A backgrounder on this series of posts in the run up to the Open Call to Debate on Challenging Left Liberalism, can be found here.
The first in this series of posts defining Left Liberalism can be found here.
To recap from the last post, it was proposed that we must frame our definitions from the point of view of the tension between the Individual, Community and the State.
It was also proposed that we must characterize this tension along the three axes of – Cultural and Economic Choices the Individual must make and Strategic choices the State must make to preserve itself.
A defining characteristic of Indian politics in the last two decades has been the emergence of Identity as the basis for political mobilization.
Identity not just defined the principal political faultline of Communalism versus Psuedo-Secularism, Identity has also been the currency of negotiation for Entitlements.
In yesterday’s post we discussed the limitations of Psuedo Secularism as a label. Extending the same logic we examine critically the ideological label Hindutva.
What purpose does the ideological label Hindutva serve ?
If we were to ask the same questions of Hindutva that we had asked of Left Liberalism on the tensions between the Individual, Community and State we in making socio-cultural, economic and strategic choices, we end up in a quandary.
For there is nothing in the definition of Hindutva or essence of Hindu Thought, that tells us how these choices would be made and who would enjoy primacy at the expense of others in making those choices.
It in fact is foolish to expect such an Identity based definition of Hindutva to offer us answers for there would be many who profess faith in Hindu thought and yet are quite comfortable taking overtly Left Liberal positions as defined before.
But that is not all, the fallacy of Hindutva as a label is exposed when we take a close look at the political positions of those who swear by it.
There are many who swear by Hindutva and yet believe that the State and Community should have primacy over the Individual in making economic, cultural and strategic choices.
If we were to strictly compare this position with Communism, the similarities hard to miss, for Communism too would overrule the Individual in making economic, cultural and strategic choices.
Similarly if we were to swap the Minority label with the Majority label there is practically no difference in the compromises the Left Liberals would happily make on economic and strategic issues and the positions the Hindutva-vaadis would advocate on the same.
It is ironical that all three Left Liberals, Communists and many of those who swear by Hindutva agree on the State overruling the Individual in making choices.
The distinction if any between these three lies in the reasons they offer to rationalize their positions
#1 The Left Liberals justify it on the grounds of tyranny of the cultural/religious Majority
#2 the Communists justify it on the grounds of tyranny of the Bourgeoise
#3 some who swear by Hindutva justify it as a reaction to the tyranny of the Left Liberals and their Minority bias.
There in lies the fallacy of using Identity as an ideological label for it obfuscates the truth that many who profess Hindutva are no different from Left Liberals when it comes to making choice on economic issues and no different from Communists when it comes to making choice on cultural and strategic issues.
A direct outcome of this fallacy is that many who vote on the basis of Hindutva may actually be voting against their own economic or strategic interests.
A situation no different from Minority Vote Bank politics where many who vote in favor of Left Liberalism do so at the expense of their own economic and strategic interests.
What about the label Internet Hindu ?
As we have seen in the case of Hindutva, Identity as an Ideological label is not a reliable guide on of how choices will be made.
It is for this same reason that the label “Internet Hindu” is not particularly useful.
Apart from telling us about an Hindu who is active on the Internet, it says little to nothing on how we make political choices on issues and who we trust more between the Individual, the Community and the State.
It doesnt set us apart from Left Liberals some of who may even be Hindus on the Internet, in how we make choices.
What is worse it allows the lumping every Hindu on the Internet within this broad label unmindful of either Cause or Country.
Where do we go from here ?
It is important to not lose sight of the original objective here which is
to define an alternative that is in opposition to the broad political space occupied by the Congress and Communists and that is mostly defined by the label Left Liberalism.
We need to do so because
#1 We want policies and politics that make choices that consistently serve our interests in all the three realms – economic, cultural and strategic.
#1 We have also found that politics that may swear to be in opposition to Left Liberalism e.g. Hindutva, may actually end up agreeing with Left Liberalism on many issues thus end up hurting our interests rather than serving them
Hence the next step would be to define a label that consistently tells us how to make choices in a manner that is the political opposite of Left Liberalism and thus consistently serve our interests.
There is much to choose from in defining such a label from across ancient ideas of Rajadharma symbolized by the White Umbrella, recent ideas of Integral Humanism, Minimum Government Maximum Governance and of course British and American Conservativism amongst others.
More on that in the next post.
Filed under: DesiPundit, Left Liberalism, Progressivism
Mainstream Media has realised that they missed the blogging bandwagon. But, after the ‘cattle class shashi tharoor saga’ they feel the need to explore a new medium which is twitter.
The issue has been that lot of these media personalities can come to terms with the democratic nature of twitter. You make one comment and a thousand mentions come back as a response. Blogs used to have the feature of blocking such messages from general public. Twitter does not provide this facility. The universal condemnation which comes on every goof-up that happens leads to very irrational responses.
Sagarika Ghose’s ‘gutter snipe’ statement is an example of this phenomena.
In light of this Ashok Malik’s categorization of everybody as a radical fringe is a little bit naive. It is granted that there are a few ‘Internet Hindus’ who dont necessarily follow norms of civility. But, such people are few and far in between. Taking a few fringe instances as representative of the complete phenomenon is gross misrepresentation.
Incidentally, every right-wing follower does not have to be a BJP supporter. I’m a BJD fan myself. In Orissa, I find the BJP useless. Therefore, the categorization of everybody as a single identity is perhaps, unwarranted.
I would like to see Mr. Malik or Mr. Dasgupta write about sagarika ghose calling somebody as a gutter snipe. Sadly, journalistic unionship(another leftwing phenomenon) might force them not to do so.
Unfortunately, you are following the left wing narrative to define ourselves. Who cares what the left wing labels are.
The right wing has to define what it’ll stand for.
- Economic freedom – ending tyranny of govt economic control while creating safety net for bottom 20% (we are still a poor country)
- Free & Open trade for prosperity and economic competitiveness
- Strong defence including on terrorism – not just build a show military without no use for it
- Cultural Hinduism
It’s time to create our own narrative.
http://csspeak.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-being-centrist-wont-work-in-india.html
-cs
Interesting analysis.Looking forward to the online debate.
@chandra
@all
Right vs left debate in Indian context continues to beat me. I think that this classification of identity or ideology has its roots in European christian theology. In this framework the rightists were/are conservative Christians in nexus with church trying to hold onto political power, while leftists were/are political opponents pf church, its agents and its aristocratic friends.
While rightists have continued to define themselves on the same old conservative Christianity/religion stance, the leftists have tried various things to describe themselves. They started with Atheism, another modern concept grounded in European Christian theology (very easy to confuse this with Nastika schools of thought of Hindu philosophy). Class struggle, socialism, communism, liberalism etc are other concepts they have spun or defined to grab the political power from their chief opponents. And, the rightists in accordance with their roots have continued to use religion, God to claim superiority over “God less” leftists. The truth is that both ideologies draw their origins from same places and circumstances.This is very much akin to Christianity and Islam having their roots in Judaism and yet staying at loggerheads with one another.
I do not know the right words we should be using but I definitely think that its not healthy to categorize ourselves as rightists. I have time and again seen discussions spiraling down into meaningless left vs right debates making it hard to focus on the issue from Indian context of Dharma, Culture and values system. May be they are meaningful, may be it is only me that feels this way, but one thing is sure, we are once again, for the nth time now, giving a chance to the outsider to define, classify us and our narratives, somewhat akin to Plants and Animals
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psecular.wordpress.com
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