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The true meaning of politeness, and its limits
Politeness is a one-way street, often masking hypocrisy and violence; true civility can only exist between equals, not as a tool for oppression.
Last month, this author wrote the obituary of politeness only to be forced to write this more qualified sequel, positing politeness to be a one-way street only a select few are entitled to access. The performance of politeness is the most perverse gesture of civilisation. When we demand politeness and when we think we are being nice, courteous, refined, we are at our most hypocritical, our most violent. Take, for example, the recent Miss Universe controversy in Thailand. The national director insulted Miss Mexico, who stood her ground, and in solidarity with her, all other contestants staged a walkout. Ironically, the national director shouted the word “polite”.
Let us begin with an older source than our modern manuals of etiquette — the Kamasutra of Vatsyayana. For the uninitiated, the Kamasutra is a manual not for sex but for civility, for the art of being a cultured nagaraka, a refined man of the city. It’s a treatise on how the man must learn conversation, perfumes, garlands, how to enter a room, how to listen to music, how to modulate his speech, how to look at others without offence. But here comes the paradox: This nagaraka’s politeness is not universal. It is deeply classed and gendered. The refined man practices his manners on the courtesan, not on the servant. The same man who writes verses to his lover may beat his slave without any contradiction.
Politeness, therefore, is not opposed to violence; it is a code that, at best, organises violence. So, a public loo can be left filthy in India because an underpaid employee will clean it and feel grateful for the job, but lord forbid if a droplet of water stains your boss’s sink! Almost everyone becomes polite in Singapore and controls their bladder. Thousands of dollars and whiplashes in consequence go a long way in cultivating politeness.
Vatsyayana, and later Bourdieu, give us a theory of symbolic capital that a person’s worth is measured not by their moral goodness, but by the subtlety of their gestures, their ability to inhabit the ritual of civilisation. We moderns imagine ourselves democratic, egalitarian. We send polite emails — “Dear Sir or Madam, I hope this message finds you well,” but outsource misery to anonymous workers. The polite smile of a barista is learned, practised, and economically essential. When politeness becomes one-sided, when one class must always smile, serve, bow, and the other class thanks them “so kindly” — then politeness itself becomes obscene.
Think of Gandhi’s insistence on ahimsa (non-violence). His civil disobedience. People imagine it as politeness elevated to ethics. But Gandhi knew that politeness and civility without equality are the opposite of non-violence. To say “thank you” to your oppressor is not virtue; it is what Nietzsche would call the morality of the slave. True politeness can exist only between equals, when both have the right not to be polite.
Politeness should also not be confused with the social climber’s carefully planned gestures. It’s akin to the cunning of reason. The Arthashastra, for example, tells the ruler: Be polite, even charming, but always calculate the political advantage. Machiavelli told the European princes the same. Today, we chant “No More Kings” but have adopted these manuals. If we want proximity to the ruler, let’s be polite, charming, and never ever utter a contradictory syllable, and we’ll be rewarded. Our politeness must be monetised, so we choose the recipient of your politeness carefully. The problem, however, arises when we forget that politeness, then, is a fiction, perhaps a necessary one.
This fiction goes unchallenged for it suits everyone. Some weeks ago, this author and a friend indulged in a sociological experiment in an overpriced sandwich shop. Young and not-so-young people, dressed in some of the most high-end products money can buy, waited patiently for an hour or more for their food. The polite congeniality was the function of the fiction that being able to taste that sandwich signifies a certain social capital. Of course, we can afford to wait for something precious and not lose our smile. Of course, we can afford to make the customers wait and be nonchalant about it. The polite contract. It’s the same as not calling out the obvious lies someone in our social circle tells. Why should we bother and sabotage our polite relations? But maybe we should. Maybe we should ditch the ‘polite,’ like the well-trained Miss Universe contestants did.
To be truly polite today would be to know the limits of politeness. To know when the smile must stop.
Nishtha Gautam is an author and academician. The views expressed are personal
