Culture of Mistrust
Once upon a
time Kashmir boasted of a culture of trust despite foreign rules and
slavery. Compared to situation today Kashmir was almost a heaven of
trust, a generation or two back. And trust between people and
communities were grounded in common trust in God. People shared meals,
milk, vegetables etc. Even dreams were not private. There were no
separate rooms or bathrooms for every individual. More people could
reside in a house than can reside in a Mohalla today. We had no craze
for big houses, separate cars and lavish parties to advertise our vanity
and show off personal empire that fundamentally results from distrust
in community spirit.
Today, as people no longer believe in
God in practice (prayers and fasts not withstanding as people are not
ready to be transformed by them afterwards) one can count on fingers in
one’s community people whom one can trust. Earlier we could rarely find a
person who could not be trusted. The word was important and most of
transactions involving even huge sums were transferred to contracting
parties without affidavits or written documents. Today we would
appreciate Bill Gate’s remark that the first principle of success is to
trust none, to take nobody’s word at face value.
Mistrust also costs us a great deal of
traffic jams. Here people don’t, generally speaking, provide the lift
even if requested, not to speak of stopping out of courtesy we owe to
fellow humans or fellow Muslims. It is killing for self dignity to
request a lift to unknown person so it is better if private car owners
stop on their own. This would immediately reduce number of vehicles on
roads to less than 30%.
Spaces available for building trust are
not there. No NGO or Mohalla Committee or State Department has this
mandate or prerogative. Children don’t trust parents in key decision
making processes and parents in turn prepare for old age without great
hope that children would help. Students mistrust teachers as role models
and they have ample justification for this. People don’t trust leaders
and the converse is also true and partly explains Sheikh Abdullah’s
betrayal of/by the people. Even spiritual teachers are often suspecting.
Mureeds ask where to go or give one’s hand to. Pirs say mureeds can’t
be trusted.
What can we say to those who ask whom
should they trust given history of deceptions and betrayals? Where are
the leaders who have no personal empire to build? Where are Pirs who
don’t have their eyes set on our pockets? Where are religious scholars
who have no trunk with any sectarian ideology or alliance with power? Do
we have any answers? We are doomed if we can’t find them or understand
why we don’t have them. We can begin to find answers by noting that
individualism that comes up with socio-economic transition that market
forces generates mistrust. Modernity breeds mistrust. Technology implies
mistrust. Modern education our children receive contributes to
mistrust. Creating mistrust is a huge industry. Our system is wedded to
cut throat competition, to leg pulling, to institutionalised corruption.
We are required to fight powerful forces and change our attitude and
lifestyle if we want to restore trust. Are you and me prepared for this?
Given this scenario how do we teach trust to new generation? Is our
educational system ready to take up the issue head on?
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