Being elite is not a thing of pride anymore, a similar level of pride is now extended to the Dehati now. To be sophisticated, to have manners and to have a refined taste in art, music or cinema is considered snobbish and rather snotty. Your favourite movie cannot be 'Silence of The Lambs' or 'Anand', it has got to be 'Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge' for you to be considered ‘fun-loving’ and 'jolly'.
The Dehatification of India began about 15 years ago, it’s a movement that concerns itself with the dumbing down of every dimension of society and social life. It’s an ailment that plagues every aspect of Indian society, from weddings to festivals. Weddings, considered to a union of two souls in pop-philosophy has been reduced to an endless display of vulgar opulence. Everything that was once considered to be holy and sacred has been reduced to a lifeless hollowed-out Dehati facsimile.
You might think that the Dehatis in question are uneducated people who dwell in villages or slums, and that is precisely where you are wrong. A Dehati is someone who:
a) Refuses to believe in logic, science or rational arguments
b) Blindly follows traditions and superstitions.
c) Belittles those who challenge or oppose their views.
Upon careful deliberation, you will realize that such people exist all around us, they might even hold degrees from prestigious institutions, but are Dehati nonetheless. A semantic breakdown of the word ‘Dehati’ will elaborate this further. The word emerges from the Sanskrit root word ‘Deh’ or the body, and so in essence, anyone who leads a body-centric existence is a Dehati. For e.g.: you meet someone and that someone is constantly preoccupied with their looks, i.e., their face, hair, clothes, shoes or such, you must cautiously distance yourself from this individual, for they are a Dehati.
I have come across a number of such people, who are bogged down with their appearance, that it’s almost nauseating. I have known people who have obtained degrees and diplomas from institutes where the common folk would die to go, and yet believe in things like “never sleep with your head pointing in the north, as the Earth is a magnet, and your body contains iron, and so sleeping to the north will give you a headache”. Now this Individual can even have a B.Tech degree from IIT Bombay and still believe this.
A popular YouTuber by the name of Flying Beast shared a photo once, while performing a ritual, with the caption that “two families remained unaffected by the Bhopal Gas Tragedy since they had performed a Havan that day”. Now anyone who has studied science even till the 10th standard would know that burning anything is defined as a process of combustion. A Havan is a ritualistic practice in which wood is burned and Ghee is added, now we also know that burning wood comes under a process called Incomplete Combustion, and that Incomplete Combustion is a highly inefficient version of combustion, for it only produces smoke, water vapour, methane, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. So how in all that is good and holy, can Carbon Monoxide and Carbon Dioxide protect someone is beyond my mental faculties. The YouTuber who posted this holds a degree in Civil Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, considered to be one of the leading places for scientific learning and research.
Hence, this YouTuber is a Dehati and so are his millions of followers. This is how Dehatifictation is being popularized in Indian society, at the helm of cultural nationalism and by propagating acts of violence against those who refuse to believe in such garbage. The preconceived notion that only those who live in villages and those who listen to Bhojpuri songs are Dehatis is hence disproved. Lack of self-awareness and self-knowledge will always push you toward a Dehati lifestyle, in short a body-centered lifestyle, one where self-preservation is considered a virtue.
A lifestyle in which rationality and logic are relegated to the side-lines, whereas cultural norms, traditions and rituals occupy the central designation. To be uneducated is a thing of pride nowadays, there are people who proudly say, ‘I have never read a book in my life, and yet I am a guru’. Popular authors of the day are absolute dolts, who have no formal or informal education to back them up. When the bestselling books are books being written by Bollywood celebs and YouTubers, you can be damn sure that the Dehatification is true and complete.
Look at the state of popular media in this country, almost every song is a party song, but what are you even partying about? No answer. You see, forced positivity, nauseating optimism and hopeless derision are primary characteristics of the Dehatism. They are endlessly happy about their birthdays, as if, their birth on its own, was their choice. Being happy about something that wasn’t even an act born out of one’s own action is amazingly stupid.
Dehatis hate philosophy, they shudder at the very thought. For them philosophy is for boring and old people, and to be young is to be dumb and uneducated. Throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s, rebellion meant rebelling against what was wrong, to rebel against superstitions, to rebel against darkness. Since the advent of cultural nationalism and its subsequent mainstreaming, rebellion is all about rebelling against science, facts and logic. To be elite is a sin today.
Dehatification is the saddest thing that has happened to the Indian society in the past decade, it can only be reversed via massive transformation in the educational sector and I can say with absolute certainty, that my demise will happen much before Indians will get the opportunity to celebrate the demise of Dehatification.
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