What is the difference between nationalism and patriotism? Are rulers sheeps in wolves clothings? Or is it the opposite? Is religion for the sake of man, or is the man for sake of religion? What exactly is secularism? Is everyone in authority just?
Are some of the most important questions, India needs to ponder upon in completion of Narendra Modi’s 6 year tenure, today. Which is also a shame, please note. In a time when globally democracies are progressing towards a modern and inclusive society with more scientific temper, India has to introspect and find answers to these questions, because India is confused in the interconnection between what’s legal, what’s idealistic and what we are actually doing.
In last years India allowed you the luxury of a million inequalities. One vociferous ideology is glittering without worth in the mousetrap of hatred.
Authoritarian and insecure by nature, Mr Modi responded to the political dissent with paranoia. After all, raw power is the only currency valid in India today.
The resounding electoral victory invoice generated the majoritarian ideology of Hindu Supremacy, or hindutva, which now threatens to tear apart India’s secular fabric. Physical attacks on minorities, the targeting of dissent as antinational and the lynching of muslims suspected of trading and consuming beef by cow protection goon squads have become all too frequent. Hindutva ideologies dismiss those protesting the lynchings as elites whose “rootless cosmopolitanism” is out of the step with the support culture of popular Hinduism. They label critics as enemies of national unity and development that are desired by the majority.
A homogeneous body of “the people” demands nothing less than its total and unmediated presence in the power that rules over them. Modi appears, claiming to embody “the people” and justifying authoritarian attacks on recalcitrant institutions and dissent in the name of popular will. At this extreme end of the spectrum, the claim for the direct expression of popular sovereignty conjoins populism with authoritarianism.
Popular activism arises in the tension between these two ends of politics, demanding that the formal institutions of democracy– the elected government, law and the judiciary, press and the public sphere- respond to the people’s voice.
My question here is, what is a country if its not a conversation? Why is it that country is limited to only a mere plot of land with some geographical borders? Why is it that public is the pawn here? Shouldn’t it be opposite? I’ll say, reclaim your freedom from the fascist govt. Voice your opinion. Freedom from fear is the freedom you must claim for your motherland. Let the fire in you ignite in realms of democratic dissent. You see all battles aren’t fought for winning but just to establish the fact that someone fought while others refused to.
However, people still call modi a democratically elected Prime Minister. However, majoritarian support dosen’t necessarily ceases constitutional molarity. Similarly, bjp’s electoral victory can’t justify toxic communalism and hindutva. The hindutva nationalism is basically tempered by self deception, as a result of collective narcissism.
Secularism implies an association of religious considerations from political and social life. Religion is ideally a matter of personal faith on which modern secular society is based upon values which may not contain an ocean of fundamental human rights. As we understand them today as modern man will not rely on vision for deriving our concept of social consigns but in India today that is an ideal and not a practice.
Currently the political culture bore the full brunt of the consequences of democracy’s bargain with Indian society’s deep inequality. The rituals of feudal prostration demanded by the elite transmogrified into showy performances of political fealty to the powerful. It is all an act. Yesterday’s followers pledging undying loyality could turn into today’s dissidents on a dime. The fluidity of power has opened the sluice gates for ambitious “fixers” who rushed in to manage contracts and licences and become a conduit for raising party funds.
Driven by half baked nationalism ,it wanted to destroy everyone who disagrees with them or is different in religion or caste/creed.
When we were enslaved under the British we could imagine freedom, but now that we are free, how will be imagine subjection but the question is are we really free? The value of the postcolonial freedom was brought with millions of slaughtered and uprooted lives.
Could such freedom magically eradicate subjection when it was itself slave to religious fanaticism and barbarism.
The Indian leaders had penned their vision of freedom in the constitution of India which provided a state that would act with extraordinary power to guarantee the state freedom and introduce social change. This wasn’t because they were authoritarian at heart. In the anti colonial struggle a strong commitment to civil liberties was produced. It is why the nationalist elite endowed Indian citizens with fundamental rights. Democracy permitted the expression of different views and creeds. But what if people cared more for their narrow minded thoughts rather than general interest? After all, this had happened before.
You might be thinking now that until when will history repeat itself in a negative way, when will that day come when all of us will ignite ourself with the realms democratic decent. Ambedkar had one said that how can people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation? What India needed was a thorough social transformation, a removal of inequality. And our politicians today have taken the advantage of this loophole because democracy in India is only a top dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic.
You know when will we be free? The day, we no longer have to answer those questions in the beginning of the blog, because at present, subjugated with self delusion, the real meaning of freedom has faded. Freedom from the insult of dwelling in a puppet’s world, where movements are started through brainless wires, repeated through mindless habits, where figures wait with patience and obedience for the master of show be stirred into a mimicry of life, is the real freedom, and certainly when you I’ll no longer, give up on yourself and continue to dream, even if your wings are clipped off.
Deb's Blog 