Just like an idea has the power to move a nation, a word has the power to move an idea. The word under siege, not just in India, but all over the modern world is ‘liberal’. In today’s world, it is a tragic synonym for intellectual infirmity and moral one-upmanship.
Liberals call an authoritative politician like Narendra Modi authoritarian and the political mortician of secularism, Rahul Gandhi, liberal. They warn of Yogi Adityanath’s religious credentials while indulgently viewing the communal diatribes of Owaisi or Azam Khan as comic relief. They mock the churlish Americanism of Donald Trump while keeping schtum on the unscrupulous visa practices of Indian tech companies, which created the H1B crisis in the first place.
Have liberals lost their place in history?
If it were not for them, the world would have been a grim and unfair place. Women couldn’t have voted. Widows would still be burned on their husband’s pyres. Blacks would be denied a seat alongside a white man on a streetcar. Dalits would be punished for their shadow; hot lead would’ve been poured into their ears for even accidentally hearing verses of the Bhagavad Gita.
So how did liberalism, the philosopher’s stone of social justice, go so terribly wrong? Why are nationalist politicians winning the vote, changing even the easygoing voter into a conservative?
Because liberal has become synonymous with weak. Trump won the US on patriotism and xenophobia. Brexit won the vote in UK. In France, right wing Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is surging ahead. Germany’s Angela Merkel is forced to take a right turn to avoid defeat. Modi continues his juggernaut run as India’s first Hindu nationalist prime minister while his ideological doppelgänger Yogi Adityanath is the new popular icon, combining spiritual beliefs with administration. Their power was not acquired in a military coup. It has been legitimately conferred on them by democracy—the eternal bastion of liberalism. Why are Indian liberals nor ready to embrace this contradiction? Why is democracy turning a blind ear to the liberal voice?
The road to hell is paved not just with good intentions, but also bad decisions. Liberals rant against Yogi’s saffron robs while avoiding the triple talaq debate. Their bandwagon has been hijacked by vested interests of NGOs with designs, parties with caste and communal values and academic sympathisers of extremist causes whose agenda overrides the mild-mannered sympathy of middle class idealists.
Visionaries are products of their times. Cesare Borgia, a catalyst for the Renaissance, was an unscrupulous murderer. James Madison, father of the American Constitution, was a slave-owner. Winston Churchill was racist. So was Mahatma Gandhi, later a saviour of the lower castes. Without embracing this contradiction, the liberal cannot proceed on this discovery of new India.
The liberal voice cannot be allowed to die in this bipolar world. Today, it resembles the tone of a has-been rebel singer with laryngitis, who has forgotten his verse. Sure, there is lost romance in old melodies, but leave the past to broken harps of old revolutionaries. Minus a new theme song for the future, the liberal will be the Phantom of the Opera in an India theatre, which is sold out.
Ravi Shankar
ravi@newindianexpress.com