In an essay written some years ago, I had contended that there may be no historical inevitability, after all, that capitalism will be slain by the product of its own womb, the working class.
With regard to India’s capitalist democracy, however, I had ventured the thought that there may indeed be an inevitability about the Indian Constitution: that it may not now be conceivable that any radical political force, be it from the left or the right, can make bold to subvert/ overthrow its founding/ “basic” postulates.
Kindly allow me to eat my words.
Who would have imagined that with no Emergency in place, the most egregious violations of the constitution of India would come to be so consummately normalised as we are now witness to.
When the renovation of the Somnath temple in Junagarh was sought to be undertaken after Independence, the then President of India attended the ceremony in 1951 only as a private citizen.
Some 70 years into the practice of constitutional democracy, the chief occupation of the executive head of the republic now for weeks on end seems to be propagating and overseeing the consecration of the lord Ram idol in Ayodhya.
The fact that Shri Modi’s role as ‘yajman’ in the consecration on January 22 drew public reprimand from two Shankaracharyas—the highest and most venerated authorities in the Advait Hindu Order—has come to be brushed aside with unconcealed disdain. So much for the pretence of faith.
Yet, the stand taken by the top of the sanatan hierarchy has embarrassingly tangled the onslaught of the spokespersons of political Hinduism on those who have shared the critique voiced by the Shankaracharyas.
The question has begged itself: if the Congress and others who have declined a BJP party-political invite to attend the consecration ceremony are “anti Hindu”, why should the Shankaracharyas too not be dubbed “anti-Hindu,” having also declined to attend the ceremony?
So head-over-heels was the consecration designed to be that India’s obedient “mainstream” media immersed itself in the goings-on 24×7, without exception.
Not one has yet made bold to pop the poser: who represents the sanatan, the Shankaracharyas or the PM?
Just to remind ourselves, the Preamble of the constitution still retains the obligation that the state shall be secular, and shall refrain from showing partiality to any one religious faith, while respecting the freedom of all faiths to “profess, practice, and propagate” the tenets of their religion.
Many a liberal-democratic jaw now hangs in silent consternation at the unrepentant brazenness of the proceedings; but they may have only themselves to blame for having believed that the social/ cultural right-wing would never find the purchase politically to unleash its revanchist agenda in quite the measure now underway.
Or, that the Constitution and the People’s Representation Act to the contrary, unfettered denominational propagation would come to be the chief route to political/ electoral ambitions, with not a murmur, (with honourable, even if beleaguered, exceptions), from the world of the “watch-dogs”, namely journalists, academics, judges, not to speak of the officialdom that is formally charged with ensuring the compliance of political protagonists with the strict injunctions of electoral laws.
Nor was it anticipated, over all, that liberal democracy would in India turn out to be a mere elitist patina over a dour feudal/revanchist framework firmly anchored in the worship of power, vested be it among men or deities.
That a new so-called apolitical (read ultra conservative) class of Indians would emerge from our technological advance, and seek to marry “time-honoured” social/ cultural/ religious hierarchies and persuasions to a faceless and inhuman digital modernity was likewise not in the minds of leaderships who had banked on technological advance to also further ideological emancipation.
Let it be said that even Karl Marx who set great store by technological advance as a force of production did not foresee that the material progress enabled by such advance would turn out to be so counter- productive to overall human emancipation from the irrational oppressions of the old world. Or, indeed, would only marry those oppressions to technological controls, yielding the ruthless politics of religio-corporate fascism..
India’s political opposition
One is truly askance at the unrelenting and abject uniformity of the agenda now daily peddled by “mainstream” media channels.
It is to sing all-day-and-night-long hosannas to the proceedings in Ayodhya temple town, alternated with ad infinitum denigrations of the political opposition for being, allegedly, merely greedy on behalf of their own little turfs, and unable to match the towering figure of Shri Modi who commands the obedience and supplication of ostensibly an entire nation, rendering the asking of questions both superfluous and unbecoming.
That behind this agenda and persuasion lies ever-burgeoning private corporate wealth is by now acknowledged even by those who used to have some qualms.
As to state institutions as well, India’s “mainstream” media, nine out of ten, finds the victims in the wrong rather than the shamelessly partial agencies who tailor investigative energies to suit the faces they pick.
In such a context, the political opposition, their sound bytes notwithstanding, do seem insufficiently cognizant of the peril that awaits the republic.
Not many in the dispersed opposition actually seem to embrace the likelihood outlined above, namely that losing the next general election may not be just another normative electoral happening, but one that may in double quick time lead to a formal jettisoning of the basic verities of the Constitution with all the consequences that must follow.
It is well to recognise that the bulk of India’s new elite will have few qualms should such a transformation be attempted.
If anything, they may applaud the deed to the echo which will applaud back (to borrow from the Bard).
It is always the downtrodden who have the highest stake in an emancipatory constitutional order, and in a fair application of the regime of laws, not having friendly access to centres of entrenched power.
That being so, the opposition might do well not just to do lip service to the need for democracy but internalize that need sufficiently in the coming days to formulate a common programme of action which finds credibility among the republic’s overwhelming majority of the dispossessed, persuasive enough to draw them away from the opium now so preponderant.
In that context, the significance of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra cannot be overstated. Nor the mass contact programmes intended to be mounted by non-Congress opposition parties.
The political task of confronting a mesmerised populace with the weight of reality and rationality is not an easy one; but it is a praxis that must be undertaken with a do or die conviction, and to the exclusion of fissiparous sectarian interests.
Democracy cannot reside in the oracular voice of any one man, great or not.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
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