Dismantling Hierarchies and Imagining a More Egalitarian World

The withdrawal of Tanishq ads due to the right-wing onslaught is a reflection of the larger fissures in social relationships. There is a deeper churn taking place which seeks to divide society not only along religious lines but also along caste and gender. This superior v. inferior lens and power dynamic will ensure that humanity eventually comes out as a loser. We need to disrupt this way of seeing power patterns. We as individuals and society need to realise the uselessness of hierarchies and envision a different, more egalitarian world. We can learn a lot from the image of a circle as a way of organising our lives as opposed to a  triangular power structure where some are always at the top and others at the bottom, says AVANI BANSAL

Iwoke up with a dream. The world around was freezing at a frightening speed. The immense cold was freezing everything and everyone along the way. The chilling wave was headed in our direction. Along with my near and dear ones, I was frantically searching for everything that could help us stay warm so that we could survive this ice avalanche, hoping that we would somehow escape alive from our frozen state.

I wasn’t consciously thinking of ice or frozen places before going to sleep, but the world does increasingly seem like a cold place – even beyond dreams – in terms of what we have made of human relations.

Tanishq gives in   

The outrage against Tanishq’s ads on Twitter, the right-wing onslaught on it and its subsequent withdrawal depicts the sordid state of affairs in the country. The ad in question tried to depict Hindu-Muslim “unity” (ekatvam) by showing a Muslim mother-in-law bonding with her Hindu daughter-in-law and arranging for a special “godhbharaai” (a ceremony in Hindu culture when a woman gets pregnant) in her honour. In a nation known for its unity in diversity and home to a multitude of religions, an outrage of this mammoth proportion to a mere ad by a jewellery house can only be a sign of things to come.

The oldest strategy in the power-book is “divide and rule” and this requires drawing lines that divide people into “us v. them”. It is served on the platter very smartly and sophisticatedly by projecting and celebrating a section of people as superior to others. Those who are being celebrated as culturally superior, of course, do not mind it, but in the process, the “others” who are shown as inferior, go on being marginalised until they are rendered too powerless.

What’s more, in a Diwali ad by Tanishq where Sayani Gupta, an Indian actress, is shown saying “have a cracker-free Diwali” met with resistance by Hindutva groups again. C.T. Ravi, BJP National General Secretary, from Chikkamagaluru, Karnataka, even wrote, “Why should anyone advice Hindus how to celebrate our festivals? Companies must focus on selling their products, not lecture us to refrain from bursting crackers. We will light lamps, distribute sweets and burst green crackers. Please join us. You will understand Ekatvam.” Tanishq again withdrew this ad. 

While these incidents may be dismissed as one-off incidents, it brings to light larger fissures in social relationships in society. There is a deeper churn taking place. So is there a framework that can explain what lies underneath this divisive agenda that seeks to divide society along different lines, not only of religion but also of caste and gender among others?

Divide and rule policy

The oldest strategy in the power-book is “divide and rule” and this requires drawing lines that divide people into “us v. them”. It is served on the platter very smartly and sophisticatedly by projecting and celebrating a section of people as superior than others. Those who are being celebrated as culturally superior, of course, do not mind it, but in the process, the “others” who are shown as inferior, go on being marginalised until they are rendered too powerless.

The more poignant concern is how do we live amidst this seeming contrast values – one which theoretically claims that we have and want to design a system that gives everyone an equal opportunity and the other, where we hypocritically gulp down every spoon of sweetener that says, “You are better than the so-called others and so deserve more than the others.” This sweetener, over time, has the ability to wreck the health of society.

The seeming contrasts that we live with do not seem to end. It is like discovering that you need a book for dummies to survive as everything that you are told is but a big lie. Consider this. When we are young, we are taught to share, to treat everyone equally. We are taught that our nation is based on the principles of fairness, justice, equality, so on and so forth. But as we grow up, we realise that the majority of adults are living by a different rule-book, one that was never taught to us. If enough people did live by these rules, why would there be so much inequality, injustice, unfairness in this world? If anything – the current power structures in society just continue to reinforce the status quo rather than make any serious attempt to change the world for the better. The examples of this are galore.

We observe in nature that we reach our goal faster if everyone is thriving well. For e.g., if our oceans maintain a rich diversity, that helps increase the quantity of our food supply; if our forests are rich and dense, they absorb more carbon; if nature’s cycle is maintained, all is well, just as it is supposed to be. In essence, we as humans, are slowly learning the costs of seeing ourselves as “superior” to others in nature, as opposed to seeing the whole of nature as an intrinsic web of which we are a mere part.

I want to go to a top law school because it increases my prestige in society, but then, I don’t want to share how I got there. I want to be the most famous lawyer, but I don’t want to share what I did to get there. There is always an incentive to not share with others what I have learned and therefore, the world evolves at a much slower pace than it can, thus keeping us as a society, largely where we are than where we can be. In other words, “my interests always seem to trump other’s interests”. This inherent view gave strength and prominence to capitalism as a dominant world view which thrives on the ability of people to place their interests before that of others.

But if we prod further, we may realise that it may be in my self-interest to see that more people do better than just me. We observe in nature that we reach our goal faster if everyone is thriving well. For e.g., if our oceans maintain a rich diversity, that helps increase the quantity of our food supply; if our forests are rich and dense, they absorb more carbon; if nature’s cycle is maintained, all is well, just as it is supposed to be. In essence, we as humans, are slowly learning the costs of seeing ourselves as “superior” to others in nature, as opposed to seeing the whole of nature as an intrinsic web of which we are a mere part. This superior v. inferior lens and power dynamic with nature is going to ensure that humanity eventually comes out as a loser. We need to disrupt this way of seeing, this power pattern. We as individuals and as a society need to realise the uselessness of hierarchies and envision a different, more egalitarian world.

We Need Circles, Not Triangles

The inherent power structure that posits people as “superior v. inferior”, “more knowledgeable than others”, “stronger than others”, imposes a world-view where we see all social relations as a “triangle” – where some are always at the top and others at the bottom. In other words, in this pattern of “triangles”, there are some people who have more power, more influence than others, which by its very concept, excludes others or relegates others to a disadvantaged position.

Now, some may say – isn’t it natural? Doesn’t nature itself make some stronger than others. But nature only makes us all different — it is us, humans, who by imposing, adopting and adapting to this triangle pattern in all our personal and social relationships, make that “different” look “better or worse”. The reason this is problematic is that those who are left off as worse are allocated fewer opportunities, fewer resources, lesser freedom and thereof always turn up less than in an optimum possible state. For e.g., while not all men are more favourably placed than all women, the general lens applied to gender across the world is that men are better than women overall. Thereby, while the measure may differ, men have historically enjoyed a more powerful position than women across the spectrum. Similarly, higher castes in India have traditionally enjoyed more power and status than lower castes. Now, over time, based on laws and regulations, there will be still some women better off than men, or people from lower castes better off than people from higher castes, the exception only proves the rule.

The numbers (of people) who are at the top and bottom of the “triangle” are immaterial. For e.g., in professional spaces, a minority of people may be at the top, indicating that they know better. They are the experts, therefore earn more, or are looking up to. But in this “us v. them”, as seen in the divisive Hindu-Muslim agenda in India, even a large majority of people, who identify with one religion, which is the majority one, maybe seen or pitched as belonging to the “top of the triangle” with the disadvantaged ones at the base.

The lens of power as “triangles” spans all of history. Whether it is an autocracy, plutocracy or democracy, the broad idea is that some at the top make all the decisions. From family units to political units to social and religious units – there is a hierarchical relationship where someone is in charge. Our idea of leadership is shaped by the idea of someone at the helm of affairs.

This triangle power structure goes much beyond the Hindu-Muslim divide in India. Yet, we never question the inherent logic of these power structures which are based on a pyramid-like triangle – where some will always be at the top, while others will always be disadvantaged – thus never taking us closer to the dream of a truly egalitarian society. Who occupies the top position may be a matter of time, as we change our understanding of what’s the norm, or our rules and laws may define that, or we may simply decide this on the basis of victor’s justice.

In fact, this lens of power as “triangles” spans all of history. Whether it is an autocracy, plutocracy, or democracy, the broad idea is that some at the top make all the decisions. From family units to political units to social and religious units – there is a hierarchical relationship where someone is in charge. Our idea of leadership is shaped by the idea of someone at the helm of affairs.

In other words, power structures — whether informal organisations such as corporate houses and political parties or in social informal group interactions — are all in the form of a triangle where hierarchy commands that some are always superior to others. This leads to an “Establishment”, which by its very nature is disadvantageous to some and promotes elitism as opposed to egalitarianism.

The power of power

This concept of power as a triangle is contained in most definitional attempts of encapsulating “power”. German sociologist Max Weber, for instance, defines power as “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will, despite resistance.” Political theorist Robert Dahl gives an illustration, “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.” Even Dahl’s critics such as Peter Bachrach, Morton Baratz and Steven Lukes agree that the definition of power includes an exercise of power over someone. French philosopher Michel Foucault expands on the same idea of power when he says, “If we speak of the structures or the mechanisms of power, it is only insofar as we suppose that certain persons exercise power over others.”

Is it possible, however, to replace this hierarchical triangle conception of power with a circle, making collaborative efforts more meaningful, thereby dismantling hierarchies and recognising individuals as “different” not better or worse than others?

This view of power may be immortalised by American political philosopher Hannah Arendt, for e.g., when she says that power is “the human ability not just to act but to act in concert”. American political theorist Hanna Pitkin notes that “power is a something — anything — which makes or renders somebody able to do, capable of doing something. Power is capacity, potential, ability, or wherewithal”. Seen this way, our pursuit may and should be of a world where equal opportunity is given to all, irrespective of their differences.

Several feminists expand on this skewed dominant understanding of power over someone and stress on defining it in a way that takes women’s struggle and their history into account. For e.g., Susan Moller Okin in her book Justice, Gender, and the Family argues that “when we look seriously at the distribution between husbands and wives of such critical social goods as work (paid and unpaid), power, prestige, self-esteem, opportunities for self-development, and both physical and economic security, we find socially constructed inequalities between them, right down the list”. Therefore, her understanding of power requires that we dismantle hierarchies and distribute power as a resource more equitably between men and women.

Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex says, “She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute — she is the Other.” This leads to a differentiation between men and women as the superior and the inferior and leads to domination and oppression by the former.

Is it possible, however, to replace this hierarchical triangle conception of power with a circle, making collaborative efforts more meaningful, thereby dismantling hierarchies and recognising individuals as “different” not better or worse than others? 

Virgina Held may have implicitly argued for a more “circular” and collaborative approach to power when she says, “The power to cause others to submit to one’s will, the power that led men to seek hierarchical control and…contractual constraints” is a masculinist conception of power. She argues further that “the capacity to give birth and to nurture and empower could be the basis for new and more humanly promising conceptions than the ones that now prevail of power, empowerment, and growth”.

Different strokes for different people

This conception of power relations viewed as a circle, as opposed to a triangle, is captured by Nature itself. Look around – a tree no matter how huge, does not feel superior to another tree. A waterfall does not tell a stream, “See, I am more knowledgeable!” An eagle and a sparrow are just different and do not have any hierarchical power relation between them. Look at the flowers – you can be a rose or a tulip or just a “wild little flower” on the side of a hill, or a pavement – you do not claim superiority over another.

While some may argue that in nature, the food chain provides that the snake eats the rat, the eagle eats the snake, so on and so forth, but humans are more evolved because we do not need to literally or metaphorically “eat one another” to survive. The animal world lives more like a “matter of fact” where the life-span, the food cycle, predetermines the life of every animal without classifying them as superior or inferior, but with each of them serving a separate role, none more important than the other.

Those who advocate for a caste system in India point out that the division of labour was based on the same model – where each person performs a unique role, most suitable to them – but the fact that these roles came to be assigned based on birth, and through human institutions, unlike nature, make it unacceptable and incomparable to the animal world. Simply put, a rat is born a rat and will not have the power of an eagle by design, but the same cannot be said about someone born in a particular family, as he can go on to acquire the skills of another caste system.

This image of a circle, as a way of organising our lives, is also found in all spiritual traditions — the yin and the yang; the cycle of life; the wheel on our Stupa and on our Indian flag.

There may be a reason in the cosmic design as to why the solar systems, the earth itself looks more circular. We may think that the earth is special in the cosmic design, special as compared to all other planets, but the more our scientists study the universe, the more determined they are that we are but just a speck in this big, wide universe – we are just different, not special!

Replace the old hierarchy

This collaborative, circular view of leadership and power is the need of the hour if we are to replace the old top-down hierarchical power equations that explain why our world is still far from our ideal version – the seeming utopia of a truly egalitarian world, where no boy or girl has to commit suicide because her parents cannot afford her an education or no child has a limit on his vision because he is born in a particular caste, religion, geography, gender, etc.

We as a nation and as humanity will not grow by imposing “our idea” on others or by treating some as inferior to others. Radical as it may sound, the real leap we have to take for the survival and evolution of humanity is by accepting the “other” not as superior or inferior but “just different”.

Families are our closest experiment laboratory. Rarely are siblings born of the same parents alike. But parents do not treat them as superior or inferior but only as different. Even in the corporate world, imagine the progress we can make if we didn’t reward success as an individual initiative of climbing up the corporate ladder but instead as a collective collaborative effort.

The aboriginals and tribals already know this – the power of ubuntu— which means “I am, because you are.” A divine, if it exists, would similarly treat all alike. It is not for us to discriminate. So let us dismantle all hierarchies.

Come, it is winter. Let us burn the coal of our hearts and gather around. This too shall pass.

(Avani Bansal is a lawyer practising at Supreme Court of India. The views are personal.)