2025-05-16
Note: This is a satirical and critical opinion piece. It is not intended to offend or hurt anyone’s sentiments. The aim is to provoke thought about the nature of power and its unexpected manifestations.
The existence of hierarchy in humans is older than humans themselves and ever since there has been hierarchy there has always been someone on top - in power. All sort of people have been in power, some in the likes of Gandhi who propagated that "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." And others in the likes of Genghis Khan who famously (infamously?) insisted that "The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to their bosom their wives and daughters." Despite these two ideologies being poles apart from each other, there is still something common between them: It was known with certainty that how their rule is going to be. I mean, for instance, the tyranny under the rule of Genghis Khan was already infamous. So when he robbed, raped and killed the invaded area it must've hardly came as a surprise to the innocent families of east Asia. Some estimates suggests that he impregnated thousands of females in the region, as a result there are about 16 million descendants of Genghis Khan alive today, a tyrant indeed!
But obvious is no interest. There is an expected tyranny and then there is unexpected tyranny. "What? ISIS rule in Syria unleashed a totalitarian theocratic and barbaric hell on innocents? Unbelievable." - said no one ever. I want to go beyond the obvious and highlight instances when seemingly innocent group with honest intentions which once got intoxicated with unaccountable power led to tyranny for the ruled. For instance the notorious rule of Eunuchs in 2nd century China.
Dogs and eunuchs have been a trustworthy ally of men for thousands of years. In China during old times the eunuchs always played a significant role in the imperial court. Since they were castrated they no longer had sexual feelings or ability. Hence, king would trust them near his wives. Also, not having a family and being solely dependent on King made them loyal too. However, in second half of 2nd century they used their proximity with kings to make their way to official titles. And what followed after that was something imagined by the king or anyone else - Eunuchs once in power, started selling official seats, killing Confucian officials. It was only after that, that the remaining bureaucrats and Confucian philosophers ran a coup against the tyrant eunuchs. Eventually the eunuchs were chased, burned alive and thrown out of the court.
Eunuchs were one of the many 'unexpected tyranny' examples. Even today there are multiple such groups, take for example the urban planning bureaucrats in India - they studied, passed competitive exams, citizens put trust in them but they end up forcing such urban planning design that if someone lives in a sector in India they would literally have to walk for at least 1km before they can see any sign of emergency/essential household items shop. And if you for some reason decide to open a shop inside a sector - boom! you are under arrest or under some bribe - they give you choice here. Compared to that in any organic village or town, which has not yet come under the tyranny of the bureaucracy, any shop would be at minute's distance.
Vegans! Who at first seemed to be cute, innocent and harmless people who were ordering egg-less cakes and quietly judging you for ordering an omelet to 'Chicken lives matter' kind of posts on Twitter to hindering people from entering into KFC to finally banning eggs from mid-day meals of public schools in India. From just a seemingly harmless preference of some individuals, once the vegans reached the level of unaccountable soft power where whatever they claimed was accepted to be morally correct, the tyranny of vegans end up snatching the only source of protein from the plates of poor Indian kids.
I don't think it is required for me to present more such examples, I made a simple and elementary point that as much as there are 'expected tyrannies' that are taking place around us so are equal if not more in numbers the 'unexpected tyrannies'. And that is the catch with the later, it is always unexpected, unpredicted - the tyranny is always in disguise of innocence, rationale and harmlessness. Hence, it becomes difficult to identify them. If Confucians with their independent thought process were unable to identify the tyranny of eunuchs in advance, what can we expect from an average? It seems like, to quote Blackadder, “the path of life is strewn with cow dung from the devil's own satanic herd.” And more often than not the dung is distributed by the very people who promised to clean things up.