Liberal Project is not dead- Perverse version of Leftist Ideology masquerading as Liberalism is on last legs
- In Current Affairs
- 08:28 PM, May 25, 2017
- Mayuresh Didolkar
All those who enjoy the legal thrillers by authors like John Grisham and Steve Martini would have come across more than one lawyer objecting on the grounds of ‘assumes facts not in evidence’, meaning the question (or the answer) assumes something which is not backed by evidence as true. Well, if Ms. Sagarika Ghose was a character in one of those novels, her recent article in The Times of India (http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/bloody-mary/a-charter-for-liberal-indians-liberals-its-time-to-boldly-and-constantly-assert-your-vision-of-patriotism/) about liberalism would have to be thrown out as pretty much all of it states assumed facts not in evidence.
Sagarika Ghose says- The entire liberal project, you are being told, is apparently dead.
Who is saying liberal project is dead? And to whom? As a proud lifelong social liberal, I think the liberal values are alive and kicking. Honestly, can you show me one article/ scholarly piece written by someone with a modicum of credibility that states liberalism is dead? What many scholars argue, and I agree with them, is the uniquely perverse version of leftist ideology that has been masquerading as liberalism might be on the life support system after all.
Ghose says- The idealistic middle class, once a bedrock of India’s freedom movement, has been missing in action.
Again, not true. Thanks to the advent of social media and the telecom revolution, one would be hard pressed to think of any other time in our history where the middle class had participated in the nation’s political discourse with the sort of vigour and passion that we see today. The problem Sagarika ji and her ilk suffer from was termed as ‘No True Scotsman’ fallacy by British philosopher Andrew Flew. The fallacy goes something like this- let’s say you claim Scotsman will never kill and then read in the newspaper about a Scottish killer. You simply counter by saying- no true Scotsman would do such a thing. Similarly, what is missing in action is the middle class that meekly accepted the leftist narrative for number of years and so those present in the discourse and not in agreement with Sagarika ji are not, according to her, the true middle class.
Ghose says- Indian liberals, you are being told that you belong to the ‘Westernised elitist club’ and that you have a colonial mind-set.
This is a clever bit of sleight of hand where Sagarika ji conflates the larger group of liberals with the small Westernised elitist club that journalists like her belong to. Problem is not Indian liberals are being dismissed as Westernised elites. The problem is Westernised elites have a stranglehold on the Indian liberal movement.
Ghose says -Indian liberals have always stood against the rampaging state power and individual rights
Only partially right. This rampaging state power is (begging Sagarika ji’s pardon) essentially a western construct where societies had to guard against state excesses. In India, the state machinery, bogged down with red tape and rampant corruption hardly evokes any real fear. No, what the true Indian liberal fears is the violent extremists- the kind often eulogized as ‘misguided youth’ by liberals like Sagarika .
Ghose says- Liberals are called anti-nationals.
Not true, people like Advaita Kala and Economists like Sanjeev Sanyal and journalist Hindol Sengupta (just from my short list of acquaintances) are all liberals and nobody to my knowledge has called them anti-nationals. The problem is once again the sleight of hand where the order of the words liberal and anti-national is changed to suit the narrative. People supporting Kashmiri separatists are indirectly supporting suppression of the rights of religious minorities, women and gay people in a caliphate like regime that is sure to form if Kashmiri is allowed to secede. Yet these same people are termed as liberals by people like Sagarika ji in interest of larger ideological alignment. As soon as it is recognized that anti-nationalism is not the definition of liberalism this problem will solve itself.
Hilariously enough, next the writer talks about liberalism being mired in negativity and fear and that it’s become too focussed on denigrating and demonising opponents. The irony of someone who spent the first 1000 odd words of the very article railing and ranting against evils of the Hindu nationalism, asking liberals to stop focus on denigrating opponents is not lost on anybody.
Throughout the piece, the writer tries to whip up some kind of frenzy by randomly using names of leaders like Gandhi and Ambedkar as true champions of liberalism. Again, no doubt about these great people being champions of liberalism, but ask yourself this- would Dr. Ambedkar, a champion of oppressed and common people all his life, would have stood on the same side as the super-elite, super-snobbish Lutyen’s liberal? Would Gandhi, the ultimate advocate of non-violence, supported the ‘Banduk ke dam pe azadi’ sloganeering of the JNU type?
Sagarika also quotes Gandhi ji’s withdrawing from the non-cooperation movement due to the violence saying to him means were as important as the end itself. She doesn’t bother explaining why she doesn’t apply the same yardstick to the ‘misguided stakeholders in Kashmir’ or the Maoists in Central India? If we accept Gandhi ji’s stance on non-cooperation as the gold standard, how does Sagarika continue to advocate dialogue with violent and armed movements?
Noted American journalist and author Peggy Noonan once said that part of courage is simple consistency. And it is this courage that the kind of pseudo liberalism advocated by Sagarika ji lacks. If opposition to violent mob justice is a liberal principle, why is it not applied to the stone pelting mobs in Kashmir? If power of individual over state is something a liberal stands for, then why the deafening silence over murders of RSS workers in Kerala on the state government’s watch? If standing up for the rights of minorities is part of being a liberal, then where were you when the Kashmiri Pandits were driven out of their homeland in the most brutal manner?
The left purports to hate control by the state and yet has extremely rigid ideas about what constitutes liberal behaviour. If you don’t conform to it 100% you are a bigot, racist, sexist, homophobe. In this light, any attempt of an intolerant leftist like Sagarika ji to undermine the state’s authority must be seen as nothing more than a clever attempt to restore the balance of power to the good old days where winning elections was a mere formality and a small, exclusive group of elites who neither knew nor cared for public opinion made all the rules.
There is a certain amount of similarity between the extreme right and extreme left ( I am sorry, Sagarika ji with her recent lies on social media http://www.opindia.com/2017/05/warned-of-police-action-sagarika-ghose-deletes-tweet-spreading-communal-discord/ and this rant qualifies as extreme left) in that both sides are in a constant state of whipping up hysteria. If you listen to the spokespersons of either of these sides, you are apt to think that the end of days are nigh upon us. Whereas in reality, as bad as things might seem to those in present, most of the time it is just one more in the series of endless iterations of history. An average person would be better off focusing on mundane productive activities like his/her business or raising a family than buying this kind of extreme rhetoric.
So my dear fellow Indian liberals, when Sagarika calls on you to speak boldly and constantly over every issue, it is not the liberalism but the rapidly dwindling support base she is worried about.
Your liberal credentials have been tested and proven enough number of times. Don’t let them be subjected to an arbitrary test by elites with a dog in the fight.
Jai Hind!
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