There is a
constant debate in the social media on how left has monopolized the intellectual
and cultural public sphere. Furthermore, there is a strong stream of liberal
thinkers or at least so-called liberal thinkers who strive to have their voice
as the monopoly in the public sphere. Without doubt, many have been patronized
by the Congress led ecosystem that ruled the country for a significant part of
the decades post-independence. There have been non-Congress dispensations yet
they have shied away from taking on the powerful lobbies. Some attempt was made
in the intellectual sphere or the social sciences sphere by Dr. Murli Manohar
Joshi as HRD minister during the NDA rule from 1998-2004 but it was undone the
moment the Congress came back to power. Given the liberal secular chatterati which
is very vocal and thus entrenched, the scope for the challenger is often
diminished.
The emergence of
social media gave a new impetus to the growth of the Indian right. The voices
on the right long supressed by the liberal elite found a platform wherein they
could speak their views without being censored. This freedom is steadily getting
eroded as the social media platforms are increasing converging towards the left
of centre thinking and suppressing voices on the right. Yet, the organic growth
of the right on platforms like Twitter is perhaps an achievement that is
understated. This morphed into an amorphous ecosystem but homogenous enough to
counter the monopoly of the left. The challenge to the left liberal thinking
emerged from this unusual source and they could not get rid of them. Many have
turned aggressive against the counter arguments. This was nothing unusual. In fact,
in the initial talks between Hindus and Muslims on the Ayodhya issue, the
preparations which the Hindus had done in accumulating evidence left the Muslim
side unprepared. The monopoly in the cultural sphere by Islamo-left thinkers
allowed them to suppress these voices on the right and drag the dispute for
long.
Yet as the right
begins to gain critical mass, the directions do not seem convenient for
sustaining the system for long. The political power might exist or not, the
dominance in the public sphere must remain dominant. This is independent of the
political power in the long run. The right has been shouting from the roof tops
on the left ecosystem but seemingly abdicates its responsibility of creating
one to the government. Modi might facilitate the system but the creation has to
be organic bottom-up. Yet this is something that remains invisible. The organic
foundations are giving way to the top down approach. There is very little focus
on the emergent than the existing. It appears the right is more interested in
getting positions on the committees than venturing into the new and unexplored.
The left has dominated the text book scene for instance for nearly half a
century. The right wing thinkers want to replace the left on these committees. It
is a different story that the text books as we know might be dead in no time
and something else will replace. The right wing should have ideally focused on
capturing the newly manifesting sources of knowledge than the existing ones. Yet,
to them, it is about prestige of replacing the left in the committees.
An instance can
be cited about the Wikipedia. Wiki over a period of time emerged as the primary
source of knowledge. Given its invariably top of the search position in Google
search, people by default will tend to navigate to Wikipedia for information. The
left perhaps realised very fast and moved to capture the same. The Indian right
was more in dismissal of Wiki pointing to its inaccuracies. Barring a few on
their individual volition, there was no attempt to capture Wiki and post
accurate information at least on matters with respect to India and Hinduism. It
was only during Delhi riots that Indian right seem to have woken up. Yet aside
of the some noise, very little has been done to build an Indian equivalent of
Wikipedia. There is no reason why this cannot come. The thinking in the Indian
right is more of top down approach with creating a few right wing public
intellectuals who will lead their battle. Yet this hardly serves the purpose.
While Amar
Chitra Katha or Chandamama did their bit of work in sustaining the
civilizational memories, the current crop will have to revolve around gaming
for instance. Yet the gaming industry in India is very nascent. The emphasis on
toys and gaming by PM Modi recently is more to correct this `imbalance. Yet in
the absence of bottom up push to building a civilizational based gaming and toy
industry occupying the high value add in the Smiley curve, these will become
tools for the left to capture. Indubitably, the new tools that are on the
horizon are the virtual reality and augmented reality. Both are experiencing limitations
given the paucity of content. The content to these technological forms can be
created. Furthermore, with passage of time, they will become more granular. Yet
the Indian right is hardly venturing into these spaces. The left liberal system
is all set to capture these spaces and the Indian right in all likelihood will
again sit and whine.
To the Indian
right, the celebrity right is what matters now. They feel perhaps threatened by
the emergence of somebody from the grassroots. These might have evolved organically
but any movement from the grassroots will erode their monopoly. However, unless
the cultural movement is made bottom up, evolved organically, the movement will
not succeed. There is a definite need of an Indian repository of videos, a la
an Indian YouTube or Vimeo, there is a need for an Indian Facebook, there is a
need for an Indian Twitter, yet these are far from the minds of the Indian
right. It must be realized that there cannot be a global right. The right by
its very definition would locate in a certain frontier unlike the left. The Indian
right currently resembles the Congress pre-1919. There are some grassroots
effects, yet in totality, the pecking order is top down. Despite his failings,
one too many, Gandhi’s contribution lies in making the nationalist movement
bottom up. He involved the masses than the classes. Without the organic growth
of the movement through a capillary action process, the Indian independence
would have remained a pipe dream. The right wing in India or the Hindu right in
particular awaits this moment.
Comments
Post a Comment