Single Party Rule By Default: Has The Public Begun
The Beguine?
And now when I hear people curse the chance that
was wasted
I know but too well what they mean
From: When they begin the beguine- Cole Porter
The Beguine is a ‘couples’ slow-dance’, and the unlikely
metaphor here, is in terms of a gradual, but not interminable, build-up,
towards general elections in 2019, and beyond.
Is India moving on philosophically, democratically, but
disgusted with their elected representatives, spurred-on by disillusionment,
with near filmy, feudalistic, interpretations of imported ideologies; of a
constitutional intent subverted, of parliamentary procedure thrown overboard by a roomful of
boors?
Is it fed up of being taken for granted, taken for fools?
Moving on, towards something more home-grown, more willing
to be accountable, that it can call its own, as its self-image matures?
Is the RSS, re-dressed in long trousers, less sinister and
ridiculous now, than was assumed before, off-hand, almost axiomatically?
Has it morphed in the public eye from anachronistic neo-fascism,
into a patriotic, disciplined, honest, and benevolent force for the good?
Can it be banned again, or dismissed as the killers of MK
Gandhi, being challenged in court, even as the dim-witted Congress scion
refuses to retract?
Thing is, more and more people, in these days of interactive
social media, have realised that it was the long-ruling Nehru dynasty, that
killed many parts of the Gandhian legacy, replacing it with their own hagiography,
with their near divine right to rule.
And it was this same Nehru dynasty, that planted the seeds
of many needless but seething conflicts, having to be endured to this day.
But despite the body politic being long spoiled from the pampering
of a destructive, neo-colonial kind; a new consensus has been already built.
This is not entirely in favour of the once chai-wala, turned
RSS pracharak, turned CM, and now PM; because of some obscurantist
fringe elements vitiating the atmosphere.
But it is a consensus, that is definitely against the
pseudo-secularism cum faux socialism, relegated to the past.
Is the carping over the Supreme Court mandated, having to
stand up for the national anthem before movie shows, for example, a hollow
bleat from yesterday men?
People lost in denial, and disbelief, like the Hillary
Clinton supporters in America, long permitted, and used to, trashing everything
patriotic here, in the name of modernity, ‘tolerance’, and personal freedom?
Are all of Macaulay’s half-baked and chi-chi children, and their cousins
of Marxist, Fabian, and Lohiaite extraction,
who have collectively kept the masses of India miserably poor and backward,
really headed for the dhalao now?
Do the post-independence, post 1991, far more switched-on generations,
regard the rootless internationalism of the Congress Party, essentially, as
traitorous?
These people constitute more than 65% per cent of the
population, many aged between 15 and 35, and form our vaunted demographic
dividend. Resulting, inadvertently, from our soft attempts at population
control, after correcting the initial
excesses.
China, simultaneously, was hard about it, and is changing
into a country of old people, notwithstanding their recent reversal of policy. Demographic
shifts take at least three decades.
The reactionary and old amongst the Indian Liberal-Left,
harking back to self-serving interpretations of ‘The idea of India’, need to
drop their hectoring, and understand what the young people want now.
These people are the present, and they have decisively voted
for Modi, and they are the future of India, wanting to give him more time.
Regarding much of the Congress-speak as sedition, these
young voters are in resonance with the prevailing wind around the world, grown
disillusioned with making too free with core values of identity and
inspiration.
People, young and old, rich, poor, educated and not, in the
West, are grown disillusioned after more than a half century of broad world
peace, from being pauperised by economic prescriptions, that have nevertheless
failed.
Politically, taking on Islamic angst, at last, that blames
the nominally Christian West for its pain, asserting it to be errant nonsense.
Why do Muslims, members of a hugely populous religion, refuse to reform its
medieval tenets?
Instead, sections within it, have forced bloody outrages, on
the everyone ‘other’. This other, is inclusive of even those, amongst Muslims
themselves, who have the temerity not to agree with this neo-savagery.
Globally, there is a move towards the right then, not just
in protest against these marauders, but towards nationalism in its various
manifestations.
This is what Communists and Left-Liberals are calling a
primeval ‘irrationalism’, a narrow and vicious close-mindedness, even a
madness, they hope, will pass.
But, it is an ironic moot point; where does the obsolescence
truly lie?
Is the intolerant ‘liberal’, frequently reduced to an
electorally vanquished minority where people vote, or summarily pushed aside,
where they don’t, confronting extinction?
Viewed from a macroscopic perspective, it has been a long
run indeed, for the Liberals and Communists; a few recent centuries worth, as
authoritarian and monarchical constructs unravelled in the face of the new
egalitarianism.
Today however, it is widely felt that the Left-Liberal has
bamboozled and lied for too long. So now, there will be no more putting upon
people, without delivering the prosperity they promised!
The Left-Liberals won’t get another turn at the wheel
however, till, and if, the new Right fails too. Can their gravy-training hearts
hold out for that long, or will they cravenly jump ship?
Will the Right become an amalgam of erstwhile liberals, now
turncoat, and the more extreme alt-right, going forward?
The run of regional
parties, and their oversized influence in national politics, that ebbed and
flowed for the entire 30 years that India saw no majority government at the
centre, seems to be firmly on the skids.
If the NDA win again in 2019, with a majority at the centre,
it might put paid to the mostly pernicious regional party influence in national
affairs, more or less, conclusively.
With the reported dissensions and infighting, the
break-aways, the lack of succession planning, and continuity, in some of them;
as a collective, they are likely to put up a poor challenge to Narendra Modi in
2019.
This, irrespective of the fact that every initiative, or
even the lack of it in some important instances, of the NDA, has not always
been a qualified success.
This piece, written while we are roiled by the
demonetisation turmoil, with the GST roll-out and further necessary financial
measures as yet uncertain, is here on
the threshold of new year 2017.
Not only has the private limited, me-and-my-extended-family,
on a tax free jamboree, nature of the beast, grown tiresome to people, but the
regional credibility too, is gone.
No one believes that these entities are there to help their
aspirations. They do not seem to follow any ideology other than self-aggrandisement.
It has turned off the voting public, after a long period of gaining nothing by believing
in their false promises.
Adarsh politics, is seen to be
present today only in the much maligned RSS, and their political offshoot, the
ruling BJP, to some extent.
The other two nominally national parties, namely the
Congress and the CPM, are mired in end-of-life contradictions, and have shrunk
in stature, to controlling less, than some single state regional parties, who
at least still hold tenuous sway in
their own bailiwicks!
Meanwhile, it is the public in India, 30 months into this
Modi administration, that has apparently begun the beguine, the slow couples’
dance, setting in motion an enormous juggernaut of change, that will ostensibly
not tolerate obstruction or attempts at reversal.
When the song finishes, there may be no more to be said
about a viable opposition, because it would have killed itself with its own
irresponsibility.
A single party democracy in India, to all intents and
purposes, is what we had for the first 50 years, except that the shoe was on
the other foot.
Today, if it comes to it, India’s second go at it, could
rival China’s growth of the thirty years between the eighties and the first
decade of the 21st century.
Cole Porter wrote the song ‘When they begin the beguine’, in
1935, on a Cunard cruise-ship, travelling between Indonesia and Fiji.
It celebrated a Caribbean dance form, mostly from Guadeloupe
and Martinique, adapted from earlier French ball-room ideas, becoming a slow rhumba
in the sun, involving a rolling of the hips.
Porter’s song, on the B side of a single, with its complex construction,
took time to become a hit. But when it did, it migrated the dance-form, though
transformed, via various musical arrangements, into swing, tap-dance, and a
very long list of standard balladeering.
The Beguine, even has a further, cultural back-story. Beguines
were women, in no-vows Christian communes, during the 13-16th
centuries, in Northern Europe.
The song and the dance Porter’s lilting song inspired, travelled,
from ship to shore, firstly, of course, to America, New York’s Broadway, and Hollywood.
And later, to Europe, particularly, Paris.
It was even a favourite of our own Meher Baba, who asked for
it to be played seven times, at his funeral in 1969.
For: Sirfnews
(1,496 words)
December 11th, 2016
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