Honest appreciation and admiration for quality work and sterling character is healthy and often necessary. It helps ensure morale and the continuation of top performance and conduct.
It is when praise is used as a smokescreen to fog truth and to hide incompetence that it becomes a matter of concern. From genuine praise it merges into sycophancy (khushamad), a weapon of the weak deployed to lower the defenses of those in a position of relative strength. It is meant to subordinate principles to politicking. The key factor, therefore, is the position held by the recipient of sycophancy.
Complimenting a colleague is large-heartedness and encouraging a subordinate is considerateness. Juxtaposed with that, ‘puffing up’ a boss could convey the bad breath of sycophancy.
It is in official circles that sycophancy flourishes the most and causes the larger damage. An incompetent boss likes to have his ego massaged by his subordinates. An inept subordinate over-compensates by flattery coupled with backbiting of his peers to prove to his boss his credentials as a wellwisher. The approach of a sycophant is simple: bully juniors and butter seniors.
However, flattery, according to James Wolcott in the August issue of Vanity Fair, is only part of the “oral repertoire” of a sycophant. A successful sycophant “is also a skillful tattletale … doling out information” that enhances his “resource value”: “Most people succumb to gossip just as they do to flattery, unable to resist what they feign to be above.” The objective for the clever sycophant is to “wiggle under the defenses of those being wooed.” This is a game in which youth has an advantage: “For the middle-aged authority figure, coaching some intern or cub reporter is an opportunity to shape the future and take pride in the progress of a protégé.” The skilled subordinate “knows how to play upon these feelings and tickle the ivories of his elders.”
Linked with the human condition, sycophancy is a universal malady. More so, perhaps, in settings where the administration of justice is highly personalized. There, sycophancy tends to further override the already weak institutional arrangements. In a larger sense, sycophancy had pernicious policy implications. It chokes critical feedback of policies, insulates the governing elites by suppressing facts, and by creating a larger than life image, maintains an ongoing dalliance with delusions. Also, it reduces the threshold of tolerance.
From the top, the benefits of sycophancy trickle down to the bottom, making the non-sycophant stick out awkwardly.
Who is being pandered to and to what end? Sycophancy is a civilized form of insincerity through which, among other things, yes-men gain upward mobility from their object of supplication. The message is clear: to get along, you go along. Merit is the first casualty. As noted by Richard Stengel, in his book, You’re Too Kind: A Brief History of Flattery: “Flattery is the choice of a competitor who knows he is likely to fail in direct competition.” Sycophancy assumes then the form of an institution with its own system of rewards and penalties. Especially so, in bureaucratic surroundings, where law is frequently applied against the `lawaris’.
The chameleon-like character or the lack thereof of sycophants is never more evident when there is a possibility of a change of administration. Keeping both their ends covered, they carry out a coy flirtation with the would-be powerbrokers while adroitly reaffirming their loyalties to the incumbents.
Yesterday’s traitor becomes tomorrow’s patriot. The sleazy trail left by the changeable convictions of past sycophants has never failed to deter aspiring sycophants who are in the apprentice stage of their careers.
The meshing together of the old class-ridden despotic order - with it flowery verse and florid prose - with the demands of a quasi-defunct colonial order makes the terrain ripe for the breeding of sycophants.
The spillover effects of sycophancy have operated as a hindrance to the maturing of a foreign policy befitting an independent and sovereign nation. The Holy Prophet (pbuh) consistently spoke out against the corruptive effects of fulsome praise uttered to one’s face. His admonitions have not been adequately followed to our collective detriment.
