HYPOCRISY: Democracy, Religion, and me.

HYPOCRISY: Democracy, Religion, and me.

 

Recently I was accused of being a hypocrite.   I was talking to a friend and, as is my wont, I was complaining about another person who failed to respond to an email I had sent them a few days previously. My friend pointed out that I was in no position to make this complaint: I am a notorious non-responder to emails. 

 

I frequently procrastinate and dilly-dally in my correspondence with others. I often wait until the last possible minute to reply, or until I have received several follow-ups begging me for a response. Essentially speaking in this case my words and deeds don’t align, I promise to reply to the emails sent to me but I don’t. In reality, I am a procrastinator and lazy. 

 

The accusation stung but my friend had a point. My instant reaction was not to accept what he had said but, rather, to make excuses. I argued that my friend didn’t understand why I was so bad at responding to emails. It wasn’t a moral failing, I told them, it was an illness. And although this particular accusation of hypocrisy wasn’t that serious, it did urge me to reflect on other ways in which I may be hypocritical. 

 

The mind conjures up many different things when one hears the word hypocrite. Maybe it is a politician caught in a scandal; maybe it is a religious leader doing something counter to their professed beliefs. Or maybe it is a scheming and conniving character featured in a soap opera. But most likely that one thing that doesn’t come to mind is the theater.

 

The word hypocrite came into English from the Greek word ‘hypokrites’, which means ‘an actor’ or ‘stage player’.

 

The Greek word itself is a compound noun: it’s made up of two Greek words that translate as ‘an interpreter from underneath’. That makes more sense because actors in ancient Greek theaters wore large masks to mark the character they were playing and so they interpreted the story from underneath the masks. The Greek word took on an extended meaning to refer to any person, who was wearing a figurative mask and pretending to be someone or something they were not. It appeared with its earlier spelling ‘ypocrite’ in the 13th century. By the 16th century, hypocrite had gained its initial ‘h’ to become ‘hypocrite’. From about the same time European religious texts refer to a hypocrite as someone who pretends to be morally good or pious to deceive others.

 

According to ancient Indian texts called ‘Shastras’, the moral and spiritual excellence of a human is marked by the power to coordinate one’s speech and actions with what one’s mind thinks.  Since the mind is fickle and its accompanying thoughts are constantly wavering and in flux, it is not easy to control its behaviour. Often one’s behaviour may not reflect feelings of greed, lust, jealousy, hatred, etc. which taint the mind. This non-alignment of thought, speech, and deed tantamounts to dishonesty. This measure and mark of moral-spiritual excellence is an essential tenet of Hindu spirituality. However, the thoughts of others can not be deciphered, so for all practical purposes, we can gauge a person on the scales of hypocrisy only by their words & deeds.

 

While no one likes to be called a hypocrite, being called a man of one’s word, keeping one’s promise, and being true to one’s word, etc are considered compliments. Not living up to one’s words has a bearing on what others think of us. The quickest way to erode trust is not to do what you say you will do. The quickest way to build trust is to do what you said you would do. It has to do with the alignment between words and deeds. Trust gets built when deeds and words are aligned; trust erodes when there is a misalignment between words and deeds. It is very simple.

 

Over the years, whereas, the definition of a hypocrite that has stuck in the minds of the people is that of someone who pretends to be morally good or pious in order to deceive others, many new ways of using the word have come up.

 

Hypocrisy is the non-alignment of one’s words and deeds; the practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case; or feigning behaviour that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel. It is also the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another. 

 

Some have voiced very radical opinions. For example, Marek Veneny believes that to grow as a person, you must learn to be a hypocrite. According to him being a hypocrite means that you unabashedly change your opinions, beliefs, values, and behavior whenever you feel the old ones don’t serve you anymore, irrespective of what you (or others) held to be true previously. The default mode of being in the world is conformity. And that is precisely why you must learn to be a hypocrite.

 

You must learn to discard the opinions others have of you, and the opinions you hold about yourself. These opinions are limiting your development and growth.

 

You say one thing and do another. But in a good way.

 

According to British political philosopher David Runciman, “Other kinds of hypocritical deception include claims to knowledge that one lacks, claims to a consistency that one cannot sustain, claims to a loyalty that one does not possess, claims to an identity that one does not hold”. American political journalist Michael Gerson says that political hypocrisy is “the conscious use of a mask to fool the public and gain political benefit”. 

 

However, the common thread that glues them all is ‘deception’. All agree that some kind of deception is prevalent in all kinds of hypocrisy and hypocritical behaviour. Sometimes it is conscious and at other times the hypocrite doesn’t realise that he is deceiving himself and others. 

 

On another note hypocrisy, which also implies compromise with one’s principles, can also be a form of adaption – a survival tool. Darwin in his book ‘On the Origin of Species’ said that only those who adapt can survive. However, being hypocritical to adapt by compromising on one’s principles to survive is one thing, but being a hypocrite to fool others for personal benefit is quite another. Such a material phenomenon has major ramifications for humans when practiced.

 

Belief systems condemn hypocrisy.

 

Christ called out on hypocrisy as mentioned in John 8:7 “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her”.  Jesus condemns the scribes and Pharisees as hypocrites in the passage known as the Woes of the Pharisees. He also denounces hypocrites in more general terms in Matthew 7:5. 

 

In Islam, Quranic Chapter 63 is often titled “The Hypocrites”. Hypocrisy is viewed as a serious sickness. The Qur’an rails against those who claim to be believers and peacemakers, thinking they are fooling God and others, but only fooling themselves. In some translations of the Book of Job, the Hebrew word “chaneph” is rendered as hypocrite though it usually means “godless” or “profane”. 

 

As narrated in the Ramayana, Lord Ram refused his brother’s request to return to Ayodhya. Return to Ayodhya would have made him a hypocrite for not keeping his word when he promised to leave the kingdom. In the Bhagwad Gita, Shri Krishna provides different examples of hypocrisy and hypocrites – those who outwardly renounce objects while being mentally attached to them, penance performed with ostentation to gain respect and honour. In the Buddhist text Dhammapada, Gautama Buddha condemns a man who takes the appearance of an ascetic but is full of passion within. 

 

In modern times we have Muslims making a big show of piety by eating only ‘halal’ meat. On the other hand, they have no qualms about eating fish and animal meat from hunting trips. The same is true of the Sikhs, whose religion mandates only ‘Jhatka’ {Jhatka meat, as opposed to Halal meat, refers to the instantaneous severing of the head of an animal with a single stroke of any weapon, with the underlying intention of killing it with minimal suffering} Then there are some Christians who show piety by abandoning meat during lent but continue eating fish. 

 

Beef has become a major bone {pun unintended} of contention in India today. Few states allow the slaughter of cows and the sale of meat therefrom. In other states, the beef ban has taken on a very ugly turn. As per press reports, Muslims have been lynched and done to death, by fanatic vegetarian Hindus, on the mere suspicion of possessing and/or transporting beef in these states.

 

Many Indians pride themselves on having been vegetarians for generations. But ever since the advent of the ruling BJP; a party that mostly espouses the Hindutva ideology and agenda, the decibels around the din of the vilification of animal slaughter, selling, and eating meat have scaled new heights.    

 

On the other hand, even though I know that a substantial chunk of the Hindu populace is nonvegetarian, I was a bit surprised to see a write-up in the TOI telling travelers about temples {8 of them} scattered all over India that serve non-vegetarian food as Prasadam {Prasadam denotes anything, typically food, that is first offered to a deity or saint and then distributed in His or Her name to their followers or the congregation}. 

 

What I did not know and it came as a surprise was the article in the TOI saying that Ayurveda prescribes beef for several disorders.

 

Hypocrisy comes in various forms and it can also be very secular. Sometimes hypocrisy is that good intention that paves the way to hell. In its professed aim to protect the free world America has danced with the worst dictators and toppled elected governments. As a Noble Peace Prize winner Obama ordered air strikes and raids into at least 7 nations.

 

Hypocrisy as an adaptation tool.  

 

The run-up to the 2016 Presidential Election saw the U.S. go through the Republican Presidential Primaries. Here the US exhibited the finest in adaptation hypocrisy. The Christian right supported Trump despite his attitudes and remarks on women and his many marriages. Many Republican politicians who had called him a liar and other apt but unflattening names, fell over themselves when he was elected as the Presidential candidate of the Republican Party.

 

Presently the Republicans and the US Supreme court claim that they are protecting life by banning abortion and trampling over a woman’s right over her body. But they are opposed to any gun control even though an average of 12 children die daily due to gun violence. The Catholic Church has welcomed the US Supreme Court’s decision on abortion but no word about the harm to children from guns. Mind you the Bible highlights instances of Jesus’s care for children.

 

Modern India also scores very high on the hypocrisy count. Indira Gandhi was sworn in to be the Prime Minister of India after taking an oath to uphold the values & principles enshrined in the Constitution Of India. But in a move that was diametrically opposite to the oath taken, she declared an Emergency and crushed all the rights guaranteed to an individual under the Constitution.

 

Today the Congress party has been unable to find a response to the right-wing Hindutva ideology that has swept India and is espoused by the BJP. Instead of remaining true to its secular credentials, the party has reinvented itself as a proponent of soft Hindutva, just to remain relevant and take on the BJP. Its leaders have visited temples and those visits have been highlighted in the media. They have spoken about Brahmin DNA in the Congress blood. They have desisted from making statements about the Hijab controversy, and the recent Supreme Court order on the Ehsan Jafri case.

 

Some politicians enact the most blatant & shameless exhibition of duplicity and hypocrisy. Many politicians who espoused secular deals have now joined the BJP. In their earlier ‘Avatar’ these politicians roundly opposed the BJP. From a long list, a shining example is Jyotiraditya Scindia, a former Union Minister in the Congress government, who tweeted extensively against the BJP.  But, now he sings peans to BJP’s senior politicians. Interestingly these tweets have been removed.

 

But such ‘turn-coatery’ is not the fate of just those abandoning a sinking ship. Even within the BJP and the believers of the Hindutva ideology hypocrisy abounds. The most recent instance is the BJP government’s response to the backlash from Muslim nations following the statement made by the BJP national spokesperson on Prophet Muhammed. To limit the damage caused, the BJP government released an official statement calling the spokesperson ‘Fringe elements’. The Hindutva ideology that is espoused and implemented by the BJP is based on securing the primacy of Hinduism through the express act of suppressing Muslims and other minorities. For the BJP to distance itself from its spokespersons, who only voiced the ideology is laughable. More so because many party bigwigs have earlier made anti-Muslim remarks and some have gone on record as they led slogans calling Muslims anti-nationals who should be shot dead. And this even as those very politicians proclaim India’s democratic credentials.

 

The way the law under the BJP rule deals with such incidents is another example of hypocrisy at work. The law it appears is soft on the Right Wing Hindu fanatics and harsh on others. The cases of Sharma & Naveen Jindal, and Mhd Zubair point to the above assertion.

 

It is ironic that while PM Modi joined G7 leaders in discussions on freedom of speech and social media, the Delhi police which report to his govt. at the centre arrested Mohd Zubair, a respected journalist and fact checker, for a 2018 tweet of a meme from a movie. 

 

The hypocrisy in current Indian politics has seeped into society. For example, hate and distrust of Muslims and the desire for revenge that the Hindutva supporters espouse are based on the claim that the Muslim kings and raiders destroyed countless Hindu temples. What is happily forgotten is that the history of the subcontinent is replete with warring Hindu dynasties fighting each other and destroying each other’s temples.

 

Hindutva adherents don’t have a problem with Hindu kings killing each other and looting and destroying temples. And now Bollywood too has got in on the act. A recent movie called ‘Samrat Prithviraj’ depicts the king as protecting. Hinduism against attacking Muslim holders. The film conveniently ignores the wars he fought against many Hindu Kings which again is tantamount to being a hypocrite on the part of the maker of the film.

 

While writing this piece I became philosophical and it made me indulge in a little bit of introspection. Now I am wondering if it would be hypocrisy if I had not written this piece.  I decided to find out more. 

 

Even though the word is quite recent considering the history of the human race the phenomenon is as old as humans. So it is easy to see why Hypocrisy has been a subject of folk wisdom and wisdom literature from the beginning of human history. Besides the ancient and religious texts, from Niccolò Machiavelli to Carl Jung hypocrisy has long been of interest to philosophers & psychologists.  Many of them have written and discussed hypocrisy.   

 

Carl Jung attributed hypocrisy to those who are not aware of the dark or shadow side of their nature. 

 

Niccolò Machiavelli was an Italian philosopher, who wrote the political treatise The Prince in the 1500s, which encourages “the end justifies the means” behavior, especially among politicians. Machiavelli’s view that acquiring a state and maintaining it requires evil means has been considered the chief theme of the treatise. He has become infamous for this advice, so much so that the adjective Machiavellian would, later on, describe a type of politics that is “marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith”. Machiavellianism is a personality trait that denotes cunningness, the ability to be manipulative, and a drive to use whatever means necessary to gain power. 

 

He also noted that “the mass of mankind accept what seems as what is; or rather, are often touched more nearly by appearances than by realities”.  Natural selection works by the principle of survival of the fittest. Several researchers have shown that humans evolved to play the game of life in a Machiavellian way…hypocrisy is an adaption tool.  The best way to cultivate a reputation for fairness is to be fair. But since it is much harder to be fair than to seem fair, and since laziness is built deep into human nature, humans more often choose appearance over reality.

 

The usage of the word has also changed drastically over the years…the usage which insinuated moral failings still holds sway when it comes to judging others, further increasing the common coefficient of hypocrisy. 

 

The limits and boundaries of moral behaviour have shifted and a new norm of morality has evolved. Today being a liar, which earlier was akin to being a hypocrite, is an accepted norm. For a lawyer, it is a profession. For a politician, it is a necessity.   

 

Increasingly, since the 1980s, hypocrisy has also become central to studies in behavioral economics, cognitive science, cultural psychology, decision-making, ethics, evolutionary psychology, moral psychology, political sociology, positive psychology, social psychology, and sociological social psychology.

 

Hypocrisy is not liked but is widely accepted as an essential kind of behaviour. This vast prevalence and acceptance of hypocrisy inspire a lot of writing. All forms of media are full of stories dealing with one or the other form of hypocrisy as the writers, creators, and authors laugh all the way to the bank. 

 

This vast acceptance and prevalence of hypocrisy have changed the character of our society very drastically. A huge trust deficit, a deficit of logic as well as the deficit of principles is visible in society today.

In the final analysis, hypocrisy is the ash from the sacrifice of trust, logic, and principles. 

Ref:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/food-news/8-temples-in-india-that-are-famous-for-their-non-vegetarian-prasad/photostory/92806809.cms?

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/ayurveda-prescribes-beef-for-several-disorders-scientist/articleshow/49743126.cms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy

https://marekveneny.medium.com/heres-why-being-a-hypocrite-means-you-ve-matured-as-a-person-f78d1ac0424f

https://www.nirandfar.com/hypocrite/

Author:- Ranjan “Jim” Chadha – a peripatetic mind, forever wandering the digital universe, in search & appreciation of peace, freedom, and happiness. So tune in, and turn on, but don’t drop out just yet!