Over the top

As I had mentioned in yesterday’s post, I was eagerly awaiting this evening’s live broadcast of the Intelligence Squared debate on Pakistan. You would be forgiven if you’re not especially enamoured of such events because they have become something of a dreary staple in Western policy circles. People who had never heard of Pakistan before confidently make policy pronouncements on “Af-Pak”, Swat, the “tribal areas” and rattle off a gaggle of Muslim names all in a misplaced effort to garner some form of intellectual capital.

Although this particular panel discussion suffered from some of those traits it was sufficiently stimulating for the most part. I was particularly impressed with Dr. Farzana Shaikh’s deposition. Dr Shaikh, a fellow with the Asia Programme at Chatham House put forth a thesis that seeks to view Pakistani affairs from the old-fashioned prism of Indo-Pak relations and Pakistan’s testy relationship with its founding faith. Her basic contention was that the Pakistani quagmire is a direct result of the attempt to gain strategic parity with India. There were audible gasps of discomfort from (presumably) the Pakistani members of the audience as Shaikh implied that it is time that Pakistan abandons this attempt. A gentleman in the Q&A session afterwards even questioned her “representativeness” as she wrote in English and worked for a Western organisation. Evidently, the irony of speaking in the English language escaped him.

Shaikh then, if I may be permitted the usage of the term falls in the camp of the old school pragmatic secularists who wish to see Pakistan emerge as a developed member of international civil society. I would argue that the time for this Jinnahesque political project has passed and a radical re-imagination is required to foster a new and more sustainable political order on the Subcontinent for the benefit of all the populations involved.

One panelist whose speech I was eager to hear before the debate began was William Dalrymple. Dalrymple’s deposition convinced me that although he might have talents as a travel writer and as a chronicler of Mughal history he has serious deficiencies as an analyst of politics. His speech was a collection of clichés that seemed to have been gleaned from the pulp fiction that passes for political opinion in some newspapers. His basic aim seemed to be to reassure the audience that Pakistan hasn’t lagged behind India to the extent that the Western press made it out to be even attesting to the superiority of Pakistani roads and the high penetration of mobile phones. While no doubt true, it didn’t add much insight to the proceedings.

All in all though, it was a stimulating affair. I even had the opportunity to pose a question to Farzana Shaikh via Twitter that went something like this:

Re-integration with India is a utopian notion but is it not the most rational course forward?

This question simply aimed to take Dr Shaikh’s line of thought one step further. If Pakistan is to be a secular state in the classical Western sense as she envisions it then what is the rationale for its existence as a separate Islamic Republic? This of course draws attention to that rather large gorilla in the room that everybody would rather leave alone – the botched Partition of India.

Shaikh dismissed the proposition but to do so is understandable. Talking of Indo-Pak reunification or indulging in revisionist historical scholarship is to commit professional and political suicide as Mr Jaswant Singh, her fellow panellist knows well. He was quick to offer a palatable and politically correct response when the moderator posed my question to him.

Singh is infamous for his book on Jinnah that sought to emancipate the Quaid-e-Azam’s legacy and establish his secular credentials. However, Singh, now a full-time public intellectual free from the exigencies of Indian party politics seems unwilling to embrace the logical corollary of his thesis – If Partition was a bad idea to begin with, why shirk from advocating its reversal now?

- Vijay Vikram

Dear reader,

I want to draw your attention to a superb debate on the topic – “The Future Belongs to India, Not China” that took place in London in the summer of 2009. It is moderated by the Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist, Edward Lucas and features excellent speakers including Lord Powell and David Tang against the motion and Gurcharan Das and Mark Tully arguing for the motion. I recommend the video in its entirety.

Intelligence Squared, the organisation behind the India-China debate is also hosting a debate on Pakistan tomorrow that will be available to live stream from 18:45 (GMT) onwards. I don’t wish for this post to serve as some sort of free advertisement for the organisers but with speakers like Jaswant Singh, Anatol Lieven and William Dalrymple I could not resist.

- Vijay Vikram

I just spent the last two hours listening to a recording of Arun Shourie’s interaction with Harvard students instead of reading about Karl Mannheim’s views on Conservatism. It was worth listening to the entire thing even with the moderator’s unsettling diction. The most stimulating part of the discussion came right at the end when a member of the audience interrupted the moderator’s closing statement and asked -

“If I may just ask one very short question that would probably interest everybody? How does one join a political party in India? If I wanted to join the BJP today, what do I have to do? Because I don’t want to join my mohalla-level engagement given the skill set I bring to the table. How do I pitch in?”

Shourie gave an excellent answer to assorted chuckling:

“I think, get to know individuals and wait for the chance. But I would not sacrifice a good professional career in the pursuit of that goal”

Shourie then proceeds to broaden the scope of the question -

“You see, the one problem for us professionals is that we tend to see politics in a very narrow fashion i.e. How to enter a political party for the purposes of electoral politics. But why not ask a second question: how to participate in Indian public life – which is much larger than electoral politics and certainly much larger than the lives of these political parties and gangs. Take up an issue. Specialise in it. Education for example. We would have entered public life and we would be seen as effective on that point. Much better than trying to get into a political party.”

I do think this exposition was quite significant, much more so than Shourie’s mild ticking-off of M.F. Hussain for his erotic treatment of the Sita-Hanuman relationship.

The recording of the interaction at Harvard’s Kennedy School in its entirety is available here. It is highly recommended.

- Vijay Vikram

An astonishing video has been brought to my attention thanks to the persipacious Southasian diaspora at Sepia Mutiny. Glenn Beck, who is some sort of Mormon preacher on FOX news and a darling of the American working class appears on screen to wag a finger at India for our lack of flushed toilets and clean Gangas.

The culture of offence-taking that pervades modern Western society has ensured that the guardians of India’s cultural heritage residing in the United States have already emerged to roundly condemn and take pious offence at Glenn Beck’s “ignorant” comments. Professor Amardeep Singh of Sepia Mutiny with the aid of CIA World Factbook argues – “about 1.2 billion people are likely to deem [the comments] to be offensive and tasteless.” Yes, Professor Singh, I wager the Telanganites have already begun burning hastily-crafted effigies of Mr Beck as I type.

The NRI’s have taken offence. But, how long will it take for this to snowball into a political controversy back in the motherland? I am most interested in the response of New Delhi and Bombay’s well-informed and critical middle class. The kind whose progeny slobber at the mention of American higher education and Subway. Remember, this is a class that lethally combines a post-colonial hunger for Western approval with an almost unmatched intolerance for irony and sarcasm in the English language. These are the people of course, who dragged diplomatic bon vivant-raconteur Shashi Tharoor from the highest perches of 5 star luxury to Kerala House for daring to play around with the holy cows of India’s political class.

There has never been any doubt that the social base of the Republican Party comprises of moose-hunting neo-Palinites whose primary political impulse is centered around childbirth and gun control rather than relations with rising Asia. On a serious note, Glenn Beck’s criticism of Indian sanitary practices does not in any way reflect the content of the relationship between Republican security hawks and India’s strategic establishment. As the affable Ashley Tellis once pointed out, both have an interest in limiting the influence of the Middle Kingdom on the Asian continent.

Update: The US-India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) issues a press release “condemning” Glenn Beck and demanding an apology from him and FOX News.

- Vijay Vikram

I have always maintained that Swapan Dasgupta represents one of the teen murtis of intellectual India’s right wing revolt – the other two being Ashok Malik and Arun Shourie. In my view, it is these three gentlemen, in their role as public intellectuals that provide the most coherent voice to the concerns of conservative middle India.

Clearly, Mr Dasgupta occupies a charmed position in India’s political discourse. He has established himself as the leading interpreter of the Indian Right for the country’s English-speaking middle classes in a professional environment which teems with those of the left-liberal persuasion – no small feat. Recently, a more youthful, fashionable libertarian set has sprung up but they shall form the basis of a future post. Swapan compliments his aforementioned role with that of a political activist often appearing in public gatherings to speak in support of the BJP. This has earned him the sobriquet of “neo-ideologue” – not an unfair characterisation if his work on the BJP’s 2004 Vision Document and (presumably) other party matters is taken into account.

Dasgupta’s success in combining intellectual non-conformity with political activism is sometimes sneered at by those who sit on the high-horse of objective reportage and question his credentials as a journalist.

What is more interesting however, is the nature of Mr Dasgupta’s political views. We know that he is a self-described friend of the BJP and a confirmed political conservative. But, what is the nature of this conservatism?

Reading through Dasgupta’s vast output of essays and op-eds one gets the general impression that he has drunk deeply at the fountain of British conservatism. His work is full of references to major events in British history and he frequently utilises British conservative metaphors to make his point. I suppose this is a condition that ails all post-colonial intellectuals. A young Jawaharlal, fired by the emancipatory potential of Fabian thought, returned to the “dustbowls of Hindustan” to put into practice those convictions. Strictly speaking, Nehru was not post-colonial but I trust the reader grasps my point. This then, was the beginning of the famous Nehruvian consensus that has influenced more than two generations of independent India’s intellectual establishment and continues to form the orthodoxy of intelligent conversation in the country.

I am unsure as to what extent Swapan Dasgupta holds the experience of British conservatism to be applicable to the Indian context. As I’m sure he would agree, all conservatisms are contextual and claim no universality. However, there is little doubt that he holds British conservatism and Britain’s Conservative Party as the benchmark to which other conservative movements should aspire to.

It is here that we differ. I find the British Conservative impulse to be remarkably dull and staid – committed to the preservation of existing institutions and social norms as values in themselves, no matter their utility. It does well to live up to the caricature of conservatism as a particularly unimaginative, status-quoist and a downright barren mode of thought. Michael Oakeshott, a significant conservative thinker of the last century who also happened to be British argued that to be conservative is to esteem the present above all else. I find this sentiment especially problematic to sustain in an Indian context, a country crying out for a new kind of commitment and authenticity in politics.

As I’ve pointed out in a previous post, India’s political culture is a paradox – in the sense that it is apolitical. Indians find themselves in a context where their Prime Minister and the leader of the ruling national party are both apolitical. In fact, the Prime Minister’s disinterest in the political is marketed as a virtue to a public that has long suffered at the hands of professional politicians. Thus the kind of politics that India needs to embrace in order to ensure public good is a redemptive brand of politics. A conservative movement in India must present an alternative vision for the country and combine this with a vigorous opposition to the comfortable consensus in the political class. The cynicism of the average Indian however and his chalta hai manner may preclude that state of affairs from ever coming to pass.

Please feel free to contact the author at einvijay@gmail.com