Cyclicals

Did the assassination of Gandhi make it “impossible for the anger (of Hindu hurt) to find an address”, wonders Santosh Desai. Did that one act result in the whole of Hindu hurt to be linked “with an act of violence so unpalatable that it rendered the feeling illegitimate”?

All of which may not have been a bad thing, if we had become a truly secular nation. But instead this is where we ended up:

“Over time secularism, became less a principled belief and more a politically useful instrument that was used to build electoral constituencies.”

All of that started crumbling with Advani’s rath yatra and “his attack on pseudo-secularism”. It began the “re-legitimising of the Hindu right in political terms”. And when Islamic terrorism went global with 9/11, the anti-Muslim feeling in India began to seem like a universally felt feeling. All of which leads Desai to muse:

“Perhaps the past never goes away. It waits in the shadows, gathering evidence of its relevance, and slides back into the present when the time is right.”

Of course, the rise of Hindu assertiveness may just be one of those cyclical things, cases of the pendulum swinging back and forth. Speaking of which reminds me of this great exchange from Game of Thrones:

Daenerys Targaryen: Lannister, Targaryen, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell they're all just spokes on a wheel. This ones on top, then that ones on top and on and on it spins crushing those on the ground.

Tyrion Lannister: It's a beautiful dream, stopping the wheel. You're not the first person who's ever dreamt it.

Daenerys Targaryen: I'm not going to stop the wheel, I'm going to break the wheel.

Break the wheel. Doesn’t every side want to do that when they are on top? Left leaners, right wing, secular, religious, capitalists, socialists alike?

The dangers with breaking the wheel are obvious. As the Shah of Iran said during this interview from 1973:

“To get things done, one needs power, and to hold onto power one mustn’t ask anyone’s permission or advice. One mustn’t discuss decisions with anyone. Of course, I may have made mistakes too. I too am human. However, I believe I have a task to carry out, a mission, and I intend to perform it to the end.”

I am guessing that is exactly the kind of thinking and danger that led Churchill to say:

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”