The politics of friendship

One of my very politically concerned friends, publishes this status update: Friendship is more important than politics. In the following flurry of comments it emerges that he and a close friend had fallen out over their views on Anna Hazare and 'The movement' (because you know, there isn't any other one in this country).


Illustration/Jishu Dev Malakar

Friendship is a remarkable relationship. A bond of choice, love, enjoyment, exchange, stimulation, often equality and an expressed appreciation of another person. Many friendships sustain over a lifetime, bringing happiness, comfort and a feeling of community. I often think friendship expresses our more idealistic selves. Put another way, it's a part of us that shows we are all individually capable of democracy. Maybe.

But we've seen it often -- the closest of friends turned public enemies because of politics (or success, which is also politics of sorts, involving a feeling of power and ideas about winners and losers). Many of us have had at least one such experience ourselves. Well, political conviction is not a frivolous thing.

When deeply held beliefs clash, it is hard to be detached, try and see another point of view, or examine the context it comes from; no matter that we have always respected and enjoyed the other's intellect or understanding in the past.

Suddenly our political passion burns up everything, including bridges. Without political passion there are no movements, no change, so, maybe that's as it should be?

Yet, what is this need to write a script in which we alone are the zealous bearers of a flag that will save the world? Impassioned heroes of a war, in which there are only two sides? Why must everything be an extension of our fragile egos, threatened so deeply by disagreement?

Being unable to tolerate doubt, criticism or opposition is arrogance, and arrogance eventually creates stupidity and prejudice, and that's a very weak position to be in -- as the government, with its arrogance has demonstrated over the last few weeks. Being unable to tolerate disagreement is also moralistic, and while it may feel good for a while, it breeds sanctimonious vagueness, an unintelligent and unintelligible discussion about wrong and right, with no analysis or plan for change, a carte blanche for no self-reflection whatsoever.

Are our convictions so weak that we cannot look at them through another view and yet hold on to them?
Friendships are often made across great gulfs of difference. They are capacious but sure, they cannot contain every difference. We all have our non-negotiables. But if friendship teaches us anything, it is our own limits. In knowing other people, we also come to understand the limits of how we can engage with them.

The shape of our friendships might shift -- but affording these uneasy relationships and phases room in our lives is evidence of our humour and humility and our ability to value difference, and be open to changes of mind and heart on both sides, even as we follow our own political paths.

We know this in theory, but in practice, introspection is thorny business. But in keeping the doors of disagreement with friends open, we only strengthen our political engagement. In that sense, friendship is not more important than politics -- it is itself an important type of politics, which can teach us how to argue, listen and stay engaged long after the freedom-movement amusement park frisson has passed.

We should be wary of contempt and moral superiority, and use our arguments with friends to help us move from the primitive pro and not-so pro-Anna position to a deeper, stronger more thoughtful politics of our own.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at ww.parodevi.com.

The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.