How to stab a bleeding heart

Next time you feel like calling someone a 'bleeding heart liberal', take a deep breath

Lately, I've taken to carrying a knife. It is big, sharp, and deliciously curvy. I keep it with me so that next time somebody calls me a "bleeding heart liberal (BHL)", I can stab him on the spot, extract the heart from his body with my bare hands, hold it up to his face, and say to him in a gentle, kindly tone with not a flicker of resentment, "My dear friend, I'm afraid you're mistaken, it's not my heart that is bleeding".

This is the only way that I can think of to stop educated, intelligent, and seemingly sane people from flinging that phrase at me every time they run out of arguments to justify callousness, cruelty and injustice in the name of the market.

What happened was this: At a get-together last week, somebody started off about how the slums are mucking up Mumbai. Demolish them and pack the slum-dwellers off to some place where they can't be seen - somewhere outside the city, this chap argued.

It's because they sleep on the pavements and roadside that there are so many accidents - cases of drivers running over them in the night, went his logic. I should have immediately smashed my glass of lemonade on his head.

But like a fool, I got into a discussion, which in no time deteriorated into a shouting match about why the market is not delivering affordable housing to Mumbai's majority, which is why there are slums. Evidently, there is enormous demand, but no supply.

Why? The market fundamentalists had no answers. Then the question arose: Do slum-dwellers - who by no means relish living in squalor anymore than those who send their kids to Bombay Scottish - have a say on how and where they live? Or should their homes that are blighting the cityscape be destroyed without any ado?

I maintained that, as a matter of principle, human beings should be involved in any decision-making process that affects their lives. For saying this, I was branded a BHL. This mindless sabotaging of a discussion through cowardly name-calling so incensed me that I was moved to temporarily suspend my love for non-violence.

I realised that here was an opportunity to deliver some old-fashioned poetic justice: You called me a bleeding heart liberal? Fine! I'll show you how bleedingly liberal this BHL can get. Here, let me just cut you up, pluck your heart out and present it to you as a token of my bloody appreciation. 

These days before I get into any political discussion, I take my knife out and calmly lay it on the table where it can be seen. In these polarised times, this seems to be the only way to have a civilised conversation wherein you can interrogate mainstream views and not get branded as BHL, anti-American, communist, lunatic fringe, ideological (as if there is any argument without an ideology) or regressive. 

Often you get so caught up by the derisiveness of the tone in which they call you a BHL that you don't even pause to consider, hey, what is so bad about being a bleeding heart liberal anyway? Is it bad to be kind? Is it silly to think of your fellow countrymen with empathy? I suppose unfettered, unapologetic selfishness is what is 'cool' today.

Anything that betrays the fact that you care for something beyond your immediate self-interest - be it the environment, social justice, or people starving in the countryside - means that something is wrong with you.

Of course, it's okay to be concerned about these 'larger issues' at an abstract level, where you discuss them in terms of statistics and numbers. It's alright to talk about poverty in terms of percentages of the population. But it is not okay to talk about it in terms of poor people living on the footpath outside your office. That's too close for comfort, and will immediately invite the BHL tag.

So let me, for the sake of public interest and open debate, set down very briefly the gist of the BHL standpoint as I understand it and you can decide how much of it deserves opprobrium.

The BHL, by definition, places the highest value upon human life and dignity - above the market, above corporate profit, above development, above economic growth, above beautification of the city.

The underlying assumption is that human dignity is non-negotiable, while economic growth and development are handy abstractions which can be used to manipulate human beings for ends they may not agree with, but have to comply with anyway.

This means, in effect, that if you have to choose between 10 per cent economic growth and the welfare of one farming community that is going to starve to death because their land is being taken away against their will for an industrial project, the BHL will say, stuff your 10 per cent growth.

Of course, it needn't be an either/or case, but the either/or scenario makes the priorities clear, and illustrates how decisions get taken in the real world by bureaucrats working thousands of miles away from where their decisions will affect lives.

Actually, things are not so cut and dried in real life, where double standards come into play. So it's human dignity for the gated communities, but the bulldozer for the people who live in the slums that spoil the view from the balcony. It doesn't matter that their television sets are smashed, their kitchen utensils strewn about on the street, their kids' toys are crushed and the pages of their homework are flying into the gutter.

It doesn't matter that the insides of what served as their living room and bedroom now lie exposed to full public view. What matters is that these people's dwelling places are an eyesore and have to be destroyed at any cost. To not have to see - that is the imperative. And that is all that the much mocked BHL seeks to do: make us see what we'd rather not - the cesspool of economic deprivation that we have played a part in creating, and into which we ourselves are terrified of falling. This is the secret of the BHL's unpopularity.

After all, how cool is it to be seen sympathising with the have-nots when you ought to be spending every minute of your life racing to the top of the shrinking heap of the haves? The BHL cuts through your fortified blinkers. Like a knife. And it's not his heart that is bleeding, it's your conscience.
sampath@dnaindia.net