The Failure of Gandhian-Nehruvian Nationalism and the alternative
Gandhi envisioned an India based on Swaraj, a spiritually minded set of self sustained villages, anti-materialiatic India.
Nehru wanted a scientific minded, secular, socialist republic, where the idea of rational thinking and equality would be supreme.
Ambedkar wanted annihilation of caste, where Chamars and Sharmas can intermarry and eventually become one caste, where inequality based on blood is annihilated.
How many of us who swear by the name of Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar have actually followed our leaders to any significant extend?
Modi wants an India based on the idea of Hindutva, a Viraat Hindu Rashtra, where all castes which respect the ancient principle of Sanatan Dharma are welcome in the fold, where the wisdom of Ayurveda, Gita, Manusmriti will find its rightful face, and where invaders, or even natives, who oppose these timeless principles of Bharat would be shown their place.
How many of us who support Modi actually believe and follow these ideals? All other charges on Modi and his supporters not withstanding, they are not hypocrites. They may openly contradict the idea is secularism that our constitution espouses, but they are not hypocrites. They may openly prefer Vedas and Gita over a textbook by Amartya Sen or Romila Thapar, but they are not hypocrites.
And exactly this gives the strength of trust, belief and devotion to the ideology of the right wing in India. People are ready to kill and be killed, to shut down the dissenters, and to sacrifice everything: just like their leader Modi who did all of the above.
There lies the answer to what makes Modi so attractive to Indians.
What lead to this utter failure of Gandhian-Nehruvian worldview?
Every ideology and every narrative needs a socio-political-economic reality to take root. The Nehruvian-Gandhian ideology actually never took deep root in India (much like Hindutva, which still isn't strong enough to last without Modi). But the ideological movement of mainly Gandhi against the British took root (concepts of Satyagraha, of Swaraj, of Charkha), the idea of Gandhi as 'Gandhi Baba' took root, and that generation's mindset was completely defined by their leader and their thoughts.
What makers of our constitution, mainly Nehru, Ambedkar, even Patel, tried was introducing western ideas of equality, secularism, democracy, and liberty while sailing in the ideological winds that Gandhi had generated. They knew that at least for coming 25-30 years, Indians will vote Congress no matter what, and hence they could make a constitution which doesn't reflect the reality of India, but which may reflect the reality of a modern Indian state 30 years from 1950. They perfectly knew that 'freedom of expression' is an utterly alien concept to 99.99% Indians (I mean, majority of people still don't understand what it means, in 2019), but they had hoped for a society where people start understanding that.
But they made some fatal mistakes which has led India to where it stands today.
1. They dreamt of changing India from a dirt poor, deeply casteist and feudal state, where religion is of utmost importance, to a irreligious, secular, socialist, state in 30-40 years.
2. Their western ideologies fundamentally lacked the perspectives that is required to build a nationalism based on India's past (which Gandhi had, interestingly). This left a huge vacuum in the ideological landscape of the country, which ultimately got filled by Hindutva.
3. They failed to understand the massive transformation that is needed to take state to the 50 crore Indians and pull them out of material and moral-spiritual poverty (Gandhi, again, succeeded in the latter). You cannot give sermons to a dalit on the importance of democracy if she doesn't have a root at her top and no money to eat food.
4. They themselves got hijacked by the inherent feudalism of Indian society: Congress became a den of dynasts, who cannot care less about their 'Praja', the people of their kingdom. Rahul, Digvijay, Scindia, Arjun Singh and so on become the faces of feudal Congress.
The ideals of Gandhi-Nehru were promptly set aside, even at times by Nehru himself, and it all become a game of thrones, gradually eroding the moral power of their ideology and ultimately descending to the utter immorality that we saw in UPA 2.
Not only this, the nepotism and feudalism that is deeply ingrained in Indian society, along with an immorality that Congress dominated politics became a hotbed of, also swallowed the Bahujan movements like RJD, SP, BSP and the likes. Experiments like that of AAP were too weak and too ahead of their times to propose any alternative.
So what do we have now? Absolutely no opposition to the ruling party, and not just from the point of view of a leader, but at an ideological level.
The idea of Modi is a part of the consciousness of millions of Indians now. Vice versa, the idea of Modi is a reflection of their own belief system- here is a leader, who is "boht hard" just like the cool dude in their locality, and who can show these pests of hypocrite leftists, liberals and JNU types who never really cared for them, apparently did nothing for their benefit and yet always sat on the high moral pedestal. This is going to be the mindset of this generation. The language of liberals, leftists, and western minded so callled modern people is what they will dispise. The meaning of secularism is pseudo secularism, of socialism is poverty, of liberalism is unbridled lifestyle.
The opposition will first and foremost need the moral courage and power to win the trust of people who have been cheated, used and hence have firmly placed their trust in Modi.
Then, it will need an ideology, firmly based in the reality of people, in the language that is their own, in the symbols and experiences that they could relate with.
Then, it will need the socio-political understanding of Gandhi's level (or Mandela's level, Martin Luther's level) to have the insights which would be needed to devise effective strategies and implement them in fade of fierce opposition of media, state, and money power.
It will then need faces which can compete with the "Bharat Mata ka Sapoot-Fakeer" image of Modi, faces which will have the intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual power to withstand day to day character assassinations, attack on family backgrounds, every day trolling and constant threats, as well as possibly physical attack and even attempts to murder (Martin Luther faced all this).
What would be the immediate next step which all of us who stand in the opposition of the ideology of the right can do?
We must read Gandhi, Luther and Mandela. We must read Buddha, Ambedkar and even Nehru.
We must read Geeta, even Manu Smriti and Vedas, as well as Bible and Quran.
We must read Communist Manifesto, Ayn Rand, and the literature of American, French and Russian revolution.
And most importantly, we must hit the ground, get engaged with people, understand where they are coming from, and what they have faced, what their aspirations and needs are.
The ones who would become effective oppositions to Modi would need to read as much as Ambedkar read, would need to discover India as Gandhi and Tagore did, will need to go to jail, face death threats and live a life of extreme stress like Martin Luther did. If people believe that your adversery is indeed a saint, who has left everything for India, you may actually need to do the same.
The biggest question now is, how many of us are ready for this sacrifice? How many of us would want to move out of our sheltered, safe, neoliberal life to hit the ground and be in the streets? This fight is not going to be fought in our colony.
It's okay if some of us are not ready for this. Then either wait till you witness the degradation and ultimately, even if reluctantly, get ready for the sacrifices, or if that doesn't happen, let people of India who you have little relation with and who you hence don't really care about, chose the future that they want, which may not be secular, liberal, even democratic- things which you've gotten used to be taken for granted. Continue sharing memes about Sambit Patra, continue calling Chowkidar Chor, continue propagating your elitist narratives of feminist (with ideas borrowed from the experiences of rich white women), freedom of speech (with ideas of Arundhati Roy), and have a good, comic relief for some more time before the new India arrives on your doorstep.
Nehru wanted a scientific minded, secular, socialist republic, where the idea of rational thinking and equality would be supreme.
Ambedkar wanted annihilation of caste, where Chamars and Sharmas can intermarry and eventually become one caste, where inequality based on blood is annihilated.
How many of us who swear by the name of Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar have actually followed our leaders to any significant extend?
Modi wants an India based on the idea of Hindutva, a Viraat Hindu Rashtra, where all castes which respect the ancient principle of Sanatan Dharma are welcome in the fold, where the wisdom of Ayurveda, Gita, Manusmriti will find its rightful face, and where invaders, or even natives, who oppose these timeless principles of Bharat would be shown their place.
How many of us who support Modi actually believe and follow these ideals? All other charges on Modi and his supporters not withstanding, they are not hypocrites. They may openly contradict the idea is secularism that our constitution espouses, but they are not hypocrites. They may openly prefer Vedas and Gita over a textbook by Amartya Sen or Romila Thapar, but they are not hypocrites.
And exactly this gives the strength of trust, belief and devotion to the ideology of the right wing in India. People are ready to kill and be killed, to shut down the dissenters, and to sacrifice everything: just like their leader Modi who did all of the above.
There lies the answer to what makes Modi so attractive to Indians.
What lead to this utter failure of Gandhian-Nehruvian worldview?
Every ideology and every narrative needs a socio-political-economic reality to take root. The Nehruvian-Gandhian ideology actually never took deep root in India (much like Hindutva, which still isn't strong enough to last without Modi). But the ideological movement of mainly Gandhi against the British took root (concepts of Satyagraha, of Swaraj, of Charkha), the idea of Gandhi as 'Gandhi Baba' took root, and that generation's mindset was completely defined by their leader and their thoughts.
What makers of our constitution, mainly Nehru, Ambedkar, even Patel, tried was introducing western ideas of equality, secularism, democracy, and liberty while sailing in the ideological winds that Gandhi had generated. They knew that at least for coming 25-30 years, Indians will vote Congress no matter what, and hence they could make a constitution which doesn't reflect the reality of India, but which may reflect the reality of a modern Indian state 30 years from 1950. They perfectly knew that 'freedom of expression' is an utterly alien concept to 99.99% Indians (I mean, majority of people still don't understand what it means, in 2019), but they had hoped for a society where people start understanding that.
But they made some fatal mistakes which has led India to where it stands today.
1. They dreamt of changing India from a dirt poor, deeply casteist and feudal state, where religion is of utmost importance, to a irreligious, secular, socialist, state in 30-40 years.
2. Their western ideologies fundamentally lacked the perspectives that is required to build a nationalism based on India's past (which Gandhi had, interestingly). This left a huge vacuum in the ideological landscape of the country, which ultimately got filled by Hindutva.
3. They failed to understand the massive transformation that is needed to take state to the 50 crore Indians and pull them out of material and moral-spiritual poverty (Gandhi, again, succeeded in the latter). You cannot give sermons to a dalit on the importance of democracy if she doesn't have a root at her top and no money to eat food.
4. They themselves got hijacked by the inherent feudalism of Indian society: Congress became a den of dynasts, who cannot care less about their 'Praja', the people of their kingdom. Rahul, Digvijay, Scindia, Arjun Singh and so on become the faces of feudal Congress.
The ideals of Gandhi-Nehru were promptly set aside, even at times by Nehru himself, and it all become a game of thrones, gradually eroding the moral power of their ideology and ultimately descending to the utter immorality that we saw in UPA 2.
Not only this, the nepotism and feudalism that is deeply ingrained in Indian society, along with an immorality that Congress dominated politics became a hotbed of, also swallowed the Bahujan movements like RJD, SP, BSP and the likes. Experiments like that of AAP were too weak and too ahead of their times to propose any alternative.
So what do we have now? Absolutely no opposition to the ruling party, and not just from the point of view of a leader, but at an ideological level.
The idea of Modi is a part of the consciousness of millions of Indians now. Vice versa, the idea of Modi is a reflection of their own belief system- here is a leader, who is "boht hard" just like the cool dude in their locality, and who can show these pests of hypocrite leftists, liberals and JNU types who never really cared for them, apparently did nothing for their benefit and yet always sat on the high moral pedestal. This is going to be the mindset of this generation. The language of liberals, leftists, and western minded so callled modern people is what they will dispise. The meaning of secularism is pseudo secularism, of socialism is poverty, of liberalism is unbridled lifestyle.
The opposition will first and foremost need the moral courage and power to win the trust of people who have been cheated, used and hence have firmly placed their trust in Modi.
Then, it will need an ideology, firmly based in the reality of people, in the language that is their own, in the symbols and experiences that they could relate with.
Then, it will need the socio-political understanding of Gandhi's level (or Mandela's level, Martin Luther's level) to have the insights which would be needed to devise effective strategies and implement them in fade of fierce opposition of media, state, and money power.
It will then need faces which can compete with the "Bharat Mata ka Sapoot-Fakeer" image of Modi, faces which will have the intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual power to withstand day to day character assassinations, attack on family backgrounds, every day trolling and constant threats, as well as possibly physical attack and even attempts to murder (Martin Luther faced all this).
What would be the immediate next step which all of us who stand in the opposition of the ideology of the right can do?
We must read Gandhi, Luther and Mandela. We must read Buddha, Ambedkar and even Nehru.
We must read Geeta, even Manu Smriti and Vedas, as well as Bible and Quran.
We must read Communist Manifesto, Ayn Rand, and the literature of American, French and Russian revolution.
And most importantly, we must hit the ground, get engaged with people, understand where they are coming from, and what they have faced, what their aspirations and needs are.
The ones who would become effective oppositions to Modi would need to read as much as Ambedkar read, would need to discover India as Gandhi and Tagore did, will need to go to jail, face death threats and live a life of extreme stress like Martin Luther did. If people believe that your adversery is indeed a saint, who has left everything for India, you may actually need to do the same.
The biggest question now is, how many of us are ready for this sacrifice? How many of us would want to move out of our sheltered, safe, neoliberal life to hit the ground and be in the streets? This fight is not going to be fought in our colony.
It's okay if some of us are not ready for this. Then either wait till you witness the degradation and ultimately, even if reluctantly, get ready for the sacrifices, or if that doesn't happen, let people of India who you have little relation with and who you hence don't really care about, chose the future that they want, which may not be secular, liberal, even democratic- things which you've gotten used to be taken for granted. Continue sharing memes about Sambit Patra, continue calling Chowkidar Chor, continue propagating your elitist narratives of feminist (with ideas borrowed from the experiences of rich white women), freedom of speech (with ideas of Arundhati Roy), and have a good, comic relief for some more time before the new India arrives on your doorstep.
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