A brief dialogue about India with Dr. Jerrold Atlas of psychohistory-historicalmotivations Forum
between the 19th and the 20th of April, 2014.
Dr.
Atlas:
[Arundhati
Roy offers a deep look into the multiple processes at play in a complex India.
To understand it well, please try to see that they are all functioning in the
same time and space --- ancient traditions, rural poverty, urban
overcrowdedness and poverty, fear of the modernity some see as threatening,
fear of the backwardness that threatens to overwhelm all gains, rising corruption,
radical Hinduism, Hindutva repressive tyranny and
censorship
and a willingness to choose radical Right leaders who promise to bring order --
often by suppressing or crushing those deemed to be "enemies of the
state".
To
understand the interplay of the radical, the modern, the traditional is to
understand what drives India more than most articles seen lately. In a land of huge businesses and moguls of wealth
and power, it is also a land where corruption allows the sloppiness of business
regulations and a current spate of
improper
generic drugs sold globally. Rising is
the goal for so many since it offers hope of assuring one's place in a terribly
crowded place. Fearing Muslim neighbors
drives fear and a willingness to target those deemed to be state enemies worth eliminating.
I
hope List member Suzarin will lend us his overview of things in India and help
us understand what is going on and what is at stake in the upcoming
elections. J ATLAS]
My response:
Hello,
Dr. Atlas,
Thank
you. As usual, your comments are insightful and interesting. I might touch upon
only the general elections of 2014.
As
you have rightly said, India is an extremely complex nation. Disparities within
and between its countless groups are so huge and varied that averages about
anything Indian are always useless. At one end there are sickeningly opulent
people like Mukesh Ambani, mentioned by Ms. Arundhati Roy, and at the other faceless
millions who live like abandoned cattle.
Broad
labels like Hindu and Sikh, Brahman and Dalit, Madrasi and Punjabi, and rich
and poor are so misleading that beyond as labels they convey nothing
meaningful. In the colonial discourses,
India was depicted as the country of the maharajas, nautchgirls, snake charmers
and rope tricksters. That was plain fiction.
Now
also, trying to define a common Indian identity will be stereotypically
hazardous. Comparing India with other countries and peoples also will only
confuse.
Naturally,
Indian politics reflects all these complexities. Indian elections are,
therefore, generally unpredictable. There are some groups, termed in the Indian
context as ‘vote banks’, which traditionally support certain political parties.
Usually they are religious or caste groups. The ‘middle class’ groups may vote,
cutting across religious and caste affinities, shifting their support on other
considerations, like the economic. The poor people of all groups, invariably
the largest chunk of voters in any election, are by and large purchasable.
Almost all parties and candidates spend unbelievably huge sums of money on
them,
giving
either cash or consumables. Cash per voter may be as low as Rs. 500/-. These
are the voters who quite often decide the poll results. How many will be bought
in any election is an unpredictable quantity, dependent upon a number of
disparate factors.
There
are rules to disqualify candidates and parties indulging in such vote
‘purchases’, but in spite of the vigilance of the Election Commission,
malpractices are rampant. Those who spend huge sums on electioneering try to
recoup that money and much more using their elected offices. Everyone knows
this is the main cause of corruption, but corrective measures are painfully
slow.
Political ideology rarely decides elections in
India. Some people may flock together in the name of their religions. But
members of all major religions are usually seen among the active supporters of
different political parties. The case of the Hindus is a good example. If a
majority of the Hindus are a clear vote
bank,
the BJP that uses ‘Hindutva’ as a political rallying issue, should always win
all elections. But, that is not happening. This time, however, the BJP has put up
Mr. Narendra Modi, who is perceived as a militant Hindu leader. as its prime
ministerial candidate. That, together with the huge propaganda that the BJP has
organized, make the 2014 elections a little more unpredictable.
For
India watchers, this election is going to be special.
Suzarin
[Dr.
Atlas added:
Thanks
to Suzarin for offering us an insight into the pragmatic as it applies in
India. It is hard for those elsewhere to
embrace India (or any other incredibly populous nation) because of the realities
there not seen elsewhere. Overcrowding
alters the basic psychology of life and people as well as culture and, very definitely,
politics.
The
nature of so many means that there can be a drift toward massive corruption as
a shortcut to the use of democratic ideas. Yet it is an endemic corruption to
be found in all things in such nations.
To think that this doesn't corrupt the fiber of society is to miss the
very essence of such overcrowding -- all things become negotiable. This seeps into the moral construct of society
and that too may be damaged.
India
is now in the position of such anger at those who have run the nation for so
long and what has become their seeming to be out of touch with today's needs
that it endorses a radical thug (some say).
Yet, some believe that the position and impact alter an individual
allowing for ethical and human decency to triumph and change to be made. One may devoutly wish this to be. I may not hold this belief -- nor, perhaps, many
List members, but it is a possibility in India.
I
would hope for this possibility but the rise of Hindutva chastens me and makes
it seem hardly likely. This is a moment
in India when puritanical choices seem to be the group-fantasy and harsh, punitive
governance imposing will over the many seems to have dominance. It is understandable that this might be so
because of the endless disorder of the Gandhi-Nehru legacy. Yet, it is a despair and that signals some
horrid choices and moments ahead.
India
-- like many in the West, especially in the US -- needs a moral regeneration
and the redevelopment of opportunity for all. It is the only reward essential
for the future to be bright. The concept
of "exclusivity" has never really worked for long in any land and the
demographics require an understanding of this.
Only allowing/encouraging the full development of everyone to their
fullest can bring grandeur to a society/group.
The sickness of the recent past has been "exclusivity". Instead, "inclusivity" must become
the new stage of the dream of a greater nation.
I
would be remiss if I didn't add in the meme unspoken - that this rise of Modi
is also endorsed by the corporate world there -- a signal that corporate
wealth/power is being used to turn India into a worker-drone situation best for
the corporate rich and especially so in a land so overcrowded as to present
wealth opportunities from manipulating the many into sources of huge revenue
growth for the richest. I see this trend
as the "poisonous apple" more likely to harm India.
I'd
welcome a conversation about this subject/India/overcrowdedness/
aspirations/free
market philosophy/"inclusivity" v "exclusivity"/etc from
List members. J ATLAS]
My response:
Indian cities are certainly overcrowded, which brings into
play many human traits a sparsely populated country would never experience. You
are right: “Overcrowding alters the basic psychology of life and people as well
as culture and, very definitely, politics.” As you have said, the ease with
which corruption is accepted in public life is
one such change.
The
cities, however, do not add up to an India political discourses often posit as
the real India.
If
one may put it this way, there are many Indias, not one. The identities and
interests of the different groups, determined by religious, caste, ethnic,
linguistic and cultural affinities, often cross and re-cross the political
contours. The administrative unit of India is an accident.
‘Indians’
are not and never were a single nation in the sense in which one can speak of
the French or the Japanese. It was after realizing how diverse the people of
the sub-continent were that Jawaharlal Nehru, during India’s freedom
struggle, coined the expression, ‘unity in diversity’. Like all slogans, it was
a call to act and bring it about, not a statement of fact.
The
exclusivism you have mentioned is actually working between and among many
groups and at many levels in Indian life. Hindu exclusivism is only the
most pervasive/pernicious among them. After Mr. Narendra Modi was chosen
as the prime ministerial candidate by the BJP, this has only attracted greater
attention world-wide.
If
the proof of the pudding is in eating it, the choice of Mr. Modi by a party
that has any number of leadership-aspirants shows that he is different from the
rest. What that difference is seen differently by different people depending
upon their biases. One thing is certain. He is capable of evoking strong
opposite reactions in those who follow his politics. In that sense, he is
a divisive personality. And, of course, he is the demagogue par excellence of
modern India.
But,
as you have hoped at one point, while in power, ‘the position and impact may
alter an individual allowing for ethical and human decency to triumph.’ It
might happen to a political party/group also. The promise of three divisive
programmes on which the BJP had come to power were put on the back-burner all
the six years it was in power from 1998 to 2004.
I
wish you had not used “radical thug” to describe an Indian political
functionary who has come to power through elections and is under constant
judicial review, however corrupt or deficient they might be.
I
also wish you had made it a little clearer for those who follow you, that the
Gandhi in the “Gandhi – Nehru legacy” is not Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi,
the ‘Mahatma’. The ‘Gandhi’ in the names of Indira Gandhi’s family is
Feroze Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’s husband, who was a Parsee, unrelated to M.K.
Gandhi.
Suzarin
[Dr.
Atlas added:
As
usual, Suzarin, you amplify others' understanding of things Indian. India is
far from a unity and never seemed to have been intended to be. Yet it is.
The working of this has been a major problem but it is one to be
overcome in many nations -- including the US.
It's just that the "growing pains" are so great that they hurt
many and take too long to heal.
While
I referred to Modi as a "radical thug:" in another post, I used it as
"some claim". That is
true. The US government declared him as such
as well -- now they're finding his accession to power sufficient to alter that
somehow. Let us hope that the wish is parent to the new truth…. I still hope
what I said is so -- that he will be tempered by the needs of power to become a
leader for all. There are stains on his record
that may prove far more difficult to bleach -- actions speaks louder for this
than words.
I
suppose you are right in that many outside India don't know the differences
between one Gandhi and another -- as many may not understand that one Roosevelt
wasn't the same as another, or one Kennedy or one Bush or one Clinton. Thanks for clearing that up.
I
am still more concerned about the rise of corporate/zillionaire power emerging
in India. I suppose we can't escape that influence -- even here in the US where
it has become a corrupting force pushing away from democracy to oligarchy. Yet, it is a pernicious power corrupting the
goals of a unity and increasing democratic governance -- it is a frightening
process harmful to the broad distribution of betterment and promised social
compact. That they have apparently
"selected" Modi does not augur well for the majority -- but even that
may be tempered by the necessities of governance. I just see it as for what dangers it signals
-- a worrisome challenge to "inclusive democracy".
As
we have jointly discussed, Indiaphiles wish and hope for a better India servicing
the leap into modernity as well as respecting the grandeur of its past. There is a glorious, albeit bloody, past and
a march into modernity that has yet to be accomplished for the majority. While
the zillionaires have managed to use size and wealth to achieve some more
modernity and significant employment growth, they are also subject to the
corrupt nature of things there. Sadly,
this doesn't help bring betterment for the majority. India's younger generations may see the
zillionaire role model more than the ancient ones, more than Nehru or Indira --
or they may find a better path than their predecessors and achieve the hoped
for amalgam into modernity. Like you, I hope for the best and worry as well.
Unlike
you, I never found Aurobindo's abandoned revolutionary zeal or his embrace of
the mystic threatening or troubling -- he was on a journey that may have gone
astray or never reached its goal before he died. So be it but "the
Mother" accomplished something good with it all -- and we agree on
that.
There
are many special places in India -- new and old -- and they contribute to what
may eventually become a national patrimony of greatness and good life. The national history is too rich to ignore,
too large to absorb and too important to forget. But, for me, best of all is the richness of
the foods and recipes I labor hard to master.
Enjoy someone's foods and you love them even more.
Thanks
for your conversation about your country.
J ATLAS]
