Some fashionable words make no sense. Let’s start with ‘activist’

Image for representation | Unsplash

In PG Wodehouse’s brilliant novel Ring for Jeeves, the one and only Roderick Carmoyle, aka Rory, has an exchange with his wife Monica, aka Moke:

“It’s… what’s the word?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Begins with ‘in’.”

“Influential? Inspirational? Infrared?”

“Inexplicable. That’s what it is.”

And that is a good place to begin. I find so many fashionable words of today quite inexplicable. And that is despite being a zealous Wodehouse reader. I wonder what others, who have never heard of Blandings Castle or the Drones Club, do when forced to deal with words that defy explanation, aka inexplicable words.

 

Of activists, protestivists, and passivists

Let us start with “activist”. Now, who or what is an activist? Presumably, an active person busily showing up in gymnasiums and yoga classes. Apparently, that is not good enough. An activist is quite another kind of creature.

An activist, we are told, is one who carries placards and demonstrates on sundry matters. An activist is frequently involved in protests of one kind or another. They might as well be called protestivists, if you ask me. An activist writes angry blogs. An activist is almost always of the leftist persuasion. An activist keeps busy filing petitions in courts to prevent the construction of bridges, roads, airports, and so on.

Mind you, this does not prevent the activist from using roads or airports. An activist is a big carbon emitter, frequently attending conferences in Paris, Tokyo, Copenhagen, and Rio. An activist is defined by being active on behalf of others—minorities, tribals, animal-lovers, and so on—and this when it’s not even clear that these groups want to be represented by self-appointed activists.

Going to gymnasiums or yoga classes is strictly optional. You don’t have to do that in order to be an active activist, or even a hyperactive activist—or even better, a hyperactive hyperactivist.

Dear Reader: I will let you in on a secret. I am not an activist. You can call me a passivist if you feel like it, because I do occasionally write sentences in the passive voice. And Dear Reader, please do not feel guilty or ashamed if you are a passive passivist. You are in good company along with this humble writer.

When the majority becomes ‘majoritarian’

The second word that completely foxes me is “majoritarian”. The ordinary people of ancient Rome—the Plebeians, or the plebs as Rory Carmoyle might call them—were opposed to a small elite group of Patricians deciding how the city should be run. They coined the expression “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” which translates as “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.

But that approach is strongly condemned by the patricians of today. Apparently, the voice of the majority plebs is “majoritarian” and therefore worthy of disdain. If the majority of Indians, for instance, like the Kumbh Mela, then that does not make the Kumbh a good thing. It makes it a superstitious indulgence of deplorable plebs.

Lest I be accused of chauvinism, let me walk away from our country. If the majority of Americans want to send back illegal immigrants, or privileged visa holders who are not deserving of that privilege, then that simply will not do for Patrician judges who want to protect the clients of the elite.

A repeat study of Roman history is called for. The Gracchus Brothers were vilified and prevented by Patricians from doing what the plebs wanted. In our country, if you have been to the right colleges, if you speak English well, if you have never visited Tirupati, if you have never bathed in the Ganga/Godavari/Kaveri, then you are an elite patrician. And it is your bounden duty to thwart and sabotage any attempts by the majoritarian plebs to achieve their agendas.

And in this effort, you have the support of our old friends, the activists, who will promptly go to court to discredit the flimsy majority vox populi. Again, in the interests of avoiding accusations of chauvinism, let me point out that American patricians are one step ahead of our homegrown variety. They have a clever procedure whereby they can actually look around and find courts and judges of the patrician persuasion who can help quell majoritarian pleb madness.

The patricians are clever. Perhaps they are born clever. Perhaps they attain cleverness. Perhaps they have cleverness thrust upon them. In any event, they are clever, they are activists, and they are proud of their cleverness—and disdainful of deplorable pleb passivists.

They point out that our first-past-the-post system makes our governments, in fact, minority governments. Suddenly, our patrician friends become enamoured of the discredited Continental European proportional representation system. I wonder. I really wonder.

When the same first-past-the-post system delivered patrician majorities, it was wonderful. The Indian electorate was intelligent and India was a great democracy. The same system now may be empowering the unwashed plebs (or shall we say, washed-in-the-Ganga plebs?) and that means the system is not OK.

 

Phobia and punishment

Enough of majoritarianism, whatever it might mean. Let me switch to a more sensitive word that I frankly do not understand.

Dear Reader: let me warn you. We are treading on difficult ground. But I believe it is important for me to end on this note. The word “Islamophobia” is bandied around a lot. This is a word that is indeed difficult to understand. We are told that this word is comparable to anti-Semitism.

Let us examine this claim. Anti-Semitism is a word first coined in the nineteenth century by a German writer, at a time when the only Semites in Europe were Jews. It was therefore a straightforward term to describe dislike or hatred for Jews.

Now let us examine the difference. “Phobia” is a word that describes a mental disease, or at the very least, an irrational mental condition. This implies that if someone is accused of Islamophobia, that person is deranged. That means that anyone who says anything about Islam or its followers is deranged.

Incidentally, this does not apply only to critics. Even if someone praises Islam or Muslims, the accusation of Islamophobia can stand if that praise is seen as condescending or patronising. Even the most innocuous, respectful person can be described as an Islamophobe.

And then, almost immediately, our favourite activists and anti-majoritarian patricians will get activated—perhaps even hyperactivated. The respectful individual is promptly cancelled and can be admitted back into the patrician salons only after intense and sustained grovelling.

I repeat: these and a few other words have gained ascendancy. Rory would describe them as inexplicable. Despite our lack of understanding, we have to live with these words. The only way to deal with this semantic incoherence is to return to reading about Rory and his friends, and forgetting the new world around us. A world that is not influential, inspirational, or infrared, but inexplicable.

Jaithirth ‘Jerry’ Rao is a retired entrepreneur who lives in Lonavala. He has published three books: ‘Notes from an Indian Conservative’, ‘The Indian Conservative’, and ‘Economist Gandhi’. Views are personal. 

(Edited by Asavari Singh)