Not the BJP ,not only again, but ever, at any cost – and why

amit shah

Wake Up India: Essays for Our Time – 2

We know that all the people who say that India is not a nation but divided are not speaking anything wise. To divide Indians on the basis of religion or caste or language against language or languages or region against region or regions on the basis of class or gender or race or colour or any other such ploy is to lose out on our future as a nation that has great potential. Balkanization of any sort is not a solution to our problems. in fact, peaceful expansion if possible to more parts of the globe or solar system may be a better idea considering our population and its density, instead, which is actually already going on through the exodus of so many of our citizens to other places to live, making India now a fluid concept which is no longer only geographical or historical but also made up of people in dfferent parts of the world like NRIs, PIO, second gen settlers, third gen settlers, emigrants, immigrants, their assets, wealth, money, cultural capital, memories, new experiences, diasporic or even nomadic nature, interbreeding, admixture, travel narratives etc. It is in the midst of this fluidity that the problem of identity becomes acutely felt and the political belligerence of a BJP is all about group identity felt as a crisis which has bred an aggression based on fear, one felt even in Europe, by what is considered as the Islamic threat through immigration, but in both cases or in what is seen rising now in America this reaction as it is based on fear is unhealthy and has led to the foundations of the ideologies bred in defensiveness to be flawed fundamentally towards a wong kind of nostalgia for the past, theologically, coupled with a fascist politics, engendering violence and a capitalist economics that rapes the earth and the poor, women and children, with its ideological mooring based interestingly enough on post-democratic appropriations of democracy’s or anarchy’s or revolutionary communism’s strategies for its offensives which make it a lethal but not effective combination in terms of long-lasting abilities to gain and keep power, which is the thrust behind these and any other political configuration.

The mistake the oppostion in India is making is believing in the democratic process. They believe that in 2019 BJP will be defeated and ‘acche din’ or better times will come again not understanding that BJP and its allies can only be defeated by a constant political attack, surveillance and vigilance, one that has not yet been mounted, on a much larger scale than the one used against the British or the Mughals as in the BJP we are dealing with a form of virulence that partly has its roots in a hankering back to the Indo Aryan system of jaati and varna – thinking of people are belonging to or being superior to others who do not belong to the right race and caste – that is actually a much tougher strain of indoctrination and endurance to defeat than ones that were brought in by the Mughals or the British, one that can be defeated only by a virtual onslaught whereby one fights for the future from the future’s vantage point for the country which should be not regressive but based on the idea of post modernism which is against grand narratives or metanarratives and more in favour of an interlpay between different points and positions like the local, regional and national or glocal on the one hand in terms of geography that keeps shifting in terms of its relationships in terms of which is more important at any particular point in time – including terms like international, intranational, transnational and metanational aligned to the concept of time which is teleological but also simultaneous in connection to people who evince in their daily lives confusions brought about by living in different historical times at the same time, the real malaise in a nation like India that has no concept of time at all.

What we need to do thus is reformulate nation in such a way that the BJPs feet is cut away from under it by taking away their powers ideologically.

For instance let us contend for the self evident truth that the nation is stronger for being multi religious not because religions are repositories of truth but as the future is going to be one in which Darwinian adapibility as a prime number and factor for Indians will need the ability to draw on any part of knowledge and not just one part of it to meet the challenges of nations that seem to be doing better with a non religious or anti religious or a single religion alone matters mindset to prove that the different concept of wider plurality and multiplicity still matters for the future.

Let us continue to contend for the necessity for the co existence of langauges and translation without privileging one over the other as in the case of English, Hindi, and all other languages that Indians hold dear including Sanskrit or Tulu or Pali or Prakrit or Urdu or Arabic or Hebew or Greek or Aramaic or Tamil or any presently existing one like Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Odiya, Bangla, Gujarati, Sindhi, Khasi, etc., if it helps us grow as a nation. This should not stop us looking outward and backward and learning Chinese or French or Spanish or Dutch or Portugese or Norwegian or German or Russian or any other language if it is going to help us in trade and commerce.

Let us contend for a political system that is flexible enough to see the flaws of all parties like the BJP (retrogressive) or the Congress (fossilized) or AAP (too small) or the Marxists and after seeing them, go for a form of rule or governance that is anti monarchy or fascism or absolutism or totalitarianism or communism or democracy as all this has failed and think of post democratic and post communist options even as we are post fascist and post monarchist or post authoritarian. This may be post humanist too but if that is what will help us we have to go in that direction. This political equation is the most thorny point or issue for such a large nation as India, though not the only one and the only solution seems to be the rule of a group of benevolent leaders who are given a long time to set things in the country right, a chance the Congress had but lost out on and the BJP is not suited for which is the real quagmire we are in now. The answer is connected not to politics but economics as the party that can solve India’s real problems like food, air, water, land and all its collateral, housing, clothing, education, medicine, employment, happiness for families, leisure, games, sports, entertainment, arts, culture, population, inflation, resources, wealth, assets, traffic, money, lack of honesty, distribution, energy needs, techonological needs, scientific needs without being in the trap of capitalism is the one that should be given the reins of power. That party is not the BJP, they have no idea of such things and are lost in issues that bear no relevance to India now or the future shape the world is taking or our nation has to take if we are to improve and become a real world power, due to the fact that it is rampantly steeped in ignorance.

Dr A.V. Koshy is an established author and writer who is a poet, critic and artist. He has a doctorate in Samuel Beckett’s Poems in English from the University of Kerala, now published. He has co-authored and published a monograph of essays called Wrighteings: In Media Res and has several, published research papers to his credit. His greatest desire is to build a village for people having autism where all their needs are met. He runs an NGO called “Autism for Help Village Project” with his wife for this dream to come true. He has fourteen other books out now as fiction writer, literary critic, poet, academician, literary theoretician, essayist, editor, anthologist, co -editor, co-author and co-contributor. His latest and perhaps best book is a collection of short stories Scream and Other Urbane Legends.

© Koshy AV

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