Jibran Anand: The Liberal Victimhood
Liberals are our great
allies, the crucial lynchpin against fascism. Liberals hold the key to building
a popular front against divisive forces which are gathering at the Centre and
across the world. Or so suggests Pratap Bhanu Mehta in a sarcastic piece (‘Blame
it on the liberals’, IE, June 28), which builds a romanticised victimhood
of liberals. The article ignores
the historical trajectory of liberalism while falsely projecting valiant works
of resistance against the current dispensation as the result of a handful of
the upper middle class (generally men) activist liberals. In that way, Mehta
has remained true to the historical actions of liberalism as an ideology, which
hijacks victories of the working class and the marginalised as its own while
remaining a valiant defender of free speech and a “moderate” variant of
capitalism. The irony of the latter is particularly sweet; Bill Clinton and P
V Narasimha Rao (both avowed liberals) have been torchbearers in ripping apart
whatever was left of welfare capitalism in the 1990s.
Acts of resistance
have been expanding over the last four years. These have emerged not from the
position of a self-avowed saviour but from collective people’s struggles along
with the innumerable acts of everyday resistance against the neo-liberal-
fascist nexus. The Una aandolan in Gujarat, the protest of Tamil Nadu farmers
in Delhi, the farmers’ march to Mumbai in early 2018, the anti-Sterlite
protests, are examples. The convenient sense
of (liberal) victimhood obfuscates the structural oppression of Dalits,
Muslims, women, tribals, workers and farmers. These liberals are aloof and
impartial observers who remain open to being attacked because of their
remarkable self-awareness and malleable ideology.
Heroes of the marginalised,
these individuals have supposedly saved the environment, spoken up for free
speech and the press, all while remaining valiant in their opposition to the
authoritarianism of government. The same liberals,
however, waited until 2018, when the effects of GST and demonetisation crippled
their businesses, to raise their voices. They barely raise an eyebrow over the
dismantling of higher education (the latest being the scrapping of the UGC),
not only because it is their love for neo-liberalism that enabled the process,
but also because the alternative lies in the new Ivy-league-esque private
universities like O P Jindal and Ashoka.
There is no doubt that
liberals are occasionally allies, particularly in countries like India. The
choice suggested is between lack of jobs, crippling farm loans etc and
communalism, mass lynchings and an atmosphere of fear and hate. But to
articulate such a choice is to create a false binary. The opposition to
communalism and fascism seems to point towards a broad mass, popular front,
which must grudgingly include liberals but not embrace them with open arms.
A popular front led by
the Lutyens’ elite will not only be defeated - in the 2019 general election and
the subsequent ones - but it will also fail to combat the RSS and other
Hindutva groups that are expanding beyond the Hindi heartland. Moreover, it will
further strengthen popular support (of the RSS) and disillusionment with any
alternative that may exist for a large number of Indians. The above dilemma has
led a lot of “progressives” to mollycoddle liberals, conveniently ignoring such
articles in public while being privately critical of them. The strategy,
however, is a misguided one since a sustainable fight against fascist forces
cannot emerge from the top. The refusal of the Congress in Delhi to join AAP’s
protest against the blatantly obstructive nexus of Centre, bureaucracy and the
LG is evidence not only of their short-sightedness but also indicative of their
declining credibility within the opposition.
Liberals cannot be the
vanguard of the opposition because the alternative we have to imagine needs to
include radical demands for land, healthcare and education among others, areas
that these very liberals systematically destroyed. Ignoring self-righteous
assertions of liberal pride is one way of going forward, but it will dilute any
sustained opposition and reinforce the falsely curated image of an elite
opposition to communalism.
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/liberals-in-india-intolerance-dalits-muslims-farmers-protests-5265182/