Bread and butter appears to be the order of priorities for most voters rather than governance issues
Trends, fashions or ideas float in all societies. When does a trend become an ideology? What drives a person to commit themselves to it?
An ideology is understood as a system of ideas that aspires to explain the world, and sometimes replace it. Some call it the science of thought which aims at serving people, freeing them from prejudice, preparing them for the sovereignty of the preferred idea.
regulating behavior
This seems to be evident from the time humans engage in deductive and inductive reasoning for perfect existence in daily life. This process matured over time and experienced over the centuries. When simple explanations were not understood, the phenomenon was attributed to supernatural or divine forces. Each of these demanded justice among human beings living together. Hence, the saying that justice is the first law of human institutions. Evidence of this is available in ancient codes of China, Mesopotamia, India and elsewhere. Over time, these became religious codes and were duly consecrated. They all saw the integrity that mankind should strive to achieve.
In all cases the aim was to regulate human behavior in societies. The undeclared premise in most was that the average member of a social group living together was too busy or too simple or both to understand the full meaning or implication and almost in the sense of acting without any particular reason for the purposes of these laws. Was mindless, ready and willing to follow the suggestion of order and punishment in case of disobedience. Obedience was sought to become a habit.
Quest for social order
The political climate of the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in Europe, sought to assimilate ideologies with their focus on change with greater meaning for the masses. So in Marx’s statement Feuerbach. thesis on: Philosophers have simply interpreted the world in different ways; The point is to change it.
There were many of these in the 20th century, each addressing a target audience ranging from local and regional to global and based on an ideal social order. Each also depicted a demonology based on social class or ethnic specificity, the promise of freedom from tyranny. Thus, communism, with its vision of a classless communist society with the promise of ‘to each according to his needs’, made sense to settle. Similarly, and in addition to various versions of anarchism in European activist movements, National Socialism in Germany and Italy troubled its supporters by focusing on the nation and the fatherland. All of them found imitators in colonial lands in India, China and parts of Western Asia. They were all characterized by what Erik Hobsbawm portrayed as ‘ruthless, cruel and submissive’ versions of socialism.
Freedom, Communal Thoughts
In India, the ideas of ‘communal consciousness’ (in matters of political color) emerged at the social level along with the urge for freedom from foreign rule in a section of the society in the last decades of the 19th century. The efforts of Mahatma Gandhi and his like-minded supporters were opposed by many among Hindus and Muslims, who gave themselves the illusion of belonging to different ‘nations’. The rest was done in 1947 by the Mountbatten Plan and the death and destruction that accompanied it.
The ease with which the Bharatiya Janata Party’s political approach and strategy has carved a niche in the public mind over the past three decades has been seen. Electoral data in recent decades indicates a change in its vote share, which is termed non-Indian, meaning mainly adherents of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but politically focused. two later. Why and how is this sequence of priorities laid out for a good section of the electorate rather than for bread and butter governance issues? In the state elections from 2014 to 2019, its vote share reached or crossed the 50% mark in Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Delhi etc. Political commentators attribute this and its subsequent resounding success essentially to the successful advocacy of majoritarianism.
artificial lines agenda
This is despite the dispersion of minority population in most parts of India and despite the fact that in daily life, all sections of people, majorities and minorities, live in the same or adjacent neighbourhoods, and work together in daily life. We do. Despite this, an attempt is made to draw artificial lines to lay the foundation for a majoritarian agenda by categorizing religions on the basis of their places of origin. How far back can one go in history when faced with MS Golwalkar’s observation that “Iran is the base of Aryabhumi” and part of the “grand picture of our motherland”? So were the Aryans, and their faith and philosophy. Was it Indian or non-Indian?
it is considered It is convenient to recall Swami Vivekananda’s letter of June 1898 in which he said, “I firmly believe that without the aid of the practical Islamic principles of Vedantaism, however good and wonderful they may be, vast masses of mankind would are completely useless”. That “a junction of two great systems, Hinduism and Islam – the Vedanta mind and Islam body – is the only hope for our own motherland.”
It is the constitutional imperative of the fraternity to get lost even in the declared parameters of Hindutva.
core issues
The Hindutva agenda of looking at matters through the prism of faith may have disrupted or weakened the post-Mandal equations and brought electoral gains; So is the intoxicating effect of the success of the Ram Mandir movement. However, it cannot address the challenges of the policy and its implementation arising out of the ongoing protests against agricultural laws, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the National Population Register, widespread unemployment and several other measures, resulting in severe distress in most areas. It is done. Society.
Does this ‘ideological credence’ explain the public crisis and its widespread publicity within the country and in credible foreign media? Can this be attributed to the folly of its proponents, who are confused by a non-critical ideological belief? Will it reflect the education of the masses in the upcoming state elections, regardless, and beyond? Will the masters of Hindutva neither sleep nor sleep?
Hamid Ansari was the Vice President of India (2007-2017)
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