MIGA, the Indian version of America’s MAGA
Recently,
I came across three articles related to US. On reflection I felt that they
could as well relate to India which is also caught in the crosshairs
of two opposing ideologies. The Right wing extremism , in all fairness , is to
be seen as a slap on Left wing extremism of the last few decades. The missin
factor in both cases is moderation. To club all Left wingers as anti national
has brought about a deep cleavage among our people and it will be difficult for
any future government to heal the division. It is of utmost importance that as
a nation, we realize this sooner than later.
The
first of the three articles was one about Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), an organization to
safeguard these two basic principles in governance and instill accountability
in the US government. It is a watchdog organization to expose ethical
violations and corruption by government officials and institutions. Recently
this organization has filed an ethical complaint that Trump administration is
consistently failing to follow even the simplest ethical rules. It has pointed
out how the administration was using Trump’s campaign slogan MAGA(Make America
Great Again) on all official communications and on the social media which is in contravention of ethical principles, as
Trump has become the official candidate for re election in March 2018 . The use of his campaign slogan
to promote Trump’s work by public officials violated the ethical principles
ingrained in what is known as the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act had become law in
1939 to “ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan
fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace,
and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based
on political affiliation.”. The law ensures that government resources are
not used in support or opposition to any political candidate or party.
What
we see in US today is not a trickle but an avalanche of violation of the ethical
Act. It is equally disturbing to read about the rise of Qanon, known as a conspiracy
theory gaining ground. The conspiracy theory centers around an anonymous
source, Q, telling the world about a
secret battle being waged by Trump and special counsel Robert Mueller against a
pedophile ring filled with celebrities and political elites who have been
covertly running the United States government for decades. It is an insidious attack
on Hillary Clinton who is accused of running a child sex ring known as the
Pizzagate. There is not a shred of evidence to back the claims, for nothing is
true. A lot of Trump’s followers(bhakts as we call them in India) have joined
the Qanon group as it is intended to provide Trump’s most fervent supporters a
way to explain away any scandal or slip-up the president may face.
Let
us cut through to India, that is world’s second largest democracy where
elections happen regularly and where the electorates are subjected to catchy
but vapid slogans and fed on a whole lot of genuine and false attacks on
political opponents very similar to Qanon conspiracy theory. But in India we do
not have an organization like the CREW as most of the reasoning intelligentsia
prefers to sit in the drawing room and speak of doomsday that they see coming, but
afraid of sticking their necks out. The one or two who venture to speak out are
viciously trolled and abused on the social media and come directly in the line
of fire of the government. We also have something similar to MAGA which we can
call MIGA(Make India Great Again), a slogan to inspire Indians to contribute to
the nation’s development by their support to the ruling party (I am surprised
that the present ruling party has not hijacked this acronym in slavish
imitation of US). MIGA is a veneer of development over the vituperative attacks
on the last seven decades rule mostly by the Pandit parivar and less than a
decade by other non Congress Prime Ministers that ironically include five
peaceful years of BJP rule under Prime Minister Vajpayee.
Make
India Great Again is to bring India back to the halcyon days of Treta yuga of Sri
Ramachandra that ended 18 million years ago. The last four years have seen a
vicious onslaught on the earlier 67 years with a continuous exhortation to
bring back Ram Rajya through a Congress
mukht rule. The Qanon theory has been in full swing these last four years and
one fears how much more invasive it will be in the run up to the 2019
elections. But the present situation in India scores over the Qanan theory as
it not only attempts to paint the entire opposition as scamsters , it also
projects a knight in the shining armour who has arrived true to Nostrodamus’
prediction to cleanse India and take India back to Treta yuga. Adept at making
acronyms that US is reputed for, ourMIGA project has been driven on empty
slogans so loudly articulated by the ruling party and by the ‘bhakts’ as Modi supporters call
themselves. Our Q theory spares the government in power which defends itself
against all ethical violations attributing them to the misdeeds of the previous
six decades rule of the Congress. The
deft handling of the vanishing tricks of Mallayyas, Choksis and Modis (PM
excepted), the passion for building Sri Ram Temple in Ayodhya, appropriation of
Sardar Patel’s legacy( and remaining oblivious to the fact that Sardar Patel
had banned RSS and it was only, Pt. Nehru, their sworn aversion, who persuaded
Patelji to lift the ban) and building his statue that will be the tallest
in the world, speaking volubly about triple talak and nikhila while not a
squeak on the rapes of young girls and women in shelter homes, professing
compassion for Muslim women against all Muslim men, whipping up binary
conflicts that would show the opposition as anti national, anti Hindu, anti
sanskari(one who preserves the sanctity of Hindu culture), anti tradition, pro
Muslim, pro English, pro Western. If Bharat were to become great again, that is
possible by rooting out all these anti- ruling party’s professed faith,
ideology and prejudices. The third article that has similarity with US is the
judgement by US judge Hornsby's ruling, on the question of whether Jews can be
defined as a biological race and whether they can be treated "like a racial or ethnic
group." Hornsby says "Modern sociologists and anthropologists,
especially with advancements in DNA studies, debate whether Judaism is a
people, a religion, or both. There is no doubt, however, that many people have
and continue to view being Jewish as a racial identity... Jewish blood"
isn't a scientific designation. It's an assertion of racial difference based on
prejudice, not fact.”
This
is an important insight about racism as all assertions of human racial
difference are based in prejudice, not fact. There are no different human races
and religion should not be meant as a sign of biological difference. This
judgement has relevance for us in India. Those who follow Islam also belong to
India. They do not have a separate racial identity. We are on the verge of
starting xenophobia just as racism is slowly growing in US and Europe. Hinduism
that is founded on pluralism cannot harbour fear of followers of other religion
and practice because of a deep rooted prejudice against them. To discriminate
fellow citizens on the basis of their different religion, customs and culture is
cutting at the root of pluralism and humanism. Pluralism as defined by a Harvard
scholar is “ not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity… pluralism
is not just tolerance, but the
active seeking of understanding across lines of difference…pluralism
is not relativism, but the encounter
of commitments. The new paradigm of pluralism does not require us
to leave our identities and our commitments behind, for pluralism is the
encounter of commitments. It means holding our deepest differences, even our
religious differences, not in isolation, but in relationship to one another…
and lastly pluralism is based on dialogue. “
Isn’t
it time for all thinking, rational and patriotic Indians to organize something
on the lines of CREW and spread the message of ethics, pluralism and the
importance of dialogue to make MIGA a reality?
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