“If you live long enough, you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat,” French philosopher Simone De Beauvoir had said, and nothing brings this quote to mind more than three recent instances of Right-wing reactionism.  

On September 21, teachers and students at the Central University of Haryana staged a play based on a short story by Mahasweta Devi. They were harassed by members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and are being threatened with criminal charges even to this day. On October 7, a Madhya Pradesh cadre IAS officer was transferred and issued a show-cause notice for questioning the standing of Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJP’s forerunner) leader Deendayal Upadhyaya in a Facebook post. Finally, on October 14, a peaceful gathering of atheists in Vrindavan was disrupted, and attendees beaten up. 

To return to De Beauvoir, it is time for the Indian Conservative Right-wing to consider three things. One, it must understand that this might just be a watershed moment for the Right-wing in India. This is the first time it has won a clear majority in the Lok Sabha and is therefore well-placed to put out a body of coherent Indian conservative thought that people will listen to. One that can be grown and adapted to the times it lives in and be communicated to the world as a valid, yet home-grown ideology. It will be foolish of it to squander this opportunity by focusing instead on the same kind of flash-in-the-pan agitations and rabble-rousing it was used to resorting to as the opposition. While the elections come and go, it is only ideas that remain. 

Two, you can’t beat up somebody and then sit back in an armchair expecting them to listen to your views. The free speech guaranteed by our Constitution can be as much of an asset for the Right in India as it is for the Left, only if it learns how to use it. For Indian conservative thought to even begin to be treated seriously as an ideology, and not the demands of a belligerent group seeking to stake its claim, it has to stand up to debate, not devolve into thuggery. 

Three, and this is often overlooked, the Indian Right-wing has for a while now worn on their sleeves a contempt for India’s English speaking classes, dismissing them as the ‘Left Liberal Elite’. The larger subtext of India’s conservative approach in the last decade – albeit not historically, for Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee belonged to this class too and even Deendayal Upadhyaya wrote a substantive portion of his work in English – has been: ‘The English speaking liberals are disconnected from the masses in their ivory towers; we know what the people want because we communicate in their language.’ This may bode well for election propaganda but no ideology can be fostered in a vacuum. 

India’s academic and indeed governmental, legislative, judicial and business systems have been built in such a manner that the highest echelons of each are wedded to the English language. The absurd suggestion – which raises its head every now and then – that this mode should be overhauled would spell disaster for governance, economy and indeed academia, and bring the country to a halt. Furthermore, ideology as well as its practice in a country today operates in conjunction with concepts discussed around the world. And English is, in effect, the language of our globalised world. 

Consequently, the Indian Right-wing will have to translate and transmit its thought as well as define the contours of their discourse, so that they can engage with English speakers in corridors of intellectual influence everywhere. 

And if – for this possibility cannot be dismissed – India’s Right-wing thinkers lose the arguments in such fora, they will have to evolve their thought. For conservatism may not believe in revolutions, but evolution lies at the core of its survival.  

Let’s reflect on what could be a possible evolution of approach for India’s conservatives. 

Don’t bludgeon Mahasweta Devi’s work, learn from it 

Is it not a little ironical that a Right-wing organisation is up in arms against the work of a writer whose first novel was a biography of the Rani of Jhansi? Mahasweta Devi, being accused of anti-nationalism for showing the army in a poor light, had said at the Frankfurt Book Fair, “This is truly the age where the Joota (shoe) is Japani (Japanese), Patloon (pants) is Englistani (British), the Topi (hat) is Roosi (Russian), But the Dil…Dil (heart) is always Hindustani (Indian)… my country, torn, tattered, proud, beautiful, hot, humid, cold, sandy, shining India. My country.” 

The beauty of Mahasweta Devi’s writing lies in the fact that the politics of her work arises not from half-baked beliefs and propaganda but from lived experiences and an involvement in the struggles of Indian people. Works like Aryaner Adhikar, Rudali and Hajaar Churashir Maa are a testament to this. Are there writers the Right-wing can call their own? Unlike non-fiction, which is limited by what has come to pass, fiction can be a useful tool in exploring the possibilities of an ideology through a microscopic lens. For the Right, S L Bhyrappa, arguably one of Kannada’s best writers, comes to mind. Devi’s short stories, including Draupadi, which was staged at the Central University of Haryana, have been translated very competently into English by none other than postcolonial scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. You will find English translations of Bhyrappa’s books are less easily available, dramatisations less heard of. What about the Shatavadhani polyglot poet R Ganesh or other performers of Avadhanams? Do their works even reach a larger audience? 

The best response to a play the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad had a problem with would have been another play. To win a culture war, the reaction to culture that offends you has to be an alternative culture, not hooliganism or moral policing. The Right-wing has to change its stance from opposing free speech with nonsensical whataboutery to embracing it proactively in a way that can be respected.

Who was Deendayal Upadhyaya? 

IAS Officer Shiv Anant Tayal may have been provocative in saying he could not find “a single work of authorship or scholarship” by Deendayal Upadhyaya, but rather than transferring him for this – a ridiculous move – the Right would have done well to pause and think whether this is true. Some of Upadhyaya’s work is available on deendayalupadhyay.org, which misses out on the last syllable of his surname in English. This is not an oversight, but a symptom. On Upadhyaya’s birthday, I asked around in quite a few bookstores – including the ‘hub’ in Central Delhi’s Khan Market – but none of the diligent shop assistants could find me a single book by or on the man. Neither any on Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the other well-known Bharatiya Jana Sangh leader, or any Indian or even foreign conservative thinkers (requests for Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind or William F. Buckley Jr.’s God and Man at Yale were met, eventually, with helpless stares). 

Perhaps questions about Upadhyaya will be answered now that the Prime Minister has launched a 15-volume set of Upadhyaya’s complete works. However, a larger question remains: Can Upadhyaya stand up to critical scrutiny like Nehru did? Nehru has lived on in the essence of this country not because of deification, but because both the Right and the Left had analysed his life and his politics with hard facts gleaned out of dedicated academic investigation. Upadhyaya’s ‘Integral Humanism’ or Ekatma Manavvaad, proposed in four lectures, is a worthwhile concept to look into, for here was someone attempting to find an alternative to the politics of his time. But was it an intellectual progression from Manbendra Nath Roy’s Radical Humanism or a mere circumscribing of it to match the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s ideas? Four lectures do not make an oeuvre. Upadhyay’s other writings and subsequent interpretations of his ideas by Right-wingers after him – from Balraj Madhok to Mahesh Chandra Sharma who has compiled his work to present day RSS ideologues – must be synthesised with the lectures so that contestations and counter-contestations can ensue. Only then will the value of Upadhyaya’s thesis be clear and ingrained. 

But the Right, instead of putting Upadhyaya and Integral Humanism on a debating podium, has placed them on a pedestal. This approach, one that may well have the scholarly and unassuming Upadhyaya turning in his grave, is epitomised by the asinine symbolism in BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi’s suggestion that the Racecourse Road should be renamed Ekatma Marg after Upadhyaya’s addresses. Sure. And perhaps we can rename the adjoining Teenmurti Lane the Tryst-With-Destiny lane, and hold popularity polls at a traffic island where they meet. Because that’s how we determine intellectualism nowadays.  

The reduction of religiosity 

The attack on an atheism conference in Vrindavan, by members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (founded by RSS leaders) and the Bajrang Dal (VHP’s Youth Wing) is a glaring example of believers cannibalising the ideology they are themselves products of. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, President of the Hindu Mahasabha who coined the term ‘Hindutva’ was a self-proclaimed atheist. An article in the RSS publication Organiser titled ‘Think It Over: Glimpses of Atheism in India’ hails the Charvaka and Lokyata traditions of atheism. “Of the six great philosophic systems (Darshanas),” it reads, “Four – Sankhya, Nyaya, Yoga and Vaisesika – were not so sure whether gods existed.” 

Contrast images of a mob reportedly carrying containers of petrol, to burn down the ashram where the conference was to be held, and signboards reading: “Dharm sankat paida karne vaalon ko giraftaar karo (Arrest those who give birth to doubts about your religion)” with this Rig Vedic hymn the Organiser piece begins with: 

“Who is there who truly knows 
And who can say, whence this 
Unfathomed world? 
And from what cause? 
Or, even the gods do not know.” 

There is not much else to be said. Like with gaurakshaks caught beating up Dalits, or Maharashtra Navnirman Sena mobs threatening to attack movie theatres, the greatest challenge to conservative Right-wing ideology in India today lies not from the Leftists or the Centrists, not from plays or Facebook posts or atheism conferences, but from certain misdirected members of the Right-wing themselves.