It is futile for liberals to look for political space in this middle class – Gandhi and Nehru are, for them, just names from a lost world.
Everything appears normal in India. City editions of all newspapers run daily colour supplements with movie gossip, photos of celebrity parties and comic strips. Restaurants in Delhi’s Khan Market, Mumbai’s Pali Hill or Bengaluru’s Lavelle Road, serving European and Chinese or Japanese cuisine, are brimming with guests.
Looking at the mood, it seems that the heated debates on Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) or mob lynching or rapes are taking place on some distant continent.
The spectre of anarchy, it would appear, is a bizarre illusion for those who love Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After all, the so-called mob violence and communal strife have always been part of India’s life, and journalists critical of Modi are only creating a fear psychosis. Indeed, if these fear-mongers go silent, life would be peaceful.
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If one were to see the world through the prism of the Newshour rantings, it would seem that not only India, but the whole world is divided in only two camps—Islamist and anti-Islamist. The so-called immigration crisis in Europe or US President Donald Trump’s policy of banning influx from some Muslim countries is a global reflection of that divide.
Almost 25 years ago, American sociologist Samuel P. Huntington propounded a thesis that future world conflicts would occur between cultures and not countries. (Foreign Affairs, 1993). According to him, the biggest threat to world peace would be from the global Islamic civilisation, with violent extremism as its arm. His thesis was titled The Clash of Civilizations?.
It is a rather intriguing coincidence that he argued his thesis soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War (December 1991). From the ‘50s to the early ‘90s, the world was believed to have been divided between the Communist and democratic countries. “Those who are not with us are against us” was the simplistic American worldview. This view had considerable influence on the intellectual establishment in India. Places like the India International Centre (IIC) in Delhi were seen at that time as a product of that cultural Cold War.
India proved to be the most fertile ground for Huntington’s thesis. Babri Masjid was demolished by Hindutva fanatics on 6 December 1992. Even the leading lights of the intellectual establishment like Girilal Jain, former editor of The Times of India, said in his book The Hindu Phenomenon that the demolition was “essentially beneficent”, and Muslims would feel safer in a Hindu Rashtra.
Otherwise mild editors like K.R. Malkani, M.V. Kamath and T.V.R. Shenoy echoed Jain’s views. The Rath Yatra of L.K. Advani was actually following the path shown by Huntington, even if unknowingly.
Since then, the communal divide has seeped through the Hindu middle class consciousness. The “ifs” and “buts” of history can be interesting and illuminating. If the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led BJP had come back to power in 2004 (with subservient NDA partners), the Hindu consolidation that we are seeing now would have perhaps started at that time.
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Let us not ignore the fact that the seat difference between Sonia Gandhi-led Congress and Vajpayee-led BJP was just seven in 2004 elections (Congress 145 and BJP 138). Sonia’s formation of a pre-poll alliance with “secular” parties saved the Congress. The buzz in the Sangh Parivar at that time was that Vajpayee would vacate the seat for Advani in the middle of the tenure and would be made the President in 2007.
All this sounds almost fictional today. But in those days, Advani was no less a Hindutva radical. The famous debate of “Mukhota and Chehera” dominated drawing room discussions at that time. The liberal “Mukhota” of Vajpayee will be replaced by the real “Chehera” of Advani, it was said. After all, was it not Advani who vociferously defended Modi after Godhra enveloped Gujarat?
Today, Advani may even appear as a liberal face to many Modi detractors, but back then his was the “Trishul” carrying image in R.K. Laxman’s cartoon. If Modi can ride roughshod over his patron and protector today, it is because the real “Chehera” has taken over the system. The RSS has its “Chehera” in command now and the so-called liberal “Mukhota” is lying in a state of semi-coma.
The reason why the Left is left out today and liberals are trying to save their political space is because they did not realise in time that the terms of political discourse had changed. The middle class, which was the flag bearer of liberal-secular values, had metamorphosed.
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One layer of the middle class had become hedonist-consumerist, aspiring an American lifestyle, and the other layer was trying to find its identity in neo-Hindutva. The NRIs who were finding themselves rootless in the US or in the Gulf countries embraced Advani first and Modi later.
Those spending their evenings in high-end restaurants belonged to the former, the hedonist upper middle class. In their indifference to the lynching and anarchy outside, the other layer of middle class became apologists for neo-Hindutva. It is futile for liberals to look for political space in this class – Mahatma Gandhiji and Jawaharlal Nehru are, for them, just names from a lost world.
Kumar Ketkar is a former editor and Congress member of Rajya Sabha.
In this complete commentary, Muslims are just mere bystanders. They do not have any agency or choice. Maybe Huntington reincarnated as Laden.
If I were an islamist with an insidious agenda, I would pay for exactly such an article that makes Islamo-Fascists look like people lost in an airport. Harmless and clueless.
The photograph shown is of Bajrang Dal, but the title and story are for BJP. Imagine if news articles started showing Maoist gunmen for all leftist parties. And that’s one reason why I don’t trust Mr. Ketkar’s articles. He may have a point, but he lets his biases clour his journalism.
So says the political appointee of the congress who was rewarded with RS membership. Tax paying classes do not get benefits be it roads or infrastructure, by doing reservation for many minorities and others congress only gave political doles for vote banks this was the reason for middle class to abandon the congress, unfortanately for India BJP is continuing with same reservations for vote bank politics
In any society, the middle class is the custodian of its values, plays an important role in its public affairs, including the media. One is not sure that the middle class supports religious polarisation, violence against minorities, turning one’s face away from modernity, intellect and excellence. It is also aspirational and deeply interwoven with the health of the economy.
While you are not completely wrong about middle class apathy towards political development in the country, you have totally forgotten to write about political apathy towards middle class and their aspirations.
(Tax paying ) Middle class today is smart enough to understand (and not understand) what is noise vs. real issue. As you rightly said – all of these were always part of our DNA. Both journalist and politician do not like (at least publicly) to say good things about good food – our culture/language/food/literature is languishing somewhere. This is because whole generation of politician (like people who runs BMC) didn’t let us evolve – anyone born in this century aspirationally only wants to speak English, only wants to eat/dress like westerner. For how long do you want to talk about Nehru and Gandhi only, why not talk about Birla, Murthy, Bansal (these are being discussed today in the Khan Markets restaurants).
Since politician make policies only for poor (not for Mumbai or UP or India), middle class is leaving this country at increasing rate – I am worried about my country (about corruption, about lack of jobs, about mob lynching) and I proud of eating at fancy places. You continue to eat in stinking ‘Galli’ because that’s what is prescribed for non-middle-class by vote grabbing political parties and embedded journalists.
Kumar Ketkar Saheb has driven us to historical facts. He is right that the liberals have lost space in the present scenario of politics and Left are left with confusions with whom to travel. I visualize anti-Hindutva I.e RSS will come together to save India, it’s democracy &Sovereignity.