The Idea of a Secular, Democratic India

Any liberal, compassionate and freedom-loving individual would be distressed at the condition of India today. The world’s largest democracy, once hailed as an example for the whole of the developing world to emulate, is sliding into the morass of fascistic autocracy (based on Nazi-style religious nationalism) under the Narendra Modi regime. The puzzling fact is that even after performing miserably on all fronts, and getting only 37% of the votes of 60-70% of the total populace who voted, they have become a commanding presence in the parliament and many of the states of the Hindi belt. So much so, that they have dropped all pretense of their “development” agenda and are going ahead aggressively with the Hinduisation of the Indian subcontinent. Attacks on minorities, discriminatory laws against Muslims, and illegal arrests and detentions of all critics of the regime have all become the norm; and all three arms of the democracy (legislative, executive and even the judiciary) seem to be toeing the government line. The Bharatiya Janata Party (Modi’s party), the political wing of the Hindu fundamentalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (or RSS for short), have become so confident that they are talking of ruling India forever and converting it into a Hindu nation – and realists are afraid that their confidence is not entirely misplaced.

Why? Why did the country which began its life as a secular democracy in 1947 slip into this religio-nationalistic madness? How did this fringe group of Hindu fanatics slowly become the mainstream and start controlling the national narrative? Is it because Hindus are essentially fundamentalist, and secularism was just an illusion? Or has something happened in this seventy plus years to push the majority religion more and more on the path to fundamentalism?

Looking at our history and culture, I have decided upon three possible causes for India’s shift to the right. Please note that this is only my personal reading; my opinion is formed based on my observations and reading. I have no claims to scholarship of any kind.

The Essential Religiosity of India vs Political Correctness

I would like to narrate two incidents. One way back in the middle eighties, one earlier this year.

I was living with my parents and had just started on my first job. My sister, eleven years younger to me, was in middle school. One day she had a query: the teacher had asked her to name three festival indigenous to Kerala. What should she write? My mum said – of course, Onam, Vishu and Thiruvathira! These were the three festivals unique to Kerala.

Image Courtesy: Indian Express

The next day, my sis came home angry and frustrated after a fight with her teacher. She had rejected her answer, and asked her to write “Onam, Christmas, Ramzan (meaning Eid-ul-Fitr)”. My sister objected vehemently, saying that the last two were universal and not indigenous to Kerala. The teacher put her foot down. She said she agreed, but unless she wrote like that, no marks would be given – because that was what was “officially” expected!

It was my first brush with political correctness.

Now fast forward to 2020. In one of the WhatsApp groups that I am a member of, someone made an observation that Onam was the only festival of Kerala. I countered, citing Vishu and Thiruvathira once again; the the argument was that they could not be called “festivals of Kerala” because they are not “secular”! I stuck to to my guns, saying that secularism had nothing to do with it. The arguments went back and forth, ultimately with the admin calling me and warning me about “politicising” the group.

Political correctness had struck again.

This is the popular liberal narrative of India – that India is a secular country, that our ethos is one of tolerance (this is echoed by Hindu apologists too) and that there is no predominant “Hindu” culture. I had also subscribed to these popular half-truths at one point of time – until I forced myself to swallow the bitter pill and wake up to reality.

It is true that the concept of an overarching Hinduism – or the “Sanatana Dharma”, as its promoters like to call it – is a myth. However, there is indeed a common cultural thread running across the Indian psyche: and that is deeply religious. What the Vedic religion had done was to assimilate all the varied gods and goddesses spread across the subcontinent under their umbrella. Many of these faiths were at war with one another (so much for tolerance!) but pluralism was the accepted norm. So Hinduism as we know now, rather than being the tolerant monolith it is being touted as, is a potpourri of contradictory believes subsumed under an overarching philosophy. And it is this philosophy which is being used by the advocates of cultural nationalism to advance their fascistic intentions.

Indian Liberals go wrong (as evidenced in the examples I quoted above) in negating this religiosity. They stubbornly hold on to their fantasy of a secular, non-Hindu India, and play into the hands of the right-wingers.

The Twin Cancers of Caste and Patriarchy

Everyone in the world knows what caste is – it is the insidious social system in India which marginalises a huge section of its own people. What most people don’t know (and those who know won’t accept), is that caste does not limit itself to the Hindu upper castes.

I remember seeing a Malayalam movie named Sthanaarthi Saramma (“Candidate Saramma”) in my childhood. It was about two rival candidates for a Panchayat election being in love with each other – Saramma and Johnnie Kutty. What I couldn’t understand was that why their love was frowned upon by the hero’s family – weren’t both Christian? Then my mum told me that Saramma was a “lower caste convert Christian”, from the fisher-folk community, so Johnnie Kutty’s “upper-caste” Christian parents could never accept it. It was the first time that I understood that caste was not limited to Hindus alone.

Image Courtesy: Manorama

Fast forward to 2019, when a Dalit Christian youth, Kevin, was murdered in a case of honour killing – because he had committed the crime of marrying an upper-caste Christian girl. (Unlike movies, life always doesn’t have nice endings to love stories.) Clearly, not much had changed in almost half a century.

Now coming to patriarchy – it’s the fashion to blame it all on the Brahmins (“Smash Brahmin Patriarchy!”) like caste: but again, it’s another half-truth. No doubt Brahmins are patriarchal – but so are almost all other communities (except a few matrilineal societies scattered across the country). And even in those matrilineal societies, men have usurped control to a large extent.

By holding Brahmins and Brahminism responsible for a social ill towards which every community contributes, essential focus is lost.

Minority Communalism

This is a potential landmine. The moment any intellectual addresses this, he is immediately labelled a “sanghi” (a derogatory name for a Hindu fundamentalist) and cast into the outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.

According to the liberal narrative, fundamentalism is present among Muslims, but these are “fringe groups” and the majority is secular. While it is true that a huge majority of Muslims are not fanatics, neither do they call out the actions of the fundamentalists – the fanatics are too strong, and there is real fear. Even more disturbing is the fact that many Islamic organisations who are legitimately operating are, to a large extent, fanatical. They are not fringe groups by any stretch of imagination.

Image Courtesy: DC Books

On July 4, 2010, Professor Joseph had his hand chopped off by Islamic extremists for allegedly insulting the Prophet Mohammed. This happened in broad daylight. Even though all the miscreants have been punished, one can still see comments on social media about the “mistake” committed by the Professor: even though many condemn the extremist action, they also place the professor in the dock.

Similarly, the actions of the Muslim kings of India who looted temples are brushed under the carpet. It is a fact that these kings were not fanatics – rather, they were opportunists, who protected temples under their watch and destroyed those in a neighbouring country. (Tipu Sultan is the prime example.) Instead of highlighting this fact, the liberal narrative paints these conquerors in rosy colours, holding them up as epitomes of secularism – in the process, pissing off Hindus who are not addicted to political correctness.

The Way Forward

To get Indian liberals out of the morass that they themselves have created, and to protect secularism and democracy of our fledgling nation (yes, I consider ourselves pretty young – only 73 years old), we need to do three things.

1. Accept the fact that Hinduism is not all Brahmin propaganda. It has got all of India in it. What has happened is that the Vedic religion has appropriated and standardised it. We must oppose this standardardisation and decentralise our culture.
2. Caste and patriarchy are not just Savarna things. Each caste oppresses the castes below them. And almost all communities oppress their women. There is no easy, one-stop solution to this – this imbroglio has to be unravelled one knot at a time. Education holds the key.
3. Islamic fundamentalism is as dangerous as Hindu fundamentalism. There should be no compromise (not even political soft-pedalling) when faced with it.

It is a slow, hard climb. In the short-term, we are fated to suffer a period of majoritarian autocracy. But if we are ready to face the facts honestly and start acting accordingly, we can build the India the founding fathers had in mind – at least one or two generations down the line.

Little Lost Liberal

I had been a left-winger ever since I became politically aware: but during my college days, I violently broke with the student wing of the Indian Communist Party because of their authoritarian tendencies. That was the time I incidentally discovered Ayn Rand, and became for a while enthused with her theories of absolute freedom. However, I couldn’t fully agree with her on her Social Darwinism, and was convinced that the state should look after the welfare of the poor and destitute. It was only in the 2000’s that I recognised myself for what I was – a left-leaning liberal.

The website https://www.politicalcompass.org/ measures political ideology along two separate, independent axes. The economic (left–right) axis measures one’s opinion of how the economy should be run: “left” is defined as the desire for the economy to be run by a cooperative collective agency (which can mean the state, but can also mean a network of communes) while “right” is defined as the desire for the economy to be left to the devices of competing individuals and organizations. The other axis (authoritarian–libertarian) measures one’s political opinions in a social sense, regarding the amount of personal freedom that one would allow: “libertarianism” is defined as the belief that personal freedom should be maximised while “authoritarianism” is defined as the belief that authority should be obeyed.

They have a test there to check where on the graph one exactly stands: and I found myself somewhere towards the lower left of the bottom-left quadrant. Not surprisingly, most of the liberals are located there: the right-leaning ones, located in the bottom-right quadrant, are called libertarians. The top-left quadrant will find most communists, and the top-right, conservatives of all colour.

Ever since the Soviet Union fell in the 1990’s, the world has shifted significantly to the right. And since the new century dawned, it has significantly shifted to the top-right quadrant. The libertarians are happy just with economic freedom, while the communists are happy with just state power. So in 2020, we see the huge Goliath of the conservative right facing the tiny David of the liberal left – a David, sadly, without his slingshot. And Goliath is winning hands down.

The funny thing is, most of the people taken individually are not really conservatives. They value personal liberty, are willing to live and let live, and would be willing to support people who are worse off than themselves. However, the conservatives are able to sell them their agenda – even when they have been proven wrong – while liberals seem to grope in the dark, trying to get their message across.

Why?

Freedom of Expression

Well, liberals do start out with a disadvantage – they don’t agree much on anything other than liberalism. So to make a cohesive social group out of them is literally equivalent to herding cats. Conservatives on the other hand, are happiest when they are banded together under a religion, or a flag, or a despot. So here we have a small, strong group of single-minded people against a large and heterogeneous multitude. (The irony here is that the Goliath mentioned above is actually very small, when we get down to brass tacks, but incredibly cohesive.) No wonder they are able to hijack the narrative.

It is not very difficult for liberals to convert their seeming disadvantage into an advantage: provided they accept that the only thing they agree on is personal liberty and freedom of expression. They can pretty much disagree on everything else, but freedom to speak one’s mind and be oneself should be non-negotiable. The old dictum, “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it!” should be the be-all and end-all of liberalism. That should be the war cry.

But sadly, there is that teeny bit of conservatism in all of us which wants to prevent opinions unpalatable to us being aired. So the moment liberals realise that the freedom of expression they laud is applicable to the hated conservatives also, they start tying themselves up in knots making justifications why certain kind of speech and expression is beyond the pale. And in doing so, they fall into the conservative trap.

The Bogey of Political Correctness

Political Correctness is defined by Wikipedia as:

Political correctness (adjectivally: politically correct; commonly abbreviated PC) is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in society. In public discourse and the media, the term is generally used as a pejorative with an implication that these policies are excessive or unwarranted.

Though this sentiment seems laudable at first glance, a deeper reading will show that it effectively prevents free speech – because as Salman Rushdie famously said, without the freedom to offend, it does not exist. As almost any opinion is likely to offend someone, the excessively PC individual is barred from speaking at all.

Now comes a personal experience. I shared the cartoon on the right on my Facebook wall.

It was done without any deep thought – actually making fun of a political party which was uttering platitudes about a controversial decision by the Supreme Court. But things suddenly took a bizarre turn with a couple of my FB friends taking it as a personal insult. Soon, my wall was a virtual battleground: and one person had a meltdown. Two or three people unfriended me, shocked at my callous, “privileged” indifference to the marginalised.

This set me thinking. Apparently, the so-called “liberals” were also as touchy as conservatives when their own pet sacred cows were attacked. Maybe even touchier.

Now fast-forward to October 17, when a teacher was beheaded in France for showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons satirising the Prophet Mohammed. Quite predictably, most of the free world condemned the incident – and France took a brazen stand, that they would not compromise on their laws regarding freedom of expression based on any provocation. Predictably, there were a lot of arguments, both pro and con, about the issue: most of them healthy.

However, many Indian liberals took an anti-France stance: apparently, insulting Islam in the current scenario was anathema to liberalism, because Islamophobia was rampant all across the world this could be used to target them. What made the argument really bizarre was that some “atheists” argued that criticising other religions do not have the same import, because they were not victimised – as Islam was! This was obviously ridiculous – and many called it out. And one could see golden examples of Orwellian doublespeak falling from the mouths of the guardians of personal freedom in reply. Was this comedy or tragic irony?

(The funny thing was that Muslim liberals, on the whole, were arguing for ignoring the cartoons and going on. it was the “woke” Hindu contingent which was up in arms.)

This gave me an insight into how liberals have lost the plot. In seeing themselves as guardians of the underprivileged against conservative attack, they were self-censoring their speech – and what is worse, attacking those liberals who were not willing to do so. So, those people who hold liberal opinions on a number of issues but are not willing to toe the “PC line”, get pushed into the conservative camp by default. (I have seen it happening in India – my next post will be about that.)

So now we have the spectacle of groups of liberals sitting in their own echo chambers, tossing “approved” opinions back and forth, and patting each other on the back. Anyone who has the temerity to question any of them is pushed out into the big, bad world. And the echo chambers keep shrinking.

The only way for liberals to come back into the mainstream is to restore the freedom of speech and expression to the throne from where it has been kicked down from. Yes, it will be difficult. One will have to engage with a lot of people, with a lot of unpalatable opinions. But engagement will create a bridge: and once ideas pass back and forth over it, there will be change.

The art of discourse is a very strong weapon. Something which conservatives, who can only pontificate from a pulpit, do not have a clue about. It is not spectacular and showy: but like a rapier, it will slowly cut through prejudices and bring about revolution – in the minds of people. And that is the only revolution that’s permanent.

Conspiracy Theories

Urban Naxals

The right-wing filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri published a book called Urban Naxals: the Making of Buddha in a Traffic Jam in 2018, in which he put out the nonsense theory that Indian intelligentsia and academia were riddled with covert ultra-leftists bent on overthrowing the state. This was ostensibly the story of the making of his atrociously bad film Buddha in a Traffic Jam (which deservedly bombed at the box-office), which had the same theme as the book – and how, at each step, he was attacked and thwarted by the Maoist intelligentsia permeating all the institutions of India. The premise was silly beyond imagination, but in Narendra Modi’s India where right-wing paranoia ruled the roost, the book was a big hit and began to be taken seriously by a huge chunk of the population. Soon it was linked to Islamic terror, Pakistan, and all kinds of “anti-national” activities, and India was in the grip of a full-scale paranoia.

There was an incident mentioned in the book. On 9th February 2016, some students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) held a protest on their campus against the capital punishment meted out to the 2001 Indian Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, and Kashmiri separatist Maqbool Bhat. Soon after the incident, Kanhaiyya Kumar, Umar Khalid, and various other students were arrested for sedition – the charge being that they shouted a slogan “Bharat ko tukde tukde kar denge” (we will break India into pieces). Later on, it was discovered that they had not and the whole incident had been manipulated. But Agnihotri, in the book, used it to revive a very old conspiracy theory – that of a communist “Deep State” out to destroy the Indian nation-state.

The Deep State

A “Deep State” is defined by Oxford Dictionary as “A body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy”. The communist deep state of India is presumably comprised of closet left-wingers, radicalised during the Nehru/ Indira era when India had its long-standing love affair with the Soviet Union. Apparently, this was first propounded by Yuri Bezmenov, a Russian defector to America, in a booklet titled Love Letter to America – which is considered to be the absolute gospel by right-wingers. Any unbiased person reading it, however, would find his arguments to be utterly facile. I read the book and found it to be absolutely hilarious in its outrageous claims. For example:

It did not take me long to discover that our group was engaged in neither “research” nor “counter-propaganda “: behind locked doors we accumulated intelligence from various sources, including Indian informers and agents, regarding virtually EVERY important and politically significant citizen of India – members of Parliament, civil servicemen, military and public figures, media people, businessmen, university professors, radical or otherwise students and writers – in other words EVERYONE instrumental in shaping the PUBLIC OPINION and policies of the nation. Those who were “friendly” and ready to invite the Soviet expansionist policy into their own country were promoted to higher positions of power, affluence and prestige through various operations by KGB-Novosti. -Large groups, of the so-called “progressive and sober-thinking” Indians were on a regular basis, generously supplied with duty-free booze from the embassy stocks. Soviet sympathizers were invited to the USSR for free trips and numerous “international conferences” where they not only received substantial sums of money in the form of “literary awards” or “Nehru Peace and Friendship” prizes, but were also medically treated for VD or hernias acquired in the perpetual “class struggle”against “American imperialism”. Those who refused to be “flexible” and take a voluntary role in this cruel farce were thoroughly character-assassinated in the sensation-hungry media and press.

This means that the Indian government was virtually run by the Soviet Union – perhaps a valid hypothesis during the Nehru era, but unutterably silly in hindsight, looking at the dismal performance of the communist party in India. But it does point to the right-winger’s deep-seated fear of the “Reds”.

Yuri Bezmenov

The significant thing to note here is that I was directed to this book in 2015, when a Hindu right-winger commented on my review of The Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud by Arun Shourie – another book analysing how India’s history has been falsified and subverted by her leftist historians. Narendra Modi had just come to power, and the Hindu right in India was just finding its voice. Even then, it was sure that they clearly had a narrative down pat, linking so many unrelated and unconfirmed narratives into a semi-coherent whole: especially for prejudiced brains seeking exactly such a pattern.

What is a Conspiracy Theory?

Wikipedia says “A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable. The term has a negative connotation, implying that the appeal to a conspiracy is based on prejudice or insufficient evidence.” The world is full of them: This Wikipedia page lists out some of the more prominent ones.

Most conspiracy theories are simply too crazy to take seriously, like aliens gallivanting around in UFOs or alligators making merry in New York sewers. But most of the theories have a political slant, either anti-establishment or pro-establishment: and this political angle does pose problems, as it can be utilised to fuel hatred against a particular group of people – the most famous example being the antisemitic propaganda based on a Zionist conspiracy which fed upon itself for centuries before culminating in the holocaust.

The story of the Jewish conspiracy is still very much alive, especially in Arab and Palestinian minds who have the international bully Israel as a living example. When I was in the Middle East, poisonous books like The International Jew by that famous antisemite industrialist were openly sold in bookshops, and were taken seriously by many people. However, even though antisemitism had been present in Europe for centuries, the book that seem have set it into a movement is the book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a book written by Sergei Nilus in Russia, which was purportedly the minutes of meeting of the Elders of Zion who met in Russia in the late nineteenth century, and which discussed detailed plans for world domination.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The theme seems to be destabilisation of the world due to the overthrow of the established order, the rise of the democratic republic which is controlled by Jewish money, which shall collapse at a particular point of time to allow for an international conspiracy of Jews to attain power. The book is so silly and badly written, it would give the intelligent reader a headache. And one can immediately see through the manifestly ridiculous arguments.

This book has been established as a forgery , but when it came out, it was the Bible of Jew-haters. Henry Ford distributed it in America, and it is said to have inspired Hitler. Even now, it garners 4 and 5 star ratings on book sites, mostly from the Arab world. I just did a quick search on Goodreads, and one can find many people who take is as the gospel truth.

Why? If we can answer that question, maybe we will touch the heart of the problem of why conspiracy theories are so attractive.

The Paranoid Universe

We live in a world which we are not ready for yet. Homo Sapiens has centuries of history as a hunting and foraging animal behind us before the cognitive revolution set us on the path to civilisation. Reason grew at a tremendous pace, and we discovered science, the most powerful tool to strike away ruthlessly the illusions that governed us as a species, and point the way to objective truth.

The only thing is, we were not emotionally ready for it. The primitive animal that remains caged within our civilised veneer still lives very much in fear of a world which he cannot control. In this “demon-haunted world” (to borrow from Carl Sagan), all the myths and beliefs which helped him to attain a modicum of the feeling of security were suddenly stripped away. He was like a trapeze artist who suddenly sees the safety net disappear.

We are pattern-seeking animals. We need reasons and explanations. Unfortunately, life or the universe does not have any. They just are. There is no “grand purpose”.

This is unacceptable. So, we create The Matrix.

The Matrix

The Matrix is the 1999 cyberpunk SF movie, where mankind has been immobilised by intelligent machines and all are living a virtual reality. There are a very few humans who are outside this box, and they are the target of the machines, who never want humanity to wake up.

For the conspiracy theorists, this is the world. We are living a lie in a sham universe: reality is the matrix, controlled by the establishment/ Jews/ Muslims/ Marxists – or whoever you are frightened of. The apparent chaos that we face in our daily lives are all orchestrated by those evil entities. Like Neo, the hero of The Matrix, we have to swallow the red pill and wake up to harsh reality.

***

Most conspiracy theories are benign, to be carried on as hobbies by harmless crackpots. But once in a while, the fascist establishment takes it up and uses it to whip up paranoia – and crack down on their critics.

The conspiracy theory of the communist deep state in India was purposefully co-opted by India’s Hindu majoritarian government with an enthusiasm unparalleled. In 2018, it reached its nadir with the arrest of many social activists, who were accused of being urban Naxals plotting the assassination of the Prime Minister and the overthrow of the Indian state.

In 1818, in the battle of Koregaon in the state of Maharashtra, the British army defeated the numerically superior force of Peshwa Baji Rao II with the help of Indian soldiers from the Dalit community of Mahars. It is a matter of pride for Dalits as a victory against their “upper-caste” oppressors: but for the “nationalists”, the celebration of any victory of the “colonial oppressor” is sedition.

in 2018, as Dalits celebrated the 200th anniversary of this battle, stones were pelted on the gathering, which resulted in the death of a young man. This led to Maharashtra-wide protests and attendant violence. The police, in retaliation, made it into a grand conspiracy and arrested five well-known social activists on unbailable warrants based on the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

They are still in jail. And from then onwards, the conspiracy theory is snowballing like anything. The arrests made under the UAPA are increasing (even those offering the mildest criticism to governmental policies are often booked) but more insidiously, the social narrative is gaining credence that there is a widespread conspiracy among closet Maoists and Muslim terrorists (“Jihadis”) to destabilise and destroy India.

In the age of social media (especially WhatsApp), it’s very easy to spread malicious gossip disguised as fact – especially in a country like India, full of educated illiterates. The interesting thing is how these rumour factories link discredited stories from post-independence era onwards to the latest gossip and create an India-wide conspiracy out of the whole cloth.

According to these conspiracy theorists:

1. Indira Gandhi and family are Muslim/ Christian, having allegiance to an international Islamic/ Christian Conspiracy.
2. India’s Marxists historians have distorted India’s history to hide its glorious Hindu past and whitewash the Mughals, who were all religious maniacs.
3. This is part of a continuing conspiracy against Hinduism, in which Muslims and Maoists are somehow in cahoots.
4. Even with the Hindu Right ruling with a brute majority, using draconian laws indiscriminately, the Hindu religion is under threat.

Now we see how conspiracy theories metamorphose from the realm of the delightfully hilarious to the frighteningly destructive. In the recent years, apart from draconian measures from the government (which are steadily escalating), there has been a marked increase in hate crimes against minorities – to the extent that lynchings are news no more.

As they say – it did not start with the gas chambers.

Auschwitz Concentration Camp

The Post-Truth World

post-truth

adjective

• Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief:

‘in this era of post-truth politics, it’s easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire’

‘some commentators have observed that we are living in a post-truth age’

The above is from the web version of the Oxford dictionary.

I was not very sure of what this meant until I had an argument with a young man in my office.  This guy, intelligent and balanced in all other respects, shocked me by turning out to be an ardent Trump fan.  On further discourse, however, I found that he hated Hillary with an unbelievable passion, which he claimed was due to her dishonesty: but I suspect that it arises from a strong misogynistic streak in him, something which is buried in the shadow side of his personality (to borrow from Jung).

He kept on barraging me with the “evidence” of Hillary’s crookedness; but when I pointed out that most of these were of doubtful veracity, and a lot of similar allegations existed against Trump, he was at pains to point out to me that while most allegations against Hillary were “true”, those against Trump were “false”!  In short, he was doing exactly what the first example quoted in the above definition of ‘post-truth’ was trying to illustrate: cherry-picking data to come to one’s desired conclusion.

This brought up another unwelcome thought in my mind: aren’t I, a left-wing liberal, also guilty of the same thing?  We only have to look at Facebook to see that all and sundry keep on justifying their political stands on extremely shaky data.  It seems that if we look closely enough, we can always find something to “prove” just about anything.  So logic and reason have absolutely no say in human discourse any more – sadly, neither does truth.

***

This had me ruminating on the concept of “truth” itself.  I remember having this discussion on the Joseph Campbell fora (now sadly all but defunct): what, exactly, is “truth”?  Well, there are the indisputables: it is the truth that New Delhi is the capital of India, and that The Da Vinci Code was written by Dan Brown.  Only the severely delusional individual will dispute these, as we have concrete evidence to prove the same.  But what about, say, evolution?  The scientifically minded individual would say that it is the logical conclusion to draw from the evidence we have at hand, but it could hardly be called “the truth” as all said and done, it is a conclusion drawn by the mind.  So in our discussions, we decided to call the indisputable truths “facts”, and the proof for the same, “evidence”.  Truth was confined to the twilight zone where it was largely dependent on individual interpretation of evidence.

Things really became interesting in that particular conversation thread when someone said that the heliocentric universe was “only a theory”!  On the face of it, this claim was silly: but as the discussion went on, we found that this particular scientific “truth” was not as robust as those facts which I stated above.  I mean, we have ample evidence to show that the earth and other planets orbit the sun, but have any of us verified it first hand?  It could be that the whole scientific establishment is playing a massive fraud on us – in fact, this is what the Flat Earth Societies believe.

We have to accept that there are various shades to scientific truths also: while the heliocentric universe is on a relatively safe wicket, the theory of evolution is on more unsure ground.  And when we come to something economically and politically loaded like global warming – Al Gore aptly called it “An Inconvenient Truth”! – it seems that truth has become what we want to believe.  With science also influenced by politics nowadays, the fabled scientific method has become a tool for arriving at our desired conclusion.

***
Which brings us to politics, and how it permeates every thread in the fabric of human discourse in the current globally connected era.

Before TV became so popular, one had to take an effort to know the news – it was possible only through reading.  And it required some effort.  Reading the newspaper was almost and educational activity during my childhood; both our parents and teachers encouraged us to do it. I remember that in those days, news was more heavy on content and less on sensationalism – there were no colour pictures, no controversial statements which were highlighted in the headlines and much less of opinion pieces (if at all there were, they were clearly tagged as opinion).

The advent of television changed all that.  Now we had a movie screen in the house to watch the news as it happened, and it was much more exciting (also, it required much less cerebration).  I think none of us noticed how much it took away from the advantages of reading the newspaper.  Because as we read, our mind continually analyses the information and forms conclusions – when we watch it on the screen, the thinking mind is largely dormant and we react emotionally to the visuals.  We were getting dumbed down despite ourselves.  And when cable TV debuted, we had a multiple set of viewpoints barraging our audio and visual sensitivities.  News suddenly became big-time entertainment.

But the most decisive factor in ushering in the post-truth era is, I feel, the internet.  Now information was available literally at the touch of a finger.  To “google” something became an accepted verb.  Students doing school projects, instead of poring over heavy tomes in the reference section of their libraries, just opened Wikipedia, downloaded the pictures, copied the text, and aced their grades.  Everyone became an expert on various subjects due to their web browsing skills alone.

While this interconnectivity had its positives, it has its negatives too: the most obvious one being the loss of veracity.  Anyone with a good vocabulary and a smattering of knowledge can put up articles which would have a sufficient veneer of truth to hoodwink the gullible.  And with social media now ruling the roost, truth has gone for a toss.  The same syndrome is affecting the so-called “debates” on TV, which are nothing but shouting matches, each participants brandishing “facts” to support his or her viewpoint.

***

Is man essentially rational or emotional?

I remember discussing the “Rational Man Hypothesis” with my brother-in-law, a psychiatrist, some years ago.  This postulates that man essentially acts rationally, weighing all information objectively before reaching a conclusion and takes action accordingly.  However, enticing as this view is, it is utter poppycock: other than the half-Vulcan Spock nobody behaves in this way.  Man is essentially an emotional and instinctive animal even after centuries of evolution.  Reason is slowly mounting an attack on emotion, and gaining ground inch by painful inch, but it is still an uphill battle.

What social media and reality TV has done in the recent past is to reinforce this emotional quotient to an unprecedented degree.  With a world which is teetering on a precipice both politically and environmentally, it seems that mankind has retreated into its pre-enlightenment mentality, at least partially.  In a dog-eat-dog scenario, it’s every man for himself – I think the rise of the radical right can also be partially linked to this turbulent emotional environment where fear is the predominant emotion.

***

Is there a way out?

I cannot see any light at the end of the tunnel in the immediate future.  However, recognising our basic irrationality might be a beginning.  Reading up on different viewpoints on the same issue, keeping one’s emotional reactions in check, is also a method of rationally approaching an issue.

The fact that “truth” is not one size fits all.  The concept of objective truth, borrowed from Western science, is essentially a chimera.  Truth may be different for different people – each of us has his or her own path.  According to the Isavasya Upanishad:

“hiranmayena pātrena satyasyāpihitam mukham

tat tvam pūsan āpāvrnu satyadharmāya drsṭaye”

(The face of truth is concealed with a golden vessel.  O sun, please open it so that I, who am truthful, may see)

The sun here, I feel, is the one that burns within the spirit.  One has to let it blaze forth so that the golden vessel of our prejudices may melt away… and we may see the truth finally in its entirety.

Charlie Hebdo and the Freedom of Expression

“I do not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” – Voltaire

France is seen as the seat of European culture, the temple of free speech: so when the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris was attacked by armed gunmen on the seventh of January and four famous cartoonists murdered in cold blood, international outrage was instantaneous. People took to the streets with placards bearing the slogan “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) as a mark of solidarity: international leaders condemned the atrocity: and a massive rally was taken out in Paris on eleventh January where the leaders from forty nations participated. The attack was seen, rightly, as an assault against freedom of expression.

(Image courtesy: The Guardian)

The attackers were Islamic terrorists, and the reason for the attack was Charlie Hebdo’s publication of cartoons purportedly insulting the Prophet Mohammed. The responsibility was claimed by Al Qaeda immediately. And predictably, the “Islam versus the West” debate started.

Most of the Islamic nations condemned the attack: some leaders even participated in the rally. However, the West’s tired old saw of “Muslims not doing enough to condemn and combat terrorism” started coming out in print, visual and social media. Muslims as a people were immediately placed in the dock and Islam as a religion was once again accused of fomenting terrorist ideas in its basic tenets.

Then, some interesting viewpoints started coming to light – interestingly enough from the liberal West, questioning the very sincerity of the protests. The first of this kind of article I read was about the “pencil cartoons”, a host of which appeared after the carnage. Many of them showed pencils regenerating after getting cut: pens and pencils in combat against guns and swords: and coming up trumps while weighed against guns and bombs. While these were not very offensive (though repetitive), there were others showing Islamic terrorists being bombarded with pencils, pens and brushes. The political theme of the second set was clear: “enlightened Western intellectual power” against the violent firepower of the “uneducated” Middle East. And in many of the cartoons, the terrorist was shown as a hawk-nosed, turbaned, scowling Arab – a familiar caricature in the West since the colonial times.

(Image courtesy: http://www.redflag.org.au)

Soon, another set of criticisms came up, about the participants in the Paris rally. Many of the nations expressed solidarity with Charlie Hebdo had notorious track records on free speech: Israel had jailed journalists in Gaza, Saudi Arabia had jailed and lashed a blogger for alleged blasphemy, and Egypt, Bahrain, Russia etc. also had less than pristine records on the right to free speech. Even USA had tried to bomb the offices of Al Jazeera and the case of Julian Assange is still alive as a huge embarrassment for America and Britain.

The third set of criticisms was about the magnitude of the outrage. The murder of twelve people in France created such a huge outcry, while the killing of around 2000 people in Nigeria by the Boko Haram was largely ignored. Inevitably, the Third World claimed that the skin colour of the victims was in direct proportion to the furore – that the killing of black and brown people did not matter.

The final set of criticisms was against the cartoons themselves. Charlie’s cartoons were meant to shock and disgust; they were grossly insulting religious figures and the religions themselves. Many people think that there is a limit to free speech, and that Charlie Hebdo crossed it long back.

***

I personally was also shocked to hear about the attack, and condemned it immediately in my own small way by posting a review on the Goodreads website.

I am usually not in favour of anything which purposefully harms religious sentiments. In India, we have so many religions so sometimes we have to walk on eggshells: and respect for all religions is taught from a very tender age. So when the purportedly anti-Islam cartoons were first published, I never paid much attention, except remarking privately it was in bad taste.

But now things are different. When the guns of intolerance are trained on artists, it is time for all of us who are interested in art and literature to take up arms – and by that I do not mean guns. The written word packs more power than a thousand guns – and when it is combined with laughter, the power increases hundredfold.

So let’s join in solidarity with the slain cartoonists, and ridicule these extremists and their dictatorial version of religion to death.

I have since then had the chance to view many of the cartoons. Most are in extremely poor taste; many are overtly sexual; and almost all of them are insulting to some degree to some group. But I have to say one thing – they are impartial. Charlie Hebdo has no sacred cows. They were not a Western institution insulting the East – they were irresponsible and arrogant mavericks making irreverent fun of anything and everything – including the French government.

I do not consider that Islam or Muslims in general are responsible for the terrorist attacks, any more than Jews in general are responsible for Israel’s war on Gaza or Christians for George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” in Iraq.  I also do not agree that it is a question of “the intellectual West” against the “extremist Arab” – this is a simplified viewpoint which ignores the complex ground realities in the Middle East.

I do not endorse the French claim that their country is the centre of the freedom of expression – according to me, the French law prohibiting Islamic women to wear the veil is as restrictive as the one forcing all women to wear the abaya in Saudi Arabia. Racism and intolerance are not the sole province of the so-called theocracies and dictatorships; they are present in democracies also. However, the main difference is that in democracies, one has the freedom to criticise everything, including the powers that be – this is all the more true in Europe, and France is in the forefront of this freedom. And Charlie Hebdo is the shining example of that.

As a member of a democracy which leaves a lot to be desired in the department of the freedom of expression, I salute Charlie Hebdo.

As a member of a multi-religious nation, brought up on the sanctity of all religions and the importance of not insulting any religion, I condemn the cartoons insulting religious figures.

I do not agree to what Charlie Hebdo is saying, many a time: but I will defend to death, their right to say it.