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.
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