The psychodynamic structure of a lynch mob

Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears . . . (Audre Lorde, 1983: 175)

The group phenomenon that drives a lynching is the product of an extremely complex and horrifying combination of external and internal events. It reflects all levels of the matrix which become condensed and exacted in a violent assault or murder of an individual who is identified as belonging to one group—usually a marginalized and hated group—by a group of individuals or a gang who belong to, or represent, another group and who believe they have an unofficial mandate to exact justice for a perceived transgression. This ‘justice’ can go as far as a public execution. Lynching is related to bullying and scapegoating but has a number of different and additional aspects. The first is that lynching takes part in a mob or gang so requires bystanders. It happens intermittently over frequencies that are difficult to quantify, but often relate to happenings in the social unconscious at a given time. For instance, politicians might use racist rhetoric to cynically gather support by exploiting insecurities in society, which bolster ignorance, racism and scapegoating of marginalized groups. ‘If you want a N*gger for a neighbour vote labour’ was reported to be the Conservative party’s unofficial slogan in a 1964 British general election (Deakin, 1965). More recent examples are the election of Trump in the US, based on blatant racist assertions, which are arguably powerful drivers for the public lynchings and racist murders in the US.

What relationship is there between the lynch mob and the formal power structure in society that turns a blind eye to it? The lyrics of a song by the pop group The Police below speaks to a lynch mob state of state of mind and how the mob enacts the wishes of those in power.

Once that you’ve decided on a killing
First you make a stone of your heart
And if you find that your hands are still willing
Then you can turn a murder into art
Now if you have a taste for this experience
And you’re flushed with your very first success
Then you must try a twosome or a threesome
And you’ll find your conscience bothers you much less
But you can reach the top of your profession
If you become the leader of the land
For murder is the sport of the elected
And you don’t need to lift a finger of your hand (Murder by Numbers, The Police, 1983)

The lynch mob enables its members to more readily ‘make a stone of your heart’. It must have an object or person to lynch and this is anchored in structures of race, gender sexual orientation, and ethnicity—indeed in any oppressive group which, by means of power, violence, cruelty or perversity persecutes another (Waddell, 2007). We are talking, in other words, of a dynamic relationship in which, aggravated or fuelled by external circumstances, negative aspects of the personality and group dynamics are played out with usually tragic consequences, as we have just witnessed with the death of George Floyd in the US and previously here in the UK with the murder of Stephen Lawrence. These group dynamics are part of the ‘social unconscious’ and are aggravated or fueled by external and internal circumstances.

Clearly, lynching cannot be separated from wider social, cultural and political issues. It is often sanctioned by a set of tacitly socially accepted perverse ideals, and those lynched are perceived to be outside a defined space and are accused of having transgressed a social taboo. Tacitly licensed, the lynch mob operates outside of a legitimately governed space, exacting a punishment for a perceived transgression, which could simply involve being different or having ideas and aspirations that might attract envy.

Total depravity, human hate . . . do not explain fully the mob spirit in America. Before the wide eyes of the mob is ever the Shape of Fear. Back of the writhing, yelling, cruel-eyed demons who break, destroy, maim and lynch and burn at the stake, is a knot, large or small, of normal human beings, and these human beings at heart are desperately afraid of something. Of what? Of many things, but usually of losing their jobs, being declassed, degraded, or actually disgraced; of losing their hopes, their savings, their plans for their children; of the actual pangs of hunger, of dirt, of crime. (Du Bois, 2008: 677)

Therefore, the lynch mob speaks for, and enacts, a split off and projected part of society that wants to punish and even destroy those who are considered other. The other that represents potency on the one hand or dirt and deprivation on the other, that needs to be erased at all costs. This is known but denied by society; the mechanism of turning a blind eye to the suffering and the dehumanization of those lynched is in operation (Steiner, 1985). Paradoxically, at the same time racial terror lynchings of African Americans, although denied by the government, often had the atmosphere of carnivals, with postcards depicting lynchings advertising the event and food vendors and souvenir stands. Hundreds, or thousands, of white people including their own children would often gather to watch and take part in the lynching of African Americans (Wilkerson, 2020; Ifill, 2018). At present, a ‘symbolic parallel process’ operates throughout the world with many hundreds of monuments honouring the memory of slave traders and colonizers littering the landscape of major industrial cities.

In a white supremacy, lynching and micro aggressions operate at different ends of the racist spectrum. The lynching of people of colour is an extreme enactment of white supremacy and racist erasure (Stevenson, 2020). How and why do such ‘groupings’, ‘gangings’ and lynch mobs occur and what factors determine a move from one state of mind or grouping to another? The terms ‘group’, ‘gang’ and mob’ can be related to Klein’s (1959) description of the depressive and paranoid-schizoid positions and the group or gang reflects such states of mind. In adulthood at times of regression the paranoid-schizoid (egocentric and paranoid) and depressive positions (concern for others) still operate and are not just located in infancy and childhood. Although they are ordinary/normal states of mind in infancy and early childhood, they become dangerous when they dominate in adulthood, such as in a regression to the paranoid schizoid position, which is a characteristic of lynch mobs. The structure of human groups, gangs and lynch mobs can relate to the states of mind displayed by these two constellations from a descriptive and theoretical point of view. Bion (1948) challenged Freud’s view of groups as a family and introduced a ‘work group’, that is functional and approximated to normality (depressive) as opposed to a group formed by a pathological organization (paranoid-schizoid) led by psychotic mechanisms. The latter offers a false stability with paranoid fears and a lack of genuine stability at the nucleus of such a group.

It is its nucleus of ordinary men that continually gives the mob its initial and awful impetus. Around this nucleus, to be sure, gather snowball-wise all manner of flotsam, filth and human garbage, and every lewdness of alcohol and current fashion. But all this is the horrible covering of this inner nucleus of Fear. (Du Bois, 2008: 677)

Gangs, or mobs operate internally and externally. Rosenfeld (1965) talks about the internal gang, which is an aspect of the mind that corners the most constructive parts of the psyche and keeps them hostage, preventing psychological growth. This is paralleled in society, preventing social change and a more equitable distribution of resources and liberty. The gang or mob needs a scapegoat, an ‘other’ outside of itself that is to be blamed and punished for the sins or grievances of the in-group and to create a sense of binding that holds it together.

A depressive state of mind equates with a work group and the individuals within the group can tolerate different states of mind and explore differences and operate outside of the psychotic (Bion, 1948; Klein, 1952; Segal, 1957). Their minds can be emotionally flexible; they can manage tension and creativity, although these abilities are not static and there will be periods of splitting off and projecting aspects that are felt to be intolerable even in a functional work group. None the less such a group values difference and diversity. It can bear dissension and conflict. This is in contrast to the regressive pull that drives the gang or the lynch mob, which is dominated by symbolic equations (Segal, 1957) and paranoid schizoid thinking. This means seeing the world in a very split way in terms of people who are good and the same, and people who are bad and other, with no nuances or concern for welfare, and even hatred of the people who are felt to be different and an idealization for those considered to be same. A lynch mob is a destructive and violent gang imbued with, and bonded by, hatred as opposed to a work or social group bonded by creative impulses (Segal, 1957).

It is these psychodynamic processes that help us understand how and why a social group of young men on a night out, or after a soccer match, turn into a racist hate mob or go on to gang rape a girl. Why a work team turn into a bully mob targeting team members who are different in some way, forcing them out of the organization. Why a group of police officers, who have a duty to protective and serve, turn into a racist mob that murders a black man.

The lynch mob as anti-group

When individuals come together in a group all their individual inhibitions fall away and all the cruel, brutal and destructive instincts, which lie dormant in individuals as relics of a primitive epoch, are stirred up to find free gratification. (Freud, 1921: 79)

Nitsun (1996) critiques the notion of groups as being only benign and positive and advocates ‘realism’, recognizing the group’s potential for healing as well as destruction. He emphasizes the need to understand and manage both aspects of these complex dynamics. There is a social context to any group that can represent a wider social pathology. This applies to all groups, ranging from a task focused work group to a lynch mob. The latter is in the thrall of anti-group phenomena. The group members may find themselves pulled towards anti-social behaviours as well as towards benign activities.

What constitutes a crime might not be guided by morality but by the law. Rules can be set down by the powerful, outside universal parameters or justice. We need not remind ourselves that the chemical castration of gay men (Nadin, 2020), 245 years and 12 generations of slavery, apartheid, Jim Crow, a man’s right to rape his wife, were all legal at one stage of very recent history (Akala, 2019) so an individual would not be considered to be deviating from the group norm if they indulged in these activities. The group norm, therefore, is not static and is anchored in societal and cultural values at any given time in history, which could reflect very oppressive forces for some communities.

The anti-group is generated from a yearning for an ideal relationship with a primary carer and harks to an imagined time of purity and un-contamination. A third term, such as the father, is seen as a threat to this relationship (Nitsun, 1996). This is the ‘other’ who needs to be attacked and destroyed. This attack could take place in a therapy group or a lynching. An anti-group is saturated with symbolic equations (Segal, 1957) and the members’ malignant projections and projective identifications. The conscious and unconscious dynamics of a constructive work group make it holding and nourishing, whilst the dynamics of an anti-group make it undependable, unsafe and persecuting.

A lynch mob is Mafia like (Rosenfeld, 1965) and dominates and persecutes its members; it binds them into a lie of sameness: ‘We are white and superior’, ‘We are not gay or sexually deviant’, ‘We are secure in our gender identity’ etc. This is a pathological organization that offers the promise of stability. It is at one and the same time same time infantile and adolescent, as both immature states of mind are imbued with a great deal of psychic instability that leads to an aggressive need to split off and project. These mental states feel unbearable, due to the lack of a mature psychic apparatus to process them. Instead, the infant or adolescent resorts to evacuation and action, which contributes to group destructive forces. During adolescence anxieties about identity arouse an acute intolerance of difference either in the self or in the other and there is a need to bolster the ego at the expense of others, often in a very cruel way (Waddell, 2007).

This fiction of ‘sameness’, belonging and stability of identity in a lynch mob is a paranoid schizoid defence and the containment it offers is very fragile. The group members, who are relating in anti-group attitudes sense this unconsciously and find themselves in the thrall of a compulsion to attack and destroy. This can be directed at the group from within (anti-group) or something outside of the group (lynch mob as anti-group). This is a weak and dangerous container that leads to a vicious cycle; the group members are anxious and insecure, generating a malignant form of projective identification that binds them together in a most destructive and hateful way. This paranoid-schizoid state of mind characterized by an excessive operation of splitting and projection drives the mob that aggressively deploys a projective and splitting frenzy of denial and attribution. Within this is a wish for a world free of difference and an idealized pre-oedipal history, uncontaminated by the other who is imbued with negative attributions, located in an out-group. The lynch mob as anti-group

reflects underlying fears of annihilation and in particular, deprivation. In the foetid psyches of the lynch mob is a terrible fear of deprivation that makes the ‘other’ not just a threat (the powerful, potent black other) but the one onto whom are projected intense associations of shameful deprivation (the dirt-poor, shameful, black other) and both have to be eradicated. (Nitsun, personal correspondence)

Additionally, there is wish for a revised, perfect history that involves a denial of psychic reality and a paranoid fear of the return of what has been repressed and projected. Also active are a hatred of thinking, doubt and concern, a lack of curiosity and a need to exclude and triumph violently. Human commonality is denied. There is also a retreat into omnipotence and an attraction to violence and even murder. The gang or mob promises protection to its members but its intention is to do damage. A lynch mob gives its members a sense of intoxicating power; a promise of safety from the most persecutory and primitive anxieties. It panders to the gang members’ sadomasochistic fantasies and allows an enactment of the most destructive fantasies without remorse (Bell and Novakovic, 2013; Keval, 2018). The lynch mob feeds lies and promises that cannot be delivered outside of the realm of the psychotic and perverse.

Sunday, 13 November 2022

Three Cases - Five Decades

Acknowlwdgements: Shantanu Basu

This evening, we had a very depressing conversation with our advocate son. I asked him to react to today's release of six convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and committing Gautam Navlakha to house arrest. Our son did not comment on either of these cases. However, what he narrated put us to shame first as humans, than as Indians.

A 18-19 year old girl student, alleged to be an SFI activist, was picked up from her home by the police in the winter of 1976-77. Today her 93-year old mother appeared before the metropolitan judge after our son took up her case. The mother was not even able to recall the month and year of her daughter's arrest, 47 years ago, save for saying it was a very foggy winter evening. The girl was charged under a Draconian Emergency act with innumerable charges against her. Forty seven years later, neither has the police filed its final report nor submitted a charge sheet and she remains jailed without even a lawyer to take up her case. Instead, they requested three more months that the judge allowed. The mother told the judge that her daughter was now close to 70 years old, suffering from terminal bone cancer and badly wrinkled owing to prolonged incarceration and insect bites inside a dark cell for close to a half century.

In another case, a man was picked up by the police sometime in 1987, allegedly framed by his employers in a factory labour dispute. Again, courtesy our son who took this case, the matter came up for hearing. During the hearing the judge asked him how long he had been incarcerated. The man remembered 1987 and said the last newspaper he read was in 1986 and was not even aware of happenings in India since then. He had lost his wife to cancer and his only child, a son, in the past 35 years. With tears welling in his eyes, he told the judge he wanted to be released to spend time with his grandson who he had never seen. He was even willing to mortgage all his agricultural land to raise surety for his release. In mid-2022, the police finally filed a charge sheet, 35 years later, that my son said will not stand the test of law and requested the judge for bail. The matter is now listed for a fortnight later.

In a third case, a mother tried to lodge a missing person complaint with the police when the latter picked up her son one night from their home in 2007; he was never found. The only memory she has of her then 7-8 year old son was a stuffed teddy bear that she brought to the court. After running from pillar to post, finally she approached our son's senior who marked this case to our boy. During an early hearing request, the police said they were still looking for the missing person and would file a final report in DUE COURSE, after 15 years. The court will hear the case again after about two months.

Having heard the case descriptions, I realized that what my son was alluding to was the high profile of the Gandhi convicts and Gautam Navlakha when there were lakhs of people rotting in jail, who did not have the profile and/or means of either of those named earlier nor have had any charges pressed against them after 20-30+ years. And these are mainly helpless indigent people that the State is slowly killing. The judiciary remains a mute witness with 3-4 crore criminal cases pending hearing/decision across India.

We wholly empathised with our son when added that in the lower criminal courts, the accused line the corridor leading to the respective court and fall at the feet of lawyers to save them, loudly crying and beseeching the state for mercy. It is a matter of national shame that the judicial process itself has turned into a life term once a person is arrested, irrespective of the gravity of the crime.

Judges no longer have the moral right to punish an accused who has already been in jail for 20+ years, that too mostly for petty crimes. Yet, very few judges muster courage enough to release the accused on bail, even when the relevant criminal law provides for bail (SC says it is a rule) where no charges are filed by the State within 90 days. Indian jails are hell holes with huge overcrowding, disease and absence of medicare and other basic human amenities. What is even more depressing is the fact, that the police is routinely exonerated of all responsibility on the grounds that the investigating officer has superannuated, PPs transferred or retired, jurisdiction of police stations having changed, records not available, witnesses are dead and a multitude of other very lame excuses. Yet, seldom do courts pass strictures on police and PPs. This only emboldens them to prolong a case till a prisoner dies and evade all responsibility for closing a case, either by exoneration or by charge sheet.

State govts. and GOI have absolutely no business to preach on human rights, either at home or abroad with such abominable record. UCC can come later. What needs to be TOP PRIORITY for a new govt. should be to enforce the provisions of criminal law and release all prisoners on bail, that have done over 10 years' jail time (except cases of violent crime in which charges have been filed) in the first instance, followed by those that have 5-10 years within their first 30 days in office. That will reduce pressure on our crumbling jails and the police force; besides the spectre of limitless incarceration will deter repeat wannabe offenders.

Essential reforms in the police force, that have been bandied for decades, such as providing a captive investigation and prosecution wing for each police station need to be implemented. There is no point in raising the number of judicial posts without commensurate reforms in police administration.

Accountability and punishment for police personnel too should be legislated and strictly enforced so that arrest and jail without investigation no longer remains the path for State repression and fostering fear. Likewise, for promotion, judges must fulfil specific QRs such as adjournments granted, quality of judgements (to be examined by retied eminent judges on random basis), etc. must be implemented.

We are rightfully proud of our son who, in addition to his other professional commitments, is taking up just cause and bringing them to courts after burning the midnight oil. We wish him all success in his professional life.

Thursday, 15 September 2022

Uncovering a ‘humble’ chaiwallah’s billion-dollar lifestyle

OPINION

Uncovering a ‘humble’ chaiwallah’s billion-dollar lifestyle

It could put every fat cat in Power Delhi and Khan Market to shame even as taxpayers foot Narendra Modi’s astronomical, wasteful bill.

ByVrinda Gopinath14 May, 2019

Uncovering a ‘humble’ chaiwallah’s billion-dollar lifestyle

Can Narendra Modi stop his tiresome habit of invoking his humble origins and pitting it against rich and entitled Power Delhi? Modi has never tired of saying he is an “outsider” from Gujarat, and that he hasn’t been—and never will be—accepted by “Lutyens’ Delhi”, a euphemism for the Old Power Establishment or Left, Nehruvian, secular once-governing clique.

Now that may be true: the Liberal-Secularist is vehemently opposed to Modi’s RSS-BJP brand of divisive Hindutva politics. However, Modi is not talking about an ideological battle as much as harping needlessly on his impoverished background: of a workhorse versus a prince, a backward caste versus a well-born, rough versus refined. This, of course, is accompanied by whirring images of Modi in tapasya (rigour of austerity and penance), his mother Heeraben living in a hovel, and other such heart-tugging brand persuasions. Of late, Modi has even jocularly said in interviews, given to favourable news organisations, that his only regret as he nears the completion of his term as prime minister is that he could not make the people of Lutyens’ Delhi his own, nor he part of them. At other times, he has hit back, saying that the “Khan Market gang”, another allusion to Power Delhi, cannot dismantle his image because it was not them which created his image, but it was of his own making through 45 years of tapasya.

This narrative of Modi’s exclusion has been faithfully reinforced by sympathetic and cloying commentators and media persons who insist that chaiwallah Modi (there are still no confirmed reports that he worked as a tea-seller) will never be accepted by the champagne-swilling Lutyens’ set. And the myth-making continues as Modi insists on having a one-way conversation with the media, with no questions asked while he continues to retell the same score.

Modi’s jibes and name-calling of Power Delhi is yet another Goebbelsian attempt to say the same thing again and again till it becomes the truth. But it cannot be a tale as phony and so far away from the truth. For a chaste chaiwallah, Modi’s splashy lifestyle as prime minister has come with a billion dollar bill for the taxpayer.

Consider this:

For starters, if the country’s humble prime minister really wants to lead by living a life of humility and austerity—in deference to the millions of poor and impoverished people he constantly refers to with such touching sympathy—he could perhaps exit from his grand, five-house official residence in the intoxicating world of Lutyens’ Delhi, that not only takes up the entire road, but is spread over 12 acres, in the leafy boulevards of the Capital state. While the layout of the five-mansion residence is secret for security reasons, there are private quarters, guest rooms for visitors, and accommodation for family members, apart from salons to entertain. It’s all run efficiently by a staff of over 50 gardeners, chauffeurs, housekeepers, cooks, and electricians. There are barbers, hairdressers and tailors on call, apart from doctors and nurses on duty round the clock with a state-of-the-art fitted ambulance on stand-by. It’s a household expense that runs into crores of rupees.

Imagine if humble Modi had downsized his personal quarters to a functional minimum, not necessarily outside Lutyens’ zone but in a more modest house—hasn’t he tired of telling the world how he works a punishing 20-hour work schedule, barely sleeping for three-four hours? It would have sent a slap to the slothful and entitled Lutyens’-Khan Market gang he so reviles, and would have also revealed the prime minister’s true beginnings of not just being a chaiwallah’s son (the fable flip-flops from Modi being a tea-seller to being the son of one) but as an ascetic RSS pracharak too, brought up on a rigid and rigorous discipline of life.

I suppose it takes a lot of money to keep Modi humble and poor.

If there are five bullet-proof BMW sedans to ferry him around in the city—though he’s reportedly switched to Range Rovers—there’s Air India One, the plush Boeing 747 jumbo jet, which Modi uses whenever he flies on official visits abroad. It made sense to have the jumbo when prime ministers ferried officials, business delegations, and a sizeable media contingent on tours. But a media-averse Modi travels without them, and with only a bare minimum of officials. As RTI queries have revealed, Air India has sent a whopping bill of ₹443.4 crore for the PM’s trips abroad so far, on aircraft maintenance and setting up a secure hotline, though the airline is yet to calculate the expenses for Modi’s trips to five more countries stretching from Argentina to Japan. The Prime Minister’s Office has declined to give any calculation on Modi’s domestic trips, saying it does not keep an account of it.

Now, couldn’t the humble PM opt for a business jet, with less opulence and luxury, and save taxpayer’s money? Instead, the poor and humble PM has splashed out on his trips abroad with an astronomical bill of ₹2,021 crore in the last five years, which amounts to ₹400 crore a year. His fans say that previous prime ministers too blew up similar amounts of money, but aren’t we dealing with a frugal and ascetic RSS pracharak today?

But Modi’s vanity doesn’t end here: it’s in the publicity sweepstakes that expenses have blown through the roof. As RTI queries reveal, Modi spent nearly ₹4,400 crore on publicity alone (footed by the government and taxpayer) in just four years, until 2018, to bolster his image along with the schemes launched by him. Unfortunately, reports on the performance of the schemes fade in the blaze of Modi’s publicity blitzkrieg. In election year now, the mind boggles with the campaign bill, as reports say Modi’s BJP got 94 per cent of election bonds issued (running into ₹210 crore). Its Facebook and other social media is a multi-million dollar industry.

But it’s in his personal vanity that Modi takes the best shots. Though Modi would like to appear not to have overly planned his dressing for the day, he has taken dressing to levels where even the international media has reported on his sartorial pomp and flourishes. Modi has dumped the pracharak’s fetish for military khaki and orderliness. Instead, he’s declared that his colour choices and mixing is “god-given”. Apart from divining his colour palette of orange, crimson, and bright colours, he now prefers them in silent shades, according to his tailor, Bipin Chauhan from Ahmedabad. Chauhan had once admitted that Modi told him that he cannot compromise on three things: his eyes, voice and clothes.

The Modi kurtas, Modi jackets, lushly embroidered cashmere shawls, his bespoke suits, apart from his Bvlgari glasses, Movado watch and Mont Blanc pens—these are hardly reminiscent of his poor, tapasya-seeking adulthood. Modi seems to revel in opulence and high living. And, has anyone forgotten his monogrammed suit (reportedly prepared at the cost of ₹10 lakh and auctioned at a base price of ₹11 lakh, although it was gifted to him) or declaring his 56-inch chest, of virility and machismo—a far cry from the rigours of an ascetic and fakir.

And has Modi confirmed rumours of his hair transplant and personal grooming now that celebrity hair stylist Jawed Habib has joined the BJP? Apparently also Modi’s personal hairdresser, Habib hinted that Modi has a haircut every week when he said that only a weekly clip can keep his hair and beard in such perfect shape; and that they are in the perfect shade of white. Reports on Modi’s weekly “diamond facial”, to eating expensive mushrooms for his now fair and buffed skin, has kept the media agog for a while.

But when it comes to education, there’s nothing Modi can do to reinvent himself. In fact, Modi fakes it when he can’t take it. He still has to live down his degree in “Entire Political Science” and the verdict on whether his graduation is real or not can actually disqualify him from standing for election—but the PM has sneered at his blue-stocking colleagues in Power Delhi when he said “hard work is more powerful than Harvard”. That too, when addressing crowds in towns of backward but hopeful Uttar Pradesh. If you can’t get a college degree from an illustrious university, be anti-intellectual, is his roaring credo.

Life, for Modi today, is a high-maintenance gig.