The March of Nations

Andy Warhol- Superman

The March of Nations


Influential18th century political philosopher G.F.W. (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich) Hegel, wrote about the destiny of the world directed by the “Will of God”, but carried forward by the “State”. Hegel, sometimes confused with fellow German Friedrich Nietzsche and his heady “Will to Power” exhortations, visualised a clutch of dominant players, no more.

But today with shrinking state authority amongst the first world, due to largely checkmated military options and near bankrupt coffers; things may be taking on a retrograde tinge reminiscent of the 18th century. The centre is not holding up too well and not just in India.

Hegel’s original vision of a ruling set is perhaps akin to the modern-day stranglehold of the five member Security Council. But the Security Council is also gridlocked. This has forced unilateral action on the part of its strongest member, namely the US, but might embolden others to follow suit in future, provided always that it or they can likewise finance their military adventurism.

There is also the high-power clubbiness of the G-8, despite its own set of competing interests; and also the media soaked summitry of business and politics at the annual Davos Economic Summits.

Certainly therefore, in echo of the Hegelian thesis, taken at face value, all this is tantamount to a ruling oligarchy of nations and their top businessmen, determining, for all intents and purposes, the fate of the world.

Hegel called this process “the march of nations”, implying where these lead nations go, the rest of the world is constrained to follow. Today, we might describe the phenomenon by just one word- globalisation, which admittedly is a little fuzzy about the inner workings of the power equations.

But, there is a mutation in the manner the Hegelian dialectic operates now. It is no longer possible to neatly systematise everything into thesis/antithesis and resultant synthesis. It is not as neat as that because the same influential nations and businessmen are forced to regroup, guided by “enlightened self-interest”. This makes for decisions taken on an issue to issue basis reflecting national vested interest, power politics and commercial gain and loss. Nations are no longer lined up in clear-cut teams in competition to each other across the board. Nor are they necessarily melded together by ideology, at least not for sustained periods.

For example, China is with America on certain matters and not in others. So much so, that the conceptual formulation of a G -2, touted barely a year ago, wherein the world’s richest country and its fastest growing one could rule jointly, is seen to be falling apart already. It is falling apart because China, though it is today only a quarter the size economically as the US, thinks itself strong enough to not have to play at junior partner. It is the perception of a growing power looking at what it thinks is a declining one. It’s not going to work in China’s favour, but tragically, it has persuaded itself otherwise.

The European Union on its part is hoisted on its Euro-based petard. That is why there is much angst generated amongst its dominant players such as Germany and France having to bail out its near bankrupt compatriots, such as Greece, Ireland or Spain.

Besides the quid pro quos, though routinely demanded, are not necessarily forthcoming. There are localised political pressures. Broke but Socialist Greece is finding itself strike bound, even before receiving bailout monies from Germany and France, as it tries to restore fiscal discipline. If Greece were on its own it could perhaps have devalued its way out of the debt trap, but now all 16 EU countries have to defend their beleaguered currency, and their average indebtedness of some 84 per cent of GDP!

That is also why the EU sometimes speaks in different voices on the matter of Islamic terrorism. Its constituents don’t uniformly support the foreign policy initiatives from the US either, despite being dependent on US trade and investment and even at the expense of undermining NATO. And this state of affairs is naturally being exploited by others, both within the Security Council and elsewhere.

In an increasingly disunited and multi-polar world, the Hegelian vision of a unitary lead-and-follow principle is largely compromised. This, even as the pressures and complexities of interdependence and contradictory policy positions are making for self-evident paradoxes.

For example, the increasing calls for strong sanctions against Iran for its nuclear weapons ambitions are undercut by the fiasco of the WMD propaganda used by the West to bring down Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. Many are wondering whether Iran is being demonised for control of its oil rather than the security issues being touted.

After all, nothing truly effective has been done against the Al Qaeda and the resurgent Taliban, even though they are tantalisingly close to laying their hands on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. But America and its allies persist in using a reluctant and culpable Pakistani state to act as its proxy.

Ironically, Iran, being vilified for its nuclear power/weapons ambitions, is not a terrorist state but is on the brink of being slapped with crippling economic sanctions. Pakistan, which is a terrorist state, nurturing both its non-state actors and dubious guests, is receiving strong support and succour from the Western Alliance!

Clandestine nuclear power North Korea has cocked-a-snook at the West, and gets away with it due to a gridlocked Security Council and blatant support from China.

And China, on its part, continues its hegemonistic policies in the South Asian theatre and further afield, inclusive of military muscle-flexing, cyber-terrorism and trade based aggression. It calculatedly ignores the gathering global perception that is distinctly shifting against its ill-advised “Will to Power”.

An economically weakened US has little alternative, if there is no Chinese cooperation to address trade balances between the two, but to undertake an all out trade war with China. This may prove very damaging to both sides but end up halting Chinese export-based economic growth.

But such is the direction that the “march of nations” is taking. India, very much a follower in the scheme of things, may yet benefit from the fall-out of all these building storms, provided it is able to defend its borders, maintain its internal security, and keep growing strongly on the back of its domestic markets.

(1,043 words)

February 12th, 2010, Mahashivratri
Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Leader on Edit Page as "The march of the nations" on February 19th, 2010. Also online at www.dailypioneer.com and is archived there under Columnists.

The Moon Belongs To Everyone

Chitra Ganesh- Amnesia Roxanne

The Moon Belongs to Everyone



The moon belongs to everyone
The best things in life they’re free
The stars belong to everyone
They cling there for you and me


From: The Best Things in Life Are Free


In Delhi city magazine Time Out, British-Indian novelist and essayist Rana Dasgupta writes: “Delhi’s is a dislocated personality-and it is precisely from this dislocation that its immense drive derives.” Quite refugee right too, because the native Delhiite would otherwise be the apathetic descendant of the last days of Mughal rule leavened with a smidgen of United Provinces/post-1911 air of a fading British Raj. Dasgupta might have added: and that is why Delhi is saved from the kind of parochialism being witnessed in Mumbai.

Chief Editor of Mumbai’s Midday tabloid Aakar Patel, writing in the same issue, thinks matters would be solved if the city’s Bania ethic was only allowed full play. He says, Mumbai was built by the mercantile class, be they Muslim, Hindu, Parsi or British, and the badge of mercantilism is pragmatism over honour. Patel goes on to endorse the mind-set by asserting “compromise is a sign of modernity”.

But then, unaware of the disconnect he displays, and unmindful of the irony and arrogance of eulogising a teeming metropolis by citing its most elite and sophisticated minority, he crows: “Without South Bombay India would be even more brutal, uncivilized and barbaric than it is.” But maybe it is this disconnect, this South Bambaiyya insouciance, which is at the source of Mumbai’s current predicament.

It is patently absurd to hold South Bombay in counterpoint not only to the rest of the city, but India itself! That too by apportioning unlimited virtue to the enclave while heaping intemperate abuse on the rest of the country. It is a little like condemning revolutionary France for not possessing the supposedly desirable airs and graces of the king’s court at Versailles.

But looking at the parochial vitriol emerging from the central and northern parts of the city of Mumbai is not much fun either. There is paranoia about alleged moves to separate Mumbai from the rest of Maharashtra in a vague foreign-handish kind of way. There is a great deal of Marathi manoos assertion and calls for reservation. Some of this is justified because the Marathi manoos has never been the most enterprising member of the Mumbai public, and probably needs a deal of affirmative action to find his little space in the sun, in what is, after all, his own state.

But the powers that be in Maharashtra, in the ruling combine, but flirting with the same danger; and in the vociferous opposition, desperately seeking populist traction; had better bring the wild talk, threats of disruption, and sporadic violence to an early close. That is, if they don’t want a flight of enterprise, talent and capital witnessed by West Bengal decades ago, in response to similar pogroms by a Communist Left Front, also acting in the name of the people, if defined a little differently.

And in that unfortunate case, the Marathi manoos may well be left with a metropolis without its animus, a city divested of its vitality, because the very mercantile classes which made it great have been driven away.

Neighbouring Gujarat is already a beneficiary of Mumbai’s political unreasonableness, as it has been from the Lal Salaam kiss of death in West Bengal. Delhi and the NCR will and has benefited from Mumbai’s ill wind. Bangalore and Hyderabad have done well over the last few decades because of Mumbai’s expensive real-estate and over-crowding. Chennai, slower-paced, has become the banking and credit card back-office king.

For Mumbai, all that is left now is to drive out the Tatas, the Ambanis and Bollywood to bring about a general exodus of “others”; because it won’t just be the Bihari mazdoor or the Uttar Pradeshi taxi driver that will leave because of the unreasonableness.

And if the Shiv Sena, the MNS, and elements of the ruling combine persist with their present course of agitational and destabilising politics, the Marathi manoos will certainly not be the gainer.

For once the Congress Party and the BJP and most other parties find themselves in agreement that Mumbai cannot be allowed to turn into a provincial bailiwick of local political forces. And pushed to the wall, the obvious seditious and unconstitutional nature of the agitation will have to be put down.

But, what is more likely, in the grand Indian way, is that the matter will be allowed to fester, be democratically opposed and drawn out, till it dies a natural death at the hustings. The idea of India is now well entrenched, and so is the notion of economic progress being the greatest hope and benefactor. It is expected the typical Mumbaikar will want to get on with his life and livelihood. The jihadis have discovered this to their frustration. Now the parochial Marathi-manoos-first parties will also be given their comeuppance. The wisdom of the electorate will eventually show the door to the craven misuse of the meaning of statehood within a country.

The debate of state first, country second, is both churlish and bizarre. That it seeks to assert itself is only good in so far as it is doomed to failure. The assertion will end up acting as an emetic to remove the poison from Maharashtra’s body politic.

But if it is all aimed and calculated to extract special privileges and exceptions for Maharashtra as a price for restoring the peace, the Centre may well have some food for thought. Perhaps this kind of exceptionalism began with the imposition of Article 370 in Kashmir. Several other states, particularly hill states, have enacted local laws preventing “outsiders” from purchasing large tracts of land. Even every colony in New Delhi now routinely locks out the public through an intricate set of gates and gatekeepers in the name of security.

It is frustrating for the people of India to go forward, as in advertising mogul Martin Sorrell’s characterisation of India as “the fastest growing democracy” in a recent Walk the Talk episode with Indian Express’s Shekhar Gupta; and have to deal with the remnants of narrow identities far from subsumed by the benefits of nationhood even after sixty years of independence. But then, nationhood is never a given and facile thing and must be defended.

(1,049 words)

February 6th, 2010
Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Op-Ed Leader in The Pioneer as "Moon belongs to all" on 9th February 2010. Also online at www.dailypioneer.com. Archived online at www.dailypioneer.com under Columnists.