It Doesn’t Matter Who Wins Today – India Remains Battered and Divided

It Doesn’t Matter Who Wins Today – India Remains Battered and Divided

By Jawhar Sircar

(23 May,2019, The Wire)

Countless people are arguing incessantly about whether Narendra Modi will come back to power – many have assumed that it is a foregone conclusion. 

It may be time to take a realistic look, which means that it does not matter which political party or parties form the next government. Only the naive refuse to believe that India is what it was between 1947 and 2014 – largely tolerant, secular and wedded to democratic norms.

The issue is that even if a coalition that is opposed to the BJP wins, it can hardly reverse the beliefs and behavioural patterns that have been injected and nourished over the last five years. The needle has moved a lot, not only towards Hindutva but also towards the right (the two are not necessarily coterminous) and it is unrealistic to expect that this will change with a new ruling party or by external intervention, however vigorous.

Hate is now legitimate and a large section of Hindus that support the overpowering of Muslims, Christians and Dalits are not expected to cringe and convert to pluralism anytime in the near future. Obligations under the constitution and the political culture of tolerance and centrism had been embraced by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the only other BJP prime minister, but they are now gone.

Let us admit that Hindu aggression is more than just respectable – it is often the desired posture. Victimhood and valorisation are the twin pillars of a fascist ideology and these have now been injected into the blood of too many Hindus to be just wished away. As Viktor Frankyl discovered, there is a latent fascist streak in all of us – someone just stoked it, rather successfully.

What we have learnt from the eerie silence in India that followed repeated lynchings over cows and beef, the immediate but ineffective protests from a vocal minority of liberals notwithstanding, is that a vast section of Hindus are totally uncompromising on this one issue. Neither the fact that all Muslims certainly do not consume beef nor that a person’s diet is a constitutionally protected right, cut any ice.

Even the Congress has to placate these millions whose stand on this issue brooks no compromising attitude and hence it stands charged with peddling ‘soft Hindutva’. The whole business disguises, ever so thinly, a growing disgust at meat-eating or non-vegetarianism per se, even where the Hindu diet is concerned. Vaishnav vegetarianism is sure to be foisted, more so over the next few years, as India’s preference.

India’s historic equilibrium between the three major Hindu belief systems, Vaishnav, Shaiva and Shakta, that took centuries and millennia to arrive at, is now quite inconsequential. It was but natural for the largely-vegetarian Gangetic plains to graduate from just Hindi-Hindu-Hindutva (HHH) to using diet as its vanguard as it expands its hegemonic desires. In a way, this arises from the cumulative failure of decades of a liberal rule that could not induce the Hindi heartland to try to learn at least one other Indian language, to broaden their world view at least.

All of India that lies beyond this belt struggles with three, or at least two, languages (and cultures), while the votaries of HHH revel in myopia, while their representatives Blythe, quite unabashedly, every central government institution and office in India, in the name of propagating the ‘official language’.

All said and done, much of the hatred for liberals arises from what is perceived as the privileged English educated (often foreign schooled) class by the Hindi-bred, even those brought up in the vernacular languages. Now that this class conflict has found an ideology that legitimises desi pride, often with dollops of conjured history, it is not likely to recede after the elections and concede space to the erstwhile dominant narrative of refined Nehruvian liberals.

India has always prided itself as the only third world country that had successfully confined its army within barracks and cantonments. But one is not sure how long. A dozen or so retired generals have reportedly joined the BJP, which is ominous, and thousands of other members of the armed forces, retired or in service, appear convinced that only one party is finally giving them their dues — even when it shies away from taking a call on the vexatious ‘One Rank One Pension’ issue.

After all, what began as genetically-propelled pulsations of ultra-nationalism, that all rightist parties indulge in, in lieu of a proper political ideology, is now an integral part of state policy and propaganda, ably supported by a rabid social media.

Again, it does not matter that history tells us that this particular political stream stayed away, rather determinedly, from the national struggle during its most critical hour and that it does not have a single nationalist leader in its pantheon, in spite of repeated attempts to poach them from the Indian National Congress movement.

It boasts of crushing terror with an iron hand, though statistics tell us otherwise – that between 2014 and 2018, India suffered 388 major acts of terrorism. Kashmir is as good as ‘gone’ – history will tell us where – and whoever comes to power will have to contend with the situation that has been created with so much effort. Ultra-nationalism is here to stay and will continue to dominate Indian politics, irrespective of who rules.

Liberals ruled for decades on end but not one government or educational system had either the courage or foresight to openly tell Hindus certain home truths about their religion – like the persecution of Buddhists and Jains during the ancient period of Indian history. Not all Buddhist centres were destroyed by Muslim invaders only and the Bengali term for ‘ruins’, dhangsa-stupa or the ‘destroyed (not decayed) stupa’ says a lot, indeed.

Let us be logical: could large parts of Southeast Asia ever became Hindu, without some proselytisation? The relentless Brahmanisation, that M.N. Srinivas explained as Sanskritisation, was only a trifle different from the sanctioned (and often valorised) conversion undertaken by the Semitic religions. History tells us that no religion has ever been really faultless and if all facts were placed up front at least some Hindus would rethink their ‘victimhood’ under Muslim rule.

This uncontrollable Frankenstein that will surely haunt us well after Modi is gone may never have been manufactured. In all honesty, we need also to admit that the liberal’s inexplicable silence every time Muslim terror strikes anywhere certainly exacerbates the disgust of anti-liberals and swells their numbers.

As Viktor Uhlrich reveals in his recent biography Hitler: Ascent, the dictator’s foul-mouthed speeches and opinions were not spontaneous, but came out after careful preparation, precisely designed to gain maximum attention from the media and maximum reaction from the crowds.

But coming to the positive side, one must admit this new-fascist wave drew the best out of a section of liberals – not all – who rose to the occasion, as never before. This group finally got its act together and launched a relentless, tireless struggle against every authoritarian measure, each public lynching and all that went against India’s basic plural structure.

A vindictive leader, party, organisation and state spared no effort to cow them down, from indulging in the vilest of abuses to organising tax and other raids and threatening or instituting fearsome legal proceedings, but that only strengthened their resolve to carry on the struggle.

It also brought out a new breed that prided itself as ‘neutrals’ whose stings and perennial arguments are often more vicious than the neo-fascists. They cover their lack of courage by engaging in exasperating arguments and criticising with puerile logic those brave-hearts who take on the dreaded establishment at great personal risks and also suffer financial losses.

We cannot also but mention that New Delhi has, like most national capitals the world over, its own crop of ‘sunflowers’ that is genetically programmed to turn towards whichever sun rules the sky, as they constitute the interesting core of the Delhi’s chatterati, who, of course, are privy to whispered secrets.

William Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism, a 1933 classic, holds good even today. Nations have paid a heavy price earlier for this choice of politics and have gone through a painful historic scourge of Armageddon – which was dreadful. To expect the poll results in India to change it all is quite unrealistic as the virus is now too well entrenched to be wished away.

The Bengali version of this article was published in the Ananda Bazar Patrika.

(Please Click Here to Read theArticle on The Wire’s Website)

Will Our Vote Be Known ?

Will Our Vote Be Known ?

         (English Version of Article published in Ananda Bazar Patrika,   6th May 2019)

         Every election seems to be the most important ever in history and the 2019 polls are, therefore, perceived as the most critical in a long time. I have conducted elections from 1977 when, as ‘assistant returning officer’ of Burdwan, I witnessed the collapse of Indira Gandhi’s hegemony. Since then, I have participated in different election processes in different official capacities, in Bengal and elsewhere, and ended up as the state’s chief electoral officer during the 1998 and 1999 parliamentary elections. As a keen observer of the electoral process, I can safely say that this election is really quite different from others —except perhaps 1977 — as India has to take a very grave choice, on which the future of the nation depends in many senses. Having said that, my main worry now is that since vindictiveness is a part of state policy, should we not take extra care to protect the voter from being identified and harassed later on, by any powerful party at the centre or in the states? 

       Though it is still difficult to find out at an individual level who voted for whom, it is quite possible to know the voting pattern of a street or locality that goes to any particular polling station. The apprehension is that weaker sections and minorities that are particularly vulnerable to detection and retribution after the polls. In fact, a minister of the ruling party in the centre openly threatened voters on this account — because, as we stand now, it is not very difficult to find out the votes obtained, for or against, in each mohalla or paraa. This knowledge is critical to every party and every contestant. Under the previous ballot box system, the election commission could invoke rule 59A of the election rules and order the compulsory mixing or jumbling up of the ballots cast in a number of polling booths. This was done to make it impossible to find out which locality voted for whom. Ever since we introduced electronic voting machines (EVMs)  this legal provision became defunct. I remember quite nostalgically how, just before the 1999 parliament elections, election officials had to campaigned tirelessly to make voters aware of this voting machine which was totally new. Nowadays, each EVM shows the result of its own polling booth only and the results of a number of electronic machines can not be totalled or mixed up as we used to do for paper ballots. 

       The election commission, however, worked hard and consulted EVM manufacturers, who came up with a new machine called a ‘totaliser’ that could add and mix up the votes cast in fourteen polling booths. This was, indeed, a breakthrough and in November 2008, the commission wrote to the law ministry to amend the rules and introduce totalisers, at least optionally. The ministry sent it to a parliamentary committee that did not decide on this issue for several years, perhaps because political parties are always keen to know booth-wise or locality-wise results. The law ministry supported the commission’s recommendation through a policy note in 2010,  and the inaction that followed reveals one more of the many mistakes that the previous government made. But then, we did not have any fear of a quasi-totalitarian and incursive state then, as we have now, and once the results of the 2019 elections are made known, locality wise, mischief can be at work. 

            Returning to the continuing drama, we see that in 2014, the election commission dutifully reminded the ministry once again, of the dire necessity of protecting the identity of groups of voters, by resorting to ‘totalisers’. This was to be applied selectively in cases when they commission considers any constituency or a part of it to be sensitive from this angle. In 2014, the supreme court also stepped in and wanted to know why the ministry was not taking urgent action to amend the rule. The ministry responded by saying that it had sent this proposal to the law commission, which was quite true. But what is rather surprising is that even after the law commission clearly recommended in para 13.7 of its report of ‘electoral reforms’ in March 2015, that election rules should be amended to introduce totalisers, the present regime did not do so. It is quite clear that a section of the political class is keen to know which booth voted for them and which did not. If we go by the record of this regime in taking cruel, surgical strikes against minorities and dalits, one can only pray to the god of elections of India to ensure that nothing untoward happens later on. At the same time, we must also acknowledge that the people of India have gone through such qualms in the past as well and nothing can deter the masses whose minds are made up — on whom to vote.