#02 The Dictatorship of the Haircutters
The slow slide into a deep cesspool which over-rides your individual freedom.
Two weeks ago, we saw the news. This was not any other news, but something that bought different reactions from the public. On one side, eager parents and people looking forward to saving our culture congratulated the Headmaster who stood outside his Government school, took his scissors, and disfigured their hairstyles with random criss-cross cuts, totally humiliating them.
On the other side, the other half of the concerned netizens knew that the situation is going beyond human decency, crossing all borders of human dignity, and personal freedom, and humiliating children under 18 years of age.
That’s not where this ends. The collector of a big district in the state of Tamil Nadu India sends out an order that all students should have decent hair-cut or their hair would be trimmed.
Here you can see a clip from a News channel - where Police (law enforcement) are forcibly apprehending children without their mandated (decent) haircut at the Chidambaram Bus Stand (in full view of the public) and are giving them a haircut.
This is where you might think that it crosses all borders.
For some of you, it would seem like that the police are doing a great job and would love the approach by law enforcement like the 32k-odd people who have liked the post.
The important argument that many keep defending such actions is that
The guy having the haircut has a ‘pullaingo’ hairstyle.
The pullaingo is a derogatory term that is often used for identifying youth from underprivileged areas who carve their individual identity as a form of art with their own hairstyles and fashion sense etc., They are referenced in online platforms of the brash youth from underprivileged areas with streaked or sometimes colored hairstyles, excessive jewelry, tattoos, dio bikes, etc.,
This will lead to increased discipline among students.
Do you know that someone else in the world did that? Not just for students, but for the whole country.
It’s simple. It’s called Dictatorship. or is it called Dick-tatorship ? (The battle on who has the longest Dick, hence the highest ego? The joke is that, such men are the ones who have the smallest ones.)
I’d like to weigh these points by not putting a counter-argument, but by going on the same flow of opinion that the people supporting the same are doing.
For the people supporting the above actions,
Would you like it if your dress, its brand, and its cloth quality are mandated by the Collector and Law enforcement?
Would you like if you are mandated to wear only one design of spectacle whether or not you need it or not - but for the only reason, it makes you look studious, hence a good person?
Would you like it if you are ordered what to eat and what not to eat - infringing on your food choices? (I wasn’t kidding. Another collector in Tamil Nadu stoked a controversy by ordering the same)
Would you like if you are ordered what religion to follow, what religious signs to wear and display, and what God to worship?
Would you like if you are ordered whom to marry?
Would you like if you are ordered where to enter and where not to depending on where do you see in a societal hierarchy where you were placed without your consent from the moment you were born? (Hey, I just explained what’s caste!)
If all the above answers are yes, then - you are right. The children deserve to be forced to sit in the public and see their identity which they created with their hairstyles get decimated and destroyed which can be easily categorized as public child abuse.
Because you believe that people have no fundamental personal rights that are guaranteed by the constitution of the Law of the Land which the IAS and IPS officers pledged to safeguard and implement.
Let me play the Devil’s advocate.
The only people who believe that they can discipline them,
Parents - who should?
Institutions - can keep rules as to what is allowed and what’s not. Can say what are the penalties for not following the rules which don’t abuse the Children/People or their basic rights (in accordance with Indian Law)
If you do not speak against the excesses and overreach of a power that’s already unquestionable, that power will become corrupt. The fence will start destroying the crops it was sworn to protect.
The Administrative and the Law Enforcement have plenty of jobs in their hands and these kinds of power overreach that results in its misuse, rather end up getting bad PR in the eyes of the public. The biggest culprit here isn’t the Public. It’s not even the people who did this. It’s the Media.
The media stands as the de-facto organization which is so powerful that it singlehandedly gets information to a lot of people in microseconds yet, doesn’t question the Public Servants of the Government but rather promotes it in social media with encouraging background music in Reels.
What’s even sicker is that the Child Welfare of the board continues to sleep.
For parents who want their sons to have a stricter hairstyle? By all means. It’s your way of disciplining and I don’t even want to talk about what’s toxic parenting and what’s not now.
The reality that most should awaken to is that short disciplined army haircuts have no relation to the success of a child in their schooling. (This is irrespective of the institution’s rule). No scientific peer-reviewed research exists for the same. Don’t even make me pull up the childhood photos of present-day geniuses. It’s a myth.
Over and Out! BOOM.