The Portzebie Papers
In times like these, when countries seem to think nothing of lobbing bombs into neighbouring territories and world leaders seem to take delight in outdoing each other by threatening to bring out their biggest weapons, there is no doubt that matters of national security are important.
However, things like terrorist attacks, incursions at the border, and the looming possibility of a world war are distracting us from a problem that is possibly even more important than national security — the problem of national insecurity.
While we spend trillions of dollars protecting our nation from the physical threat posed by evil foreign militaries and armed insurgents, there is not enough being done to protect the sentiments and fragile egos of all sections of society, such as religious groups, political parties, fans of mediocre filmstars, rava idli enthusiasts, people who cosplay as Alucard, and men named ‘Badri’. Let’s be honest and ask the hard question — how many people were actually killed by terrorists or invading armies in the past five years compared to the number of people whose sentiments were irrevocably hurt by other people saying random things? Clearly, denigratory comments and derogatory remarks are causing far more damage to the average citizen of India than assault rifles or long-range missiles.
As I have argued before, I believe that we need to set up an Offence Ministry to handle national insecurity, just as the Defence Ministry takes care of national security. That way, we can have a dedicated section of government whose primary responsibility would be to make sure that people named G. Praveen Kumar don’t get offended when the hero in S.S. Rajamouli’s next blockbuster is named P. Sathish; Rohit Sharma fans don’t get upset when their beloved player is not given a lifetime achievement award in New Zealand; Baba Ramdev doesn’t file a defamation suit against anyone who eats quinoa, and so on. In fact, it is vital to ensure that the Offence Ministry provides our political leaders, starting with our honourable Prime Minister, with top-level insecurity cover so that they can go about discharging their leadership duties without being needlessly hurt by dangerous things like tepid comedy, badly constructed tweets, casual comments by C-list celebrities, or WhatsApp messages between ordinary citizens.
India is a rich and diverse society, making it extremely tricky to balance the insecurity needs of all citizens. Something that is perfectly acceptable to Hindus may offend Muslims, and vice-versa. A mean joke about a beastcaller named Rangarajan, while seeming offensive to all beastcallers and people named Rangarajan, regardless of their ability to summon terrifying beasts to battle, may be quite amusing to geomancers and all people not named Rangarajan. A social media post about Chennai’s unbearable summer may deeply wound ardent lovers of 40-plus temperatures but be lauded by winter loyalists, people from Bengaluru, and knitting needles.
If we don’t act with urgency, we may find that China or Pakistan is able to cause us great harm by exploiting the holes in our fragile insecurity infrastructure. While we’re busy focusing on their soldiers, tanks and mounted turret-guns, they could strike at us with jokes, cartoons and memes — tearing apart the very fabric of our 10000-year-old civilisation that has survived several generations of oppression, exploitation and misrule by greedy, evil people. And, since we have, in the right spirit of national insecurity, silenced our own comedians, YouTubers and TikTokers, we are in the unenviable position of not being able to retaliate in kind.
And I don’t think we can import that sort of thing from Russia.
Anand Ramachandran is a Chennai-based writer and game designer who likes playing games with his writing.
