There is a familiar question that precedes many life choices in most of our homes or any major decision of life- “Hamsai kya wannan, rishtedaar kya wannan?” (“What will the neighbours and relatives say?”).
Spoken so casually that it scarcely registers as an intervention, the phrase acts nonetheless as an invisible law. It prescribes the dimensions of homes, the scale of weddings, the schooling of children, and even the allocation of hard-earned savings. What should be a personal choice- guided by means, conviction, and reason- often turns into a public performance where the audience is society, and the cost is one’s individuality.
Stories from across the valley give this phenomenon both texture and consequence. Examples like young men who had saved for years to launch a modest enterprise yielded instead to family pressure and financed a lavish sister’s wedding to match a neighbour’s display.
The wedding satisfied the social gaze; the dream of enterprise dissolved. While some are enrolling their kids in expensive private schools, not because of its pedagogy, but because a government school would “raise eyebrows.”
These are not isolated anecdotes. They form a repetitive choreography: choices calibrated to outdo or to equal, rather than to fulfil private needs or public good.
The social anthropologist recognizes here a dynamic of honour, face and reciprocal expectation. The psychologist points to conformity experiments- Solomon Asch’s classic studies that demonstrated how individuals abandon their own perceptions to align with a group consensus.
When the unit of reference enlarges from family to the neighbourhood, the pressure amplifies; when the observer becomes omnipresent, autonomy withers. The result is a social calculus in which visibility, not value, becomes the organising principle.
Religions, philosophies and ethical traditions have long warned against this inversion. The Qur’an counsels against covetous envy: “Do not wish for that by which Allah has made some of you exceed others…” (Surah An-Nisa 4:32).
The Prophet (Sallallahu alaihi wasallam) emphasised sincerity of intention and loving for one’s brother what one loves for oneself. Comparable injunctions place restraint and interiority at the heart of moral life. Yet when esteem becomes a currency, these ethical precepts recede, replaced by a culture of ostentation (riya) and performance.
Economically, the consequences are predictable and pernicious. Households acquire debt to sustain appearances; savings and entrepreneurial capital evaporate into temporary displays.
Weddings that should mark familial union become arms races of consumption. Funeral rites, too, may turn into a public ledger of prestige- an ironic transformation in which mourning is monetised and grief becomes competitive.
The social fabric that once protected individuals now polices them: privacy shrinks and authenticity is driven into private rooms. The problem is not merely financial or social; it is existential. Living for the appraisal of the other corrodes the inner life. People live double lives- one for themselves, another for the gallery.
The external life shines with borrowed glamour, while the inner life wilts in quiet discontent. Over time, such fragmentation breeds anxiety, moral fatigue and what might be called a communal melancholy- a condition where abundance and meaning cease to correlate.
If diagnosis is straightforward, so must be the prescription: it begins with recovery of moral imagination and ends with institutional support for healthier norms.
The individual first: freedom is less the licence to do whatever one desires and more the capacity to live without fear of communal censure. Education should cultivate discernment- an ability to distinguish between what is necessary, what is noble, and what merely signals status. Curricula that include ethical reasoning, civic education and financial literacy can inoculate younger generations against the rhetoric of display.
Families and community leaders hold the next responsibility. Religious sermons, community dialogues and local elders’ forums can reassert values of qana’at (contentment), ikhlas (sincerity), and amanah (trust). Small, local initiatives- voluntary bans on ostentatious displays in wedding processions, community-led guidelines on funerary expenditures, or match-funded micro-grants for entrepreneurs denied capital because of social pressure can change norms more rapidly than policy alone.
Local governance and civil institutions, too, have a role. Municipal authorities can design permitting and licensing regimes that discourage conspicuous consumption without policing faith or choice.
Financial institutions and NGOs can offer targeted products: micro-savings schemes restricted to entrepreneurial uses, low-interest loans for productive investment rather than consumption, and incentives for community savings groups.
Media and cultural institutions should celebrate examples of restraint and service, not merely spectacle.
Finally, the moral reorientation requires everyday courage. The orchard worker who refuses gossip to preserve his peace, the teacher who chooses a quiet life of study over performative charity, the young entrepreneur who insists on investing in a start-up rather than in an extravagant ceremony- all embody a quieter, more difficult heroism.
Their gestures are small, stochastic acts of rebellion against a culture of moral voyeurism. Our moral renewal must begin from within.
Let every family, every neighbour, every individual pause before the next intrusive comment, the next needless comparison, the next display meant only to impress. Let us return to humility and sincerity, where dignity is not defined by luxury but by character. To mind one’s own business is not selfishness- it is spiritual discipline. It restores peace to the self and dignity to the community.
“Hamsai te rishtedaar kya wannan?” will not vanish by exhortation alone. But if the question is met with another- “Be kya wanan?”- “What do I tell myself?” – then the conversation changes. When choices are first tested against conscience rather than crowd approval, the healing begins.
The work is not merely to curb consumption but to restore an ethos: one in which dignity is measured by character rather than circumference, where generosity is sincere and not performative, and where homes become sanctuaries of intent rather than stages for spectators.
Societies can lose the art of living freely without realising it. Reclaiming it requires reflection, policy and above all moral imagination- the capacity to see a life lived for its own sake as wondrous and sufficient. Only then will the valley’s social fabric return to being a source of care rather than a machine of comparison.
Dr. Aadil Zeffer is a former Cultural Ambassador (FLTA) to the USA and a former faculty, TVTC, Saudi Arabia. He can be reached at aadilzeffer.doe@gnuindia.org
Comments are closed.