Continuous Fabrication
Albert Camus once observed: mankind can be divided into
three kinds.
A. Those who do nothing that requires hiding, thus escaping the need for lies.
B. Those who do not wish to conceal their deeds at all, believing truth is the better path.
C. And the third—those who love secrecy and lies with equal passion.
So then, does it follow that if we continue lying long enough, humanity will one day arrive at truth? Let us consider an example.
The alibi of the “isolated incident”
In recent times, whenever an unpleasant occurrence takes place, we have invented a convenient false excuse: we call it an “isolated incident.” Those who so explain have no relation to separatists, and yet the credit for separating one from the whole belongs to them. Suppose an accident occurs once a month; we label it “isolated.” If it happens once a week, we baptize it as an “unbroken series of isolated incidents.”
Then the accident begins to happen daily. It is now an “unceasing isolated incident.” So many isolated fragments, so constant, that they harden into continuity. Out of the architecture of deliberate lies, a truth begins to emerge.
Let us simplify the parable. When a dog bites a man, it is no news. When a man bites a dog, it becomes news. This example is often cited for novice journalists. Now imagine a peculiar contagion infects a nation’s people so that men begin biting dogs. The first such event makes headlines. A few more may still be called “isolated.” If it happens week after week, it is an unbroken string of isolated happenings—so long as the germ remains hidden. But once the germ is revealed, the event becomes ordinary, almost natural. Much like Camus’s Plague: when the authorities suppress knowledge of the contagion, every fresh outbreak is still labeled “isolated.”
Yet the germ spreads unceasingly. A day comes when at broad noon, men biting dogs is no longer news. Newspapers then carry instead stories of human life’s various distortions. The deformity, however, does not belong to society, but to the administration that concealed the germ.
When distortion becomes normal -
In a country or a city where rape occurs daily, can we forever call each event an “isolated incident”? Will not the distortion itself become the norm? Lies too become truth in precisely this manner. This is why lies must be swiftly apprehended; if given time, they mature into truth and blind the eye forever. From the earliest chapters of history, civilization has been built mostly by the blind.
Camus thus wrote in The Plague: at times, the liar’s heart is clearer than the truth-teller’s. Truth’s glare dazzles like the noonday sun. Against a massive boulder of a system charging down upon us, the lie appears instead as a soft twilight glow—where everything receives its measured importance, and social peace is maintained.
In our own society, the events we daily witness with naked eyes are explained away as “isolated incidents.” Such commentators echo the same twilight: “where everything receives its necessary importance.” The transparent lie no longer shocks us; we chuckle, teeth bared in all thirty-two rows. Transparent lies have another quality: they amuse, particularly the wise, feeding their minds with fodder.
The daily package of lies
Each morning, society receives a neat package of lies called the newspaper. We pay to purchase it. In recent times, the newspaper has become like a tickle at dawn—titillation rather than truth. A platter of fatty poison, like mutton rich with grease, harmful to health, but served at sunrise. Twilight’s glow at dawn! Except for cricket scorecards, no two papers print the same truth. Each manufactures its own story. Some will say this is “plurality of truth.” Others will call it “continuous fabrication.” Readers today have almost abandoned novels; why pay again for books when one can buy twelve pages of fiction each morning for two rupees?
Thus, truth itself has become a mountain of irritation. Lies, by contrast, carry flavor, fluidity, excitement. Are we then to conclude that for ease, for peace, society needs lies—that lying is civilization’s own organ?
How often do we hear officials utter grave words: “Transparency and Accountability.” Headlines in newspapers. Yet the speaker, the printer, the reader, even the believer—none practice it. Transparency and accountability: the most ill-fated of ideals. Always it is said that external pressures prevent their practice. Astonishingly, everyone blames “outside forces.” If there is no inward human yearning for them, why practice them at all? Why preach them in textbooks, in moral classrooms? The answer: men love instructing others in them. The great men and celebrities of the world have turned this into their profession.
Human history is filled with such moral tales told by great men, yet rarely lived by them—or by common folk. Unless bound by the rope of fear. For it has been seen: those who practiced duty and honesty were often subjects of tyranny, not democracy. Fear is civilization’s true engine, a truth we often forget. Modern democracy breeds lies, because fear has dissolved. Democracy now roams the streets with a balance scale in hand, a hawker selling false weights.
The grotesque comedy of power
What is “accountability”? Accountability to whom? Consider Jharkhand’s tribal Chief Minister, devoted to the dream of tribal freedom. Six months after the new state’s birth, his ministers were spending fifty million rupees a month on travel. His convoy held twenty-three cars. Tamil Nadu, Bihar—leave them aside. As the proverb says, “Whoever goes to Lanka becomes a Ravana.” But Jharkhand—the land of tribal dreams?
Politics today resembles competitive examinations: one succeeds by long toil, long preparation, ruthless struggle. As the political scion of Gandhi’s family declared: “Politics is something you cannot fathom standing on the street; we, born of heritage, will wash and eat the whole.” Accountability? None. Twenty-three cars are my right. And the right to speak transparently in twilight’s glow. Should we not laugh to hear such speeches?
Political transparency and social transparency in our land are almost identical. They are essentially the right to lie with impunity—lies visible to the naked eye but never confessed. In a poor country where citizens cut queues whenever they can, why blame politicians for the same instinct? It is merely a method of survival.
Opposition parties question politicians’ lies daily. But who questions the lies of citizens? In daily life, we lie in countless ways, all excused under “existence.” Like Ratnakar the robber, told by his family he alone bore responsibility for his crimes. Shall we then not ask: where does twilight’s transparency lead us?
Commerce of deception
Business fabrications now rival political ones. Who in the world has not been swayed by advertisements? A man does not know what he needs; advertisers know better. Every soap company proclaims its product the best. Yet my school chemistry teacher, Mr. Satya Babu, taught that none make true soap; each is faulty in ten ways. Can all of them be “the best” at once? Then clearly, each is lying. The so-called “truths” we accept on paper we inwardly know to be lies. But we do not care—so long as our pockets can pay. Advertising’s glitter dictates our choices.
It is said truth is the essence of knowledge. But in practice, it is lies that feed our knowledge. How bitter! Consider history itself: a massive fabrication. Do we not all know this?
The famine that vanished
Take the 1943 Bengal Famine: 30 to 40 lakh perished from hunger. Who was responsible? Gandhi and Churchill, two supposed saints of humanity. But has any finger ever pointed at them? Where in history books is it written that Bengal’s grain was shipped to Europe, its youth conscripted into war? Churchill took it all, Gandhi sat at his round tables. But he must not be blamed—he must be turned into a Mahatma of nonviolence. Thus historians absolved him, while Hitler and Nathuram Godse were branded killers. Subhas Bose, who joined the opposite camp, was denounced as immoral. Do we not know this truth? Yes, we do. Yet we prefer to live inside lies. Lies have become our comfort, the twilight peace that passes as knowledge.
Tagore once wrote: literature is great only when it shelters tranquility. In a letter, he accused his junior, Jibanananda Das, of lacking this peace. Jibanananda protested: must writing not provoke, rebel, hurt, expose lies? Why should that not be great art? More dangerously still: the “great men” we worship are rarely as great as we imagine. But in this land, only the state’s explanation is accepted. Like advertisements craft a brand, the state manufactures great men, so that lies may circulate in twilight’s kingdom forever. Thus Gandhi emerges saintly when fighting with Allies, while Bose is damned as reckless for fighting with Axis. The white lies of history—who crafted them? The post-independence merchants of lies: Nehru and Marxist historians.
The age of unending lies
True knowledge arises when reason is applied to experience. Our reason is weak. In the art of lying, however, we are skilled. Thus in this age of triumphant fabrication, what value can trust retain? We no longer hear truth, for our ears themselves have been fashioned by lies.
We know the truth, but only as that which lies have worked to cover. Ideally, one should examine every truth and arrive at balanced judgment. But our judgments are one-sided. In this sense, globalization of lies is invaluable in studying human nature. The greatest terror of legal or state lies is this: law itself cannot fight them. Consider judges delivering verdicts—each “true” on paper, yet all affirming transparent lies.
Are the convicted then innocent, and the defeated the victors? Not exactly. Men, like great men, are mixtures of virtue and vice. But we cannot judge them rightly—because middlemen, the advertisers, profit from selling their myths. Continuous fabrication binds a nation in invisible chains.
The national consequence
As a people, we feel the consequence of this uninterrupted lying—in our society’s daily decay, corruption, decline. The cultural damage is profound. Yet still there exist truth-seekers, thinkers battling ceaselessly against the tide of lies. They are the true wealth of the nation.
But what of the innocent? Those with little judgment? Without the ignorant masses, this essay would not be needed. It is precisely for their safety that we must tear the mask off the perpetual liars. That is the true responsibility, the true transparency of a modern intellectual.
A. Those who do nothing that requires hiding, thus escaping the need for lies.
B. Those who do not wish to conceal their deeds at all, believing truth is the better path.
C. And the third—those who love secrecy and lies with equal passion.
So then, does it follow that if we continue lying long enough, humanity will one day arrive at truth? Let us consider an example.
The alibi of the “isolated incident”
In recent times, whenever an unpleasant occurrence takes place, we have invented a convenient false excuse: we call it an “isolated incident.” Those who so explain have no relation to separatists, and yet the credit for separating one from the whole belongs to them. Suppose an accident occurs once a month; we label it “isolated.” If it happens once a week, we baptize it as an “unbroken series of isolated incidents.”
Then the accident begins to happen daily. It is now an “unceasing isolated incident.” So many isolated fragments, so constant, that they harden into continuity. Out of the architecture of deliberate lies, a truth begins to emerge.
Let us simplify the parable. When a dog bites a man, it is no news. When a man bites a dog, it becomes news. This example is often cited for novice journalists. Now imagine a peculiar contagion infects a nation’s people so that men begin biting dogs. The first such event makes headlines. A few more may still be called “isolated.” If it happens week after week, it is an unbroken string of isolated happenings—so long as the germ remains hidden. But once the germ is revealed, the event becomes ordinary, almost natural. Much like Camus’s Plague: when the authorities suppress knowledge of the contagion, every fresh outbreak is still labeled “isolated.”
Yet the germ spreads unceasingly. A day comes when at broad noon, men biting dogs is no longer news. Newspapers then carry instead stories of human life’s various distortions. The deformity, however, does not belong to society, but to the administration that concealed the germ.
When distortion becomes normal -
In a country or a city where rape occurs daily, can we forever call each event an “isolated incident”? Will not the distortion itself become the norm? Lies too become truth in precisely this manner. This is why lies must be swiftly apprehended; if given time, they mature into truth and blind the eye forever. From the earliest chapters of history, civilization has been built mostly by the blind.
Camus thus wrote in The Plague: at times, the liar’s heart is clearer than the truth-teller’s. Truth’s glare dazzles like the noonday sun. Against a massive boulder of a system charging down upon us, the lie appears instead as a soft twilight glow—where everything receives its measured importance, and social peace is maintained.
In our own society, the events we daily witness with naked eyes are explained away as “isolated incidents.” Such commentators echo the same twilight: “where everything receives its necessary importance.” The transparent lie no longer shocks us; we chuckle, teeth bared in all thirty-two rows. Transparent lies have another quality: they amuse, particularly the wise, feeding their minds with fodder.
The daily package of lies
Each morning, society receives a neat package of lies called the newspaper. We pay to purchase it. In recent times, the newspaper has become like a tickle at dawn—titillation rather than truth. A platter of fatty poison, like mutton rich with grease, harmful to health, but served at sunrise. Twilight’s glow at dawn! Except for cricket scorecards, no two papers print the same truth. Each manufactures its own story. Some will say this is “plurality of truth.” Others will call it “continuous fabrication.” Readers today have almost abandoned novels; why pay again for books when one can buy twelve pages of fiction each morning for two rupees?
Thus, truth itself has become a mountain of irritation. Lies, by contrast, carry flavor, fluidity, excitement. Are we then to conclude that for ease, for peace, society needs lies—that lying is civilization’s own organ?
How often do we hear officials utter grave words: “Transparency and Accountability.” Headlines in newspapers. Yet the speaker, the printer, the reader, even the believer—none practice it. Transparency and accountability: the most ill-fated of ideals. Always it is said that external pressures prevent their practice. Astonishingly, everyone blames “outside forces.” If there is no inward human yearning for them, why practice them at all? Why preach them in textbooks, in moral classrooms? The answer: men love instructing others in them. The great men and celebrities of the world have turned this into their profession.
Human history is filled with such moral tales told by great men, yet rarely lived by them—or by common folk. Unless bound by the rope of fear. For it has been seen: those who practiced duty and honesty were often subjects of tyranny, not democracy. Fear is civilization’s true engine, a truth we often forget. Modern democracy breeds lies, because fear has dissolved. Democracy now roams the streets with a balance scale in hand, a hawker selling false weights.
The grotesque comedy of power
What is “accountability”? Accountability to whom? Consider Jharkhand’s tribal Chief Minister, devoted to the dream of tribal freedom. Six months after the new state’s birth, his ministers were spending fifty million rupees a month on travel. His convoy held twenty-three cars. Tamil Nadu, Bihar—leave them aside. As the proverb says, “Whoever goes to Lanka becomes a Ravana.” But Jharkhand—the land of tribal dreams?
Politics today resembles competitive examinations: one succeeds by long toil, long preparation, ruthless struggle. As the political scion of Gandhi’s family declared: “Politics is something you cannot fathom standing on the street; we, born of heritage, will wash and eat the whole.” Accountability? None. Twenty-three cars are my right. And the right to speak transparently in twilight’s glow. Should we not laugh to hear such speeches?
Political transparency and social transparency in our land are almost identical. They are essentially the right to lie with impunity—lies visible to the naked eye but never confessed. In a poor country where citizens cut queues whenever they can, why blame politicians for the same instinct? It is merely a method of survival.
Opposition parties question politicians’ lies daily. But who questions the lies of citizens? In daily life, we lie in countless ways, all excused under “existence.” Like Ratnakar the robber, told by his family he alone bore responsibility for his crimes. Shall we then not ask: where does twilight’s transparency lead us?
Commerce of deception
Business fabrications now rival political ones. Who in the world has not been swayed by advertisements? A man does not know what he needs; advertisers know better. Every soap company proclaims its product the best. Yet my school chemistry teacher, Mr. Satya Babu, taught that none make true soap; each is faulty in ten ways. Can all of them be “the best” at once? Then clearly, each is lying. The so-called “truths” we accept on paper we inwardly know to be lies. But we do not care—so long as our pockets can pay. Advertising’s glitter dictates our choices.
It is said truth is the essence of knowledge. But in practice, it is lies that feed our knowledge. How bitter! Consider history itself: a massive fabrication. Do we not all know this?
The famine that vanished
Take the 1943 Bengal Famine: 30 to 40 lakh perished from hunger. Who was responsible? Gandhi and Churchill, two supposed saints of humanity. But has any finger ever pointed at them? Where in history books is it written that Bengal’s grain was shipped to Europe, its youth conscripted into war? Churchill took it all, Gandhi sat at his round tables. But he must not be blamed—he must be turned into a Mahatma of nonviolence. Thus historians absolved him, while Hitler and Nathuram Godse were branded killers. Subhas Bose, who joined the opposite camp, was denounced as immoral. Do we not know this truth? Yes, we do. Yet we prefer to live inside lies. Lies have become our comfort, the twilight peace that passes as knowledge.
Tagore once wrote: literature is great only when it shelters tranquility. In a letter, he accused his junior, Jibanananda Das, of lacking this peace. Jibanananda protested: must writing not provoke, rebel, hurt, expose lies? Why should that not be great art? More dangerously still: the “great men” we worship are rarely as great as we imagine. But in this land, only the state’s explanation is accepted. Like advertisements craft a brand, the state manufactures great men, so that lies may circulate in twilight’s kingdom forever. Thus Gandhi emerges saintly when fighting with Allies, while Bose is damned as reckless for fighting with Axis. The white lies of history—who crafted them? The post-independence merchants of lies: Nehru and Marxist historians.
The age of unending lies
True knowledge arises when reason is applied to experience. Our reason is weak. In the art of lying, however, we are skilled. Thus in this age of triumphant fabrication, what value can trust retain? We no longer hear truth, for our ears themselves have been fashioned by lies.
We know the truth, but only as that which lies have worked to cover. Ideally, one should examine every truth and arrive at balanced judgment. But our judgments are one-sided. In this sense, globalization of lies is invaluable in studying human nature. The greatest terror of legal or state lies is this: law itself cannot fight them. Consider judges delivering verdicts—each “true” on paper, yet all affirming transparent lies.
Are the convicted then innocent, and the defeated the victors? Not exactly. Men, like great men, are mixtures of virtue and vice. But we cannot judge them rightly—because middlemen, the advertisers, profit from selling their myths. Continuous fabrication binds a nation in invisible chains.
The national consequence
As a people, we feel the consequence of this uninterrupted lying—in our society’s daily decay, corruption, decline. The cultural damage is profound. Yet still there exist truth-seekers, thinkers battling ceaselessly against the tide of lies. They are the true wealth of the nation.
But what of the innocent? Those with little judgment? Without the ignorant masses, this essay would not be needed. It is precisely for their safety that we must tear the mask off the perpetual liars. That is the true responsibility, the true transparency of a modern intellectual.
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