Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal’s campaign against ‘cross gender massages’ in spas is a testimony to regression and sanctimoniousness.
When the Aam Aadmi Party was founded six years ago, it had the look and feel of a modern party full of idealistic men and women—and people like us—in contradistinction with the conventional parties and their shenanigans. AAP boss Arvind Kejriwal still has the appearance of a regular middle class man with his simple but Western attire (never kurta-pyjama or dhoti-kurta). Appearances, however, can be deceptive, for AAP has proved to be as socially conservative as any other party, the liberal trappings and politically correct stance notwithstanding. Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal’s campaign against “cross gender massages” in spas is a testimony to regression and sanctimoniousness.
The Delhi government under her party has been troubling spas and their owners and employees; she is also targeting the Bharatiya Janata Party for its supposed inaction against the supposedly immoral massage parlours. “Name the leader who is troubled by the proceedings on the spa. How many spas does the leader of BJP Delhi have? Does BJP Delhi get its funding from these spas? Does BJP want to make Delhi Bangkok? Which BJP leader got a call from a big spa owner?” she recently asked.
Everything is wrong about her statement. To begin with, it is based on the logical fallacy called argumentum ad hominem—that is, attacking the opponent rather than his argument. Without offering any shred of evidence, she is insinuating that the BJP is soft on spas because one of its leaders is either himself a spa owner or is a crony of the spa lobby.
Then there is another insinuation: the BJP wants to transform Delhi into Bangkok which, in this context, means the prostitution capital of the world. The AAP claims to be a progressive political party; its constitution is committed to socialism. So, why on earth is its leader behaving like a sanskari commissar? Why is she heaping odium on prostitution which, after all, is a victimless activity? Why is she obsessed with eradicating prostitution? Has her government addressed all the issues that the people of Delhi face that it is now worried about their moral health? Have they, for instance, eliminated air pollution in the national capital?
This brings us to an important question: should a state or a parastatal body tell people about what is and what isn’t good for their morals? A liberal democracy is premised on the principle that human beings are self-governing, autonomous, rational creatures capable of deciding what is good for them; therefore, they should be allowed to do whatever they want to so long as they don’t harm anybody else.
This fundamental principle has been totally debauched in our country; what we have instead are several bunches of politicos who decide everything—the economy, society, culture, and even morals—for us. These enlightened souls (enlightened, that is, in their own reckoning) decide that some proscription is good for the society; and they force us to follow it. They can proscribe e-cigarettes, alcohol, and now massage parlours.
They can act in this manner because there is nothing to oppose them. Sentimentalism has overshadowed rationality in politics, and unctuousness has replaced sagacity and temperance in public life, and moralising has eclipsed morality. Moralisers thrive; self-appointed moral guardians multiply, unleashing a myriad of tyrannies on us.
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), a British author, broadcaster, and Christian apologist, noticed this trend. He wrote in his book, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
The conscience of sundry moral busybodies and our political masters (who also fancy themselves as our moral guardians) is the product and function of their statist worldview: that is, only the enlightened souls know what is good for the millions of dimwits, also known as the people of India. It is this mindset that makes the Leftists describe people as “the masses”: inanimate objects, lacking free will, ethics, and dignity, the creatures that need to be told what they should do. And makes the Rightists resist anything they deem offensive to our culture—that is, as they understand it.
Obviously, if the statists—saffron or red—can’t let people take care of their own economy, they also can’t let them behave in any manner that might be physically or morally unhealthy. Hence the ban on e-cigarettes. And hence the DCW chief’s tirade against spas.
It doesn’t occur to her that her innuendoes malign and stigmatise thousands of girls working in parlours. The DCW’s website says that it was “constituted with the aim to investigate and examine all matters relating to the safeguards provided for women under the constitution and other laws.” Maliwal is not just exceeding her brief but also indulging in something—moral policing—which militates against the spirit of democracy and liberty.
Ravi Shanker Kapoor is Editor, www.thehinduchronicle.com