A RECENT WHATSAPP forward that has spread like wildfire euphorically heralds some sort of a glorious revival of the Right-Wing ideology across the Western hemisphere. Its conclusion basically is that because Giorgia Meloni, Javier Milei, Geert Wilders, et al., have been elected with thumping majorities, Narendra Modi too, will return to power in 2024.
At the very least, this is the latest exemplar of an old logical fallacy: of confounding correlation with causation. At worst, it is the return of another old ailment that has plagued the Hindu community for the last 150 years: of seeking western validation for our own successes, which have nothing to do with the west. To put it bluntly, such behaviour is the outward expression of our subconscious colonization which clings to the alien and fears taking ownership of our own triumphs.
Even in the limited sphere of electoral politics, equating Narendra Modi with Geert Wilders or Giorgia Meloni is akin to forcing a simile between Christ’s alleged Second Coming and Krishna Janmashtami.
The West has a well-defined Right Wing. India has only a well-defined Left Wing fully populated by spectral Indian slaves of the West. Members of this Indian Left Wing are equal opportunity slobberers: they avidly lick the saliva-stained crumbs off the palms of both the soul-vultures of the Joshua Project as well as the world-burning denizens of George Soros and Pierre Omidyar.
India thus is a freak case where the ideological opponents of the (Indian) Left are yet to define themselves unambiguously. Defining themselves as “Right Wing” causes more self-inflicted harm than good in the long run. From its inception, the Indian Left has been honest about and proudly flouts its colonization. But because the Indian Left’s opponents have had no clear self-definition, they have had to resort to drawing feel-good parallels between Wilders and Modi, Trump and Modi and so on. This is not to question the genuine commitment of the Indian non-Left to their pet causes but to point out a historical and commonsense reality: that the best weapons in your arsenal pose the constant danger of backfiring.
I distinctly recall the eminently wise words of the literary scholar, Dr. L.V. Shanta Kumari who once told me, “wings on human beings look ugly and stupid.”
The Right Wing of the West, if it acquires absolute power, will for example, further accelerate the pace of Christian conversions in India. History demonstrates that the missionary apparatus loves nothing more than a bloody civil war within the society of its targets.
The Right Vs Left battle in the West has a reasonably long history. What has made it so stark and visible today is the unprecedented level of global connectedness, plus the demonic transformation of the Left into Woke. The ongoing backlash in the West against the Left has occurred precisely because Woke has singularly destroyed the family unit out there and has been the most loyal concubine of Islamic terror. By all counts, this is the West at war with itself, divided as Left and Right.
The Hindu society in India should watch it with caution and while it is tempting to celebrate the electoral losses of the Left, it is wiser to introspect and draw lessons and not participate in it.
THE PHENOMENAL SUCCESS of the Ramajanmabhoomi Movement, the consecutive victories of Narendra Modi or the evolving Hindu resurgence – all of these are fully homegrown. They are not merely political, social or cultural changes but epochs. But because they’ve unfolded before our own eyes, it is hard to grasp their far-reaching magnitude. When their history is written with honesty after half a century, posterity will better appreciate the true import of the term, epoch. Their inspiration was Indian. Their methods were homespun. Their appeal was rooted in an ethos that has nothing to do with western “Wing” political ideologies. And so, viewing them in the light of these “Wing” ideologies is, like I said, an expression of subconscious colonization.
I see two ways forward.
The first is a conscious rejection of the western model of ideological universalism – i.e., viewing every phenomenon through an ideological lens. That model has clearly failed in the very society and culture that birthed it. It would have been hilarious if only it was not so serious. Both the (non-Woke) Left and the Right in America are incessantly breaking their brains over the same question: why is America so broken and how to fix it? In the end, their diagnosis is uniform: a corrupt elite has colonized the country. Their solutions such as they are, are no solutions. The philosophy of history says that America has reached its expiry date because its society has become dysfunctional. The political class cannot fix society. So, what is needed for America is a tombstone and not a repair kit.
The second. This rejection should be concomitant with all-encompassing decolonization, a term and a process that originated in India even as the British were colonizing it. The field is almost infinitely vast and stalwarts of the past have handsomely fertilized it. It would be both foolish and arrogant to claim to improve upon their work. The best we can do is carry that legacy forward.
This work has also acquired lightning urgency in our own period of byte-sized attention spans, and in an era of fleeting emotions and a complete lack of respect for anything that is grand, magnanimous, quiet, sustained, slow and rhythmic.
To be continued
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