No `moral policing'; `Amoral policing' instead?
Monday October 10 2005 08:53 IST 
S Gurumurthy

A cine actress publicly justified pre-marital sex. No educated man 
would expect to marry a virgin, she asserted. Many, mainly women, 
protested, spontaneously. Lured by the huge media space politicians 
too joined the protest. The actress apologised. The show should have 
ended there, but did not. After the actress closed her theatre, the 
liberals opened theirs. It's `moral policing' against the actress, 
they protested. Who can set standards for other's morals, they asked.

One has freedom to say or do what one wants, they asserted. Sex just 
rests on consent between two free individuals after all, they 
counselled. Intellectuals liberated from morals wrote edits and 
articles and castigated `moral policing'. No one dissented, as they 
would invite abuse as being un-modern, even anti-modern. Even as the 
liberals were defending the actress' right to call for pre-marital 
sex, they must have been mighty pleased to know that a condom vending 
machine has been installed in a quiet corner of Delhi's Jawaharlal 
Nehru University to help young students to live a modern life!

The shout against `moral policing' rests on this logic. ``If the 
society were to police, it would be lawless. If the community were to 
do it, it would be oppressive. If the family were to police, it would 
be stifling. So allow the law, only the law, to police. That is, 
allow only the state to police. In other words, allow only the police 
to police.'' But the police, the liberals know, enforce only the law, 
not morals. So the liberals want people unburdened of morals, that 
is, to be free of morals. They seem keen to raise an amoral people 
and call them free. But, how free would such free people be? They 
would be the least free, in fact. They will be the most State-
dependent, in substance. Take the Swedish people, adored as the 
freest and most advanced in human development index, as an example.

There, the liberals have succeeded in raising most of the Swedes free 
of the morals that families here cherish. Two-thirds of Swedish men 
and women live without marriage, any Swede with any other for any 
length of time. With the result the family is no more legitimate, 
actually looked down as antiquated, un-modern. It is fashionable for 
the liberals to cite Sweden as an example for gender rights, human 
rights, and liberty! Yet Sweden stands high on the list in women-
beating, that is, men, who are not husbands, beat women, who are not 
wives. So statistically wife-beating has stopped in Sweden as there 
are no wives to be beaten! But look at the other side of 
this `advancement'.

As the family as an institution is dead, the state has to step in to 
fill the void, care for the aged, the infirm, and the unemployed.

In the end the Swedish are most state-dependent in fact and 
consequently the least free in substance. Result, a couple of years 
ago, the Swedish government had to enact that the uncared for aged 
Swedish could appoint a helper to look after them at State's cost. 
Sweden survives this because its population is just two-thirds of 
Mumbai's. Can we, a nation some 120 times bigger, think of such a 
moral – actually amoral, as most of us see it – model! This kind of 
liberalism knocks down marriages and families; erodes respect for 
society.

This is amoral policing which shames those who care for basic morals 
and drives them underground, so that the public space is occupied by 
the shameless. The last phase of modernity, the non-procreative man-
women union, is now at the horizon. Result, population regresses 
threatening the existence of many nations, their cultures, economic 
prospects. Families unprotected by normative moral standards 
respected by communities and the society cannot survive. Families 
cannot be established or nurtured by law, nor can communities be 
organised or saved by law. But, beware, the law can undo, even 
destroy, both.

The family, community and the society constitute the social capital of 
a people. While financial or intellectual capital belongs to 
individuals, social capital is a common public asset. It is nourished 
only by morals and norms. It does not need a seer to unveil these 
basic truths. Socially recognised norms alone persuade husband and 
wife to live together for life. Law can only help them to separate. 
The law and adversarial justice set the wife against the husband, and 
husband against the wife; father against the son, and son against the 
father; neighbour against the neighbour. In contrast the family and 
society which function on normative moral standards, unburdens the 
state, and frees the people from state dominance.

That is why we have just 12,400 police stations for seven lakh 
villages! That is why we have a family provided social security, and 
the West has a state-dependent social security! It is easy to destroy 
the institution of morality, but impossible to replace or rebuild it. 
Neither the state, nor the law, or the courts, or the liberals can do 
it. Because it calls for surrender of one's rights, a great 
sacrifice, to build private and public morals to sustain families and 
respect for communities. Assert your right only; there is no family, 
much less a society. To amoralise to destroy (other's) families 
cannot make one a liberal. Yet, the liberals are keen to usher in a 
society free of all morals and living in amorality as the norm. Is 
this not amoral policing? In their view, `Moral policing' is un-
modern, but `amoral policing' is modern.

Author's e-mail: comment@gurumurthy.net
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