The many perks of siding with silence

If you witnessed a violent crime, what would you do? If you saw someone being attacked, would you help? In 2005, I saw a boy run wild on the streets of Lado Sarai South Delhi, a bunch of lathee clad boys clamouring after him. Buried under a shower of blows, the boy cried out for help. I wasn’t the only witness that day; a crowd of wary onlookers circled and it did nothing.

The “bystander effect” has been studied by social psychologists ever since the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 when 38 witnesses saw her attacked and did nothing.

In the fairytale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, the swindled Emperor parades down his streets with no clothes on, believing he is wearing fine attire that only the intelligent can see. Despite everyone in the town seeing that the Emperor clearly has no clothes, everyone continues with the collective silence. Everyone continues with the collective denial.

What is it about groups of people that makes them able to deny the truth, suppress justice, and stay silent? The herculean capacity of people to hold their tongue, on occasions that demand vehement rebuttal, on instances of clear injustice, has baffled me for a long time. Choosing to remain silent, even about the issues dear to our hearts, events so crucial that come knocking at our doors, and often inside our bedrooms, this deathly silence troubles me to my core.

Is there something about the way in which we live that rewards silence? Over the years I have seen the covert perks oozing out of the wide rift between what we say and what we do. What we preach and what we practice. In these moments of clarity it dawned on me that there is a clear and conceded method to this madness — an implicit reason why we extol bravery and compassion in heavy-weight words and empty gestures, but discreetly reward silence with concrete and tangible payoffs.

Silence is the oil that runs the systems. Systems designed to keep masses pinned down and asking no questions. Reduced to thoughtless and tranquil fodder going head-first in the wide-open mouth of the guzzling economy. A feed, smoothly and silently marching forward to its own extinction. Toiling on oil rigs, felling trees, promoting and buying poison in the name of food. A questioning swarm would be hard to herd, even harder to mislead.

For masses, silence is safety — a well-cushioned comfort zone, a cocoon, a safety-net of just living in the daily routine. It doesn’t take much to turn a blind eye and leave it to someone else to sort out, wait for someone else to come along and fix the problems. Someone who is not at the averaged-out level of complacency, who will call out the old elephant in the room and shoulder the risks.

Silence is a secret pact between the oppressor and the oppressed — one that smudges the lines of accountability. In our minds, we have convinced ourselves that a collective crime is not that big a deal. And we don’t mind playing our own teeny-weeny role in it. We never really went ahead and stabbed someone, we just passed along the dagger.

We litter the social media with slogans of freedom, we listen to motivational speeches and host superficial awards. But leave the heavy-lifting to a handful of isolated voices naive enough to question the way we live. We continue to go about our lives, embracing our cherished and ever rewarding silence. It has paid us, and it will pay us again.

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