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Fringe in the mainstream

How things change. It was only a little over a decade ago, when the Bharatiya Janata Party rated only the lowliest recognition as a political organization. Few would then have imagined that at the turn of the century, the party would be firmly in power, and well on its way to recasting Indian society in an entirely different mould than the ones we had become accustomed to under Congress rule. Whether this turn of the political machine will bring us any closer to the much-hyped tryst with destiny remains to be seen, and must be judged many years from now.

But can we guess now what the immediate future will hold? What real consequences will flow from this sea change on the political scene? Now that the erstwhile fringe has taken centre stage, how will national politics evolve? Consider a couple of views from this newly arrived ethos, by way of seeking the answers.

Graham Staines should have done us all a favour, and stayed in Australia. Missionary activity, whatever its well-intentioned underpinnings may possibly be, is terribly confrontational to the prevailing culture of our country, and is bound to attract retribution from offended quarters. While I abhor his death and that of his young children, and hope the culprits are apprehended and punished, I would still maintain that any lasting solution to such incidents must include curtailing the right to propagate religion.

That's a troubling view, even despicable, some might say. But let me ask you this, anyway -- do you agree?

More than aggressive Hindus, it is the mullahs who hold the Muslims captive in illiteracy and poverty. Instead of hitching their hopes to an emerging and resurgent India like everyone else, and finding a respectable place for themselves in Indian society, misguided and manipulated minorities are positioning themselves for imagined and/or foreign-funded cultural wars that are mostly anti-Indian. No wonder that even a decent person who would gladly give minorities every opportunity to succeed now looks upon them as anti-national fanatics who are busy pointing the finger at others while completely oblivious to their own bigotry, terrorism, and economic misery.

Less gross or grotesque, but in similar vein, so let me ask again -- do you agree?

My take on these questions, and the countless others of their ilk is that sufficient numbers of the nation's population now find agreement with these views at least partially. Whatever the tone of political correctness with which the opinions may be voiced in public spaces, and despite endless name-calling, this view of Indian society has clearly leapt from its meagre beginnings to a highly visible platform. While we have been assuring ourselves, both from within the BJP and without, that the national consciousness is essentially tolerant and egalitarian, we have not stopped to ask if there are boundaries to this character, and if so, how close we might be to overstepping them.

The assertive rise of the BJP has more or less pushed us towards a two-stream society, even if not a two-party system. On the one hand is the largely unfragmented religious and cultural nationalism embodied by the ruling party, and on the other is the professedly more diverse and inclusive bandwagon of the Congress and smaller parties in the opposition. The latter is highly fragmented and internecine fighting among various political groups has diminished their individual importance, but it is conceivable that, if only for political advantage rather than ideological convergence, these groups might yet come together.

The BJP supporter, the cultural conservative, is an interesting creature. The linguistic and cultural divides that range across the country don't appear to apply to him very much. No matter where one looks, he is the same; drawn from the middle to upper classes, clothed in the uniform of economic opportunity even in many rural areas, self-assured Hinduism, and competitive business interests. His political counterpart in opposition, on the other hand, is a number of different people stitched together; minorities, lower castes, the poor, self-professed secularists among the intelligentsia, God-denying communists, and a few others cast together in a motley crew.

The immediate fallout of the distinctly different nature of the two groups is this. Among the conservatives, those who shape and propagate political opinion are able to do so with little effort, for their views can be cast rather uniformly and with minimum fuss. We are proudly Indian, and proudly Hindu, and whatever we may do to accept others in this fold, there is absolutely no reason why we should be forced to dilute this view of ourselves -- this is a simple message, and largely contains everything that the BJP consciously states come election time.

The opposition is handcuffed by an inability to state a similarly simple view of itself or its aspirations for India. The more inclusive one claims to be, the more precisely messages have to be tailored to reach one's audience. In addressing fragmented communities -- Muslims now, lower castes another time, high-brow secularists a third, and so on -- separate messages are needed even to convey the same core view of the political party standing behind it. This puts a huge disconnect between those who craft the messages and those who hear them.

And that is the crux of the problem -- what Arun Shourie says is easily resonant amongst the audience it is intended for, an audience that is typically more educated than average and better off economically than average as well. Millions of middle-class Hindu families all over India readily imagine that the prime minister or the home minister have families not unlike their own in character and conduct, however untrue this could be. On the other hand, what Mani Shankar Aiyer says is a complicated and apparently contrived argument that even in the best of times requires a fair understanding of socio-economic nuances which simply is absent among the vote banks the Congress cultivates. The vast majority of those who vote for the Congress and other smaller parties simply don't identify with their political masters and their speechwriters in similar terms.

Until that realisation dawns, we will remain on course for a rewriting of our cultural hoardings and a national policy strongly oriented towards assertive and unabashed Hinduism. Those who would see this to be bigoted or myopic are merely fooling themselves into thinking that their indignant posturing in the name of propriety and decency passes muster with the BJP faithful, contrary to the truth. No longer consigned to the margins of public discourse, assertive cultural nationalism is the dominant visage of the times, and is worn with pride by the sea of semitized Hindus we're warned about often and forever. The trouble is, we are the people we are being asked to beware of, and predictably, not many are buying.

The Congress, the Leftists, and their sundry allies in the world of fragmented vote bank politics will all pay a huge political price for the pretence that the world of the educated and liberated few, and a self-professed one at that, is the mainstream of our society. Stupid is as stupid does, and the reward is a long and unfamiliar stint warming the opposition benches.

Ashwin Mahesh