Vijay Vikram

It’s been a while since I wrote on this blog. And a very good piece by a chap called Ahmad Kamran on The South Asian Idea has pushed me into rectifying that.

One of the themes that I love ruminating on is the synthesis of Indic and Persian cultures that emerged after India’s encounter with Islam. What is equally fascinating is how this culture has fractured and is in a state of war after the Partition of India – probably one of the most under-rated and under-appreciated of world-historical events. Intellectuals, both Subcontinental and Western tend to treat Partition as a localised event. A horrific event, worthy of intellectual analysis and monograph upon dry academic monograph but in essence, a tragedy restricted to and contained by the Indian Subcontinent. In actuality, the Partition of India is a world-historical event whose consequences shall be felt on the continuum of civilisations for generations. This could be read as hyperbole of course, but a very clear line can be drawn between what happened in Punjab in 1947 and what happened in New York in 2001.

Politics aside, the cultural consequences of Partition are very interesting. In the immediate post-colonial years, both India’s and Pakistan’s macaulite elites were united by the experience of subservience to a common master, being socialised by the same institutions and most importantly, living within the same political unit. I never cease to be struck by the fact that the Zia-Ul-Haq attended St. Stephen’s College and was on civil terms with Field Marshall Sam Maneckshaw (although that changed after Zia purchased the Field Marshall’s motorbike in 1947 and forgot to pay after he migrated to Pakistan). What has happened over the past 60 years, is a gradual Arabisation of Pakistani public life and an accompanying Sanskritisation of the public conversation in India. In Pakistan, words with Arabic roots are seen to be more authentic whilst terms that have a clear Subcontinental or ‘Indian’ connotation are seen as inauthentic. Ahmad Kamran provides a clever illustration of this phenomenon in the title of his piece – “From A’daab → Khuda Hafiz → Allah Hafiz”.

I rue this development because I hold the Indo-Persian synthesis to be the authentic culture of Hindustan. When I say Hindustan, I use it in its less expansive sense and restrict the meaning of the term to North India and Pakistani Punjab and Sindh. In fact, I should have been clear from the beginning. At various point in this short piece I’ve used the term India when I should really be saying North India.

Is it possible to resurrect this Hindustani culture? I don’t think so. That’s because culture is the servant of politics and is increasingly being made to conform to the diktats of hegemonic nationalist narratives. If I were to put my cultural hat on I would find this disgraceful. If I were to exchange that cultural hat for a political one, I might not find this state of affairs altogether unsurprising – inevitable even. That’s because the politics of the nation-state requires a unitary national community with a defined culture and history that aids the nationalist cause rather than undermines it. You can’t expect an Indian solider stationed on the Siachen glacier to have a nuanced understanding of the Subcontinental soul – he needs a clear narrative that defines friend and enemy – just like his Pakistani counterpart, regardless of the fact that both of them probably speak Punjabi.

R Jagannathan has a very good piece up on the Gandhi political family at DNA. If he continues writing with the same vigour he may just join the pantheon of Indian conservative thinkers that I look up to. The article is reproduced below after which some of my observations follow.

This is a welcome intervention Mr Jagannathan. But I don’t think it’s right to use Indira Gandhi and her son as templates for political leadership. They suffered from the same lacuna in political vision that you accuse Sonia and Rahul of. The only difference perhaps is that Indira was possessed of a will to power which I suppose is a kind of prerequisite for political leadership. However, that is not the total content of political leadership.

You are right in that Indira was a decisive leader. And in that very fact, she demonstrates some superiority to Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. However, Indira’s decision-making wasn’t motivated by any overarching concept of politics or a worldview. In this sense, perhaps Nehru was preferable because at least his political actions were motivated by an intelligible worldview.

It is understandable to look back at Indira Gandhi with some wistfulness because she embodied a decisionistic conception of leadership – something that is quite obviously valued in the era of Manmohan Singh (not to forget the latent affinity that India has for autocratic government). Still, making a decision and sticking to it is not the character of political leadership. A stubborn, impulsive child could do that.

The content of political leadership is determined by a coherent political vision coupled with a will to power. Rahul and Sonia have neither. And so I suppose you are right – at least Indira Gandhi took some decisions.

I have never liked Ranbir Kapoor or Katrina Kaif. So, it was with some trepidation that I decided to watch Raajneeti. It was recommended both by friends and family and one gentleman even mentioned that one of the characters reminded him of me. The film also happened to be about one of the subjects dearest to my heart: Indian politics. I also had the distinct feeling that it might not be crap. So, on the last day of my trip to India, I went along to see it.

The first thing I must mention about the film is that it borrows liberally from The Mahabharata. Nay, it’s based on it. What better inspiration could there be for a tale about Indian family politics? It was a pleasure to be able to identify and compare Raajneeti’s characters with their mythological antecedents. Some scenes from the epic are even unselfconsciously reproduced in the film. Perhaps the most memorable one is near the end where Nana Patekar, assuming the role of 21st Century political Krishna prevails upon Arjun (Ranbir Kapoor) to put aside any pretensions to honour and family ties and satisfy the requirements of political morality.

This is a theme that runs through the entire film. The idea that politics and statecraft is a plane upon itself and therefore mandates its own set of rules and morality. In this sense, it is reminiscent of Machiavelli.

(As an aside, I should point out that Nana Patekar’s character, Brij Gopal comes across as an amalgam of Shakuni and Krishna – which, needless to say, is a stimulating combination)

I was instinctively drawn to Ajay Devgan’s character (Suraj Kumar) who is unambiguously based on Karan from The Mahabharata. There seems to be an aura of badassery that permeates his character. Suraj, just as Karan in The Mahabharata embodies a will to power, a clear talent and of course an inevitable pathos. Just like his mythological antecedent, he remains loyal to Duryodhana till the very end.

Manoj Bajpai is the actor tasked with playing Duryodhana doppelganger in the film. And I must say that Bajpai is grossly under-utilised. He is forced to play quite a pathetic, unidimensional character and none of his versatility is on show. I have always felt that Manoj Bajpai got a raw deal from the Hindi film industry. He has all the potential to be a an unconventional leading man (better than Ranbir Kapoor at any rate). If somebody of similar stock like Irfan Khan is allowed his time in the sun, surely there’s space for Manoj Bajpai.

On an aesthetic note, I really must applaud the high production values of 21st Century Hindi Cinema. The wardrobe, props and locations were flawless. The dialogue was careful to utilise political Hindi, which was a nice touch. In many ways, Hindi cinema has come of age. The film industry has started making what I suppose can be loosely termed as ‘social interest’ films. More importantly, Bollywood betrays a sense of confidence and brashness that is infectious.

Having said that, Raajneeti is not free from the usual idiosyncrasies of Hindi cinema. There is of course the exotic love interest and the badly done, obligatory sex and kissing scenes that no Hindi film seems to be able to do without these days. Still, these are forgivable flaws.

In any case, I would like to end by making two observations:

1) I’ve always felt that the moral imperative in The Mahabharata lay with Karan. It is him that I am drawn to and it is him that I have empathy with. It is he who should win and it is he who deserves the gaddi. In this fashion, both The Mahabharata and Raajneeti end unsatisfactorily for me.

2) Raajneeti was only released by the Censor Board after the removal of a few scenes from the film. I imagine these scenes were deemed offensive to the sensibilities of the Gandhi family. I would love to find out what they were.

The crisis of the English-speaking politician in India (read: the firing of Shashi Tharoor and the spot of bother that Jairam Ramesh has found himself in) has led to a peculiar state of affairs - the name of Nandan Nilenkani has begun popping up as some sort of panacea to the ills faced by the urbane politician without a mass base. He is being posited as a model that Tharoor and Ramesh would be better off emulating seeing as he successfully made the transition from corporate life to public service and has been working away, quietly and efficiently – to implement a new layer of bureaucracy onto a State notorious for its world class public service delivery. This view would of course be unexceptionable in the drawing room chatter of Lutyens’ Delhi. However, I think this view – this argument is fallacious and represents a political discourse that is unthinking and venal.

What the champions of this view – Ms Sagarika Ghose and Mr Rajdeep Sardesai in particular – don’t seem to realise is that Nandan Nilenkani is a civil servant, not a politician. The two professions are of course complementary seeing as they are both committed to the furtherance of the national good but it might as well be like comparing apples and oranges. A politician creates political will, a civil servant implements it.

I have no intention of defending the Sinophilia of Jairam Ramesh or the misplaced gregariousness of Shashi Tharoor. But, it is the job of the political animal to be an active public figure whilst it is up to the civil servant to make himself as anonymous as possible and go about his mandate with a quiet efficiency.

All that the repeated invocation of the Nilenkani example shows is that Indian politics is being reduced to a managerial profession. The highest peak that Indian politics can climb is that of managerial achievement. There is no doubt that Indian governmental structures could do with some of the incentivisation that the private sector is famous for. However, Politics is not economics. Politics is not management. Politics is not administration. Politics is, well, politics. It demands a will to power and a sense of overarching national vision. More than anything, it demands a complete emotional bond with the national community. But if Nandan Nilenkani – with all his managerial/administrative virtues - is being posited as the ideal-type of the savvy politician of 21st Century India then there is something wrong with how we imagine our politics.

Of the many problems that plague Indian Politics, the one dearest to my heart is the seeming lack of opportunity for middle class Indians to engage effectively with the political process. In this context, I remember an Indian student at Harvard lamenting the perceptible lack of opportunities avaliable to him for active politcal engagement in India in an interaction with Arun Shourie. He asked:

If I may just ask one very short question that would probably interest everybody? How does one join a political party in India? If I wanted to join the BJP today, what do I have to do? Because I don’t want to join my mohalla-level engagement given the skill set I bring to the table. How do I pitch in?

The question is searing in its simplicity. The best advice Shourie could offer in response to this gentleman was, “get to know individuals and wait for your chance” – hardly hope-inducing. I suppose this is the vaccum that Friends of BJP seeks to fill. It allows the urban Indian, or Middle India – in FOBJP terminology - to engage with the only political formation around which any ”centre-right meritrocratic political dispensation in the Indian polity can re-emerge.” I think engagement with the urban set is especially important because they seem to have abandoned the BJP in quite large numbers in favour of the superficial cosmopolitanism of the Congress Party.

The Friends of BJP weren’t powerful enough to turn public opinion against the decidely anti-BJP national narrative that has been building for some time now. But they remain an indispensable instrument for mobilising this intellectually-significant demographic in support of the party. That is why I am glad that the Friends of BJP have taken the step to articulate their key intellectual and philosophical beliefs. I take the liberty here of reproducing the principles outlined in their latest post, Friends of BJP: Who are We

Friends of BJP is a subset of the educated civil society, which is BJP leaning and willing to be vocal about it. It is an associate organisation of the BJP and aspires to be a national movement, which will steer the formation of an effective and efficient Government at the centre.

Our identity, objectives, position and responses are governed by a well defined intellectual and philosophical framework. We are committed to the principals mentioned below:

• We are foremost and above all for the nation. Our fundamental objective is the security, prosperity and development of India and all Indians.
• We stand for equality and equal opportunity to all Indians irrespective or class, creed, caste, religion, ethnicity or economic status.
• We stand for civil liberties and respect the rights of the individual. Though the constitution grants these rights, the state often denies these to citizens, especially to those who are poor.
• We are committed to economic development. We believe that the state should act less as a participant and more as a facilitator and impartial regulator of economic activity.
• We believe that development of infrastructure, both physical and social, is of paramount importance in the economic development of the nation and that not enough has been done in this sector.
• We stand for a strong and secure India. We believe that the state should be more proactive in its preparation and robust in its response when it comes to the safety and security of its citizens.
• We believe that India must increase educational opportunities at all levels. India must eradicate illiteracy within five years.
• We believe that mechanism to support access to adequate, modern and effective healthcare to the disadvantaged people of India should be provided.
• We stand for probity and transparency in public life. The scourge of corruption has to be tackled at all levels in our governance structure. The state as well as its citizen needs to be eternally vigilant against illegal acts of private gain at the cost of the larger good.
• India has a diverse, rich, fascinating and valuable cultural heritage. This heritage should be adequately preserved and disseminated within and outside the country. Our culture should be used as a mechanism for promoting social harmony and building bridges with divisive elements in society.
• We believe in harmonious and cooperative relations between countries based on mutual respect and common good. Our national self interest must be clearly defined and upheld in all interaction with other nations.

The fact that the Friends of BJP is an associate organisation of the party proper is only to be welcomed. But in the long trek involved in setting up a right-of-centre intellectual establishment in India – of which the FOBJP is the first manifestation - a certain measure of  intellectual autonomy has to be ensured. The signs, so far, are good.

I am glad Arundhati Roy exists. I say this because we desperately require a coherent structural critique of Indian democracy. Naysayers might argue that her critique is far from coherent but that is of little concern here. I am happy that at least somebody is willing to question the nature of Indian democracy, even if that person stares across from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. There seems to be an unthinking; publicly articulated commitment to democratic politics all across intelligent conversation in India. It has become the holiest of our holy cows. The Indian variant of democracy is sustained by a wide variety of adulatory literature, scholarly and journalistic. Perhaps most perversely, in a strange case of the post-colonial disease, Western approval for India’s choice of government leads to much puffing of chests in the Indian middle classes. We are told that it – along with Bollywood – is the source of much of our “soft power”, whatever that is.

I am not going to waste time listing the failures of our unique choice of government. They should be clear to any thinking Indian. What I am going to argue however, is that democracy could never really have succeeded in the Indian climate. I ask you to be patient because mounting an intellectual challenge against something that possesses the degree of unthinking social acceptability the way democracy does requires effort and often I shall resort to polemic to get my point across.

I say that democracy could have never succeeded in India because India is a feudal society. By feudal I mean a state of affairs where unequal relationships between humans and between groups are socially legitimate. The very idea that humans should be or can be treated equally is an idea that would be alien to a feudal society. It also means that human beings are not viewed as individuals per se – a construct that has been one of the primary outcomes of the European Enlightenment. Rather, a feudal society imagines human beings as part of bigger social groups – religious, ethnic, regional and uniquely in the case of India, caste. Democracy then, could only properly germinate and take hold in Europe and Europe-inspired societies after the absorption of Enlightenment ideology into the European DNA. The Enlightenment has washed up on the shores of India, yes. But, it has failed to take hold of the Indian imagination. It is groups that assert themselves in India – Dalit assertion, Muslim assertion, Gujjar assertion. The individual is nowhere to be seen.

The Nehruvian project’s central failing was its assumption that the extension of the universal franchise would transform the teeming masses of Hindustan – the various regional, religious and caste allegiances into the intellectually comfortable category of the Enlightenment individual. This was fantasy. Democracy is premised on the notion of the individual, and I use the term in a deliberately technical sense. Democracy can’t create the individual, it depends on the individual for its very existence.

The grafting of democratic government onto a society that has no basis for it has led to a peculiar and perverse state of affairs. Indian politics has become an arena for the contestation of identities rather than competing claims of the common good. As Lant Pritchett has pointed out -

Politicians have been able to survive on creating identities around caste and religion claiming to deliver social justice by the very fact of their election. That is, that someone of their group holds high office in and of itself provides social legitimacy to a group’s claims to fully equal participation in the social and political sphere. Attacks on these politicians for lack of effectiveness or corruption could be seen as, at best, missing the larger social point and at worst, as a retrograde attempt of the forces of the elite to “keep them in their place.”

The degeneration of politics in India and the values it has engendered have infected the country’s public institutions. Naresh Saxena, a former IAS officer who served in Uttar Pradesh, penned a note for the National Advisory Council at the time of the UPA’s first election into office (2004) that is breathtaking in its hard hitting honesty about the current state of affairs (particularly in North India) and which articulates a common view within the elite civil service that things are going downhill, in large part because the integrity and the non-partisan character of the civil service have deteriorated. He says:

…because between the expression of the will of the State (represented by politicians) and the execution of that will (through the administrators) there cannot be any long-term dichotomy.  In other words, the model in which the politics will continue to be corrupt, casteist and will harbor criminals where as civil servants will continue to be efficient, responsive to public needs and change agents cannot be sustained indefinitely. In the long-run political and administrative values have to coincide.

I have often been asked what I consider an alternative to democracy to be. I would imagine that India needs a form of government that integrates market institutions into the fabric of the country without the wholesale import of political norms that have no roots in Indian society. My goal for now is simply to open the debate.

Postscript:

1) You can watch Arundhati’s critique of Indian Democracy here

2) I owe a substantial intellectual debt to Lant Pritchett and his idea of India as a ‘Flailing’ State. Read his landmark paper here [PDF].

The latest controversy surrounding Shashi Tharoor is proving to be utterly compelling. More so because I feel that the anti-Tharoor camp both in the media and especially within the political class is reaching critical mass. The earlier controversies had potential for embarrassment but they were surely nothing that could dethrone him from a political position that has given him an enviable seat on the Delhi Durbar – that motley crews of socialites, industrialists, politicians and media honchos who determine the direction of public life in our country.

On their own, Tharoor’s comments about the Cattle Class and Saudi intervention didn’t possess enough sting to conduct a full and thorough public trial of Mr Tharoor (although oftentimes, it came quite close to that) leading to a resignation. However, the cumulative effects of the earlier Twitter controversies and this IPL bust-up are ominous.

This controversy also has the added benefit of the whiff of a sex scandal. I use the term here very loosely, but in a puritan society like ours, Tharoor’s public appearances with his arm around Dubai beautician Sunanda Pushkar was bound to ruffle a few traditionalist feathers. The news that Tharoor is on to his third marriage with Ms. Pushkar doesn’t endear him to the Grand Old Men of the Congress party by any stretch.

Shashi Tharoor was always going be an unorthodox Indian politician. Aside from lacking familial pedigree and caste allegiance, his decidedly upper-class mannerisms and flamboyance in the English language set him apart from the typical Indian politician. New Delhi and Bombay’s chattering classes of course welcomed his entry because they had finally found one of their own in that dirty business called politics.

I should add that as an English-speaking, Western-educated Indian I have some sympathies for Mr Tharoor and his predicament. However, I wonder where his priorities lie. Public life demands compromise and personal sacrifice. The heat and dust of Indian public life is especially unforgiving. In his tenure as Minister of State for External Affairs I have heard more about Shashi Tharoor’s five star lifestyle than his initiatives on foreign policy. It seems to me that Mr Tharoor is more interested in simply carving a little niche for himself in Delhi’s intellectual social circuits – attending film festivals, diplomatic dinners and delivering eloquent speeches at prize ceremonies –  than he is in building a career in national service. The adulation of the Delhi bourgeoisie must be intoxicating. But if Mr Tharoor was serious about building a career in Indian politics and working towards the clichéd common good he should have – as Kanchan Gupta argued – “kept a low profile, networked and built a constituency in Delhi.”

It may be too late for that however. The anti-Tharoor lobby is baying for blood and 10 Janpath might just oblige. This then, would be one dramatic rise and fall in the Mahabharat that is Indian politics.

Update: Mr Tharoor could take a leaf out of his colleague, Palaniappan Chidambaram’s book and offer to resign. In the circumstances, Sonia Gandhi would be compelled to accept and Mr Tharoor could take a sanyas from public life. This act of self-denial would play well with the voting public and earn him the respect of his peers. He could after an appropriate amount of time – having cast off his dandyish avatar and perhaps gone on a neo-Nehruvian Discovery of India trip – return to public life a thoroughbred desi political animal.

Readable:

Got A Girl, Named Sue

The Trouble with Shashi

Tharoor Go, Save Your Class

Mayawati and Mr. Tharoor

In the normal order of things, I relish every opportunity to engage meaningfully with Swapan Dasgupta and Ashok Malik, two gentlemen who do most of the legwork involved in upholding the intellectual credibility of the political Right in India. I was then quite pleased to hear they would be participating in an online debate hosted by the Offstumped Community on the topic of “Challenging the Left-Liberal Bias in the Indian Media”. As somebody who has spent time a few months in a Delhi newspaper office and witnessed this phenomenon firsthand, I was looking forward to this debate with a quiet optimism.

Critique:

My first grouse with the debate was its relatively unegalitarian format – the aam right-wing janta was not allowed its say for about 45 minutes whilst the panellists sparred with each other. This however could be easily forgiven had the discussion been intellectually stimulating.

You can then imagine my disbelief as the discussion degenerated into pontifications on what it means to be an “Internet Hindu“. It is perhaps this idiotic moniker which has been gleefully adopted by many members of the right-wing netizenry that reflects the rot infecting the political Right in India and political discourse more generally. Issues of identity will always remain intrinsic to politics, even more so to the politics of a poor, feudal society like India. However, that is no justification to make loudly-asserted religious identity the raison d’etre of the right-wing project in India. As Ashok Malik pointed out in an email exchange, the desi political animal should concern himself  solely with…

…putting together a nationalist, economically sensible. right-wing political platform in India and working to shape the BJP towards this goal.

However, this is not the main reason for my post. My main grouse was how the discussion strayed from the actual topic of concern – that of challenging the comfortable centre-left consensus in the Indian media, particularly breaching the citadel of the English language media. To those who argue that the English news-channels are electorally insignificant, I would say they still have a massive sway over the Indian imagination because prevailing intellectual currents in a postcolonial society like ours are still, largely determined by the angreziwallas and it is that intellectual worldview which is recycled by the likes of Pankaj Pachauri and the perverse Ashutosh for their audience in the Hindi heartland.

It is in this context that I make the case for a centre-right media outlet. In analysing the BJP’s surprise defeat in 2004, Swapan Dasgupta argued that the party’s failure to craft an alternative intellectual establishment was one of the factors that led to its downfall. Setting up a credible, intellectually-vibrant news channel with a strong code of ethics and a distinctly centre-right editorial stance is the first step towards that goal. I am not one for crass comparisons, but Roger Ailes’ FOX news makes for a good case study.

I caught a hint of pessimism in Swapan’s interventions when the idea of setting up this news outlet was briefly discussed. If memory serves, it was something about such an attempt being repeatedly thwarted by vested interests. Perhaps his pessimism comes from a lifetime of contesting the received wisdom of his colleagues in the media. However, I think there is enough sympathy among some large family-run Indian corporate houses and that venerable new entity called “Middle India” to make a centre-right media outlet a viable project. Rajesh Jain and Amit Malviya, co-founders of the Friends of BJP movement had mooted the idea of a centre-right think tank to foster a new discourse on policy affairs in India. Whilst this is a laudable initiative, I think the conservative cause would be better served if the organisation harnessed the pool of readymade corporate talent at its disposal to explore the logistics involved in setting up a media outlet.

In any case, it is time for the Indian right-winger to stop obsessing over the perceived slights inflicted upon him by doyens of the mass-media and re-define the discourse for himself.

Reproduced below is an email exchange between Prasanna Viswanathan and Ashok Malik on the much ballyhooed Internet Hindu.

Dear Ashok

Sure you are doing fine. Please bear with me for this fairly longish piece but hoping that you will read it

I am a great admirer of your perspicacious columns. Along with Swapan and Arun Shourie,i regard you as one of the important voices of enlightened nationalism in Indian mainstream media.Your ability to demystify geopolitical complexities combined with an awesome comprehension of realities of electoral politics plus an instinctive understanding of sensible centre rightviewpoint makes your columns a delightful read. In the blogosphere,we have virtually dissected and discussed every columns of yours.More often than not we have been benefited by the remarkable insights that it provides.Infact we have an informal group of your admirers.We even invited you to a engage with us and broaden our perspective.Unfortunately that didn’t materialize though we continue to hope that it happens sooner than later

However this email is essentially to express my deep disappointment on certain parts of HT column that was published today

1. Moniker called Internet Hindu

It was actually a loony left-liberal coinage by an over-excitable (or should say i hysterical) lady media personality from a privileged babalog class.She coined it in a pejorative sense when her tweets(even many sensible people charitably called it moronic) came under scrutiny in a democratic internet medium like twitter Seriously its very very disappointing that a mature media personality like you is given credence to a communally loaded stereotyping and dignify it by making it centerpiece of a column which otherwise admittedly makes some pertinent point

Its also disappointing that you are using a patented leftliberal tactic of picking few fringe voices on the internet and passing it off  as typically  representative voice Surely you appreciate that there exists a diversity of voices in webworld even within what can be broadly called “Right” space .They are unrelated to each other and are working with varied objectives.As my fellow blogger Yossarin(one of most respected voices in centreright blogsphere ) tweeted in response to your piece “Fact that such unconnected fringe activism on Internet can be lumped with center right Indian political activism in internet exposes flaw of Internet Hindu label”.Also Yossarin makes another pertinent point “Center right political movement that came about on Internet has a clear goal in Indian politics that goal is not to rescue Hinduism globally”.

By clubbing such diverse voices under all encompassing pejorative term you are doing an tremendous disservice to many of us who are advancing Centreright POV on the blogopshere/Twitterati .Many of us look at web as a mobilization and collaboration tool to complement grassroot activism

2. “Professionally Frustrated”

Not sure who you had in mind when you indulged in this characterization Many of those who fit the moniker “Internet Hindus”   are gainfully employed and remarkably successful professionals(so uncharacteristic of you to use phrase like professionally frustrated).Despite our busy work commitment  its passion for the country and centre right politics that keeps us engaged with the political process/media discourse of the country.These type of attack coming from sympathetic voices is really depressing

3.Call to BJP

And finally on your call to BJP to distance itself /sever relationship with/from “Internet Hindus”.I am not sure whats the nature of your association with BJP or how much invested are you have in the  electoral revival of  this nearly moribund party .But many of us have considerable emotional stakes in revival of the party -we see BJP, for its flaws, still holding the key to advancement of genuine centreright politics in the country.

We are working on multiple outreach initiatives on reviving the party and web has been instrumental in  leveraging (to great effect so far) and mobilising like minded people for this cause.When a  friendly voices like yours asks the party to sever ties with “Internet Hindus”  it would potentially have a detrimental effect on our web outreach initiatives .Also lending credence to such communal coinages and making it part of acceptable ‘mainstream’ discourse , exalted centreright media commentariat is making life very difficult for lesser mortals like us

4. Taliban Comparison

This is a new trend that it is discernible of late.Comparing online Hindu activism with Taliban is maniffestly ridiculous beyond words.Whats the intent or purpose on establishing this kind of moral equivalence.I would certainly be keen to understand why otherwise incisive commentators like you resort to this comparison.Surely many of us dont appreciate that web activism over Wendy Dongier atleast the kinds calling for withdrawl of book etc.But pray how democratic efforts(however silly) like online campaign/collective legal action to oppose distorted representation can be termed Talibanseque?

Ashok in a nutshell a disappointing piece from you even more given that  centreright pov has a limited to marginal space in mainstream media discourse

Please feel free to ignore this mail but would most certainly be delighted to hear from you

Thanks
Prasanna

Ashok Malik responds.

Dear Prasanna,

Thank you for writing. I’ll try and address your points.

1. Yossarin is spot on. I completely agree there is a difference between those out to save Hinduism from global conspiracies (imagined or otherwise) and those simply interested in putting together a nationalist, economically sensible. right-wing political platform in India and working to shape the BJP towards this goal.

I see myself in the latter category. My article today was directed at those in the former category. I thought I was clear on that score.

2.  I do believe the more shrill and abusive Hindu voices approximate Talibanist modes of expression. The bulk of the email response to my article today has only confirmed this opinion. This is counter-productive and damages those, including many Hindus/right-wingers on Twitter and the Internet, who prefer a reasoned and rational argument.

3. The petition is not just “silly”. It is dangerous and seriously damaging to any rightwinger with even remotely Hindu sympathies. A petition is a perfectly valid democratic device provided it is logical, well-argued, backed by citation and evidence, written in grammatically correct and intelligible language and seeks action commensurate with the supposed misconduct of the person or object that is the target of the petition. The Doniger petition fails on all these counts.

4. I have been using the term “Internet Hindu” to describe a lazy form of armchair ideologue for some time now in private conversations. Sagarika seems to have arrived at the same coinage independently.

5. The expression “professionally frustrated” was directed at specific individuals who have been using Twitter and the blogosphere to spread disinformation, conspiracy theories and mischievous half-truths. I would not like to name those individuals here.

5. I’ll be happy to engage and interact with you or the group in any form. I cannot, however, commit myself to a full-fledged presence on Twitter — as you had once thoughtfully suggested I do — because my family and professional commitments do not permit me the time.

Looking forward to staying in touch

Sincerely,

Ashok

My response:

One of the misfortunes of having an intellectual sympathy for the political Right in India is that one automatically finds oneself in the company of unbecoming Hindu goons, be they online or in the field. As legitimate political activity in India is set on a default left-liberal setting, it is in the normal order of things quite problematic to find a desi political animal to engage with who is possessed of a sense of public service and a strong sense of national identity. The ones who do represent the aforementioned themes and other programmes dear to the heart of the Indian political animal often also couple these admirable political sentiments with quite a nasty anti-cosmopolitanism, not to mention a general distaste for Muslims. The latest brouhaha over a 95-year-old Indian painter’s decision to accept Qatari citizenship is a case in point. Without going into the stultifying details of this non-controversy, it is possible to illustrate the dilemma faced by the urban nationalist. On the one hand, there is the establishment media with all its shrillness busy bestowing titles of greatness upon Mr. Hussain, on the other, we have the cyber crusaders intent on punishing the nonagenarian for his treachery. Can you be a man of the Right and refuse to rain abuse on M.F. Hussain? For a child of that Indo-Persian synthesis called Hindustan and an advocate of assertive political action, this can cause a fair degree of cognitive dissonance.

If the choice is between urban cosmopolitanism however – a distinctly apolitical concern – and a movement that promises vigorous and ambitious national reform, the political animal ought to waste little time.

In an India that does not maintain a conscious commitment to the secularism that was so dear to her founding father, the only meaningful political-reformist impulses are to be found within that broad church called the Hindu movement. There is little doubt that the secularist project held enough promise to animate independent India’s Oxbridge-educated nation builders and for that matter, much of the professional elite. The vision of a progressive, religion-blind, postcolonial power was surely an attractive one for the champagne socialist. However, the democratising impulse inherent to Nehru’s nation building project ensured that a genuine commitment to secularism was gradually overwhelmed by the parochialism that comes naturally to a feudal society such as India. Nehru’s all-encompassing pan-Indian vision was to founder dreadfully on the rocks of region, religion and caste. Secularism in India means little more than being nice to Muslims and Christians. Although this is an admirable sentiment, it surely cannot form the basis of a comprehensive national philosophy.

The history of independent India’s politics is the history of the Congress ceding the nation-building imperative to the political Right. Why this has happened is a matter of debate. Perhaps the Congress, post-1947 really was a facade built around the gigantic political personality of Nehru and once he went, so did the fire of his guiding philosophy. One can scarcely accuse his daughter and her heirs of having much of a political Weltanschauung. Perhaps it can be accounted for by the vigorous activism of the Hindu right and the religiosity of the Hindu masses that in another era, Gandhi used to great effect.

Two points are clear though: India is a nation that still needs building and because the secularist project has run out of steam and fails to inspire the desi political animal, the only prescriptions for audacious political renewal are to be found in proposals put forth by modernisers from within the Hindu camp. There may be passionate men and women with an avowed commitment to Indian secularism residing in Delhi and Bombay who would contend the latter claim. What they fail to realise however is that they expend so much energy in fighting off the march of the Right and its pernicious agendas that they have little time to indulge in visions of societal renewal and meaningful political engagement. Machiavelli’s ideal of the political animal – one who sought the fulfilment and the glory that comes from the creation and maintenance by common endeavour of a strong and well-governed social whole – seems lost in the mediocre soap opera that is Indian politics.

The tasks facing the desi political animal then, are certainly not straightforward but necessary. He must utilise the energies unleashed by the right to create an atmosphere conducive to su-raj or good government. In practical terms this means committing oneself to policy affairs. In more normative terms, it means emphasising the will to power that comes naturally to overtly political movements. In the end, an Indian committed to political renewal has only one natural home, the Right, warts and all.