Nepotism…
The practice among those with power or influence of favouring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs. A seemingly innocuous sentence which when given a name ala “Nepotism” assumes a different and more sinister meaning all together. A fire had been stroked and celebrities, pop icons and indeed every man on the street has their opinion on the rampant nepotism prevalent in Bollywood and how the star kids and their powerful backers need to be ostracized, humiliated and disowned on social media.
Though I understand the reasoning behind these statements and the rage directed at the so captioned star kids, I had hoped that, after the initial outrage, there would be an attempt to go into the concept on nepotism at a more fundamental and base level. A historical analysis of the same would show that the whole concept of the “varna” system where your occupation is determined upon your birth was a key construct which has brought our country to the nepotistic, parochial and rigid entity that it is today. The caste system of which nepotism serves as an extension is so deeply ingrained in us that we are genuinely anaemic to the almost daily instances of nepotism which take place in our lives, right from our prejudicial views on different “classes” of people, to our rigid perceptions on how certain sects react and mostly with respect to the loud and garish sense of entitlement we exhibit at our so called rights and privileges.
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Such is the level of comfort and ignorance that we have with being innately nepotistic, that we forget that we are as nepotistic as any of those star people and we end up criticizing, hating and shamefully ignoring them. Nepotism is unforgivingly rampant in the most important social, cultural and religious spheres in our country. We have been governed by a family for the last half century despite a constitution which speaks about democracy and equality of opportunity to all. We have seen our sports teams dominated by families, heaps of cricketers and footballers given that extra opportunity just because their fathers or mothers were greats of the game. We consider it completely normal for the son or daughter to take over his father’s business, his mother law practice or his uncle’s clinic and no one bats an eyelid at that. We have never stopped and thought about how we have used our social advantages bestowed upon us merely because we were born rich; born to parents who were educated; studied in a good school.
Nepotism and its reach is beyond our collective imagination and cannot be pigeon holed into an industry, group or even that woefully inadequate definition. Favouring one’s family is not the be all and end all of nepotism; it must include favouring the powerful; It must include favouring the influential; it may even include favouring the so called “pretty” and “handsome”. Have we never seen an instance where a talented but so called “unattractive” child in a singing or dancing competition be eliminated in favour of a more conventionally “attractive” child?. Where is our collective indignation when we face instances of nepotism in our daily lives? Where is our anger when we hear that the cobblers son was not accepted into a well known music school or when the coach’s son gets selected despite not performing one hoot?.
Nepotism is prevalent and well in our society and it is there living and breathing in every single pore and fragment of it. It exists because we as a whole, including myself have been comfortable with the status quo and do not wish to upset the carefully constructed social hierarchy which ensures creature comforts, complacency and privileges accorded to us. It is so much easier to target a particular industry, which is a definite soft spot for criticism and helps us live easier with our guilt. It ensures that we are outwardly liberal and woke, despite being guilty, ignorant and blind to the endemic faults inherent in our society.
By concentrating on a specific instance and a particular set of people in the society, we are actually burying the much larger issue of tackling this monster that is nepotism. Debates and issues raised on this topic will die soon if a larger perspective, self-introspection and a commitment to a slow and hard rewiring is not undertaken. It is high time we ask ourselves what we see when we look into the mirror and I think if we peer hard enough, the results will not be the most flattering.
