It is often said, that there are two Indias- one which lives in the shimmering skyscrapers and sips French wine and the other that walks for miles under the blazing sun for a pot of water. These are the Indias grounded in reality, in material comfort-or the lack thereof, places where success and failure, good and bad, can be measured. But life isn’t just about things, its also about ideas. On television and twitter, the conjoined twins that form our national discourse, left and right shout at each other, using the microphone that democracy provides to its extremity. Shrill rhetoric and words as sharp as a butcher’s knife permeate every aspect of our political life. The Right echoes Jinnah when it declares ‘Hinduism in danger’. The Left cites the crackdown on civil society as a proof of its persecution. The Right plays victim in the face of decades of leftist governments and the Left pleads its cause against majoritarian domination of the right.
And here again, two separate Indias emerge. Are we the next superpower, ready to claim our tryst with destiny, led by a strong leader adored by the masses? Or are we the decaying democracy, standing in the ruins of the Republic our founders dreamt of, surrounded by burnt books that vaguely resemble something we called the Constitution? Are the last seven decades a story of Hindu persecution and minority appeasement or are they a glorious liberal past that we must reclaim? Are Hindus the victims of decades of “pseudo-secularism” as the Right so pejoratively calls it or the brutal oppressors of minorities that the Western media gleefully proclaims? Lost in this battle of hyperbole, the Indian centrist struggles to be heard. Because, somewhere between these two narratives, lies the truth- hidden, to paraphrase Shakespeare, like a grain of wheat in two bushels of chaff.
People like Pragya Thakur malign India’s image. The Western media amplifies this narrative to paint a dystopian portrait of an India that doesn’t exit. Caught in the middle, the ordinary patriotic Indian is being asked to choose between an autocratic Hindu Rashtra and an India bashing festival. Classified either as a Bhakt or a professional sceptic- more commonly referred to as the Urban Naxal- the Indian of ideological indifference is silenced. We as a nation have become so used to living on the ideological fringe that we do not even believe in the existence of a centre.
It is possible to be a conservative, in the classical sense of the term, and a liberal. It is possible to believe in the established order of things and incremental change and value the rights of citizens. In today’s India, the two are, in fact, synonymous. India is an established liberal society and to support that society is the identifying mark of a social conservative.
The Modi government has espoused not a conservative but a majoritarian agenda in its second term. The arbitrary revocation of Article 370, followed by months of lockdown in the Valley with no political activity or internet and then the divisive Citizenship Amendment Act and the hyper polarised, high pitched, communal election battle in Delhi and the subsequent riots have all exposed the precariousness of our polity. It is no wonder that the Indian liberal laments the state of politics today. And yet the articles that proclaim the death of Indian democracy and secularism do more harm than good.
The elite liberal, as the ruling dispensation so disparagingly terms anyone with a contradictory opinion, should realize that in the battle between a Rana Ayyub and an Arnab Goswami, the latter will always win. By making the battle about the idea of India about the fringe, the liberal plays into the hands of right. The former, with its nihilistic and despondent attitude offers no comfort to the struggling householder. The latter, however bigoted and distasteful, offers the idea of a community, a narrative, a hope that everything will be alright. And to the ordinary Indian, who worries about putting food on the table, this hope is a palliative to his misery. It gives his life meaning, weaving it into the larger stories of the battles of community and nation. And that is why the Indian right wins. This isn’t an apology for the ultra-right, but rather an attempt to understand it.
By casting aspersions on those who would even consider an alternative idea, the Indian liberal widens the ideological chasm in the nation and digs his own grave. To defeat the Hindutvavadi ideology of the BJP government, the liberal must not just point out the faults in their narrative but create their own. Those who regularly reference Hitler and Mussolini to talk about the state of Indian politics today should remember that the Nazis and Fascists were defeated by an alliance of the Conservatives in Britain and the progressive Democrats in the U.S., not to mention the Communists in Russia. The radical right will not be defeated by the radical left, it will be defeated by the centre. It will be defeated by understanding where the BJP voters come from, not dismissing them as a ‘basket of deplorables’ as Hillary Clinton so contemptuously called supporters of Donald Trump. It will be defeated by using that understanding to create a story that can appeal to every Indian, by refusing to be drawn into petty quarrels, by placing nation above religion. The onus of saving the democratic, secular India that we hold so dear is on the liberal, and he must not abdicate his responsibility.
Written By: ANOUSHKA KOTHARI
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