The Nature of Equality

Humans probably needed the Chinese virus to realise that people with better immunity and fitness have higher survival chances. The lesson is in line with the natural dictum of ‘survival of the fittest’. Despite passionate insistence otherwise, nature keeps proving it is not egalitarian. Humans are not unique in going against set natural patterns. Females in African lions, Spotted Hyenas, Elephants, Orcas, Bonobo and Ring-Tailed and Black-and-White Ruffled Lemur take on leadership roles just like humans¹⁠. These females lead because they are exceptionally skilled, because they are at the hubs of complex and multilayered social networks where skills involved require more mind than brute power to win over unequal turfs.

African Savannah Elephant

Bonobo

Ring-Tailed Lemur

Spotted Hyena

Equality

In B. Archana Reddy and Ors. vs. State of A.P. and Ors. 2005 (6) ALD 582, the dissenting learned judge wrote, “Equality is a dynamic concept. It does not mean absolute equality disregarding inherent differential characteristics of men and material. If a measure tends to perpetuate inequality and makes the goal of equality a mirage, such measure should not receive the approval of the Court. The Court can mould the relief by indicating what would be the reasonable measure or action which furthers the object of achieving equality.” Like India, most democratic societies believe in equality among equals, not absolute equality. Unlike all democracies, radicals like communists, fascists and nazis deny everybody’s equality.

Article 14 promises the more realistic, achievable notion of equals being treated equally and not absolute equality. This is because just as a difference in the treatment of similarly situated persons leads to discrimination, so also discrimination can arise if dissimilar persons are treated similarly (1993 3 SCC 677). In current politically correct popular opinions, the concept of Equality has been reduced to intellectual high fiction. The privileged has plenty of tools to break shackles while the unprivileged has no tools to start with. Poverty has turned the poor into altogether a physically weaker race²⁠. Poverty is a fight for survival before it become a fight for equality. Poverty is a fight to keep flesh and bone together. In innumerable ways, poor live in ‘survival of the fittest’ mode.

The UN Development Programme reported in the 2019 global Multidimensional Poverty Index that India had lifted 271 million people out of poverty between 2006 and 2016³⁠. The 2018 China's State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development reported that China had lifted 68.53 million people out of poverty over the past five years after Chairman Xi Jinping took over⁴⁠. India is progressing, it just requires an incredible amount of patience. Youth recognises why India is symbolised by elephants. Democracies start slow like the potential elephant matriarchs of the African savannahs^5–7 but all they need to do is keep learning, analysing, memorising and moving. They all start equally to end at various positions in the group hierarchy.

In Information Age, internet has democratised knowledge (the side-effect of which is cheap quality), empowering many people to ideate and go as far as getting copyrights and patents. The state-imposed global lockdowns should have made us realise by now that the monopoly grabbed by Equality is a legal fiction just like intellectual property⁸⁠. This fiction is the basis of modern human progress, though at a terrible price. Political rhetoric has twisted vague ideas like equality to the point where future seems to be a distant mirage.

Old Order

In 1970s, China-backed Naxalites championed rights of the poor before they began killing upper-caste landlords. Naxalite barons who exploited the very poor they claimed to protect also swallowed private lands in name of winning equality for the poor. Most high ranking ex-Naxalites on being asked why they joined the revolution and what made them renounce it have the same answer. Their talks are mostly a series of disenchantments, first from the government, last from the Maoist movement. Communism has liquidated 100 million humans since it began 100 years ago⁹⁠. If anything, Nazis and Communists can teach us that political utopias that defy, deny or design human nature kill more humans at faster rates and better efficiencies than all gods put together.

Maoists

Hungarian soldiers being taken to Soviet gulag

India's primitive political discourse has become stagnant. Every second protest idea is steeped in history, not future. It is delaying justice and prosperity by undermining liberty and equality. The world does not need conflict and revolutions, it needs cooperation and resolutions. The world is in dire need of empathy, equity and stability to prosper in safety. We live in a postmodernist world where people know no absolute truths anymore. The inexperienced and restless youth is disillusioned with this blurred vision of the future. Gods are in question, titans are falling and nobody is safe.

This current tyranny is controlled by the few Jacobins under whose reign the intellectual depletion is such that every debatable topic under the sun is reduced to simple but beguiling yes and no. Everybody is fair game to be deemed a fascist as long as the accuser shouts it out from ivory towers built on molehill-sized moral hills. Media plays it part. Journalists sit in luxury, sipping alcohol, zipping around town in pricy cars, blaming everybody else but themselves, judging everybody else but themselves.

New Order

If you think of it, CAA riots and BLM riots appear similar. They are polarising both supporters and detractors. They are both led by college campuses. They both defy authority. They both challenge democracy. They both harm properties. They both pelt stones on police and hurt innocent people. They are both backed by simmering poverty-driven anxiety. Their misery is hijacked by vested interests. Did any Muslim lose citizenship? No. Did racism end? No. Then why the riots? Why the loss of lives, limbs and property? Nobody knows.

Radicals like the founders of the Seattle Autonomous Zone (SAZ) are not unique¹⁰⁠. The SAZ is spread over several blocks just east of downtown Seattle that came up on 8^th June after protests over the murder of a black man at hands of a white police officer turned violent. The signs in SAZ go “You are entering free Capitol Hill” and “No cop co-op.” The founders come from a variety of groups and interests, ranging from Black Lives Matter organizers and newly declared terror group Antifa to labour and neighbourhood groups¹¹⁠. Most want the police precinct to be turned into a community centre and much of the department’s funding to be redirected to health and social services.

For comparison, women at Shaheen Bagh protest site were present since beginning but they swelled quickly thereafter. They first came out on the night of 15 December, when a protest by students of Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia university ended in clashes with the police until the protests led to communal riots in Delhi. Young disillusioned youth-led protests which occupied an arterial road in national capital¹²⁠. Shaheen Bagh protestors were opposing an amendment that fast-tracked citizenship for religiously persecuted minorities who sought refuge in India after fleeing neighbouring persecuting Muslim countries. Both SAZ and Shaheen Bagh are being led by activist-leaders looking to create profit, carve careers, create privilege, sustain the privilege, climb ladders, or simply create chaos. It is safe to say that both SAZ and CAA protestors are not seeking equality.

Man or Moon?

A Stanford professor named Walter Scheidel writes in his book The Great Leveller that economic inequality can be rectified by one of the ‘Four Horsemen of Leveling’ - Warfare, Revolution, State collapse and Plague¹³⁠. Today, all societies have wealthy and liberal intellectuals who love painting and selling poverty while sipping wine. All societies have rich activists who build private privilege while shooting guns off the poor emaciated shoulders. If equality is a reasonable factor in human design, why limit the crore-worth placement packages to only 2 or 3 students per top IIT or IIM? Is equality worth chasing when people are dying of hunger? This is similar to the dilemma of having to prioritise between medical care and moon rover in a national budget. What exactly should be India’s priority?

The fictional absolute equality prioritises sentiments over facts. IIT JEE Advanced exam, to be conducted on 23^rd August 2020, offers 11,289 seats in 23 IITs to 2.5 lakh eligible IIT aspirants who have cleared JEE Main exam. Just 0.012% of the total 9,34,000 registered JEE Main aspirants will qualify this exam¹⁴⁠. It is similar to Chinese Gaokao. Professional exam takers (cheaters) are charging Chinese parents up to Rs. 1 crore¹⁵⁠. IIT coachings are charging fees comparable to IITs^16–18. Asian education systems are considered monolithic and rote in the West. At home, they are perceived as tough but fair. The competition in IITs is so high that the vacancy across all IITs is just 0.76% or 73 out of total 9,660. For comparison, vacancies in IIITs and other government-funded technical institutions stand at 16% and 31% respectively¹⁹⁠. There is an obvious demand for quality education that India is unable to supply.

The price of non-accessibility to bare necessities is high in India. It leads to Munchausen syndrome-led victimhood. A plague event brings austerity led resentment. These are the stages that modern Jacobins keep looking for. In 1856, French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville reviewed the so-called ‘grievance books’ or lists of demands made by the various social layers of France in anticipation of the Estates-General, the assembly that would undermine Louis XVI’s reign and lead ultimately to revolution. What he discovered startled him, “When I came to gather all the individual wishes, with a sense of terror I realized that their demands were for the wholesale and systematic abolition of all the laws and all the current practices in the country. Straightaway I saw that the issue here was one of the most extensive and dangerous revolutions ever observed in the world.”

Alexis de Tocqueville

Maximilien Robespierre

The book ‘Homicide’ talks about many patterns of criminality transcending culture and time. The fact that societal definitions of morality are hypocritical per se, the resultant human weakness ensures weak anchors in the salty sea of sanity. Men are not okay with alcohol being sold to children but men are okay with alcohol being sold by children^20,21⁠. Humans fiercely protect their babies but they also circumcise their babies. Democracies all around the world are in danger from sentimental hysteric upheavals created by the modern globalisation led intrusions. For decades, people have rioted when the austerity programs imposed on their countries proved to be too harsh, but their protests were largely unheard in the West. What is new is the wave of protests in the developed countries.

Traps

India must not walk into this trap. Poors are beginning to die and India can not help them all. This is not a time for unrest or rest. Like American racism, Indian casteism need resolutions, people are starting to lose trust in public institutions. Equality and liberty can come only after safety and prosperity. Vinayak Savarkar put it boldly when he wrote in an essay on abolition of caste in 1931 - “The very belief that the son of a Brahmin has the innate qualities of a Brahmin or that the son of a Kshatriya must be naturally imbued with the qualities of a Kshatriya needs to be discarded. This is because of the fact that due to cross-breeding between all our castes from time immemorial, no caste can claim monopoly over a specific merit.” - Collected Works, Vol. 3. P. 472

The Chinese virus has left humans as vulnerable in their concrete jungles as they once were in caves. The man who coined the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ was a contemporary of Charles Darwin named Herbert Spencer. While Darwin focused on biology, Spencer believed evolutionary thinking could be applied more broadly. Today he is reviled for Social Darwinism which says that the successful deserve their success while those who fail deserve their failure. During Spencer’s time, English politicians drifted to the Left. Spencer was rigid in his dislike for socialism so he was sidelined when Socialists ascended. Today his tomb lies opposite to Karl Marx in London’s Highgate Cemetery²²⁠. One led to Hitler while the other led to Mao. Marx has stayed alive while Spencer was forgotten within his time. Equality remains a fiction in both life and death.

1. The 7 non-human mammals where females rule the roost | New Scientist. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2180434-the-7-non-human-mammals-where-females-rule-the-roost/.

2. Height of Indians growing at one of the slowest rates in the world: Study. https://www.livemint.com/Politics/MykyWXJ0bGCLcvZLSw4KoK/Height-of-Indians-growing-at-one-of-the-slowest-rates-in-the.html.

3. India lifted 271 million people out of poverty in 10 years: UN - The Hindu BusinessLine. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/india-lifted-271-million-people-out-of-poverty-in-10-years-un/article28403303.ece.

4. Poverty: China lifts over 68 million people out of poverty in 5 years: Report - The Economic Times. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/china-lifts-over-68-million-people-out-of-poverty-in-5-years-report/articleshow/62863326.cms?from=mdr.

5. No Title.

6. What elephants can teach us about the importance of female leadership - The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/what-elephants-can-teach-us-about-the-importance-of-female-leadership/2014/01/27/32db3f5e-7eeb-11e3-95c6-0a7aa80874bc_story.html.

7. Under poaching pressure, elephants are evolving to lose their tusks. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/wildlife-watch-news-tuskless-elephants-behavior-change/.

8. Intellectual Property Law – All You Need To Know - iPleaders. https://blog.ipleaders.in/intellectual-property-law-need-know/.

9. 100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead - WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-million-dead-1510011810.

10. Seattle autonomous zone: Protesters struggle to determine what’s next as Trump threats loom - The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/.

11. Q&A: What’s next for Seattle protesters’ ‘autonomous zone’? https://apnews.com/dbec74a55889d6e7d674fe03773922fb.

12. Shaheen Bagh: The women occupying Delhi street against citizenship law - BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50902909.

13. Open Future - Can inequality only be fixed by war, revolution or plague? | Open Future | The Economist. https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/10/can-inequality-only-be-fixed-by-war-revolution-or-plague.

14. Poor Exam Process Breeds Mediocrity- The New Indian Express. https://www.newindianexpress.com/magazine/voices/2019/jul/14/poor-exam-process-breeds-mediocrity-2002589.html.

15. The gaokao is China’s notoriously tough entrance exam, that can also get you into western universities - check out its punishing questions | Business Insider India. https://www.businessinsider.in/education/the-gaokao-is-chinas-notoriously-tough-entrance-exam-that-can-also-get-you-into-western-universities-check-out-its-punishing-questions/articleshow/64804367.cms.

16. (No Title). https://bansal.ac.in/jee_advance_bulls_eye.aspx.

17. Fee Structure for B.TECH. students. https://www.iitg.ac.in/acad/fees/btech2016_2ndSemOnwards.htm.

18. Fee Structure B.Tech 2019 | IIIT-Delhi. https://www.iiitd.ac.in/admission/btech/2019/feestructure.

19. No JEE Main, reserved seats: Yet IITs fail to woo foreign students | Education News,The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/education/no-jee-main-reserved-seats-yet-iits-fail-to-woo-foreign-students-5695439/.

20. Students take to bootlegging in ‘dry’ Bihar. https://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-students-take-to-bootlegging-in-dry-bihar-2697338.

21. SP in Gujarat sends circular to police stations that talks of police-bootleggers nexus | DeshGujarat. https://www.deshgujarat.com/2018/09/26/sp-in-gujarat-sends-circular-to-police-stations-that-talks-of-police-bootleggers-nexus/.

22. Herbert Spencer and the Survival of the Fittest | Science | Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/herbert-spencer-survival-of-the-fittest-180974756/