Vir Das, a stand-up comedian is in the news in recent times for his speech on two Indias in a foreign country. The proponents of freedom of speech are supporting him while many do not agree that it can cross the limits to abuse one’s country. The short speech was hardly comedy; it was also large on rhetoric and low on facts. At a larger level, this idea of an individual’s freedom to say anything is a New Left phenomenon. ‘Cultural Marxism’, an offshoot of this, perpetuating in hallowed academic institutes like the JNU basically have a constant anti-state slant where the nation-state is a bourgeois fraud played upon the masses. The rejection of any expression of national unity like in cricket or even Republic Day Parade is almost a normative behaviour at such institutes. Accordingly, the Indian nation-state is ‘Brahmanical’ and ‘patriarchal’; is ideologically rooted in multiple ‘evils’ of the Hindu social order; and is fundamentally inclined towards the oppression of women, Muslims, and Dalits. This evolved into an oppressor-oppressed binary and spawning of the victimhood industry, with everyone claiming to be a victim of some oppressor.
An ‘anywhere mindset’ characterises these cultural Marxists- an attitude which places a high value on autonomy, mobility and novelty and a much lower value on group identity, tradition, and national social contracts (faith, flag, and family). They are ‘just individuals’ and ‘the personal is political.’ The individual’s political life is an extension of one’s preferred identity by race, gender, sexual preference and so on carrying the potential of infinitely fragmenting politics. Thus, there is no end to the discovery of fresher victims and the endless atomization of victimhood in our country. Indians, craving for prestige by its association with the west, become the willing allies of the Western academia in disrupting the cultural coherence of the non-western societies. No wonder Das speaks about Pakistan, and the colours of saffron and green to hint subtly at the narrow attitudes of the majority.
Colonial consciousness has not left the academia, despite the talk of post-colonialism ironically. The social science disciplines (history, political science, economics, sociology) as we know them today originated in the west. This makes it impossible for a social scientist in a non-western society to speak with reference to traditions of knowledge indigenous to it. Our top academics, intellectuals, and public speakers (now comedians too), consciously or unconsciously, are eager to describe their country in terms supplied by the west to gain legitimacy. The implications of our academics viewing the Indian traditions of knowledge as being ‘truly dead’ are indeed serious. The cow must be food since it is so in the western hemisphere. It hits hard and hits fast at our civilizational roots.
The progressives have a habit of throwing abuse on anybody who does not agree with them and often calling them ‘fascist’. By a strange logic, any call for unity in the name of patriotism also becomes fascistic. Respecting the flag becomes fascistic; national anthem played out in cinema halls becomes a fascistic move; and questioning of flag-burning and anti- India slogans become a new Nazism. One prominent left thinker, Dworkin, says that the right to speech exists to protect the dignity of the dissenters. Thus, the more silent and the more law-abiding your activities, the less you may protest the provocative utterances of those who do not care anything about your values. The voice of dissent is the voice of the hero. In other words, a truly sincere government, after having passed a law, will be lenient towards those who disobey it.
Being critical of family, institutions, society, culture, and the country is important but there should be a sense of time, place, and consequences before doing that. In this matter, it is equally wrong on the part of both Vir Das now and our Prime Minister in the past when he made critical remarks on Indian doctors on an international platform. It is perhaps a happy thing that colonial consciousness might be diluting a bit. At independence, our intellectuals spoke of a single bad India; now comedians talk about two Indias- one good and one bad. Some relief!
RANDOM MUSINGS 