Jajawalya Abhiman (जाज्ज्वल्य अभिमान)

P.L Deshpande fans would immediately recognize this term from the hilarious ‘Punekar, Mumbaikar ki Nagpurkar’. In this, PuLa suggests that to be a true Punekar one should have ‘Jajawalya Abhiman’ in something, anything. This is one of those Marathi terms to which any English word won’t do justice. But it roughly translates to a burning, unreasonable, disproportionate and excessive pride in something.

When I read about Pune having topped the list of most livable cities I was reminded of this term.
No no, this is not another opinionated write up about the Mumbai-Pune (or Bombay-Pune) debate. But it just made me think that “jajwalya abhimaan” is no longer a trait of any particular city. It is an illness that has reached the DNA of most humans and it is spreading like wildfire.
There is nothing new in what I am saying. This must have been written, discussed and spoken about by far greater minds than me but I just felt like talking about it in my way.

Think of this term in context of the events unfolding around us, the daily newspaper headlines, the conversations with friends, the coffee machine discussions with colleagues which soon turn to arguments. I find the root of most current issues in this ‘excessive pride’. When pride grows like a cancerous tumor spreading throughout you, dictating who you are, extending its tentacles to others around you it gives rise to ‘groupism’. This doesn’t stop here. The love child of ‘excessive pride’ and ‘groupism’ is ‘judgement’. Once this devil makes an entry it is only a matter of time for
‘Jajwalya abhiman’ to destroy humanity.

Take the 9 o’clock debates on news channels, wherein about 7-8 people shriek and shout at the same time, speaking over each other and the anchor shouts louder than them all, from the top of his lungs and liver and spleen and kidneys. Each of these shouters belong to a particular group, which has a particular agenda, opinion and principles and every individual in that group has a disproportionate amount of pride in these principles and opinions. As they feel what they are saying is the right thing by corollary what the others are saying ought to be wrong.

The inhuman mob lynchings, cow vigilantism is excessive pride in the Hindu religion- or rather the Hindu religion as per the wilful interpretation of that mob. The opposition to end the practice of ‘triple talaq’ by certain Muslim groups is the same excessive pride in their religion as per their willful interpretation of the Quran. Almost all the riots, murders, bombings that have happened in the name of religion are due to this pointless pride. Terrorism be it of any origin emanates from this excessive pride in one’s region, religion and beliefs. That is the reason why terrorists consider themselves patriots or revolutionaries.

What’s with the ‘Make America great again’ slogan?! Nothing but extreme pride, the sentiment ultimately leading to the cruel immigration policies and the many other foolhardy policies of the Trump government.

Let’s consider the crimes against women- the trigger may be anything but the origin is in the extreme pride in masculinity which leads to the belief of women been the weaker gender who can be treated anyway they want. If a decent guy tries saying something in support of women he is put down by saying “han ja tu bhi haathon mein chudiya pehenle” Feminism is used as a curse word, something one should not be afflicted with. The effect is on both genders with beliefs like ‘Mard ko dard nahi hota’. This excessive pride for a gender which is deeply entrenched in our society makes and shapes the demons who ultimately don’t even spare babies.This same pride leads to female infanticide, skewed gender ratios and all its repercussions.

The whole nautanki of reservations, on the face of it comes from injustice towards or the needs of a particular caste but dig deeper and what it is, is nothing but excessive pride in one’s caste which leads one to believe that certain things are his rights by virtue of belonging to that caste. Just like casual sexism, casual casteism can be seen in everyday conversations; remarks like - “hai kobra mhanje kanjusach asnar”, “maratha na, maaz asto hyana”, “deshasta beshista” and so on. Favoritism and prejudice based on religion and caste are both largely prevalent. The reason for caste still being a major factor in marriages is this “jajwalya abhiman”. Honor killings is the direct result of this.
 Such divisive boundaries are not just restricted to Hinduism. Muslims have their own Shia versus Sunni pride and further subcategories, Christians have the protestants, roman catholics, orthodox and so on.


In this age of global citizens we are still waging wars on boundaries and nationalities. I, by no means want to demean the army, one has to be careful nowadays on how one's words may be interpreted and God forbid you say anything about the country or its borders you are an anti-national who must be packed off to Pakistan! All I am saying is having a balanced sense of pride of one's own country, a sense of belongingness is but natural and it is a matter of duty to protect this land to which one belongs. The people doing this duty for us deserve the top most respect but let us not use them as a reasoning in every argument about the country. Having a feeling of belongingness in one's mind and being a responsible citizen is no longer enough, one has to tattoo the love for their country on their foreheads, get an orange tan and raise slogans against “the others”. On the other end we have those with excessive pride in their adopted surname and viewing themselves at the helm of affairs by the mere reason of been born in a particular family.

Speaking of being ‘packed off to Pakistan’, there’s this excessive pride regarding one’s festivals as well, I recently read a statement posted on some random group on facebook, it was written in Marathi and roughly translates to- if you have a problem with water wasted at dahi handi, the loud noise at ganpati don’t stay here, pack your bags and go off to pakistan till Shravan ends. So basically, it is assumed that loud music, water wastage and tharki dance are part of tradition; if I care about the environment, water wastage, noise pollution and such it automatically says that I don’t respect those traditions, festivals and further due to this assumed lack of respect I can no longer be termed a Hindu and thus so very logically I must be packed off to Pakistan. (do imagine a face-palm here)

Believing in and following traditions religiously and enjoying them is not enough, one has to  judge people who don’t follow these traditions. This other group is no better, it  consists of people with their own rationale but rather than been satisfied with the personal reasons, they end up judging the former group for being too typical! It is like an unwritten rule that if you belong to a group you have to look down upon the other groups and in principle always oppose them.


This excessive pride is not just related to the country but trickles down to states, languages, cities, even districts and villages. In South India, many either speak English or their mother tongue but most do not respond to Hindi even if they understand it. This has changed considerably over the years though.  It is a different discussion altogether if Hindi really should have been made the national language, but now that it is so one may expect people to accept it. When someone not well versed in English lands up in such states and realises that people aren’t responding to the national language, what is the fella supposed to do? Taking this example in Maharashtra too the ‘sons of the soil’ as they call themselves insist that all official communication be in Marathi. So don’t try and correct a wrong but birth another wrong to counter it, oh so logical!

 To give an example close home, the Mumbai- Pune debate is quite passé, the one more popular here is the Pune-PCMC debate. In Mumbai, we have the Western, Central, Harbor debate. Region wise pride is quite rampant as well- “amhi dadarkar, Dadar is the father of mumbai”, “we are the Soboites and you all are so categorically middle class" (to be read in the Maya Sarabhai tone), “Borivali, oh my you live in jungle”. Pune has its own battles- “Peth is the real pune”,  “Kothrud is about the only decent place here”, “We are from Viman nagar and we so yo we don't even know PCMC exists.” This may all seem funny and too trivial but the excessive pride starts taking root from such trivial stuff.

I remember in school there was this fokat ka pride in being from an English medium school, looking down on the vernacular medium students while the convent educated are laughing on the regular english medium ones and now there’s international boards and stuff in the mix! We even had school bus company loyalties and an enmity between different school buses. Speaking of childishness, there’s the vegetarian versus non-vegetarian debate. The ever-so-proud non-vegetarian would say, “kya ghaspus khata hai bakri hai kya tu?” while the vegetarians would retort with, “Shiv Shiv, paap lagega you hurt innocent animals”. Topping this childishness is the sports related pride and the consecutive debates be it about different sports or teams within a particular sport or individual sports people. The scale of support the Indian cricket team gets is something the soldiers can only dream of because excessive pride for the Indian cricket team translates to excessive pride for the nation and that as we established earlier is a prerequisite if you don’t want to be packed off to Pakistan. (one of these days I must ask the individuals saying this to act on it, would love to see them tottering around for the official proceedings).

I have to talk about the art world- the writers, the poets, the painters, the sculptors… I don’t mean to say everyone in this category is how I am going to describe them. In fact I have friends, family and near and dear ones who do not fall in the below description. But I have also seen a lot like the ones on whom these observations are based. So the main condition in entering the artsy club is to look down upon who they deem as commoners, you know, non-creative types. If one has a regular 9-5 job, is happily married with kids, respecting traditions and society’s rules, not raging against anything, not rebelling then he or she is just too banal to exist!

In the quest of not wanting to fit into any stereotypes, the artsy type itself has become a new stereotype - you must have a pet topic to rage against society, you must be a rebel, you must think of yourself as been misunderstood by the society at large, you must either be bald, have freakishly colored hair (i soon plan on this), have a long ass beard, wear khadi, smoke like a chimney, criticise anything and everything that is mainstream such as popular bollywood songs, listen only to the maestros, look down on the regular bestseller readers as one should only read the classics, snicker at people not aware of western music, oh the list can go on! Things mentioned in this list are not wrong per se apart from the snickering and looking down part, but instead of been an individual choice the excessive pride of been outside the mundane has made them into a new stereotype.

Bonds are broken- relations, friendships because of this excessive pride towards anything. Groupism keeps growing and ‘live and let live’ has become a thing of the past. If the other isn’t harboring burning pride about the same issues, doesn't share or agree to one's opinion he is a moron and needs to be distanced from.

What if we refrain from parking our fat asses in any group?
Would that make us any less of the social beings we are supposed to be?
Why can one not have a firm opinion or excessive pride for any given topic and be just neutral or have an opinion which sees both sides of the coin?
Such individuals are termed indecisive, without a stand and further without a spine to take a side and revel in it. Because the rest of us take excessive pride in’ being part of the majority group which has excessive pride for their respective subgroups.’ (phew!)

On re-reading this I realized at some places I have used “us”, other places I have used “them” without even realising I am doing it. So I belong to the group of smart asses who think they have figured this all out and don’t belong to any group or have excessive pride in anything but they actually do.

Why does this happen? I am not an anthropologist or any logist for that matter to know it. But I think the innate need of man to belong to a person, a family, a community gives rise to groups. Nothing wrong in the concept per se but the problem starts when the number of factors on which groups can be formed keep increasing. It is not enough to be proud of one’s country, but one has to be proud of one’s religion, caste, region, state, city, area, housing society, floor, flat number, room in the flat, side of the bed one sleeps on well you get the point. The stuff one gets excessively proud about can be attributed to parental influence, the kind of environment you grew up in, the neighbors and childhood friends that you had, your teachers, the kind of literature and art you are exposed to and so on. So not having excessive pride about anything or not belonging to any of the subgroups seems good in theory but is actually just a utopian concept. Can we try to train ourselves to lessen the pride, to not judge and to let live?

I offer no solutions, I am but a mere observer who has a lot of time on hand to write this. So I present to you this observations with jajwalya abhiman of my Lenovo laptop, jajwalya abhiman of Google docs, jajwalya abhiman of my maratha fingers which typed this, jajwalya abhiman of the cool Moshi breeze I am experiencing, jajwalya abhiman of Pune, Mumbai, Bombay, of Maharashtra, western India, India,  South Asia, Asia, the Eastern and Northern  hemisphere, the world, the earth, the inner solar system, the solar system, the Milky way galaxy, the Milky way subgroup, Local galactic group, local sheet, Virgo Supercluster, local superclusters, observable universe and the Universe!

I will leave you with something my sister-in-law recently shared with me (could not find out who actually wrote this to give credit) -

“Mitti se, 

 mitti par,

 aur phir mitti mein.

 toh phir ghuroor kis baat ka?”