Sriram Ramakrishnan
24 July 2017
An ideology’s durability and strength is often misunderstood by many. Its fiercest believers will always find little to complain but neutral observers can also be sometimes lulled into what is called ‘the willing suspension of disbelief’ when it comes to the receding impact of a political or religious system on people. It is easy to miss the rumblings on the ground while focusing on an artificial sense of stability created by apparatchiks of an imploding ideology.
Liberalism is going through such a phase, both in India and overseas.
In India, the shock of the Narendra Modi victory in 2014 has been worsened by the PM’s continuing popularity, the BJP’s electoral surge and the crippling inability of the opposition to even play token defence.
This sense of anger, outrage and helplessness at the right ecosystem’s inexorable march would have been more palatable if it had not been accompanied by a nationalistic and religious awakening among the country’s majority Hindu population.
This awakening seen in outward displays of aggression, the increased passion and fervour with which festivals are being celebrated and an increasing sense of pride in the country’s rich cultural and religious heritage bodes ill for the liberal left which has always believed in denigrating Hinduism beliefs while praising or elevating those of other religions.
Some arguments being made against this trend show the real fear among the liberal left brigade.
According to these arguments, India’s biggest problem is a growing sense of Islamophobia, not terrorism, terrifying demographic change, joblessness or sneak attempts to divide the country.
The Hindus, they feel are out to get their Muslim neighbours and their alleged hatred has been fed by rantings by fringe extremist groups.
This is so silly that one doesn’t know where to start.
The Hindu does not feel victimised. He does not hate his Muslim or Christian brethren. He would willingly live and work with them and there are many instances where the people from two or three religions live in harmony
What he hates is a crass and corrupt political system that, aided and abetted by a section of power-hungry journalists, unelected bureaucrats and venal academics, try to denigrate the ordinary Hindu’s pride in his ancient culture religion and civilisation.
The Hindu is upset that a corrupt political system in a desperate search for votes will try and bring about cataclysmic demographic change with little regard for language, culture and religious feelings of citizens.
The Hindu is angry that a weak, impotent state will allow an implacable neighbouring foe to dictate terms while committing aggression in one part of the country in the garb of fighting for freedom.
The Hindu is angry that Marxist and liberal historians have spent years whitewashing the crimes of Mughal imperialists and marauding Islamic invaders who looted, pillaged and destroyed Hindu temples while enslaving thousands of its people.
The Hindu is upset that nothing is being done to stop and roll back the creeping conversion movement that seeks to destroy Hindu identity in the northeast and southern parts of the state.
This is the real issue.
Not Islamophobia.
The average Hindu is angry at the political system, its masters, whose slavish devotion to a foreign concept of secularism, is being seen as an attempt to deny the Hindu’s true sense of identity.
Take the recent attempts to revive the much-maligned theory of Aryan migration.
People bent on reviving this discredited concept make an error common among liberal and left thinkers.
A nation’s identity is not dependant on which migrant group was the first to cross the border centuries ago.
It is dependent upon the dominant culture and religion practised by people of that country and region.
In India’s case, it is Hinduism whether one likes it or not.
Egypt is an Islamic state.
The fact Pharaohs ruled the country centuries ago and developed a vibrant, robust culture cannot take away the fact that Egypt’s identity is Islamic and its people practise an Islamic culture brought to the country by Arab armies in the eighth century.
It is also wrong to link alleged victimhood to economic security.
For the Hindu, it is not economic insecurity that makes him angry and resentful, but a realisation that justice does not prevail under a corrupt political system.
It is not about whether he is poorer than the Muslim or the Christian.
The belief that politicians have perverted the principles of natural justice for petty political ends has created a sense of anger and outrage.
That anger is now manifesting itself in various ways and eroding the false ramparts built by pseudo-secularists and their entourage in media, academia and politics.
This alone should give the liberal left warriors enough cause for worry.
R Sriram, Resident Editor, Economic Times, Mumbai