By Dr. Satish C. Aikant
In August 2022 Mahua Moitra, the firebrand member of TMC, was noticed in a Lok Sabha session sporting a Louis Vuitton handbag valued at Rs.1.6 lakh. It was at a time when a debate on price rise was taking place in the house. When she became aware of the cameras she tried to hide her pricey bag close to her feet. One cannot say if she was acting snobbishly, yet one cannot absolve her for carrying herself in a manner that ill-suited the occasion.
Personally, I do not think Moitra is a snob. Why otherwise would she throw up her career as a highly successful investment banker following her education in an Ivy League College in the US and plunge into the hurly -burly of Indian politics to rub shoulders with the masses in her Krishnanagar Lok Sabha constituency of rural Bengal?
It is however quite apparent that there are those who display snobbishness openly and brazenly. The outer signals the snobs send out are mostly through the brands they show, be it Armani, Gucci, Adidas or what have you. While international brands are preferred one may also take to the ethnic Indian route with brands such as Pochampalli (pronounced by a socialite in a condescending accent) sourced from obscure places in the countryside. A Fabindia ethnic wear and oxidised silver are a good combination. The brand names help in expanding one’s vocabulary that can be deftly employed in the cultural festivals where heritage is used as a buzz-word.
Weddings are perfect occasions where a snob can show off his or her ingenuity. You may not have been born in a palace but you can always plan your son’s or daughter’s wedding at locations conforming to your dream palace with the help of smart event managers. Being rich is no longer considered an original sin and you can flaunt your riches to your heart’s content.
Becoming a snob does not come easy. The number of people with too much money and access to all good things has gone up invading the preserve of the old snobs. The consequence of it is that the more the new snobs become profligate, the more the old snobs sulk and reluctantly go for the understated. In an ironic twist it may even lead to reverse snobbery. One will certainly go for expensive branded clothing but their designer labels may be carefully snipped off before they are worn. Simplicity can also be used as a strategic device.
As in ‘justice must not only be done but it must also be seen to be done,’ so it is not enough for a snob to be filthy rich, he should also look flashy. His lifestyle can be conspicuous in places such as South Delhi enclaves where ladies and gentlemen of the gilded set upgrade their ayas calling them ‘governesses.’ Their prime responsibility is to keep the kids of the richie rich off the street urchins and avoid any desi influence on them. The ayas in turn think of themselves as little memsahibs in their own right.
As the erstwhile British rulers had treated his forebears the modern-day snob does it to his lesser compatriots. Keeping distance is everything. Social Darwinism now translates to the ‘survival of the fittest and the richest.’
A confirmed snob is invariably a name dropper. He can be easily spotted at a social gathering using the first name of famous people from Sachin Tendulkar to Barack Obama, assuming a nonchalant air. One may also drop the names of famous writers, but only those first published abroad or who have made a splash internationally.
Fitness is a new form of snobbery. Money itself is not enough for social mileage. Flaunting a taut tummy is a way of showing your superior body and stand out against the plebians. Having a personal trainer and sporting the latest western outfit signal that you belong to the upper crust.
A snob needs to cultivate an aura of an intellectual. He must possess a good number of Coffee Table books without feeling the need to actually read them. He pulls all strings to join exclusive clubs as these intellectual addas add to his snob value and make him score a notch above others. Clubs are also the incubators of snobbery. The self-proclaimed intellectual should be able to engage in the parlour talk on the Hindu Rashtra, for or against, and bandy the terms such as secularism or pseudo-secularism (whatever that means) depending on which side of the fence you want to be seen.
Being eco-friendly and using recycled stuff makes you looking concerned. Go on tree plantation drives to keep the earth green no matter whether the saplings will survive or perish with no one to care after the photo ops have been done with.
Loiter around art galleries and at exhibition openings with a jhola on your shoulder and a notebook in your hand to take down some thoughtful comments. You may even buy a painting or two to enhance your cultural capital.
What is typical of an academic snob is that he will engage only with other academics, never with the common men and women. He writes (in dense prose with plentiful jargon) to be read by fellow academics. If it is a twenty-page paper it may carry fifty footnotes and additional ten pages of bibliography.
Academic snobbery is rampant in the academia. Students from the hinterland entering the portals of learning in Delhi by dint their hard work are nevertheless subjected to humiliation by their counterparts from big cities. An aspiring girl student will often be called behenji for her provincial background from UP or Bihar, ‘the dusty and dreadful buffalo-grazing lands.’
The well-known feminist and postcolonial critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak found herself in a tight spot recently when she was delivering a public lecture at Jawaharlal Nehru University. While making an intervention a young Dalit scholar mispronounced the name of W.E.B. Du Bois (a well-known American thinker, historian and social critic) Spivak repeatedly tried to correct the young scholar. The spat turned into a scene of class snobbery and intolerance. It may be mentioned here that Spivak is the author of the provocatively titled essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ One wonders if she will also pose the query ‘Can the Subaltern Pronounce?’
A public intellectual in India is something of an oxymoron, since he speaks not to public gatherings where the common men and women may comprehend him but to select audiences where he addresses more of his own kind in a language which is not understood by the majority. Being an inveterate Anglophile, he must, however, talk about shedding colonial legacy or decolonizing our mindset.
The Brits left our country long ago but we have learnt quite a few tricks from them to perpetuate the invidious distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ The Brown Sahibs tend to hang out with their own type reserving cruel jibes for those who are outside their fold.
‘I am not a snob but…..’ is often a prelude to an endless stream of self-glorification with a simultaneous tirade against the less fortunate, those who have not yet arrived or may not arrive. The snob deliberately picks up the signals of disdain and trains his guns on those who are ‘not like us,’ do not dress the way we do and do not speak the way we speak. The desperation for upward mobility to join the upper ranks is difficult enough but harder still is the task of staying there.
About the caste snobbery the less said the better. There can be no denying that caste prejudice is the calling card of Indian society. One would have hoped that with the advent of modernization and secularization it would disappear sooner than later. On the contrary, it has only become more entrenched.
Snobbery outlives the generational change. Kids are unaffected by snobbery, but only up to a certain age. They will all happily play together, exchange their toys and practice no discrimination. But one day hearing what their parents say at home they suddenly wake up to their privileges and are led to believe that they are different from others and seeds of snobbery are sown in their minds.
‘I have a friend who is very poor. He goes to his school in the school bus,’ says the rich brat who is driven to his own school in a chauffeur driven car. The driver deposits his school bag on his desk in the classroom.
‘My mother tells me not to play with the servants’ children; they are so dirty’ is the usual caution given to ‘decent’ children.
So, a new generation of snobs takes over adding substantially to the overall snob baggage. There will always be ‘us’ and ‘them’ carrying forward the cultural war. And just when we think we have reached a tipping point to hanker for sanity and humility there will be new snobs outmanoeuvring us.
(The writer is former Professor and Head of the Department of English, H.N.B.Garhwal University)
