Pun­jab will soon cast its vote. Pun­jabis will stream in their hun­dreds, thou­sands, to the near­est polling booths set up in schools from which kids have been kept away be­cause schools could have, os­ten­si­bly, spread Covid, and will cast their votes. These will even­tu­ally be counted, and news­pa­pers will carry end­less sto­ries about farmer lead­ers and their choices un­der the Sanyukt Samaj Mor­cha, los­ing their se­cu­rity de­posits.

MANY WILL CHUCKLE AT THE NUM­BER OF VOTES BAL­BIR SINGH RA­JE­WAL se­cure in Sam­rala. The fate of Prem Singh Bhan­goo will give rise to end­less mirth even among the hordes of those who spent a year at the Singhu bor­der.

The to­tal num­ber of seats that the SSM will even­tu­ally win will be­come a sub­ject of joke among sec­ond rung lead­ers of BKU Ekta-Ugra­han. Deeper shades of Red will colour Ra­je­w­al’s com­rades pink lite.

Of course, all of these sur­mises could turn out to be com­pletely off the mark, and for all you know, Ra­je­wal could be sworn in as the Chief Min­is­ter of Pun­jab by the state gov­er­nor, with Sidhu, Channi, Badals, Bhag­want Mann sit­ting in the front rows. In that case, Prof Man­jit Singh could be a Deputy Chief Min­is­ter, and might be re­quired to fight an elec­tion within six months. Lakha Sid­hana would, with his ex­pe­ri­ence, of course, be the home min­is­ter.

But that sce­nario is­n’t get­ting much trac­tion in the satta bazaar.

As of now, you could bet on them los­ing their se­cu­rity de­posits and make some hon­est gam­bling money your­self.

Be that as it may, I am more in­ter­ested in what our re­ac­tions could be to those head­lines about SS­M’s losses, the re­ac­tions be­yond the “I told you so” or rou­tine mock­ing or even trolling.

For a state that has watched an An­dolan and large sec­tions of whose pop­u­lace has been part of a peo­ple’s re­sis­tance move­ment, there is bound to be a wel­ter of strong feel­ings. And all of it could be very dis­ori­ent­ing. The loss of those who were our com­rades till the other day, who did not lis­ten to us, or who be­lieved in tak­ing a dif­fer­ent route to os­ten­si­bly reach the same ob­jec­tive of ef­fect­ing more last­ing change, is near cer­tain to elicit a feel­ing of mirth.

The fact is that those in the fore­front, SSM had made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to whip­ping up, sus­tain­ing and car­ry­ing for­ward a move­ment that had brought di­verse el­e­ments of so­ci­ety and had helped in chan­nelling their en­er­gies in such a man­ner as to de­mol­ish the in­vin­ci­bil­ity of an all pow­er­ful leader and regime.

Then, they parted ways. They wanted to go for ex­ec­u­tive power. They chose to fight elec­tions. Oth­ers op­posed them. They ad­vised the SSM not to make this ‘mis­take’. They told them this will weaken the pres­sure group that has been able to ef­fec­tively de­feat a much stronger en­emy.

But the twain was not meant to meet. From a Ra­je­wal/​Charuni at the top to lesser min­ions like a uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor turned semi-politico turned un-ap­pointed ad­vi­sor to a rogue-turned-rogue el­e­ment who re­mains a gang­ster in farmer pol­i­tics, power beck­oned them all. Well, not power, but the pos­si­bil­ity of power. More pre­cisely, not the pos­si­bil­ity of power but a whiff of a pos­si­bil­ity of power.

And then the story un­rav­elled. The lack of prepa­ra­tion, the ut­ter ide­o­log­i­cal bank­ruptcy in its out­reach to the AAP and Ke­jri­wal, the im­pres­sive clar­ity about Ra­je­wal be­ing the leader and the ut­ter lack of clar­ity about any­thing else, the drama in seek­ing recog­ni­tion from the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, its an­nounce­ment of a man­i­festo com­mit­tee with­out even seek­ing con­sent from those named, the se­lec­tion of can­di­dates, the em­brace with which it re­ceived turn­coats from par­ties it hated, the mess up in its re­la­tion­ship with the SKM, and the thinly-veiled clev­er­ness in se­lect­ing a name for it­self — every­thing pointed out to an ut­ter lack of any scru­ples. One year at the Singhu bor­der had not added a sin­gle moral strain to the char­ac­ter.

Any com­mer­cial brand ar­gu­ing that SSM was not an at­tempt to steal the good­will of SKM would have been laughed out of its stance in a trial court, but SSM had de­vel­oped a much thicker skin.

One year at the Singhu bor­der had not added a sin­gle moral strain to the char­ac­ter.

Now, the only rea­son some of those who hailed the same bunch cur­rently called SSM are wait­ing for the day of the bal­lot­ing is be­cause it will be fol­lowed up by the count­ing of votes and then will come the day of those head­lines they want to chuckle over: How many of the SSM can­di­dates have lost their se­cu­rity de­posits?

Many a chuckle are in wait­ing. Ig­nore the chuck­les that will echo in the Akali Dal or Con­gress or AAP camp, but the ones that will come from within the Singhu Bor­der camp. It is a sad­den­ing feel­ing, much like feel­ing vin­di­cated by some­one’s death. It’s al­most im­moral, but it also seems re­flex­ive. Hu­man.

Ger­mans have a term for such joy, one that comes from an­oth­er’s mis­for­tune: Schaden­freude.

Colin Wayne Leach, a psy­chol­ogy pro­fes­sor at Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity, has spent a life­time study­ing schaden­freude and has au­thored key works such as Psy­chol­ogy as Pol­i­tics. He says schaden­freude comes from ex­treme po­lar­iza­tion within the ranks. You love to see your en­e­mies suf­fer­ing be­cause of what they be­lieved, and how much they dif­fered from you and how they did not mend their ways even when you told them to in all se­ri­ous­ness.

The chuck­les from within the Singhu bor­der camp will be al­most im­moral, but it also seems re­flex­ive. Ger­mans have a term for such joy, one that comes from an­oth­er’s mis­for­tune: Schaden­freude.

It is al­most like not be­ing sad at the death of some­one due to Covid who had re­fused to be vac­ci­nated even when you were fever­ishly look­ing for a booster dose and had told him not to lis­ten to the inani­ties of some “Azad-style” doc­tor warn­ing every­one about saam­ra­jwadi sazish!

We have be­come prac­ti­tion­ers of schaden­freude in our fam­i­lies, so­ci­ety, of­fices, re­la­tion­ship, pol­i­tics. It has be­come nat­ural. And ac­cept­able. Hu­man na­ture, some tell me. I have watched the glee on the face and in the voice of CNN an­chors when re­port­ing about the death of some­one who railed against vac­cines!

You can watch and lis­ten to its corol­lary any day. Just turn to Fox News and lis­ten to them talk­ing about how some­one with a dou­ble vac­ci­na­tion has picked up the virus. There’s al­most vin­di­ca­tion in their voice.

You will hear the same tone and glee when the elec­tion re­sults are out and SSM wick­ets fall by the way­side in scores.

We have be­come prac­ti­tion­ers of schaden­freude in our fam­i­lies, so­ci­ety, of­fices, re­la­tion­ship, pol­i­tics. It has be­come nat­ural. And ac­cept­able. 

The ques­tion is – should we be cel­e­brat­ing the de­feat or loss of our com­rades?

Let me tell you a story that the world has told it­self for a cou­ple of thou­sand years now, and that pro­fes­sors re­search­ing schaden­freude of­ten tell their stu­dents: Two men were cru­ci­fied at the same time as Je­sus, one on his right and one on his left. They were both thieves. They mocked Je­sus.

The story is slightly dif­fer­ent in the Gospel of Luke. It goes like this:

Now one of the crim­i­nals hang­ing there re­viled Je­sus, say­ing, “Are you not the Mes­siah? Save your­self and us.”

The other, how­ever, re­buk­ing him, said in re­ply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are sub­ject to the same con­dem­na­tion? And in­deed, we have been con­demned justly, for the sen­tence we re­ceived cor­re­sponds to our crimes, but this man has done noth­ing crim­i­nal.”

Then he said, “Je­sus, re­mem­ber me, when you come into your king­dom.”

He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, to­day you will be with me in Par­adise.”

You can dis­cuss the dif­fer­ence be­tween Luke’s ac­count and that of Mark and Matthew till King­dom come, but see the one sim­i­lar point the story makes, and that point is this: Je­sus did not say to the two, or one (in Luke), “That’s what you get if you steal or rob.”

He said: “To­day you will be with me in par­adise.”

Gloat­ing at the loss of those who dif­fered from us is an im­moral act, even if they dif­fered from us de­spite our sin­cere warn­ings.

Schaden­freude is not even a loosely moral value.

Crow­ing over the death of a dream of some who parted ways with us even when we shared the larger big­ger dream will show us how small we even­tu­ally turned out to be.

It is a re­flex­ive emo­tion, this crow­ing/​gloat­ing. It is not a moral one. Schaden­freude is the dead end of our souls. Peo­ple who find the mis­for­tune of oth­ers as a mat­ter of mirth are very small peo­ple.

Schaden­freude is not even a loosely moral value.

We are wait­ing for the day of count­ing to be­come very small peo­ple. And I see you do­ing that, and I re­call a lot of moral talk that you in­dulged in on the Singhu/​Tikri bor­der stages, and it threat­ened to drown me in a flood of schaden­freude, and it is tak­ing me some ef­fort not to fall for it.

It is re­flex­ive, but not hu­mane.

All an­dolans are about be­com­ing more hu­mane. None are about be­com­ing small men, or small women.