A State of Demographic Distress

One of the many adjectives used against India’s populace is Diversity. A cursory search will reveal much that adds to this fact: many races, many divisions, many peculiarities, languages, etc. Essentially, India perhaps should have not been one people. What brings them together is a combination of expediency, a common but fragile thread of race, similarities in culture and language where one state meets another, and to a large extent religion.

This diversity would be inconsequential was it not for the fact that 67 years of democracy doesn’t guarantee domestic insularity. People migrate, are ruled by those who are not their own, have languages and culture thrust upon them, and have to follow economic policies that are not consonant with their beliefs. These cause demographic distress and are felt deeply. Take the simple matter of gender discord. Discord is not a misnomer here. Gender relations in India have been skewed and warped to the point of misogyny and misandry being a refrain. This is also the case even when gender ratios are relatively equal. Much of this comes from the fact that culture and religion play spoilsport when metamorphosing to the 21^st century.

If the religious make up of India is anything to go by, the most regressive and rigid religions exist in India. However, this may not be a problem of the dogma but of the combination of dogma and people. One can therefore see the fault of polarity in the Indian identity and culture itself. To exemplify, Abrahamic religions in the West have allowed reform and gender relations that maintain harmony and discourse; not so the case in India where Abrahamic religions never got reformed or allowed reform of existing traditions. Hinduism is quite clearly not a religion even by the standards of its loudest voices. In essence of principles, it could have been a reformist countercurrent dogma for even the Abrahamic ones; however, the eons will show that no paganism can reform bigger theisms.

To this backdrop, there are splits of upper and lower castes – the social apartheid blessed by religious sanction. Then there is the urban-rural divide, which puts a virtual moat between people. Finally, one can make the socio-economic division of Upper,Middle and Lower classes. There could be a case for intellectuals being a separate class as well but those are the freaks of nature occurring irrespective of any compartmentalization. In summation, one can see India, simplistically, as a landmass, different geographies, religions, genders, castes, and socio-economic contributions as dividing parameters: the relevance of all these lies in how the politics of the region and the sub-continent lives and breathes.

India is and has always been a poor country with more than half of its population living on less than a dollar a day.  Adjustments for PPP are constantly done but by economists who prefer to paint a rosy picture. It is also an extremely unequal country with the top 2% getting the lion’s share of resources. 70% of India lives of agriculture. This defined the early political ideologies as socialist, correctly, then moving on to a social democracy where it lies in a transitory flux moving towards a neoliberal state.

India has always been a spiritual if not religious place. The concepts of many a saint define the financial prudence, the apartheid, the political landscape, war, and even the fatalistic concept of Karma. At this point, a digression into the political changes is needed.

India was born of the biggest people’s movement that ended up shaking the world of colonial imperialism. The independence movement brought forth a newly born state that had to decide – Socialism or Capitalism. For all the right reasons, it chose socialism as the political religion of choice. Why not? It was also the flavor of the century since 1917 with Communism gripping more than half of the world. Now, Indian or Nehruvian Socialism is one that incorporates Gandhi’s principles with Marxism. Therefore, it allows the opium of the masses and big business to survive. It is essentially a convenient form of Marxism but Socialism nevertheless. This was useful in building the foundations of society via infrastructure, rules, constitution and an abolition of all the old ills of society; most importantly land reform. The 80s brought about a change within the confines of the socialist checks and balances called liberalization. This liberalization was one where the benevolence and vision of a leader was the guiding force of change rather than global movements. The 90s was the start of the next revolution: a movement of the ‘few’, Neoliberalism. As with all countries, Neoliberalism gives us a shiny exterior but rots the core of society. However, a permanent state of Neoliberalism would destroy any country so safe to say India remains a social democracy.

There is another political revolution that occurred: that of Indian Nationalism. Indian Nationalism is a concept that is born of European fascism of the 30s. This Nationalism was even a silent counter movement to the independence movement for a while for the fear that any change in social order would endanger it. Movements like the RSS epitomized this duality of independent India. An organization that celebrated Indian independence, yet never fought for it; it hailed the casteist apartheid but embraced lower castes to be its muscles. The organization spread itself into fringe right wing elements with a religious tinge and to a political front as well. This dichotomy served it well to crush opposition with its right heel while winning hearts and minds. The political front called the BJP even won a 5-year term in office with a moderate head for a prime minister. The period was known for its violence and right wing extremism – curiously it fell because it overadvertised and was corrupt. Now, that force has come back; this time, without a moderate at the helm and without censoring its religious and political fundamentalism.

As a summary, perhaps one can say that for the first time, there is more definition in the Indian populace more than ever. One the one hand is the new, nationalistic, religious fundamentalist, anti-left and center, exclusionist and Neoliberal government supporters and votary while on the other hand, those that hark back to another leadership of relatively more centrist tendencies. This is a temporary agglutination of the people called the Hindu voters and Liberals. Temporary because one must understand that some basic things of the Indian ethos is that ideology can never supersede economics.