“Hum jahan pe khade ho jaate hain, line wahin se shuru hoti hai.” Amitabh Bachchan delivered in Kaalia. India adopted it as civic policy. WE ARE LIKE THAT ONLY, and that is the basis of the great Indian queue.
After my recent yatra to Kedarnath and Badrinath and visits to religious sites, I am convinced this was not just a dialogue. It echoes the sentiments and is a national behavioural framework.
Every temple. Every barricade. Every darshan queue. The visuals repeated themselves.
If there was a perfectly decent single line moving peacefully, carrying the devotees to darshan of their deity, suddenly, from nowhere, a parallel line would emerge. Then another and another. Soon, there will be a river of emotionally charged devotees merging into one angry delta near the gate. This is the Great Indian Queue in its purest form, totally fluid, emotional and permanently under reconstruction.”
No one knows where the line started.
No one knows where it ends.
No one knows how long they will be in line.
But everyone is absolutely sure the other line is illegal.
The Indian relationship with queues (lines) is deeply spiritual.
We do not stand in line. We negotiate with destiny.
In one temple, I saw steel barricades zig-zagging like an airport immigration system. Anyone not from India would have read that as impressive crowd management.”
However, within minutes, devotees discovered side entries, emotional shortcuts, invisible openings between railings, and one uncle who simply declared, “Bas do minute,” and entered like he owned equity in the temple trust.
Indians are among the most intelligent and adaptable people in the world. They crack global IT systems, run multinational corporations, and send missions to Mars for less than Hollywood spends on superhero films.
But when it comes to lines and queues, something inside whispers:
“There must be a better and faster way.”
Osho once said something similar: man continuously resists systems because they feel like a surrender of the ego. The moment you stand quietly and disciplined in a line, you accept equality. First-come, first-served. No specialness. No shortcut. No “Do you know who I am?”
And that is emotionally unbearable for many of us.
Because the Indian ego does not merely want darshan.
It wants preferential darshan.
Somewhere in our collective psychology sits a tiny VIP pass wearing sunglasses. In Badrinath, I too paid for the VishnuSarshtrnamvali Pooja and gained darshan within 90 minutes. Darshan lasted some 15 minutes in comfort in the main garbhagrah. And I pitied the people standing in line for 6-8 hours, only to get a glimpse of the deity. No, I did not break the line, but exploited the system. Even in that paid line, the line was not disciplined, and when the doors opened, there was a rush to get into the hall.
The science behind this behaviour is actually fascinating. Behavioural psychologists call it “competitive scarcity response.” The moment people feel resources, time, or opportunity are limited, rational order collapses into survival optimisation. While it is true that if they managed to stay calm and follow the rules, there would be ease of operations and better darshan.
Translated into Indian reality:
“If I don’t push now, these people ahead may consume all blessings before my turn.”
There is a herd psychology. The second a person breaks formation, others assume there must be a hidden advantage, and it makes the indiscipline acceptable. Nobody wants to be the only morally upright citizen left standing in a slow-moving line while another fellow reaches enlightenment fifteen minutes earlier. Do they think their GOD is not seeing this mischievous antisocial behaviour and recording it in a book?
There is a masterstroke of ropes and barricades, railings and separations. When implemented with force, it works in controlling the crowd.
India may be the only civilisation where adults require ropes to remember geometry. Without ropes, barricades, or security policing the area, a queue becomes abstract art. The Great Indian Queue survives not on discipline, but on barricades, ropes and collective suspicion.
Temple authorities know this. Airport authorities know this. Railway stations know this.
We are a nation permanently one missing barricade away from social improvisation.
Even during the yatra, I noticed something remarkable. The line moved beautifully wherever discipline was externally enforced. And if one opening appeared, just one, then suddenly human behaviour resembled water escaping a cracked dam.
And yet, paradoxically, Indians are also incredibly patient people.
We can wait years for roads, months for refunds, decades for justice.
Time is not the issue.
Position is.
Nobody minds waiting.
They just mind others reaching first.
And that’s why queues don’t work.
That is why queues become emotional battlefields.
A line silently announces equality. But society trains us to seek exception.
And therefore, every Indian queue contains three parallel stories:
Those following the rules.
Those bending rules.
And those explaining why rules are flexible for “genuine cases.”
Of course, there are exceptions. I saw disciplined pilgrims, too. Calm people. Smiling faces. Families helping elders. Volunteers managing chaos with grace. And a person like me has arguments with queue breakers.
But the overwhelming national instinct remains:
Why stand behind one person when you can move forward?
Maybe that is our tragedy.
Maybe that is our genius.
After all, the same mindset that breaks queues also breaks limitations.
The jugaad instinct that creates chaos at temples also creates entrepreneurs, survivors, innovators, and impossible solutions.
We are not a linear civilisation.
We are a sideways civilisation.
Still, next time you enter a temple and see a calm, single-file line moving peacefully toward God, protect it carefully.
It is among the rarest spiritual miracles in India.
Perhaps the Great Indian Queue is not a civic failure at all. Perhaps it is India expressing itself.
And by the way, the people at Goafest, are you still crowding and surging at the gates for entertainment, awards and sessions!
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