Uncommon sense and polio vaccination: Why Kashmiris willingly succumb to irrationality?

The reaction to the wild rumour that the polio vaccination for children had led to deaths in Kashmir was surreal and untamed. People from all walks of life and all regions of the Kashmir division of the state went berserk and swarmed to their nearest or even farthest medical facilities for an antidote to the allegedly “expired vaccine”.The Government’s assurances had no effect; in fact, people trusted the rumour more than government assurances.All of us suspended our rationality and succumbed to a reflexive visceral emotion. Was our reaction to the rumour a normal one? Why did we react the way we did? Are we emotional fools? In the tug of war between emotions and rationality, why do our emotions prevail?

While there is immense body of research that suggests that when emotions and rationality collide especially in fraught situations, emotions triumph, but in the case of Kashmir and Kashmiris, it appears to be more intense and poignant. We, Kashmiris are a more emotional people perhaps than others. However, while our emotional world is extreme and intense, it, at the same time, is not stable. We gyrate from one extreme to another.This, from a collective conscious and psychic perspective, makes Kashmiris a bundle of contradictions.An example may suffice here: while most Kashmiris gyrate to the sentiment of separatism, at the same time, many people turn out to vote too. While there is an element of patronage driven politics to our electoral behavior, but there are themes like the encroachment of the far right Hindu nationalist party’s encroachment on Kashmir, that excite people and they turn out to vote. Similarly, elders tell us, that Kashmiris of yore would be so excited when politicians would turn up on rallies and demonstrate ‘Pakistani salt’ to people, that they would vote for same politicians- a massive contradiction given that these politicians sought votes in the Indian electoral scene. In more recent times, a rumour spread by God knows who, that suggested that “steel witches” would come at night and would gouge out eyes gained traction and people again came out on to the streets.

These examples validate that in the psycho-emotional universe of Kashmiris, emotions-howsoever bizarre and irrational-predominate. But they don’t tell us why? And importantly, whether this emotional reflex predominance is cultural or psychological?

We would posit that this reflex is more culturally determined than psychological even though there is a relationship between both. By this we mean that the Kashmiri emotional universe is so constricted and constrained that it tends to veer to a very narrow view on almost everything. There may be a geographical explanation for this: Kashmir and Kashmiris live an isolated and a somewhat parochial existence that there’s very little of the world beyond that we experience or feel. But the explanation that perhaps may be the most accurate one pertains to the conflict in and over Kashmir. Our psycho-emotional universe has become so warped and jaundiced that we have morphed into cynical, scornful and suspicious people-both individually and collectively. We tend to believe in the worst, suspicious of almost everything and distrustful. All in all then, our psycho-emotional universe appears to be determined by a combination of political, social, geographical and conflict related issues and themes.

 Is there a remedy? Can we be “cured” of this syndrome?

We may or we may not. The problem is essentially structural and pertains to the negative stimulus that Kashmiris have been subject to since ages. If this syndrome is to be expunged, it would require altering the negative stimuli that Kashmiris are used to. This, among other things, would mean reorienting ourselves to the salubrious nature of the Divine, resolving the conflict in and over Kashmir, effectively globalizing the various spaces and niches of the Kashmiri world and opening these up, and a therapeutic healing that decongests our mental and emotional spaces. Will this ever happen? Unlikely. The politics and practices of status quoism will militate against these. Kashmir and Kashmiris, if the drift of events continues in the same insalubrious direction, will continue to wallow in the recesses of negativity induced cynicism and pessimism and suspicion. That is, until a new Kashmir emerges from the detritus of the old one. This may or may not happen. We rest the case on hope!

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