Last month, this author wrote the obituary of politeness only to be forced to write this more qualified sequel, positing politeness to be a one-way street only a select few are entitled to access. The performance of politeness is the most perverse gesture of civilisation. When we demand politeness and when we think we are being nice, courteous, refined, we are at our most hypocritical, our most violent. Take, for example, the recent Miss Universe controversy in Thailand. The national director insulted Miss Mexico, who stood her ground, and in solidarity with her, all other contestants staged a walkout. Ironically, the national director shouted the word “polite”.

Let us begin with an older source than our modern manuals of etiquette — the Kamasutra of Vatsyayana. For the uninitiated, the Kamasutra is a manual not for sex but for civility, for the art of being a cultured nagaraka, a refined man of the city. It’s a treatise on how the man must learn conversation, perfumes, garlands, how to enter a room, how to listen to music, how to modulate his speech, how to look at others without offence. But here comes the paradox: This nagaraka’s........

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