Pseudo-nationalism and Pseudo-secularism: Two Sides of the Same Coin

 

Pseudoism is the art and craft of using a positive emotion, feel-good factor, or a relaxing sentiment, picking its hypothetical meaning in letter, and grafting it over to hide the mean spirit. It is the spirit to dominate, to manipulate, and rule at any cost. Herein the much-cherished end solely justifies the means. It becomes a blindfolding instrument. No wonder, pseudoism is a suitable device with power aspirants particularly.

Pseudo-secularists have always cashed minority fears. They stroke almost inexistent phobias. They want the minority to stay scared and insecure about whatever the so called majority does. They keep the apprehensions and insecurities alive, and turn these into votes at the election time.  

Then it’s the turn of pseudo-nationalists. They create a rhetorical stage, offering people a feeling to contribute to nation-building. It’s a stage set for papery heroism, where one can contribute to national glory without putting anything at stake, without any risks either. It’s a goody-goody dream-world. You shout slogans, you pour hate on social media, you condone the acts of violence against your target, and you claim to be more patriotic than others. That’s it. You need not do more. Shouting amidst the frenzied crowd, like it’s a picnic outing or a new entertainment game, is all that it takes to be a nation-builder. You are supposed to stand to the national anthem before the movie starts. You do it and you are a patriot. It doesn’t matter if straightaway after that you elbow the girl in the next seat, or rub your leg against hers on the pretext of extending your limbs out of boredom.

As a virtual patriot, you get countless liberties to offer your sacrifices for mother nation. You can be a simple law-breaking chit of a human being in scores of daily routine, like violating traffic rules, passing lewd remarks at women, scattering garbage and peeing in the open. All this doesn’t matter as long as you ride the bandwagon of pseudo-nationalism.

It’s very easy to fall in this trap. Who doesn’t want to keep the belief that he/she is contributing to nation-building. Feelings apart, only a little section can do actually so in practice. Rest can take this sip in the meow meow on offer on the stage of populist rhetoric.

This risk-free nationalistic spirit but comes at a big cost. Little do people realize that by the time they are still enjoying the echo of their slogans, they have already crossed a line to enter a zone of well-orchestrated mass-hate. They are getting trained for being less loving, less tolerant, and hence lesser human beings than they could have been otherwise. Even before they realize the slightest change, they have already surrendered a part of their good self. They are smaller than they were before. Something gets cut off from the real self. They get polarized. The vision gets skewed. They lose the open-minded exuberance required for a healthy mind and creative spirit. They become just a diminished self of their former self. The society gets a fracture. It's painful. 

The current wave of pseudo-nationalism fuelled by the Brahamanical Hindu rhetoric has many takers, especially the younger generations. Not surprisingly though, on account of the fact that their hormones are yet to stabilize, the stage is shaking, and the world is mired in a wobbly vision. They, the youngsters, need to pour out their straying energies. Papery nationalism is a suitable means. It makes them paper tigers. They become valiant web-soldiers slaying opponents on the internet battlefield.

As per their growth hormones, they are exploring. They get the pill, pick it up, and savor it. It’s tasty. It’s even better than alcohol in fogging the mind into delusions. They thunder and roar against imaginative foes. They hunt down invisible enemies of the state through hate speech, by clapping over stray mob lynching here and there, and by condoning acts of violence, arson and looting now and then. In effect, it simply trains them in petty criminality, which in certain cases turns a few of them into hardcore criminals.

To make it even more deplorable, pseudo-secularists’ blood doesn’t boil over the plight of the common man. In fact more the violence born of the rightists’ anger, the more they feel they have the fodder to burn in debates. I think whenever something nasty happens, pseudo-ideologies on both sides get excitedly itching at the same degree, because exactly this type of division ensures their existence. In fact they are the two sides of the same coin and cannot exist in isolation. So they co-exist and fuel the great power game among the groups on both sides. 

Brahamanical Hindu rightist led pseudo-nationalism is particularly trying at the communal level. And this onslaught means that the pseudo-secularism of the leftist and centrist affiliations stays relevant. They know that they exist as a pair, as antonyms. Their existence is in relation to each other. It’s a very simple game and they play it smartly to rule by turns as the frenzied masses sway from this side to the other.

Islam-phobia is the common ground in the rightist strategy. Little do they realize that within the Hindu society itself, there are sections that have been exploited for thousands of years by their own co-religioners. Dalits and tribals, the frozen class, with fates frozen at the sub-human levels for generations, have as much to grudge over caste-based exploitation, discrimination and humiliation, as a fundamentalist Islamist might have against other religions. Dalits, Muslims and Tribals, the super-entity that can easily identify with discrimination, have much in common in terms of inequity, systematic second-hand treatment and exploitation.

In Indian politics, there are permutations and combinations of caste and communal identities. These shift over and acquire strange shapes. The latest may be Dalit-Muslim-Tribals combo. Muslims safely ensconced in the trio. The lethality of Islam-phobia melting in the historical wrongs against the frozen class in the Indian society. Some strange mutant of Congress, leftists and other non-BJP regional parties may come into effect. Overblown Brahamanical Hinduism, having the exploitation of its own lower society at the core, can fuel a new trend in political jugglery.

Not that it will push the Indian society towards social cohesiveness, love, peace and harmony. That unfortunately remains a distant dream because our democracy is currently fuelled by divisions in the society.