Bilkul Sateek News
Ajay Verma/Paridhi Dhasmana
Filmmaker and storyteller Shekhar Kapur has always been known for his unconventional way of looking at the world. In a recent discussion, he posed a striking question that challenges our assumptions about identity and society: “They are tribal! They are different! They are a tourist attraction! Entirely unlike us… really?”
See Post: https://x.com/shekharkapur/status/1972301414245323102
Reflecting on his early days in London, where he was training as a chartered accountant, Kapur recalled his fascination with the striking uniformity of men in the city’s financial districts. “I was deeply impressed by how they all walked the same way, wore identical bowler hats and black suits… their ‘brollies’ (umbrellas) tightly rolled without a single edge out of place. No one even looked at each other. And on the commuter trains, they turned the pages of the Financial Times in exactly the same manner, making sure not a crease was disturbed,” he wrote.
That’s when the realization struck him: “This is tribal culture! I remember thinking—they are no less tribal than the Maasai men.”
For Kapur, this was not a passing observation but the foundation of a larger argument: human beings are inherently tribal. “We gather in tribes, especially when we are afraid… and we change our tribal loyalties more often than our understanding,” he noted.
Politics, he believes, is also rooted in tribal instinct. “Even democracy is tribal behavior—just look at the tension between the democratic right, left, and center.”
From art to corporate valuations, Kapur argued, our systems of assigning value are guided by tribal patterns. “We give it names like ‘scarcity,’ but in reality, a painting is valuable only because a particular tribe deems it so. The sudden surge in a company’s so-called valuation? That too is tribal behavior, based more on belief systems than genuine financial foundations.”
He pointed out that this instinct plays out in everyday life as well. “When I walk through Juhu, I curse the cars as a member of the ‘pedestrian tribe.’ But when I drive, I honk at the pedestrians. Look how quickly we switch tribes!”
Kapur leaves us with a thought that lingers long after: if our sense of belonging shifts constantly with every group we align ourselves to, perhaps the sharpest—and simplest—question he raises is also the most unsettling: “Are we more tribal than individual?”
