Jawed Naqvi: Thank the left for the right
NB: A very thoughtful piece by Jawed Naqvi. It would be welcome if the intellectuals who once were supportive of the BJP government and who have now turned critics of this regime, could tell us what they thought of the RSS in 2013 and why. Meanwhile I believe we must rethink our understanding of 'parties'. We have become habituated to automatically attaching some essential meaning to the word 'party'. Communal and caste fault-lines precede the emergence of political parties - which merely render these into ideological 'isms' or doctrines. In each case they seek to transform the state into a faction, whilst retaining the legitimacy of the collective.
In this sense the RSS has never been a party, but the local representation of Nietzsche's project for the 'trans-valuation of values'. The RSS does not mind which party we belong to, as long as our mode of thought is 'Hindu-ised' - according to their totalitarian concept. It is the power of the mind - and its attraction toward easy answers - they have relied upon consistently. They are also more sophisticated, they know when and how to focus on the human soul (which is not motivated by economic calculi); and how to act as delivery boys for capitalist corporations. Here's an excellent insight of George Orwell's:
Who has allowed both to grow? The left-supported PPP in
Pakistan and the left-supported Congress in India are to blame. In fact, the
Congress created the Shiv Sena as a caste-based Maratha force to break the
leftist trade unions headed by Marxist Brahmins. The irony is that the left is
a fragmented force in India. So, who does one look to for succour against the
onslaughts on democracy by Prime Minister Modi and his fascist cohorts?
While the street power to combat Modi comes from the Shiv
Sena — and efforts are on to dislodge its government in Maharashtra — the main
intellectual firepower comes from right-wing ideologues. We have to count our
blessings that former BJP minister Arun Shourie has picked up the cudgels on
behalf of Indian democracy. Look how important it could be for West Bengal
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee that former BJP minister Yashwant Sinha has
joined her party to take on the might of Modi’s party.
There are examples even within the robust farmers’ movement.
The khap panchayats that have come together to challenge Mr Modi are the ones
that colluded with him in 2014 and 2019 to bring him to power. These village
communities are also socially regressive, particularly with regard to women’s
rights, not unlike the mullahs who are part of the opposition’s moves to
challenge Khan’s government.
Much has been said in recent days about the resignation of Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a well-regarded academic from a premier university. He has cited pressure against his steady criticism of Mr Modi’s assault on democracy as the reason for his exit.
The Caravan magazine did a survey of some
ideologically floating intellectuals who began by supporting Mr Modi but have
since become his critics. Prior to the 2014 general election, Mehta was busy
deflecting concerns for the future of Indian democracy in the event that Modi
became prime minister, says the Caravan’s survey.
As early as December 2012, after Modi secured a fresh term
as chief minister of Gujarat, Mehta published a piece titled ‘A Modi-fied
politics’. In it, he backed the politician’s eligibility for national
leadership, and addressed the persistent criticism of Modi for having watched
over anti-Muslim pogroms in his state in 2002, soon after he first took charge
of it. “You can look at the convictions of Modi’s cabinet colleagues and point
to those as proxy proof of his culpability,” Mehta wrote.
Among those colleagues was Maya Kodnani, Gujarat’s minister
for women and child development until 2009, who was later given a life sentence
for organising a massacre in 2002. (The Gujarat High Court granted bail to
Kodnani in 2014, shortly after Modi became prime minister, and acquitted her
last year.) But, Mehta, says the survey, added: “You can also look at them and
wonder why so many Congress cabinet ministers still have not been made to
answer for 1984” - when Congress leaders led anti-Sikh pogroms in Delhi. “The
point is not to use 1984 to politically exonerate Modi. The point is that it is
hard to attack evil when we so widely condone it in other contexts.”
The Broken Middle - on the 30th anniversary of 1984
This was a roundabout way, according to Caravan,
of saying what Modi’s defenders have always said when confronted with his
bloody legacy — that all those who point it out are Congress minions. Mehta
wrote that “those worried about Modi need to set their own house in order”, and
that “attacks on him have a self-incriminating quality”. The apparent
suggestion, according to the survey, was that it was best not to criticise Modi
at all. This approach also ignored the fact that Modi’s critics included people
who had long condemned the Congress’s evasion of responsibility for 1984.
The magazine quotes a number of other intellectuals who
switched sides. One counts this as a blessing when the largest left party has
taken leave of its senses to oppose Mamata Banerjee. It sees her as a
legitimate target with the BJP if not worse.
There is intellectual wrangling between the CPI-M and CPI-ML
about the strategy in West Bengal. The CPI-ML has opposed the CPI-M’s decision
to fight Mamata Banerjee. The two communist parties had been together in the
Bihar fray with Lalu Yadav, and they did quite well for themselves as a united
opposition to the BJP. At one point the CPI-M and Mehta seem to speak in a
similar voice. “We are not on the high tide of fascism,” Mehta reassured his
readers not too long ago. “It is more about a complicated country feeling its
way through difficult times, fed up with old power structures. The ‘F’ word has
become a substitute for real thinking.”
In August 2014, Ashutosh Varshney, an Indian professor at Brown University, hailed Modi for being “pragmatic” rather than dogmatic on Hindu nationalism. Varshney, who has since changed his position, conceded, according to Caravan’s survey of intellectuals switching sides, that the RSS “will get personnel representation, especially in the party and in cultural and educational institutions”, but, he reassured readers, so long as Modi maintained his authority “it will not be able to dictate larger policy, economic or cultural”. Reminds one of the last chapter in Orwell's Animal Farm. "It was already becoming difficult to tell the pigs from the men." Or, in our case, the left from the right.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1614114
Mitali Saran - Standing your ground: A toolkit
Ashoka University: Correspondence on Professor P. B.
Mehta's Resignation
Ignorance is
Strength-Freedom is Slavery-War is Peace (George Orwell, 1984)
The Supreme
Court, Gandhi and the RSS
The emperor's masks:
'apolitical' RSS calls the shots in Modi sarkar
Naxalites should lay down their arms and challenge the ruling class to abide by the Constitution
