The oriental and
occidental philosophies, in the ancient age, were more concerned about the
knowledge of self. The concept of
dualism, monism and various other abstract notions of life-world showed various
ways to attain the knowledge of self and the meaning of ‘existence’. Socrates
says, “To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true
knowledge”. He says that self-introspection is the most important thing and we
should start with the dictum “I don’t know”. The theories in social sciences
also talked about subjectivity of truth and reality. The initial view that the
notion of consciousness and self cannot be deciphered. These views were
contested in the field of neurology and cognitive sciences. The theory about
outer world came in the epidemiological foundations of various disciplines.
Various disciplines started talking about the role of emotions, feeling and so
on for in societal context. The concept of social embeddedness of ‘self’ came
into existence. The need for peace and stability in world order was seen as the
pre-requisite for human life in the age of monstrous technologies and nuclear
capable missile system. People started questioning the idea of infinite
progress perpetuated by the ideas of modernity. There was a growing feeling
that our technological developments might pave the way for the destruction of
the world.
The world
started recognizing the importance of peace in society after the devastating
world wars in 20th century. After Second World War, the age of
representative democracy started in most of the countries of world and use of
empathy in international relations came. Johnathan Mercer (2014) and Neta
Crawford talk about the use of emotion in international relations. Steven
Pinker (2011) talks about the decline of violence in 20th century.
He talks about the use of peace and empathy in conflict resolution. However,
Mary Kaldor (2013) talks about the changes in the instruments of violence in
modern nationalism. The use of weapon and militarism in the world is, now,
different from older tactics of war. However, the world is moving towards more
empathic and tolerant order. However, the discriminations on different
physical, social and economic basis is still prevalent in social relationships.
I am talking about two cases—first case is of massive protest in the capital
city of Delhi against the 16th December rape of a young women where
people showed collective empathy for the rape victim and second case is of
collective prejudice where right wing Hindu outfits are converting Muslim
populace in the name of Gharwapsi or reconversion. I have used the
hermeneutical approach to understand these cases.
On the 16th
December 2012, a student of Physiotherapy was raped in a moving bus. The girl
was coming from a cinema hall after watching the film Life of Pie with one of her
male friend[1].
Rape and sexual violence against women is a common problem in India but this
tragic event mobilised people of different strata and different age groups in
the capital city against the institutions of the society like state,
bureaucracy and law. The outpouring of support for the rape victim showed the
collective empathy of groups for a cause which is related to everyone in the
society - The cause of security of women in India. In addition, this rape was
executed in inhumane and brutal manner. The protests after this, which marked a
new beginning in the governance for a more stringent punishment for rape and
other sexual violence, were marked by a collective mobilisation of masses. My
main concern is to show the collective empathy of people in this case to go for
protest. However, there is also other side of the story that depicts the
rapists as from economically and socially marginalized class and they were no
psychopaths and brutalised man from the margins of the society[2].
So, I am also trying to show how the collective empathy was directed towards
the rape victim.
The support for
the girl in this case was coming from the students of different universities of
Delhi and civil society groups[3].
These people were informed about the situation of women and rape cases in the
capital of the country. Everyone shares the feeling of discrimination in India.
Be it the discrimination based on caste, colour, religion, and ethnicity and so
on. The surge in the role of media and social networking in contemporary India
crates a situation where it becomes easier for people to know about crimes
against women. The use of WhatsApp and Facebook for mobilising youths of
various places in the country demonstrates the use and power of social media.
People changed their WhatsApp and Facebook profile picture with black dots to
show discontent against the machinery of state and to show empathy for rape
victim[4].
The work of Daniel Kahneman (2011) on
‘availability heuristics’ talks about the role of media and popular platform in
forming opinion (12). He talks about the role of information through the extent
of media coverage and the capacity of people to recall. If some information is
shown on popular platforms then people can recall it easily. In the case of
Delhi Gang Rape, People were acquainted with the news of various rape cases in
Delhi. It was easy for people to connect with the issue of rape in Delhi. Further,
the use of animated re-enactment of different crimes in media provided people
with visual representations. When this rape case happened in such a brutal
manner, people lost all hopes in the legal system and called for change in the
criminal procedure code. They demanded capital punishment for the perpetrators
of the crime. In addition, the spread of information through continuous
coverage of media worked as ‘emotional contagion’, in the country and especially
in Delhi (Scheler 2008: 15). The number of protestors and sympathisers started
increasing day by day.
The role of
knowing about the ‘mental state’ of other is very necessary in the case of
empathy. This idea of knowing mental states of other is a contested theme in
philosophical and cognitive science disciplines. The phenomenological
understanding of empathy, ranging from the work of Scheler to Husserl to
Schutz, proposes three types of views (Battaly 2011). First view says that
mental state can be shared if both have same kind of experience and in this case,
they do not need to know ‘other’ e.g. emotional contagion in case of seeing
funeral. Second view says that empathy requires both knowing and sharing
meaning that the empathiser must cognitively ascribe to or assign some mental
states to the target. Third view says that one does not require sharing the
mental state of other rather any theoretical or inferential means through which
he/she is able to know about the mental state of other. However, empathy is
supposed to have distinct kind of social understanding rather than collapsing
into emotional contagion or inferential readings (Zahavi 2014: 147). Therefore,
first and third options does not make more sense. In addition, all the
understanding of phenomenology is coming from the assumption of existence of Self, Consciousness and role of
inter-subjectivity.
The notion of
self and consciousness need more examination in the wake of neurological and
philosophical literature. The consciousness is a subjective experience and it
is like “what-it-is-to-be”(Nagel 1974).
He says
There is a sense in which phenomenological
facts are perfectly objective: one can know or say of another what the quality
of the other’s experience is. They are subjective in the sense that even this
objective ascription of experience is possible only for someone sufficiently
similar to the object of ascription to be able to adopt his point of view---to
understand the ascription in the first person as well as in the third, so to
speak (Nagel 1974: 442).
The neurological
works on ‘consciousness’ say that people often use the term consciousness to
refer two terms ‘qualia’ and ‘self’.(Ramachandran 2010: 347). Qualia is the
immediate experiential qualities of sensation such as redness of red and ‘self’
experiences these sensations (ibid: 347). Further, he proves his point through
the example of colour-blind Martian scientists. Therefore, what Nagel (1974)
was talking about the gap between subjective and objective can be filled
through scientific research as the subjective experience leaves quale of
objectivity in the brain. The insurmountable ‘epistemological barrier’ of
philosophers can be breached (Ramachandran and Hirstein 1997:432). This helps
us to understand why we feel sympathetic and emphatic about other people. In
addition, it provides information about the autistic brain and neurological
functions of other kind of disorder. The attack of ‘mirror neuron’ is one of
the causes for this. The possible functions of mirror neuron systems are a)
action understanding, b) imitation, c) language, d) empathy and theory of mind
and d) self-representation.
The attack of
mirror neurons is the cause for empathy. If there is no attack of mirror
neurons then there will be no empathic response. However, if there is attack of
mirror neurons then it does not mean that it will convert to empathic
behavioural responses. Emile Bruneau, a post-doctoral scientist at Cognition
and Brain Sciences Lab at MIT, found out that people have capacity to mute
empathy signals and it prevents them to put in other’s shoes, especially in the
case of enemy[5].
He also found out that suicide bombers are characterised by very high levels of
empathy. He calls it ‘empathy gap’. Therefore, empathy can be directed towards
someone but it can also be stopped towards someone having same situation. So, the social programmes can be made more
efficient by removing biases from the mind. In the case of Delhi Rape case,
People supported the girl who was raped in the moving bus but they wanted
capital punishments for the rapists who had poor background and had very less
opportunity to attain success.
This bias came
from the information that they got through various news reports and
experiencing the situation of women in their neighbourhood. In an article of
The Hindu, Rukmini S, investigated about the problems of rape in Delhi[6].
In 2013, 1636 rape cases were registered and 583 cases were decided by District
Courts, the first level at which rape cases are tried in India.
The figure for
the country in the year 2013 is 33,707[7]
and it increased from the figure of the year 2012. These are registered cases
of rape. A large number of cases of rape are not registered in this country.
The causes for this are the influence of rapists among villagers and police,
corruption, the culture of misogyny, patriarchy, the notion of shame and
honour, tedious judicial pronouncements etc. The gender sensitization of people
in some pockets of the country has made people more active in visualising it as
a ‘national shame’. In the state
capital, civil society, women’s rights activists were also protesting against
this state of affairs for a long time.
The news
channels and social media were filled with the information about the medical
status of the girl and they were broadcasting every word she was telling to her
family members. The doctor of the rape victim told that she is “psychologically
composed and optimistic about the future”[8].
Therefore, the emphasis shifted from “viewing the women as passive victim of
sexual violence to active survivors” (Kelly 1988: 163). It is an attempt to
retain the agency of women rather than leaving it for stigmatising. It also
transcend gendered stereotypes and constructs women as inspiring protagonists.
“Survivor” is thus a political identity, which has a recruiting potential in
case of mass movements (Taylor 2001).
The
participation of women in the movement were also very high. These women were
from different universities of Delhi, members of civil society groups,
volunteers of different political parties etc. These women witness violence in
the city in their everyday life. It was very easy for them to show empathy for
the rape victim. In addition, women of other parts of the country supported the
movement. The different kinds of violence against women like molestation,
stalking etc. is common in Delhi. This protest was, for them, protest against
all such crimes in the city. It was against the culture of misogyny.
The collective
empathy generated in this case had many causes like the status of women in the
country, pro-active role of media in disseminating information, distrust in
police and legal systems etc. The emotional outbursts of the people mobilised
them against the institutions of the state. Despite repression by the state,
the motivation for protest did not die down. Indian government appointed
Justice Verma Committee to recommend amendments in Criminal Procedure Code.
However, this empathic behaviour among people does not show any effect on the
data of crime against women. The emotional outbursts of people were mired in
the patriarchal social system and prejudice towards women in the society. The
prejudice of society towards women is rooted so deep that any protest or
movements for women’s rights either became dormant or lost the goal of the
movement. The collective prejudice of the groups of society towards other
groups and the political economy of these stereotypes did not allow empathy to
take root in the society. In the case of Delhi Protest, the empathy was
temporary and social prejudice again took the central position in the society.
The collective
prejudice in South Asian society is prevalent along the lines of caste, class,
ethnicity, color etc. One of the most horrific experience of prejudice in the
world is the experience of being untouchables. The violence in the society
based on caste made them underprivileged and discriminated for centuries. The
concept of ‘purity and pollution’ and various other Shastric and Dharmic
conceptions were proposed to justify these practices. In this part of the
subcontinent, Muslims are also seen as the ‘other’. However, other terms like
stereotyping, categorisation etc. are used to define similar phenomenon. Categorisation
creates “comparisons that triggers discrimination against these out-groups”
(Tajfel in Mercer 2014: 522). The term prejudice has a classic definition by
Allport (1954)
Prejudice is an
antipathy based on a faulty and inflexible generalization. It may be felt or
expressed. It may be directed toward a group as a whole or toward an individual
because he is a group member (Allport in Fiske 2010: 342).
An important
part of the process of prejudice lies in correctly identifying the relevant
category towards which antipathy is targeted. People may not be prejudiced
against Muslims in general but they might be prejudiced against Muslims with
long beard or against women who occupy social roles of men (Eagly and Dickman
2005). Taking the Alloport’s definition, we can say that prejudice may be
directed towards some groups that are viewed as lacking on moral dimensions
(Richeson and Bodenhausen 2010). In
addition, people might show favouritism towards their in-group members without
necessarily feeling animosity towards other groups (Brewer 1999). Yet ‘positive bias’ towards own group is like
prejudice towards another group. The
organisations based on religion, caste and ethnicity specifically try to do so.
The recent programme of Hindu Right wing in India, Gharwapsi, is also an
example of collective prejudice in the country.
Recently,
members of Hindu Right outfits like Vishwa Hindu Parishad, rashtriya
SwayamSevak Sangh and so on started a programme of conversion of people of
other religion and especially Muslims in the country[9].
The also says that there will be no conversion for Buddhists[10].
Therefore, they have brought Buddhism in their in-group; Islam, and Christian
in the out-groups. They are trying to symbolise it as the re-conversion meaning
they are trying to reinforce the past through communal lens. The prejudice in
this case is coming from long drawn stereotypes in the country. Like, Muslims
are filthy, they do not have sense of cleanliness, they eat beef etc.
Therefore, a dialectic is created to show Hindus and Muslims in conflicting
relationships. The discourse is created based on signs, symbols and everyday
practices. These discourses are played through films, media and textbooks.
These are producing unconscious prejudice in the minds of children and people.
This unconscious
prejudice is related with automatic mental processes that occur simultaneously,
rapidly, efficiently and inevitably (Moors and De Houwer 2006). However,
automaticity is a matter of degree. Some authors says that prejudice and
stereotyping occurs unconsciously (Banaji, Lemm, and Carpenter 2001). Cognitive
psychologists like Underwood (1996) have established that unconscious mental
processes can influence and determine behaviour. The work of Daniel Kahneman
(2011) also says that our ‘system 1’ i.e. automatic system reacts rapidly and
most of our decisions come from system 1. This is one of the reason for biases
in our mind. However, the most intriguing question is how people are unaware of
existence of biases and prejudices in their everyday existence (Nosek and
Hansen 2008). The neurological
explanation of prejudices talks about the region of brain amygdala-which is
responsive to potentially threatening and important socioeconomic stimuli—is
involved in the automatic evaluation (Cunningham et al. 2004), whereas other
regions like anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex are involved in conflict
monitoring and conflict resolution (Amodio et al. 2004). Therefore, neural
mechanism is also supporting socio-psychological theories of prejudice and the
automatic and unconscious reflection of prejudice in behaviour.
The association
of discrimination and injustice with the concept of prejudice make it irrational
in common understanding. However, a rational Bayesian approach to judgement
requires to make use of base rate information (Richeson and Bodenhausean 2010).
Therefore, if the stereotypes or prejudices are capturing actual social
differences between the groups, it is perfectly fine to use it. But, if the
differences are not actual then it will be irrational to use them in our
decision making. It can be used in the case of differences between male and
female as people have contact with different sexes in their whole life. So, one
can form judgement or bias about them (Swim 1994). But,
this theory is problematic for my case where Hindus and Muslims remain in
contact with each other but the information about each other in their mind is
prejudiced to the extent that they are not able to ameliorate their social
status.
The difference
between socio-economic statuses between these communities also plays a big role
in this. The whole movement of Gharwapsi or most of the other religious
conversion is based on the factor of ‘inducement’[11].
They are promised to provide different benefits of government programmes and
policies. The support for this is generated through development of fear among
mass psyche. The fear is generated through the fact that they are producing
more children and in 40-50 years, their population in the country will be more
than Hindus. They also propagate that Hindu women should produce four children[12].
These propagandas are very influential in generating support from rural India
and also in some pockets of Urban India. The whole logic of population
explosion is related with neo-liberal economic theories. This economic theory
talks about optimal population and population control is related with the
depletion of resources in the country.
Therefore,
empathy and prejudice play an important role in the society. An emphatic
society will have less conflict and better human development but a society with
prejudice and concept of ‘othering’ will generate conflict between groups.
However, emotional outbursts and temporary empathy does not have potential to
make change in the society rather empathy based on proper information of mental
states of other will provides a situation where the flow of empathy will not
obstructed by the identity of other individuals or group. Therefore, ‘empathy
gap’ will not be produced in our behaviour. The neurological research can
provide us the way ahead for the development of a better society and we should
look for nudge to create more judicious and peaceful society.
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