Domestic issues: India must handle on its own
The controversy over offensive remarks about Prophet Mohammed has sparked outrage in influential parts of the Muslim world. Sensing the gravity of the issue, the ruling regime acted against two of its spokespersons and issued a clarification that only deepens the duality between the inclusiveness professed by its top leadership and the exclusion in speech and practice witnessed at the lower levels. That we worry about the remarks because they damage India’s national interest and not because they are intrinsically wrong shows the advanced state of our collective cynicism.
The irony is that no objective debate on the harm this episode has done to our national interest is possible. For one, the establishment has created a monopoly on the definition of national interest, which means that contrarian readings of national interest stand little chance of getting a fair hearing. For another, even where the damage to national interest is glaringly obvious — recall the situation with China on the Line of Actual Control since 2020 — the establishment remains confident that it won’t suffer electoral setbacks. In other words, the critical, deterrent, and corrective potential of the national interest argument has become quite limited.
That international displeasure has led to symbolic action at home could raise the hopes of those who are concerned about the deteriorating state of civil liberties and inter-community relations in the country. They may think that international public opinion and displeasure of foreign governments may pressure the regime to rein in damaging elements at home once a threshold is crossed. But it would be unwise to seek remedies for these domestic concerns in the wider world.
First, in the age of narrow nationalism and hard sovereignty, appeals to the international community are likely to draw harsh responses from officialdom at home. Since at least late-2019, we have witnessed dissenters appealing to international opinion being branded as part of transnational vested interests that make common cause against India, undermining its sovereignty and national interest. The power of any State to discredit even well-intentioned parts of its civil society is absolutely superior. The collateral damage of such appeals is a weaker civil society.
Second, the two blocs within the international community that concerned Indians feel hopeful about come with multiple baggage. The West faces an unprecedented credibility crisis over the values it historically has stood for. Strong conservative backlash against liberals across western societies and thriving democratic authoritarianism in countries such as Hungary are only two of the several reasons that have called into question the locus standi of a United States or a European Union to even mildly intervene in the domestic affairs of non-western countries. There is a reason why calling out western “hypocrisy” has become a prominent part of New Delhi’s recent diplomatic practice.
The Muslim world fares worse. Unwilling to look critically at certain aspects of their faith that are grossly inconsistent with modernity, the Muslim countries’ championing of human rights and religious freedoms appears positively farcical. It is telling that their red line concerns the founder of their faith rather than the plight of the faithful when the latter is in part due to anachronistic aspects of the faith, including the violence in its global past and present.
Our problems concerning civil liberties and the security and dignity of our minorities as full and equal citizens are our own, and we Indians must ourselves address them. The fight for civil liberties is about repairing our constitutional democracy. A non-violent social movement and a vision of inclusive nationalism, sans the detritus of the period between the 1970s and the early-2010s, will be necessary to build a democratic counterforce, correcting the lopsidedness of our polity. Unless political balance is restored, civil liberties will remain vulnerable to abuse.
This is hard enough. Almost impossibly harder still is addressing the vulnerability of our minorities. At heart here is the need to honestly revisit our difficult history. Partition and an uneven approach to personal law reforms in the 1950s robbed us of the opportunity to leave behind that part of our past. Liberals have avoided that history altogether while the Left has, although with good intentions, underplayed the conflicts within that history rather than, as those on the Right allege, written falsehoods.
The result is the emergence of a crude and misleading historical narrative that weaponises standing physical monuments of a long and complex intercultural encounter and the under-modernised state of our largest minority to push India backwards. Liberals, with their commitment to societal modernisation, and the Left, with its tools of scientific historical enquiry, could play the vanguard here. In the process, they could give the term ‘Left-liberal’ a substantive meaning.
In the 1940s, Mahatma Gandhi confronted the British argument that were they to leave India, Hindu–muslim conflict would throw the country into anarchy by saying that it was the presence of the British that prevented the two communities from encountering and resolving their differences. He asked the British to exit and leave India to God or anarchy. The Gandhian intuition remains relevant. External intervention in our issues will prevent us from confronting our deep-set, difficult, but very surmountable challenges. To not do the hard work and look to the international community for help is an abdication of our responsibility to society and nationhood.
EXTERNAL INTERVENTION IN OUR ISSUES WILL STOP US FROM CONFRONTING OUR DEEP-SET, DIFFICULT, BUT VERY SURMOUNTABLE HURDLES. TO NOT DO THE HARD WORK AND LOOK TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY FOR SUPPORT IS AN ABDICATION OF OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO BOTH SOCIETY AND NATIONHOOD