Clarion Call For A New Right

Clarion Call For A “New Right”


The recent overt prominence of the RSS in BJP matters is providing its detractors a good opportunity to raise a bogey about the future direction of the Party. This despite protestations of being merely “advisory” from new RSS Sarsangchalak Dr. Mohanrao Bhagwat.

Meanwhile, the right-wing voter and sympathiser is experiencing a degree of existential crisis as he watches his already defeated party’s electoral prospects diminish further into an unseemly morass of factionalism and infighting.

Even the prospect of a generational change at the helm might not be enough to remedy matters. What is necessary, additionally, is a re-evaluation and modernisation of the party’s ideological core in concert with the RSS.

Any modernisation in the BJP cannot be convincing without concomitant change also in the RSS. This is because the RSS is largely viewed as the marching legs of the BJP. It is further perceived to espouse a mishmash of anachronistic and quixotic views, intolerance
and communalism, notwithstanding the relatively progressive stance of the current sarsangchalak.

But even for the foot soldier of both organisations, the present pass is disheartening. His Hindutva ideology consisting of an “Integral Humanism” or Ekatma Manaveeyate, as outlined, a little windily, by Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, is outdated today.

Even updated and relaunched as “dynamic humanism”, it remains a little suspect because of the undisturbed underlying assumptions. These include several positions which can be regarded as obscurantist, communal, and even misogynistic. Even the justificatory peg of “Bharatiya Culture”, as described by Mr. Upadhyaya is hopelessly out of date.

The ideology also suffers from non-synchronisation with the gains of technology and real-time information transmissions. We are well into the 21st century, with its many enablers and conveniences, and there are even more startling advances waiting in the wings. At this time, the need for adaptation to the future is far more urgent than looking in the rear-view mirror for ideological cues that have become largely obsolete.

After all, if “Bharatiya” and “Hindutva” have mutated in meaning from the pre-independence era, into near pejoratives that denote backward looking thinking, then something needs to be done and as soon as possible.

But even as we wait for reform, these terms are now understood to represent a world view that is suppressive, communal and oppressive in intent, cloaked under a vacuous, high-falutin’ if wide-angled humanism.

And the antics of fringe groups such as the Ram Sene and others that attack women, pubs, painters and paintings, all in the name of Hindutva and said Bharatiya Culture, trivial as such activities may seem in the greater scheme of things, do not help the cause.

The other, more exclusivist, majoritartian and communal interpretation given to Hindutva is viewed by many as heartlessly reactionary, emanating from incipient fascism, unmoved by pogroms and riots, and in conflict with the Gandhian ethos of tolerance and non-violence, seen by most Indians as India’s best suit.

In short, the Right is experiencing a crying need for updation, in which the root and branch of its ideology, as practiced by the RSS and the BJP, must be modernised for the times.

If this is not done, it is clear that the BJP, invested with the business of electoral politics and supported by the RSS cadres, might find itself in greater trouble further down the road. Today it is, even in its reduced numbers, the largest Opposition Party in the Lok Sabha and ruler of eight states. So all is by no means lost!

But perhaps the answer for the future lies in adopting a page from the “New Right” of other countries. It has come to country after country in Europe and to the US, changed irrevocably through the two World Wars and the Industrial Revolution. The old age of land, aristocracy, privileges of birth, monarchy, class and creed is largely gone. And with the demise of the agrarian lords-and-serfs equations of the 19th century, old-fashioned conservative political ideologies also bit the dust.

In Britain, always an inspiration to India, the old monarchist, lordist and arch conservative Tory party of the Empire has been lapsed, little by little, through long years out-of-power since WWII, into the successful New Right policies of the eighties, a much changed thing.

It reasserted family values gone awry under Labour, emphasised greater access to quality private education to set right the ills of the state run schools, a toughening up against crime and deviance and trade unions that had paralysed commerce and industry. But it got away from its assumptions of natural superiority based on privilege.

This New Right also favoured policies designed to make shareholders of the masses, privatised state run enterprises, and set about creating a nation of property owners instead of the Labour proclivity for promoting millions of “wards of the state”. The Margaret Thatcher/John Major years left an indelible mark, even on the Opposition Labour Party,reflected in the Centrist policies of New Labour under Tony Blair and now, Gordon Brown.

And a similar scenario of “neo-liberalism” played out in the same period in the US. It went from the “caring” conservatism and prosperity of the Republican Ronald Reagan years through to the centrist and even more prosperous years under Democrat Bill Clinton.

Key policies on both sides of the Atlantic included deregulation of business, a dismantling of the welfare state, privatisation, downsizing government, reducing strangle-hold of labour unions and reforming company laws for greater flexibility in an increasingly global market.

India since 1991 has been on its own reformist path that has brought it the only prosperity it has ever known. So much so, that no government, of whichever hue, has ever dared to roll back the reform process. At best, some did not further them followed by others that pressed on.

It is clear that reforms enjoy broad multi-party consensus. What is now called for is a more centrist move in terms of ideology too, featuring only calibrated difference of approach and degree to the same issues.

This will provide our demanding electorate with a set of viable choices. It is this recognition of the writing on the wall that will renew the BJP and the RSS and free it of its confusion. It is this, or a sad return to one party rule and a drift Leftwards, in the absence of any viable opposition from the Right.

(1,049 words)

5th September, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee