The Pandemic of Hate

Right around the middle of the last decade, something changed. It was a contagion of a different kind, most notably observed in all of the world’s most famous democracies. Each case was unique, but the symptoms were all largely similar, and with a pattern.

In the United States and Britain, there was a rise of White Supremacy. Resurgence would be more like it, because Whites were never really the oppressed ever. But what changed was their ability to play victim on their way back up. White men and women from America and England championed their ‘causes’ and ‘stood up’ for themselves, brandishing guns, and/or other symbols of racial superiority. In a sane world, respective governments would have talked them out of it, or nipped it in the bud. But sanity was far from sight as the very drivers behind their misplaced rage were those trying to take power.

Between Trump, Boris Johnson, and Erdogan in Turkey, three countries found themselves being sold bite-sized dozes of hatred towards a visible but harmless enemy. With Whites, it was easy. Anyone non-White was an enemy.

India was no different.

People over time, have often marvelled at the very existence of a country like India that’s really nothing short of a conglomerate of little nations. Each state, each region, houses its own ethnic universe. Communities are differentiated by more than one marker — language, faith, cuisine, culture to name a few. It’s a delicately laid out platter.

To paraphrase Yuval Noah Harari’s book ‘Sapiens’, he theorises that Homo Sapiens slowly but certainly eliminated the relatively larger and stronger sub-species called Neanderthals, not out of competition for resources but out of sheer hatred for them. They were too different to be liked, and too similar to be ignored. It adds up: the smaller but shrewder Homo Sapien nudged the brawnier but gentler Neanderthal out of its territory into starvation and eventual extinction.

It’s been quite the same with the Indian subcontinent. Each ethnic group only somewhat different from the other. One man’s food was another man’s chutney. What’s considered cultured at one end of the country, is borderline blasphemous elsewhere. Add to this, a burgeoning population and mismanaged resources, one bad spell of rain and you’re at the brink of civil war.

Into this volatile mix, 6 years ago, was ushered in the political equivalent of a Mentos pellet to a Coke can. NM. Much ink has been spilled on his past as Gujarat’s Chief Minister, but not enough has been written about his present as Prime Minister. Or at least, not enough by the right people.

His rise up the ranks in the Party until his eventual appointment as PM, finds us drawing many parallels to that of Trump’s in the GOP and appointment as President. They were both unlikely candidates with unorthodox, and sometimes questionable intentions. Where NM comes off as shrewd or scheming, Trump is simply foolhardy. But the one thing they sold to their vote banks was largely the same. Hate.

His party, if not he himself, has been rather busy since 2014 vilifying people that were least like himself. That would mean non-Hindu, non-vegetarian, and non-conservative.

Self preservation is innate in every living being. And this crop of leaders tap into that very instinct. To protect one’s own turf, belief system, and place in society is a human right. But this statement no longer applies to privileged classes. Whites in America and Britain have long-reigned and benefited at the expense of non-Whites. Slavery’s very foundations were laid on basis of skin colour. Even after its abolition, it still exists vestigially as White Privilege. A privilege that feels threatened at the sight of high-paying, high-skilled jobs being handed to competent People of Colour (PoC).

Hindus in India have held a majoritarian position since Independence. In fact, world-over, India’s identity still rests in cultural symbology that’s almost of uniquely Hindu origin. Come 2013, the NDA is surveying a population whose working class is fed-up to the gills with the incompetent, apathetic, slow-moving, and needless-to-say corrupt UPA-lead government.

It was practically handed to him on a platter. Dressed in expensive Indian-style suits, sporting a well-manicured beard, he charmed the masses with eloquent, visionary, presentations of a strategy for a new India, while his party worked the ground-level machinery that disclosed plans of achieving a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, or a Hindu nation-state.

The difference was almost laughable in the beginning. On the one hand, you had a suave, good-governance toting Prime Minister, and on the other, a bunch of uncouth men yelling at Muslims to ‘go back to Pakistan’. It’s almost as if that sort of talk was beneath him, and he was too busy putting up a good face for India to bother reigning them in.

Apart from a fondness for the spotlight, if there was one other thing he really enjoyed, it is what his most vocal critics refer to as ‘theatrics’. Almost no big decision is ever implemented without a little buzz, or that heady mix of fear and optimism. The demonetisation of 2016 stands as a time-tested example. Its results are still to be seen. Black money still to be traced. Long queues and losses of lives still to be justified. In a fair world, this could qualify as a human rights violation. The 2020 nationwide lockdown whose repercussions are still being felt, came in with a 24-hour heads-up. Over a billion people had to stock up supplies for 6 weeks of life indoors with just a day to prepare for it.

As we inch our way out of what was an entire year spent indoors and overworked, life outside doesn’t look terribly optimistic. Per capita GDP is lower than that of Bangladesh, inflation higher than it’s been in years, and the Dollar looms larger than it ever did even in the well-greased hands of the corrupt, inept UPA government. The numbers don’t lie.

Those that support him, however, still have something to look forward to — the Hindu Rashtra. Nation-states have time and again proven to be a failed model of governance. Pakistan, whose borders were open only to Muslims from the subcontinent, are a fine example. They’ve struggled to maintain a long-standing democratic government, witnessing coupe after coupe until recent years. Pakistan has always looked to the Middle East for inspiration. Studying the rise of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and emulating it with little to no success. A nation-state fails for the simple reason that it mingles matters of faith with matters of administration. The Middle East prospers largely and arguably only because of its access to oil — something a once-aspiring nation-state like Pakistan never had.

India, on the other hand, was founded on secularism, which simply meant equal opportunity. Principally, at least. We’ve had Muslim superstars (and president), a Christian humanitarian Nobel laureate, a Sikh Prime Minister, Parsi industrialists, a Hindu father of the nation, and entire communities that don’t conform to the one-nation-one-faith doctrine.

Over a series of moves, the present administration has attempted to reverse this and homogenise the mosaic that is India’s cultural identity.

But could that mean everything touched by this Party takes us back in time? Certainly not. Among the unintended consequences of the demonetisation was a large-scale digitisation of transactions on a national scale. A number of process simplifications including the introduction of the GST, are credited to the NM era.

Supreme Leader himself is known to be an advocate of all things tech. A patron of the ‘new school’, he’s active on Social Media, and has even successfully used it to desired effect.

Not very surprisingly, a certain other nation head and advocate of science from the 1930s was also an equally vocal proponent of the nation-state model, was fond of speeches and grand appearances, and of course pogroms.

Again, he most famously rose to power through sheer salesmanship of the one thing your audience loves — hate.