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Blame The
Middle Class
The national leadership of Congress party does not have the courage
to confront Narendra Modi over the anti-Muslim progroms of 2002,
given its own abominable record of 1984 pogroms of the Sikhs
Ashish Nandy
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 At a time
when the Indian Middle Class is being looked at as the group
that will supposedly deliver the country from the inhuman value
system that it is stuck in — the caste wars, the utterly inhuman
treatment meted out to the lowered castes, the vice-like hold of
the Brahamanic hegemonic forces — and the regime is taking
little note of the moral vaccuity and depoliticisation of the
upcoming generations, perhaps one should look at the Middle
Class phenomena without the blinkers of economic development.
Much has
changed since BB Misra's 1961 classic study “India's Middle
Classes: Their Growth In Modern Times”. As Misra wrote, “Both
Freedom and Division were the work of Indian middle classes.”
The fact remains that the new Indian middle class is marked by
its social and cultural visibility, but its political role is
often invisible. Its claims tend to be coded in terms of
representative citizenship yet in practice they are often
defined by exclusionary social and political boundaries. This
piece by Ashis Nandy, that focusses on the Middle Class in
India's partisan and scarred-with-Hindutva state Gujarat, has
generated some strong reactions from within some Middle Class
elements nurtured on a hegemonic, homogenous idea of a
nation-state. Nandy's views on Indian secularism and his
ideological positioning has been very problematic and the WSN
certainly has its views on that, but we produce this article as
our commitment to the freedom of the media. Nandy is
increasingly under attack since the publication
of this
article earlier this month, and the 'National Council of Civil
Liberties' has filed a suit against him, clearly with a nod from
Narendra Modi. |
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 Now that the dust has settled over the
Gujarat elections, we can afford to defy the pundits and admit that,
even if Narendra Modi had lost the last elections, it would not have
made much difference to the culture of Gujarat politics. Modi had
already done his job. Most of the state's urban middle class would
have remained mired in its inane versions of communalism and
parochialism and the VHP and the Bajrang Dal would have continued to
set the tone of state politics. Forty years of dedicated propaganda
does pay dividends, electorally and socially.
The Hindus and the Muslims of the state — once bonded so
conspicuously by language, culture and commerce — have met the
demands of both V D Savarkar and M A Jinnah. They now face each
other as two hostile nations. The handful of Gujarati social and
political activists who resist the trend are seen not as dissenters
but as treacherous troublemakers who should be silenced by any
means, including surveillance, censorship and direct violence. As a
result, Gujarati cities, particularly its educational institutions
are turning cultural deserts.
Gujarat
has already disowned the Indian Constitution and the state apparatus
has adjusted to the change. The Congress, the main opposition party,
has no effective leader. Nor does it represent any threat to the
mainstream Politics of Gujarat. The days of grassroots leaders like
Jhinabhai Darji are past and a large section of the party now
consists of Hindu nationalists. The national leadership of the party
does not have the courage to confront Modi over 2002, given its
abominable record of 1984.
The Left is virtually non-existent in
Gujarat. Whatever minor presence it once had among intellectuals and
trade unionists is now a vague memory. The state has disowned
Gandhi, too; Gandhian politics arouses derision in middle-class
Gujarat.
Except for a few valiant old-timers, Gandhians have made peace with
their conscience by withdrawing from the public domain. Gandhi
himself has been given a saintly, Hindu nationalist status and
shelved. Even the Gujarati translations of his Complete Works have
been stealthily distorted to conform to the Hindu nationalist
agenda. Gujarati Muslims too are "adjusting" to their new station.
Denied justice and proper compensation, and as second-class citizens
in their home state, they have to depend on voluntary efforts and
donor agencies. The state's refusal to provide relief has been
partly met by voluntary groups having fundamentalist sympathies.
They supply aid but insist that the beneficiaries give up Gujarati
and take to Urdu, adopt veil, and send their children to madrassas.
Events like the desecration of Wali Gujarati's grave have pushed one
of
India's culturally richest, most diverse, vernacular Islamic
traditions to the wall. Future generations will as gratefully
acknowledge the sangh parivar's contribution to the growth of
radical Islam in India as this generation remembers with gratitude
the handsome contribution of Rajiv Gandhi and his cohorts to Sikh
militancy.
The secularist dogma of many fighting the sangh parivar has not
helped matters. Even those who have benefited from secular lawyers
and activists relate to secular ideologies instrumentally. They
neither understand them nor respect them. The victims still derive
solace from their religions and, when under attack, they cling more
passionately to faith. Indeed, shallow ideologies of secularism have
simultaneously broken the back of Gandhism and discouraged the
emergence of figures like Ali Shariatis, Desmond Tutus and the Dalai
Lama — persons who can give suffering a new voice audible to the
poor and the powerless and make a creative intervention possible
from within worldviews accessible to the people.
Finally,
Gujarat's
spectacular development has underwritten the de-civilising process.
One of the worst-kept secrets of our times is that dramatic
development almost always has an authoritarian tail. Post-World War
II Asia too has had its love affair with developmental despotism and
the censorship, surveillance and thought control that go with it.
The East Asian tigers have all been maneaters most of the time.
Gujarat
has now chosen to join the pack. Development in the state now
justifies amorality, abridgement of freedom, and collapse of social
ethics. Is there life after Modi? Is it possible to look beyond the
35 years of rioting that began in 1969 and ended in 2002? Prima
facie, the answer is "no".We can only wait for a new generation that
will, out of sheer self-interest and tiredness, learn to live with
each other. In the meanwhile, we have to wait patiently but not
passively to keep values alive, hoping that at some point will come
a modicum of remorse and a search for atonement and that ultimately
Gujarati traditions will triumph over the culture of the state's
urban middle class.
Recovering
Gujarat
from its urban middle class will not be easy. The class has found in
militant religious nationalism a new selfrespect and a new virtual
identity as a martial community, the way Bengali babus,
Maharashtrian Brahmins and Kashmiri Muslims at different times have
sought salvation in violence. In
Gujarat
this class has smelt blood, for it does not have to do the killings
but can plan, finance and coordinate them with impunity. The actual
killers are the lowest of thelow, mostly tribals and Dalits. The
middle class controls the media and education, which have become
hate factories in recent times. And they receive spirited support
from most non-resident Indians who, at a safe distance from India,
can afford to be more nationalist, bloodthirsty, and irresponsible.
25
June, 2008
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