A political direction in life

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Daily writing promptWhat gives you direction in life?

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I'm a political creature. I didn't think that I'd be one but I am. I believe this is a response to India's present historical moment. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi, assumed power in the national government, the quality of the national political discourse has consistently declined. Communalism has become overt. Majoritarian policymaking has become the norm. The national government has become synonymous with manipulation, deception, and duplicity. Political leaders openly spread misinformation and pseudoscience. The foreign policy is indistinguishable from opportunism.

Political ideologies come and go; why should that direct one's life? When the BJP assumed power in 2014, its leaders, including Modi, bolted out from their cages misinformation-first. For some time after, I assumed that whenever they'd next lose power and exit the government, good language, decorum, civility, and communication in good faith would all be restored. But I was wrong, I realised. The BJP and its allies (i) have kept up their conduct without suffering electorally for it, (ii) have fomented, rather than healed, social divisions to divide and conquer with considerable success, (iii) have undercut the democratic and constitutional machinery that counter-narratives need for sustenance, such as public data and reports, and (iv) have passed laws centralising their control of information as well as empowering them to silence dissenting voices. In effect, the more polite and more forgiving India of the pre-2014 era has rapidly faded, replaced with a nation that has constantly surprised me with every new depth it plumbs. In fact, I wonder if perhaps the India of old didn't realise exist that it was a veneer that obscured the resentment and xenophobia that feeds mainstream political discourse today.

Most of all, I'm now certain most of the changes the BJP has made are not easily reversible. People at large, but especially the middle class and the elites, have become emboldened to discuss and spread divisive ideas without fear of sanctions and deride, if not dismiss, efforts by journalists and activists to seek facts and data. More than a few opposition parties have also sought and won power by responding to the BJP with communalist politics in favour of a different social/religious group. Beating this irreversibility is what gives me direction in life today. I will most certainly fail in my lifetime, but I have to live well and do the right thing at all times. This might be a cliché but I have a particular way of doing it that I'm proud of — and which has been my personal antidote to the way Modi et al. have governed.

The first step is to have a well-reasoned political ideology to abide by. (I'm a democratic socialist.)

Second, I must cultivate myself to be the kind of person who understands why that ideology over any other as well as mitigate the extent to which I pretend it is superior, e.g. by reading about other positions, the histories of how they came to be, where and why they persist today, and what they do well that my ideology of choice can't.

Third, I must continue learning. I believe we're all on learning curves, and at different points on different matters. The only things we can do is keep moving up the curve and at the least not get in the way of others doing the same thing.

Fourth, I must strive to be a good person and to do the right thing. This is of course subjective: it is guided by a shared common sense as well as by an individual's, or at least a particular community's, social and cultural values. While the former is benign, if also increasingly uncommon, the latter is why my extended family believes creating social mobility for Hindus alone, to the exclusion of Muslims, is doing the right thing. However, I also believe making a habit of points two and three could militate against insular worldviews.

In fact, these four points are not independent of each other but, to my mind, can come together to create an individual whose personal growth and aspirations become increasingly synonymous over time with the needs of the ideology while keeping the ideology from accruing (socially) evil overtones, especially as one practices it. The very first thing we can do is to lead by example. As a next step, we can translate our precepts and personal rules for society at large, trimming that which departs from the Constitution, honing that which enhances it, and engaging with our compatriots with civility and fraternity.

This can be everything from allowing domestic workers to use the apartment elevators, complaining to the State Pollution Control Board when a contractor forces construction workers to work in the heat without protection, and rationalising the household water demand to standing in the path of an illegal demolition, protesting when the state adopts violent means against another community to bulldoze a project through, and raging against the dying of the light.

Just do what you can, at least to start with.