Calcutta is a charming city. I am told it is languishing, it is clinging to its past. I wish more cities would cling to their past; I wish more cities would languish. I shall be accused in the usual way: “it is easy to romanticize economic decay when you have all you need.” But are we not bored of this response by now? For how long will all judgment be held hostage to this mindless moralism. In fact, it is the wealthy who thrive in cities that “embrace the new.” The poor get more material comfort but less power and therefore less dignity than ever.
What the powerful do not wish to share is power; they are not jealous of their food, their shelter, their clothing; these they are happy to share. Neoliberals love to talk about the rising tide of wealth: to the moral dilemma of poverty they offer a solution that entails no threat to the distribution of power. All their hard-nosed materialism, their moral “realism” is really aimed at this: to deny that power, that dignity, that inequality matter (for these are, after all, in some sense spiritual matters) in the face of sheer material need. The neoliberals would like to tell me that the global poor don't care about my woo-woo spiritual concerns, that what they want is a meal, a house, a shirt; I maintain that the global poor in fact have spiritual concerns, just like me.
* * *
In Varanasi, the beggars are always trying to get the better of me. Some only want to beg, but most want something more. “No rupees—milk,” says the rail-thin young woman with the baby on her shoulder, and she leads me to a store where “milk” costs more than dinner at a tourist restaurant. Clearly, there’s some scheme afoot—the woman’s getting a kickback, probably, the store takes a cut. I feel resentful, indignant.
It is not that the sum of money demanded is difficult to part with—it amounts to five dollars. It is that I have been tricked, used. It is, I seem to feel, my money, and I have a right to do with it as I see fit. But do I? What I have, generally speaking, is the power to do with it as I see fit; what is being challenged here is that power. It does not seem a stretch to suppose that this is part of the appeal of such schemes. Presumably they are also lucrative, but equally importantly, the one who runs a scheme wrests a certain dignity from me; she challenges the asymmetry of our power relations. She refuses me the role of kind stranger, giving my money to someone in need; instead she assigns me the role of dupe. No wonder I find it so troubling.
In fact, this quality—this subtle upturning of power relations—seems to be at work all through my interactions with beggars in India. Every skinny dusty child has something up her sleeve. Even when there is no specific scheme afoot, there is an impish quality in her tone and gestures, a quality, it seems to me, of gleeful, or at least cheeky, mischief, no matter how much suffering, dirt, hunger it is mixed with. And the more I think about this, the more fitting it seems. I ought to be pleased, not resentful. Self respect persists, in the face of whatever circumstances.
For I have a legal right to my money, but I do not have a moral right to it. I got it by luck; I keep it by a system of laws that I had no part in making. It is a power I have; if someone can get it from me by whatever means, then they are only exercising another form of power. If they cause me no harm besides the loss of my money, is their method inherently less ethical than my own?
But why then is it a sin to steal? Because to do so is to undermine the stability of society? Because society depends on property? I would like to put it this way: property is not a fixed concept; it evolves with the economic conditions of a society. Not only the way that property is distributed but the very rights that the notion of property invokes—when and how and in what ways one is expected or required to give others access to one’s property (gleaning a field, hunting in a wood, borrowing a pot or an egg or a measure of flour)—changes from age to age. So the notion of theft also changes. Perhaps it is no longer a sin to steal. Perhaps the category of crime has done away with the category of sin. Of course, one may still wish to avoid being stolen from, and I am not trying to cure anyone of this wish; I too wish not to be stolen from. But this desire, and the means by which I try to pursue it, are matters of power, not justice.
What the powerful do not wish to share is power; they are not jealous of their food, their shelter, their clothing; these they are happy to share. Neoliberals love to talk about the rising tide of wealth: to the moral dilemma of poverty they offer a solution that entails no threat to the distribution of power. All their hard-nosed materialism, their moral “realism” is really aimed at this: to deny that power, that dignity, that inequality matter (for these are, after all, in some sense spiritual matters) in the face of sheer material need. The neoliberals would like to tell me that the global poor don't care about my woo-woo spiritual concerns, that what they want is a meal, a house, a shirt; I maintain that the global poor in fact have spiritual concerns, just like me.
* * *
In Varanasi, the beggars are always trying to get the better of me. Some only want to beg, but most want something more. “No rupees—milk,” says the rail-thin young woman with the baby on her shoulder, and she leads me to a store where “milk” costs more than dinner at a tourist restaurant. Clearly, there’s some scheme afoot—the woman’s getting a kickback, probably, the store takes a cut. I feel resentful, indignant.
It is not that the sum of money demanded is difficult to part with—it amounts to five dollars. It is that I have been tricked, used. It is, I seem to feel, my money, and I have a right to do with it as I see fit. But do I? What I have, generally speaking, is the power to do with it as I see fit; what is being challenged here is that power. It does not seem a stretch to suppose that this is part of the appeal of such schemes. Presumably they are also lucrative, but equally importantly, the one who runs a scheme wrests a certain dignity from me; she challenges the asymmetry of our power relations. She refuses me the role of kind stranger, giving my money to someone in need; instead she assigns me the role of dupe. No wonder I find it so troubling.
In fact, this quality—this subtle upturning of power relations—seems to be at work all through my interactions with beggars in India. Every skinny dusty child has something up her sleeve. Even when there is no specific scheme afoot, there is an impish quality in her tone and gestures, a quality, it seems to me, of gleeful, or at least cheeky, mischief, no matter how much suffering, dirt, hunger it is mixed with. And the more I think about this, the more fitting it seems. I ought to be pleased, not resentful. Self respect persists, in the face of whatever circumstances.
For I have a legal right to my money, but I do not have a moral right to it. I got it by luck; I keep it by a system of laws that I had no part in making. It is a power I have; if someone can get it from me by whatever means, then they are only exercising another form of power. If they cause me no harm besides the loss of my money, is their method inherently less ethical than my own?
But why then is it a sin to steal? Because to do so is to undermine the stability of society? Because society depends on property? I would like to put it this way: property is not a fixed concept; it evolves with the economic conditions of a society. Not only the way that property is distributed but the very rights that the notion of property invokes—when and how and in what ways one is expected or required to give others access to one’s property (gleaning a field, hunting in a wood, borrowing a pot or an egg or a measure of flour)—changes from age to age. So the notion of theft also changes. Perhaps it is no longer a sin to steal. Perhaps the category of crime has done away with the category of sin. Of course, one may still wish to avoid being stolen from, and I am not trying to cure anyone of this wish; I too wish not to be stolen from. But this desire, and the means by which I try to pursue it, are matters of power, not justice.
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