We don’t do nuance
President George Dubya Bush, India’s special friend, or her hegemonistic bete noire, depending on your political persuasion, let it be known, “I don’t do nuance”, thereby putting the onus on his officials and advisers to present matters in black and white, the grey being relegated to damnation.
But two-term President G.W. Bush, once wanting a certain Mr.Laden “dead-or-alive”, in all look-you-in-the-eye seriousness, is wiser than it might be assumed at first. Because, casting the world and all its matters in stark either/or terms, does have its advantages.
Not doing nuance prevails, hands down, over doubt, and issues of intellectual honesty, for example. It helps you brush inconsistencies, like where are those life-threatening WMDs, under the carpet. And, it enables you to look decisive, almost as decisive as wearing a Bomber Jacket for a photo opportunity on a US Aircraft Carrier, as you back your chosen “regime change” horses. And you don’t even have to pander to inconvenient ifs and buts as you win re-election with a decisive majority.
But India, being an old civilisation, an observant and subtle one at that, always manages a variation on every theme. So, while the world watches our no-holds-barred version of democracy in morbid fascination; we, the people of India, are confronted with the unedifying spectacle of every political party, and person in it, casting its, and his or her agenda, in black or white, in sense and nonsense alike.
We don’t worry much that this resembles anarchy and invites aggression from Pakistan, China, internal Maoists, external terrorists and all others wanting to fish in troubled waters. But, really, we patently should!
Instead we seem to have developed an ever-changing aya ram gaya ram variation of the no-nuance mantra, with nil reference to our own past preferences, and a throw-away line or two as to the whys and wherefores for anybody listening.
Sometimes, a few politicos pick up, this being the land of Mahatma Gandhi, whatever shard of ethical justification they feel like, to cloak it in. It is a shard picked up from the floor, from the shattered jar of morality lying there. Others have reached a new level of blatancy altogether, and feel no need for cloaking anything anymore.
That is why you have issues of political illegitimacy cohabiting with oxymorons of deep-seated political incompatibility. You have the UPA refusing to distinguish between the patriotic Muslim citizen and blood-thirsty terrorist, at least in terms of nabbing and punishing any of the perpetrators. The illegal, encouraged to walk-in Bangladeshi, harbouring seditionists in their midst, is retained with full voting rights and a tacit understanding of political patronage while crocodile tears are shed over increasing piles of the innocent dead. The domestic jehadi, from known and documented hotspots, is allowed to go about his business as if it were a fundamental right of his that the nation must preserve.
You also have the NDA, ostensibly a Right-leaning, business-friendly party, brazenly declaring its intent to oppose any initiative to execute long pending reforms held up for long by the ideologically driven Left. This, coming, as it does, after disowning the very Indo-US Nuclear Deal that the NDA helped foster, over six years of preparatory work. And after testing nuclear devices, five of them, readied painstakingly after years of surreptitious development by successive Congress and Janata Dal governments before them.
You also have both sides trying to engineer defections, using every device of cash and kind at their disposal, and refusing to see any ignoniminy in it.
You have, in addition, the rag-tag-and-bobtail UNPA, the secondary Opposition, devoid of a coherent political vision of their own, unless it is the debilitating ideology of the Left, opposing both ends of the stick against the middle. They see nothing odd about their declared intention of providing the benighted populace with the “third alternative”, one to be authored and executed by themselves.
The UNPA is hoping to increase its strength in the next general election so that the UNPA, the UPA and the NDA become more or less the same size. Then, the UNPA would have the right to stake its claim to form the government just as legitimately as the other two groupings. The way things are going, this could indeed come to pass.
As for the other two formations, namely the UPA and the NDA, they are determined, to make short work of the UNPA, just as they have three times already! But perhaps the past is not an accurate predictor of the future. It could be the UNPA that breaks up the NDA or the UPA to their advantage the next time around!
And all this is only the main plot. Every regional party that is teamed up within the UPA, the NDA or the UNPA, or is ostensibly independent and unattached, has its own regional agenda, often at cross purposes with its larger commitments.
The solution to the deepening mess, bizarre as it may seem, is coming to more and more strategic, economic and political commentators. It is simply an alliance of the centrist elements in the UPA and those in the NDA, or, if one has to peel the onion somewhat in the process, between the Congress and the BJP.
After all, they account for nearly 400 of the 542 seat Lok Sabha between them and are likely to easily tally up the 272 seats needed for a parliamentary majority together going forward. They also represent most of the political and administrative acumen available to the Indian political stage. Not only would such a formation end the descending spiral of political blackmail that is getting us more and more into its boa constrictor-like grip, but the Congress and BJP could be regarded as natural allies if each dropped a few of their irreconcilable differences in favour of a common minimum programme of their own.
Together, the Congress and the BJP are capable of providing governance and stability to this country after the impending elections. Dubya Bush, our friend over the seas, knows why he doesn’t do nuance. Likewise our political leadership too must, in the service of our beloved nation as our 61st Independence Day approaches, consider dispensing with chicanery and refuse to nuance the differences between the party that won our independence and the one that constitutes the principal opposition. Today, they need to unite against the rest.
(1,050 words)
Gautam Mukherjee
July 29th, 2008
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