Opinion | The Khan Market liberal’s bridge over troubled waters
For ‘unity in diversity’ to regain appeal, liberals may need to launch a modern-day satyagraha
Of all the nightmares endured by some Indians over the past fortnight, spare a thought for the most Kafkaesque; specifically, for the fellow who awoke to find himself transformed not into a giant bug, but something possibly worse in popular perception: a Khan Market liberal. Sure, even worse is known to happen. As Nietzsche, a man given to vastly exaggerated news of deaths (of divinity, famously), might have lived to testify, an even weirder fate befell his mid-1880s idea of a “superman”; originally idealized as neither slave nor master but an originator of values, this model got snatched away and re-modelled first into a supremacist and then re-reified into a superhero (with his comic briefs on display). For Khan Market liberals, however, there’s a depressive irony in what millions now make of the freedom fighter after whom this Delhi bazaar is widely thought to be named. Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the satyagrahi who passionately opposed partition on principle, is simply a “Pakistani” to multitudes of Indians, it would seem, easily clubbed with a bunch of “anti-nationals” alleged to have wept “here” for air force bombs dropped “there”.
Myths have an expanding market, evidently. Appalled liberals can either gnash their teeth, sigh in resignation and pray—nay, hope—for relief from a saffron siege, or get down to laying a bridge over troubled waters. Given some patience, the weapon that Frontier Gandhi said “no power on earth” could withstand, option two could potentially end their despair.
Note that the so-called saffron shift in Indian politics has a reddish hue of Garibi Hatao vintage. While the inflection of that ideology on the ruling dispensation is clear, its statist notion of welfare and adoption of paternalist policies could yet yield a yawning gap between state rhetoric and lived reality in a few years. Granted, central domination of development has its appeal. With dedication, it could also pan out well. By all signs, the regime’s vaulting ambition is to have a newly remixed economy uplift neo-middle India. But it also seems keen on the centralization of big leap decisions, which may well have public approval but is highly prone to errors of governance. Consider what doomed the Soviet project: Unlike a market system, which allots resources by virtue of prices set by varied signals of demand and supply in active interaction, its big-boss government relied on the educated guesses of a few know-alls for top-down deliverables. Even with a good feel of the popular pulse, the most avid of doers could lose touch and do a lousy job. If India’s economy stagnates and market rationality asserts itself, our forlorn liberals might actually find listeners for a change.
The openness that liberals yearn for, though, has to do with the minds of fellow citizens. On this, perhaps no progress can be made without a secular proposition that arouses the self-esteem of people for a greater national purpose. This may be the age of a worldwide web, but the way WhatsApp forwards left liberals aghast this poll season would suggest that righteous notions of Indianhood and pride converge opinions far more effectively than liberal causes such as justice and equality. It’s the hot stuff of democracy today, clearly. By accident or design, liberals groan, some of our citizens have been either left out or marked out for no fault of theirs.
That’s all the more reason why a liberal pitch for constitutionality must go beyond the dangers of a country riven by animus. It must affirm a unifying identity that offers everyone a sense of validation. “Unity in diversity” once held out hope, but now sounds woefully out of sync with popular aspirations. Yet, it not only sums up what makes us unique, but also holds a special promise in a fractious world crying out for a consensus on equity, justice and peace as a formula for prosperity that’s shared and thus sustainable.
Arguably, the depth-of-field vision granted by diverse vantage points is the only valid reason anyone would bet on India’s claim to leadership of this “Asian Century”. As of now, China is forging ahead while we risk losing our global edge. However, as long as the emergence of an information-age economy is a function of innovation no less than industrial-era factors, a refusal to fall into a think-alike trap could spell hope. It would involve keeping the minds of the many open to the views of the few (especially the “crazy ones” of Apple’s 1997 “Think Different” ad campaign). The frisson of dissent is integral to creativity. If the impact of iconoclasm on Europe was why the West arose, the irreverence of whacky ideas was what gave the US its success. If all voices were to be aired freely sans identity labels in India, it could work wonders someday. Equal rights for everyone ought to assure as much, but then, that is the basic anxiety of liberals anyway: That it’s no longer a given. And if the original dream of India is ever to be realized, grave violations of the Indian Constitution, the only social contract that binds us all, must necessarily evoke outrage.
All said, for a full spectrum of India to shine, our Khan Market liberals may need to launch a modern-day satyagraha. Who knows, troll armies might want the odd liberal packed off across the border for dare speaking up, but that’s just another hazard of social media. As for the other half of an either-or binary that some of Hindutva’s naysayers were taunted with over Ayodhya once, liberals who care enough might want to ponder what Alberuni scratched his head over several centuries before Nietzsche: where is this great land’s Socrates?
Aresh Shirali is views editor, Mint
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First Published:5 Jun 2019, 11:22 PM IST
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