We describe the past alone as “simpler times”. We imagine that many grand objectives were easier to achieve before a more sophisticated age arrived and made life more complex, chiefly by increasing competition. But if we look around our times carefully we will see some phenomena that show up our age as more naïve than the past, occurrences that the future generations will probably laugh at for their almost comical simplicity. For instance, the ease with which those in the organised compassion industry, widely known as “liberals”, create news from almost nothing. Fake News is deservedly defamed, but insubstantial news with a “moral compass” is respected by the elites.

A few days ago an activist organisation called The Wire ran a story that was largely derived from the public records of the Registrar of Companies.

The story insinuated that Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah’s son, Jay Shah, had bagged loans for his company only because he was an influential figure. It was not a bad story at all; it was merely an unremarkable story that could have made it to the inside pages of any newspaper, but because such exclusives against Amit Shah are rare these days in the mainstream media, The Wire was able to spin it as a work of exceptional, courageous, investigative journalism, which it was not. Jay Shah sued The Wire for criminal defamation, which contributed to the website’s facile claim that it was leading some sort of political revolution against the right

wing in an atmosphere of mortal danger.

In reality, the fact that The Wire’s leadership, which is not known for martyrdom, decided to run such a story shows that, contrary to what they may propagate, they feel secure enough to taunt the powerful.

The story is representative of something that is going on in Empathy Inc where compassion for social underdogs gives an assortment of people the excuse to pay rich tributes to mediocrity. The Sangh Parivar has created an environment that has gifted an unprecedented golden age for liberals with no special gifts in the arts, academics or journalism, but who are loyal to some Western European notion of liberal values and for which reason the Empathy Inc will promote and reward them.

The idea that the strong must care for the weak and the unlucky is not a trivial concept. It is humanity’s most important invention. In the promotion of this ideal there are, of course, highly intelligent, talented and honest people. The contribution of Prashant Bhushan, for instance, to society and to the creation of new politics is immense. Arvind Kejriwal himself demonstrates the difficult road a modern provincial liberal can travel. Writers like Ramchandra Guha, Akshaya Mukul, Arundhati Roy and Mukul Kesavan have used the full force of talent to convey what is important to them. But, largely, the liberal establishment is a refuge for ordinary talent that comes to hide behind empathy.

Empathy is, in its core, a process of absorption, of feeling and understanding human pain; today it is deployed as a process of emission, a show of feelings. The finest writers and other kinds of artists use empathy to create art. But for the rest, the exhibition of empathy is the art. Such a transmission of nobility has become a crutch for many who are limited in skills that are crucial to their stated spheres of activity — among them lawyers who are not known for their minds, but for their compassion, which is the only form of insult human beings are trained to admire; academics and writers, too, who are known more for their compassion than their talents; and youth from affluent families who seek refuge too early in social work because real life terrifies them.

A whole generation of young writers is growing up in the shadow of activism, where the truly entertaining and interesting are penalised for not being dull emitters of compassion. Art, real courageous art that does not seek easy crutches, achieves far more in the process of moving us and entertaining us than activism ever does. The film Newton, for instance, shows with considerable power the absurdity of democratic process in an impoverished tribal region; and that extreme uprightness in a person is actually a psychiatric condition. The film probably won more sympathy for the “Maoists” than the reams of unreadable prose that activists have written.

Empathy Inc has elevated problems as the most important aspects of our lives, but their own problems, which they amplify, are often frivolous, especially when compared to what average Indians go through. This secures the contempt of many who can see through the farce. They appear to despise liberalism but they only despise its leadership. So do the honest among the ‘liberals’, but if they speak they will lose the security of their social networks. As they know, there is no such thing as freedom of expression.