My blog

Tag: Right Wing

  • The Crab Mentality of Hindu Right Wing

    The Crab Mentality of Hindu Right Wing

    Do you know that burqa is empowering and is the best thing ever designed to express solidarity against patriarchy? Wearing a burqa is a fundamental right of any women and those who wear it should be respected for their courage to stand against the evil patriarchal society.

    Well the above paragraph, with all its inconsistencies, can be lifted up from any current publications by leftists. But this article is neither about Islamic feminism nor about west. It is rather about crab mentality of Hindu Right wing, where the flag bearers lose no chance to bring each other down whenever possible.

    BJP is hardly a Hindu right wing party but for all its drawbacks, it is still the only viable option on the right. Now think of the drama that got unleashed before Modi was anointed as BJP’s PM candidate. The sulking Advani was courted by the Lutyens media to fire salvo after salvo against Modi. But media did what it was supposed to do i.e. help the Congress ecosystem, and made mountains out of molehill. The sulking patriarch on the Hindu right rather than keeping his feelings private and blessing his protégée in public, decided to play into the hands of the same media.

    The dissent was crushed to a great extent by Modi but it keeps rising time and again, sometimes led by old horses who are hurt by the fact that they were ignored when crumbs of power were thrown around. The biggest failure of this season has been Arun Shourie who resorted to personal attacks against Modi and called him narcissistic and dictator in a live show hosted by Karan Thapar.

    But Shourie is not the only politician/intellectual who can be accused of such mud-slinging. This mud-slinging fest is actually even more common among the intellectuals. The feud between Malhotra and Ganesh had hardly died when Talageri fired his ammo against Manasataramgini, a famous blogger on RW, questioning his views on AIT but character assassinating him in the process.

    While western scholars build consensus by slightly modifying each others’ views in peer reviewed journals, the Hindus come out as clowns who don’t lose any chance to bring each other down over minor disagreements.

    Since the left still controls the public narrative, the need of the hour is to keep the dissent among Hindus internal rather than publicly vocalizing it. The intellectual debate in the public sphere should be encouraged, but any personal attacks should be avoided at all costs.

    There is another very important point which has slowed the growth of RW ecosystem in India. The number of retweets and endorsements by left wing portals and their contributors of their competitors’s articles far outnumber those by the RW. While Scroll and Caravan frequently endorse each other, the RW portals like Swarajya and Indiafacts hardly help each other grow.

    Moral of the story- RW needs to get its act together and work cooperatively with more emphasis on the common agenda rather than for petty personal fame, ego or money. Once RW gains control of the narrative and builds a healthy ecosystem, they will get enough opportunities for back biting and mudslinging. But till then they need to suck up to each other to survive else no one can save them from their premature death at the hands of left.

    Image credits: http://newsfirst.lk/

  • The RW reaction to JNU

    Editorial illustration for The RW reaction to JNU
    Editorial illustration for “The RW reaction to JNU”.

    For the first time since 2014, the Modi government seems to be on an offensive against the anti-national elements. Although some vigour was shown to cut down international NGO funding, that happened behind closed doors and the message did not travel fast and wide — with the result that the anti-nationals got some time to put their act together and mount one attack after the other, with the intolerance debate and award wapsi being prime examples. Modi government seems to have now finally woken up from its deep slumber and did not avoid acting on anti-national activities in its backyard. The complete silence on Malda had otherwise put even its best supporters on the backfoot.

    There are two arguments doing the rounds on social media lately and need instant attention. Both of them are the result of a lack of understanding on these issues by the RW. The slapping of anti-sedition laws on some JNU students has caused a furore among their benefactors, which was more or less expected — but a lot of self-proclaimed RW persons also seem confused in their response. There are many intertwined issues here, but let’s look at the confusion of the RW.

    [Image: JNU campus poster showing anti-national discourse]
    [Image: JNU campus poster showing anti-national discourse] — contextual restoration.

    The first point being raised in defence of anti-nationals is that these students raising the slogans in JNU form a fringe minority on the campus. The left will obviously raise this point but some on the right have also bought it without any background check. JNU has been a hotbed of anti-national activities since the time of the Naxalbari movement and this was not a stray incident. Look at the poster above, which forms the normal discourse inside the JNU campus. Can anyone in his sane mind claim that this agenda is driven by fringe elements? The arrest of the president of JNU’s student union, Kanhaiya Kumar, should clear anyone’s doubt on the acceptance of this anti-national behaviour on the campus. Had it been otherwise, the president of the student wing would have been much more careful before lending his support to such secessionist sloganeering inside the campus. The support these students got from their faculty members should clear any other remaining doubts about the support for such activities in JNU. The fact of the matter is that it is the first time that media has decided to raise this issue — otherwise support for such anti-India views has been mainstream in JNU campus under SFI and AISA, the left wing organizations which have controlled the student union for most of JNU’s history. So it would be completely wrong to push this issue under the carpet by claiming that these are fringe elements on the JNU campus.

    The second issue which has found more resonance among the RW is that the sedition laws are illiberal and have colonial legacy.

    If there are non-violent, non-terrorist activists, liberal society should tolerate them. Unwise use of sedition law.

    — Rupa Subramanya (@rupasubramanya), February 12, 2016

    Did you hear even a single voice from the left give a similar analogy in favour of Kamlesh Tiwari’s freedom of speech when he was hounded by using another British-era law? The hate-speech laws are even more abominable and much more difficult to prove in court than sedition laws. Also, both of them are British-era laws — but hate-speech is misused rather frequently to support Islamists and the leftist agenda, while the sedition law is hardly ever invoked. Does this mean that the RW should take a moral high ground and become the sole guardian of liberal ideas in this country and give a free pass to leftists to carry out their agenda? Probably they need to learn the rule of golden silence from their leftist compatriots.

    There is no reason for the RW to be apologetic about this issue and it should embrace sedition laws, especially in cases where the left wants to compromise the territorial integrity of India. No country can allow free speech on a secessionist agenda, especially when such elements wilfully play as useful pawns in the hands of foreign enemies. If anything, the RW should use this issue to highlight the hate-speech laws and brow-beat the left on their duplicity. It is high time that the RW learns some realpolitik from the left and stops taking moral high ground on each and every issue. The public mood has backed the action of slapping sedition laws against these parasitic students and the Modi government should use this opportunity to further increase pressure on leftist groups and build on its offensive posture. The intolerance debate has been in the limelight for too long — so it is high time to show some real intolerance.

    But whether slapping charges on students, who are mere pawns in this game, serves the RW purpose is a valid question that one should ask. The real masters behind the “Idea of India” brigade are not really affected by the arrest of some youth who were in any case disposable assets. But this action at least sends the signal that the RW is on offence now and would not mind some collateral damage. If Modi thinks he can win the next elections by playing Goody Two Shoes, then he is under grand delusion.