THE idea that the left alone can defeat the right has become unconvincing. On the contrary, it’s often the left that is forced to don the robe of the right to win its fights, succumbing in the bargain to the law of diminishing returns, as transpired in West Bengal.
Or see the quandary Pakistan is in today, and has been in even before the advent of Ziaul Haq. Without compromising with the right, culturally and politically, little would move. From Z.A. Bhutto to Shehbaz Sharif, everyone has needed the support of the misogynistic and minority-hating religious right to win their electoral battles. And that’s been ominous for women’s struggles, which is half the population, and for all other seekers of myriad freedoms.
In India, a robust opposition to the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party is difficult to imagine without the critical anchor that right-wing Shiv Sena provides in the fight. Take out Shiv Sena, and the BJP would be breathing down one’s neck in Maharashtra. So many of our friends are able to hold public meetings or stage rallies in Mumbai because the Shiv Sena-led coalition with Congress offers the curious space.
Strange, but this seems par for the course for much of the world. Joe Biden, the systems man, emerged as the dark horse when leftist candidates lunged at each other’s throat. For that matter, imagine Ukraine fighting the Russian onslaught without its battle-hardened Azov fascists holding out tenaciously in Mariupol, for example. Israeli governments fall like ninepins when the right-wing doesn’t play ball.
We seem to be condemned to live by the doctrine of what one may call political homeopathy. In Dr Asif Kidwai’s homeopathic clinic in Lucknow, which he ran free for the poor, a notice in Latin read: ‘Similia similibus curentur’, meaning ‘like cures like’. That’s the distressing reality we usually miss out about the lauded war on Hitler whose tormentor Winston Churchill was himself a racist bigot. And the US was actually practising racial discrimination by law while fighting the Nazis.
Imran Khan said the other day he admired India for pursuing an independent foreign policy. He was speaking before his ouster as prime minister about New Delhi’s refusal to be cowed by Western countries.
India has kept its multifaceted relationship with Russia in defence, trade and diplomacy intact. Imran is right. There are reports that Prime Minister Modi would in fact attend a virtual summit of BRICS countries in which President Putin would participate with the heads of South Africa, Brazil and China, the host of the meeting expected in June.
There is something Imran should admire about Pakistan, which is its ability to take on its erring leaders, including military dictators, head-on.
India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, has rightly won praise for steering the country through heavy turbulence unleashed by the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine. It is indeed creditable that India has plucked the courage to stand up to Europe and the United States over its ties with Russia. But then, Saudi Arabia has spoken up too.
What Modi is doing is to follow, in a cherry-picking way, the footsteps of his secular bête noire, Jawaharlal Nehru and to an extent Nehru’s daughter, and grandson too, but without giving them credit.
In a nutshell, we are looking at the much-reviled policy of non-alignment, which Nehru helped create as a global movement. It’s surfacing in India in the most unlikely ways. One shouldn’t be surprised if the given-up-for-dead Saarc club is also now revived. Non-alignment was born from Nehru’s steadfast engagement as a neutral and respected leader who helped bring the brutal Korean war to closure. And he did it in a way that was agreeable to all sides.
There is something Imran should admire about Pakistan too, which is its ability to take on its erring leaders, including military dictators, head-on. A heavy toll is usually extracted with assassinations and imprisonments of those that sought to swim against the current. This has not deterred anyone from stepping up to be counted though. That’s how Imran’s government was dismantled and Gen Musharraf found himself battling poor health in exile. The Bhutto tragedies have inspired books. Nawaz Sharif too suffered heavily. But they all had their feet of clay. They courted regression and misused religion compulsively.
There aren’t too many examples of governments being overthrown in India by unarmed street protesters except perhaps Indira Gandhi, who was defeated with a combination of democracy and street power. Difficult to see how that would be possible had the RSS not worked itself into the JP movement.
In this context, Sonia Gandhi’s appeal in a recent article in the Indian Express to fight the virus of hate afflicting the country makes an urgent and impassioned argument for political action. Her clarity and grasp of India’s problems, particularly with the consolidation of Hindutva fascism under Mr Modi’s watch, have been a striking feature of her occasional columns for the newspaper. What is lacking though is an equally clear answer to the question: What is to be done?
“The rising chorus of hatred, the unconcealed instigation of aggression and even crimes against minorities are a far departure from the accommodating, syncretic traditions in our society,” Ms Gandhi said. “Shared celebrations of festivals, good neighbourly relationships between communities of different faiths, the pervasive intermingling of faith and belief in the arts, cinema and everyday life, of which there are examples by the thousands, are proud and durable characteristics of our society through the ages. To undermine this for narrow political gain is to undermine the composite and syncretic foundations of Indian society and nationhood.”
Sonia Gandhi is making a fervent appeal to save the free press and retrieve democratic spaces. Yet there are forces within the Congress and among its current or future allies that crave power without addressing the ideological points she is raising. Nobody doubts that the BJP can be defeated by a simple majority. But to defeat the ideology it spawns would need more than a homeopathic pill.
