Amartya Sen may well think that Indians as a people are argumentative, but the kind of arguments going on around us in these times are not the ones he has in mind. He speaks of grand Indian traditions of debate, discussions, arguments, which advance our own understanding of ourselves. These are about the big ideas — identity, the nation, pluralism etc. Today, India resembles a large, ongoing TV panel discussion, where the participants shout at each other, ignoring what the other has to say and dispensing wisdom in pithy one-liners. Nuance does not matter; all debates are binaries. If you have a point of view, it automatically means you not just oppose the other opinion but hate it; you also detest the holder of that opinion.
Most crucially, once a label has been applied to you — by others or by yourself — it becomes incumbent upon you to be consistent with it. Thus, the right-winger will defend everything on the basis of what his ilk is supposed to do, while the left-liberal type will often go to ridiculous lengths to wave the tribe’s banner. Often the results are hilarious and contradictory and often the two positions sound remarkably alike. The aftermath of the horrific shooting down of journalists of Charlie Hebdo for their cartoons saw both sounding almost the same — both agreed that religion should be out of bounds of parody and satire, the “media should be sensitive and not upset people” argument. At the same time, many right-wingers emerged as champions of freedom of expression while lefties were seen as arguing against it. Clearly, the principle matter less than the contextual expediency.
Some subjects have become hot button issues —Narendra Modi is one. One either opposes him wholesale or is a rabid devotee, for whom the cult of Modi cannot be questioned, much less challenged. The hardcore anti-Modi brigade will not acknowledge that anything sensible can come out of his government. Praise, however, faint, for a policy, from a critic, immediately starts of speculation that he or she is angling for a favour or a job. Shashi Tharoor has found this the hard way. On the other hand, the barest scepticism about him by even a respected BJP figure invites an avalanche of critical comments on the social media and from respected columnists too; L.K. Advani knows all about that.
Considered examination of crucial issues of importance to the country thus never takes place. One cannot, for example, argue that some of the Modi government’s economic initiatives are on the right track, while his inexplicable silence on the shenanigans of the extreme members of the Sangh parivar are to be criticised. That will not do, because one is expected to either attack both or embrace them totally.
Things get even more absurd when the binary is applied to political parties. The BJP’s failures must be set off with similar ones of the Congress, in order to show “fairness” and “balance.” Journalists often fall victim to this fake construct. On nightly television shows, spokespersons of both parties are invited, while the issue may concern only the actions of one of them.
Inevitably, it descends into an orgy of mutual finger pointing, with sins, real and imagined, of the past being dredged out. Equivalence is substituted for equidistance. The topic of the day is forgotten in the din — another example of reducing everything to simplistic binaries. What is most perplexing is that in all other matters, the Indian mind is quite capable of grasping nuance — our myths are full of legends which illustrate that. The Bhagawad Gita is a masterclass in subtlety — and ambiguity — imparting life lessons for the most awkward of situations. We have many ways to answer a question beyond a simple yes or no. The Western mind is always stumped by the head nod, because it could mean anything. The treatises produced by Indian thinkers, ancient and modern, are as good as the best elsewhere. How did we land up here?
That will require in-depth study, but sufficient to say that the extreme polarisation that is being wrought by those who cannot and do not want to appreciate the gradations of this nation, is creating an India that can only see people, communities and therefore, arguments, as one or the other. We are expected to sign up for this side or that. And when power, muscle and brute majority are so obviously on one side, then it assumes sinister dimensions. How soon before someone actually says, “if you are not with us, you are against us?”
It is already happening all around us — authors, filmmakers, artists, are all being attacked because they refuse to fit into binaries. They explore the grey tones, rather than see things in black and white. Their view is often at odds with the rest of the world, but so what? Not everything can be reduced to a “yes” or a “no”, in the manner of one of those silly online polls and not everything can be expressed in a tweet either.
It is easy to blame someone else for this malaise — but that again would mean finger pointing. The truth is that we are all complicit in letting things slide with our laziness and lethargy. We happily consume the lousy fare that is dished out to us in the name of public discussion and debate. If someone says they speak on our behalf, we hand over that responsibility to them, no questions asked. As the middle ground shrinks, we don’t push back to stop it. If this continues there no one will be around to argue, because there won’t be any arguments left.
