Modi has, thankfully, tripped a switch in our subconscious and ensured we have enough confidence to show the world who we really are as political creatures. (PTI Photo/Manvender Vashist)Ek hammam meñ tabdil hui hai duniya
sab hi nañge haiñ, kise dekh ke sharmauñ maiñ
— Sulaiman Areeb
There is something we need to be grateful for to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. No, not the injection of a testosterone-fuelled nationalism that now seems to course through the veins of every patriotic Indian. He has revealed the sanctum sanctorum of the people’s personal politics in all its nakedness. Like political predilections. Modi has, thankfully, tripped a switch in our subconscious and ensured we have enough confidence to show the world who we really are as political creatures.
This big reveal has meant the foregrounding of the “right” liberals, ignored first cousins of the “left” liberals. Let’s call them RLs and LLs. RLs are tolerant of diverse people and open to political engagements at dinner parties and social media. They don’t want to ban things. Most things their celebrated LL cousins do, really. Except, they believe in the might of the right — at least now they do. And now is when they are gloating under the glorious rays of a massive mandate.
However, just as the LLs were, mostly, circumscribed by class privilege, just as the LLs skimmed the surface of issues before forming opinions and outraging on social media, and, just as they often fit an arguably pre-set narrative in their heads to an assortment of facts before them — the RLs too, suffer from this malaise.
The RLs feel the mandate doesn’t have much to do with Hindutva. They assert the voters have chosen a man who can make India stronger. Pulwama and Balakot are the new markers of patriotic fervour and those questioning this hate the country. But just over a month ago, more than 150 retired military officers including former chiefs of the army, navy and air force wrote an open letter to the president urging to “take all necessary steps to urgently direct all political parties that they must forthwith desist from using the military, military uniforms or symbols, and any actions by military formations or personnel, for political purposes or to further their political agendas”. Do the RLs feel these officers have denuded the idea of India and national security by speaking out? In a report in this publication (IE, January 24), it was revealed how woefully short the IAF will be in the next two years when it comes to squadrons of fighter aircraft. Did the national security enthusiasts outrage then?
Another RL topic is how the mandate reflects a people united in their recognition of a singular identity, as an Indian, negating caste. This is as facile an argument as the idea of soya “meat” is in biryani. Multiple publications including this one have tried to contextualise how the BJP has been exceptionally efficient in rewiring caste equations. The party’s understanding, for instance, in the Hindi heartland and UP in particular, of the OBCs. The Yadavs being a core SP votebank, it focused more in ticket distribution on smaller OBC castes and “Other OBCs”, which worked in their favour. Among Dalits, BJP gave tickets to even smaller jaatis. All this isn’t nullifying caste currents. It’s creating and capitalising on newer eddies in the caste pool to the benefit of the BJP.
The fear that minorities feel is one aspect about which there isn’t much the RLs can say with conviction. The violence, they know, will never stop — whether it is Adivasi professor Jeetrai Hansda’s arrest or the regulation Muslim/Dalit man being lynched. The only option is to generously apply the palliative of “these are fringe elements”. That we still consider ideology-driven goons (of any party) as fringe is indicative of the intransigence of some to look reality in the eye.
A steely resolve to evade reality that strikes a dissonant note with their personal politics unites RLs and LLs. Consider these: A Muslim domestic help in Mumbai says she has enough savings to buy a house in the suburbs but she’d rather rent one owned by a Hindu. The financial gain acts as incentive for the landlord to ensure “goons” don’t come to throw her out because of her religion. If she buys a house, the chances of getting targeted are higher. Another Muslim domestic help who hails from a Saharanpur village in UP says that, in the past women in her village had to wait for certain times of the day to use the toilet, which was some distance away from their homes. Now, because of PM Modi’s schemes, she finally has some dignity. The RLs would likely be silent at the former and the LLs would dismiss the latter as a rarity (both verifiable instances).
For both, their leftist and rightist tendencies are incidental, a function of their lived experience. Their concerns display a common lack of acknowledgement of class-caste privilege and they share the same enthusiastic disdain for diametrically opposite viewpoints. One category has simply been at the wheel longer than the other, which now feels compelled to take over and drive in the wrong direction with the same sense of urgency and confidence as the former. A new grammar of political consciousness has to evolve that goes beyond the teflon uniformity of the liberal identity.
