Too many commentators supposedly sympathetic to the BJP are evidently suffering over-exposure to NDTV. They are unthinkingly repeating the refrain of the breathless young fillies and deodorant salesmen, masquerading as anchors, who are captivated by page three fantasies of unrestrained inter-religious dalliance and other intolerable drivel. More relevant in this regard is the stark fact that they are the lacquered creatures of cynical editors, intensely engaged themselves with their evangelist proprietors for whom the hard truths of imperial subjugation alone matter.
In this particular instance, the putative subjects of enslavement are clearly the Hindus of India. And it is their purposive framing of issues of Indian politics that is currently doing the rounds as profound insight. It must of course be dismissed without a glance, in the same way soldiers cast aside the broken bodies of comrades to do battle for the urgent goal of national survival.
The counter-posing of ideology and good governance is deeply suspect and implies a host of unresolved issues. It is an alleged choice that clearly doesn’t concern India’s truculent minorities. It is only supposedly relevant for hapless Hindus, presumably making primitive trade-offs between yearnings of the soul and mundane material comforts! The minorities only care about the sanctity of their religious fixations. They will countenance injury by rioting to defend every syllable of their sacred texts or treasonously surrender India’s sovereignty to inquisitorial US officials in order to assert their god-given inviolable rights. But the erstwhile commentators and BJP’s anointed supremos believe Hindus are exclusively preoccupied with the provision of roads, electricity and water supplies, stable government, etc. To cultivate this state of nirvana one journalist has recommended names for all senior party posts, no doubt also making sure to nominate the one who will arrange his Rajya Sabha meal ticket! Some others are busy re-inventing the metaphorical political wheel on behalf of Hindus and share their discovery with the world of the common civil code, the unfairness of article 370 and Ayodhya.
Purely as a matter of factuality, it was really not clear to anyone that the BJP was running an ideological campaign in 2009. The unrelenting exposure on television, in the run up to polling day, of their arch in-house secularist and moderator of the Jinnah global fan club must have confused voters at the very least. But somehow Indian secularism (collapsing to a philosophical low from Voltaire to Lalu and Paswan) allows little space for even modest Hindu ideological craving, leave alone Kashi, Ayodhya and similar fascist plans to reclaim a paltry few ancient religious sites after a thousand years of iconoclasm. Varun Gandhi’s indiscriminate volley on behalf of Hindus struck the aforesaid sage, old timer, who declined to offer him any party post, as monstrous. But that interpretive sentiment echoed the crassest Nehruvian secularism rather than Varun’s actual likely political impact, the ardent efforts of NDTV notwithstanding. This was the same NDTV that turned a few minutes of unmistakably contrived agitation over pubs and alcohol in Bengaluru into a nightly serial, or rather repeats, in a forlorn attempt to shift a few parliamentary seats within the precincts of cosmopolitan Bangalore.
The problem with espousing good governance as a promise is that its electoral appeal is only effective if it has been delivered on a previous occasion. This is the raison d’tre of Narendra Modi’s electoral success though he is also the media’s whipping boy for alleged ideological excess. So, it is really possible to have it both ways as contrasted with the claim that aspirations for good governance and ideology are in irredeemable conflict! The NDA could claim to have been superior to the UPA in governance but not to any unprecedented degree, especially with the kind of scheming operators running amok in the PMO when they ruled. Unfortunately, by the time the NDA lost the election of 2004, it had managed to extinguish all pretence of ideological conviction in favour of savouring the experience of wielding political power, with the entire panoply of failings that it endows. The belated attempt therefore to revive the issue of Ayodhya in 2009 must have struck those who really care about it as pretty disingenuous. It was clear that the BJP was unlikely to achieve the parliamentary numbers to be in danger of being forced to contemplate building a 21st century edifice to rival Somnath. Clearly, some voters can be fooled all time and all of them some of the time, but not all of them all the time.
In reality, the juxtaposition of ideology with good governance as somehow incommensurable is nothing but a cynical ploy to institutionalise all past Hindu setback and defeat, as if they are part of an unchanging natural order decreed by the heavens. All their dreams, even modest ones designed to reclaim a few morsels of their tortured past, are to be de-legitimised. The obverse will be the need to accept all the crude, militarist oppression of Islam and Christianity since to question them would be ideological. So, massive conversions of Hindus, the non negotiable demand that the incumbent new political order is allowing US Congressional inquisitors to appraise, must be permitted without hindrance. Indeed, in an expression of triumphalist iconoclasm Church denominations in Tamil Nadu are now maliciously pressing the DMK to resume dredging the Ram Sethu to demonstrate Hindu powerlessness in what is effectively another militant Christian enclave. The future of the remainder of Hindu India may well eventually echo the cultural genocide that has unfolded in Nagaland, Mizoram and Tamil Nadu, where Hindu worship is increasingly curtailed by force. The half-wit, Saudi-funded mullahs, who managed to expel Taslima Nasreen and are demanding that no Hindu religious procession be allowed past any mosque, will be given carte blanche. And it will all occur in the name of purging Hindu ideology from the body politic. It is this fate that the traitors, wish to facilitate and have already made huge strides promoting.
Even if it were the case that good governance alone appealed to the electorate the reason for joining political life cannot solely be to sustain the prevailing status quo. Political activism is surely intended to persuade others of the rightness of one’s own ideological beliefs in order to usher in change. However, one cannot know for a fact that ideological conviction is unpopular with Hindu voters since they mobilised on an historic scale in response to the Ayodhya movement though, it is clear in retrospect, it was being used cynically for short-term political gain. One can debate the merits of rival ideological beliefs within Hinduism, but the attempt to banish ideology altogether is a cynical manoeuvre to dis-empower Hindus and subject them to the virulent ideological goals of Islamic and Christian imperialism. Ideology is immanent in political life and it is only a question of whose ideological convictions prevail. And good governance, which means abjuring criminal malfeasance and delivering efficient management, is not some holy grail, but attributes to be taken for granted routinely by any decent political dispensation. Ideological goals need to be conjoined with them in an admixture of pragmatic judgment and iron will.
The debate needs to be about the components of Hindu ideology and the nature of the differing audiences for whom it needs to be moulded for appeal. In this context, the loss of urban votes, the natural constituency of any nationalist party, is a true testament to the political price of duplicity. And of course one needs to grasp how ideological conviction must be communicated, in a world in which communication has become extraordinarily easy and also extremely easy to manipulate. Most supposedly active on behalf of Hindutva failed on all three counts, but perhaps it was because these insiders wished to abandon ideology to serve the enemies of Hindus. They mangled ideology by doublespeak, and doublespeak made them indifferent to its potential audience. And they also apparently shared the same goal of destroying any possibility of a Hindu upsurge. If Hindus are to survive as a recognisably Hindu people rather than end up subjugated like Christianised Koreans, Filipinos and Malaysia’s oppressed Hindus, they need to combine wisdom with ideological foresight and pragmatism with unwavering determination.
(The writer taught international political economy at the London School of Economics for more than two decades.)
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