00:00 Outlook brings to you excerpts from its latest issue titled "Farewell Ideology".
00:06 India's tryst with ideology has been more complex than the West's.
00:10 We have caste and region, language and socialism.
00:14 All these are forces in their own right.
00:17 In different times and in different contexts within our country, one has trumped the other.
00:23 Outlook's latest issue looks at some of the regional and national political parties
00:28 and the shifts in their ideological stance as they strive to navigate political power,
00:33 coalition politics and opportunism.
00:36 It is a reminder for us and for them about what they stood for once, lest we forget.
00:43 In the introduction, editor Chinky Sinha writes,
00:46 "Return to ideology. There is now more than ever some need for utopia.
00:52 In the sense that men need, as they have always needed, some vision of their potential,
00:58 some manner of fusing passion with intelligence.
01:02 The ladder to the city of heaven can no longer be a faith ladder, but an empirical one.
01:08 A utopia has to specify where one wants to go, how to get there, the costs of the enterprise,
01:16 and some realization of, and justification for, the determination of who is to pay."
01:22 Daniel Bell
01:24 It was in 1960 that The End of Ideology was announced in a book called
01:29 The End of Ideology on the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties by Daniel Bell,
01:35 where the American writer argued that political ideas had lost their grip on people's imagination and emotions.
01:43 Bold blueprints were no longer desired, he said, and with that, he pronounced the 1950s as the graveyard of ideologies.
01:52 There was no commitment to a cause, no yearning for deep moral satisfaction.
01:58 But the 1960s saw a return to liberalism and old-school capitalism,
02:03 as well as a return to moral values in the Western world politics.
02:08 We have since then alternated between the endings and the beginnings in the Western social sciences,
02:14 which is also what framed our ideological debates in the early years of India's independence.
02:20 In binaries, left and right, liberalism and illiberalism, socialism and capitalism.
02:27 But we often forget the context of time and place.
02:31 There was this transition then from traditional agrarian societies to modern industrial societies,
02:38 and for better or worse, much of that class conflict had been regulated in those societies.
02:44 In ours, not so much.
02:46 But then there came the great disruption brought in by polarization and ideology,
02:52 was rediscovered in the 1960s, and another ending had begun.
02:57 This is why it is important to look everywhere for endings and beginnings.
03:02 West and East, within and without.
03:05 India's twist with ideology has been more complicated than the West's.
03:10 We have caste and region, language and socialism.
03:14 All these are forces in their own right.
03:17 In different times and in different places within our country, one has trumped the other.
03:22 In 1989, the Bharatiya Janata Party adopted Hindutva as its political ideology.
03:28 Class politics was replaced by identity politics.
03:32 Nationalism took over, everything else was pushed aside.
03:36 That's how we experienced a shift.
03:39 Economics gained centrality, ideologies became diluted, even diffused in some sense.
03:46 In a conversation with a political leader just around the time of the consecration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya,
03:53 when the Congress refused to attend the ceremony,
03:56 he said that it was a wrong decision as they would lose out on the Hindu voters.
04:01 Secularism as an ideology has run its course.
04:04 Hindutva as an ideology will also become obsolete.
04:08 But the question is the time frame for that to happen.
04:12 This is the Hindu Rashtra for now, he said.
04:15 This brings us to an interesting question.
04:17 What is the ideology of the Congress?
04:19 As a voter, I'm not sure I know.
04:22 The locks of the temple were opened in 1986 under the prime ministership of Rajiv Gandhi
04:28 and over the years, the party's stance on Ram Mandir has changed several times.
04:33 In November 2019, the Grand Old Party welcomed the Supreme Court verdict
04:38 that paved the way for the temple construction and even sent out a reminder
04:43 that it was the Congress government that had acquired a 67.7 acre site next to the disputed site in 1993.
04:52 The sought-Hindutva game has been played by many, including the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress,
04:57 which has meant that they have consistently diluted their political philosophies
05:02 in trying to counter the BJP and by aligning with the majoritarian politics which they have equated with Hindutva.
05:09 They have now landed in a position where one is unsure what their ideological position is
05:15 with regard to secularism or majoritarian Hindutva nationalist ideology.
05:20 Similarly, BJP, which originally talked about social conservatism and then Hindutva,
05:26 has now raised a pitch of getting more than 400 seats.
05:30 But they aren't saying what they are going to deliver when they get there.
05:34 Yes, they have held on to the Hindutva ideology and talked about development and being a superpower.
05:40 But then, the Ram Mandir is already there and the promise has been kept.
05:45 What's next? Is there a blueprint for that?
05:48 They have said they are committed to nationalism and national integration,
05:52 to democracy, to Gandhian socialism and to positive secularism.
05:57 India doesn't operate in the same terms as democracies in Western countries,
06:05 where the ideological spectrum is defined in left-right terms and is shaped by underlying socio-economic factors.
06:13 In a country like India, we are faced with political parties that are personalized factions
06:18 or show dominance by a single organization.
06:21 Political change is now a rearrangement of parties that are obsessed with access to power and resources.
06:28 Individuals, not ideologies, dictate our politics.
06:32 Look at Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi.
06:35 They are individuals who serve as champions of consumption communities
06:40 and we are now at a point where party politics has become transactional and more authoritarian.
06:46 Consider the Janata Dal United, whose Nitish Kumar was recently sworn in again as the Chief Minister as a BJP partner in Bihar.
06:55 I am not sure what ideology his party represents because for a long time now, his politics has been transactional in nature.
07:03 The lack of attention to political ideology is not a good trend.
07:08 Ideology matters because as a voter, I'd like to know why I am selecting someone and what they stand for.
07:15 The BJP's insistence on establishing ownership over cultural issues is in contrast with the opposition's secular policies.
07:24 But with the opposition mostly playing around with soft Hindutva, how will that work in the next elections?
07:31 Even if we look at the 2014 BJP election campaign that was centered around a corruption-free government,
07:38 we can see that it was to also make way for the Hindu identity both nationally and internationally.
07:44 In the post-19 phase, the BJP has furthered its Hindu nationalist agenda by nullifying Article 370 governing the status of Jammu and Kashmir.
07:55 Then it notified the Citizenship Amendment Act.
07:59 In the states where the BJP is in power, they have introduced statutes against religious conversion.
08:05 In this, they have shown that ideology matters in the Indian politics landscape.
08:11 They have delivered what they promised.
08:14 What's the next big promise in line with that ideology?
08:17 But the future is always a question, the past full of lessons.
08:22 I'm not sure what anyone else stands for, barring a few like the Rashtriya Janata Dal that have never been in a coalition with the BJP.
08:31 Their ideology states that they stand against communalism in any form and espouse socialism for the sake of the dispossessed.
08:40 In 1990, LK Advani's chariot leading the Ram Rath Yatra to galvanize Hindus was stopped in Samastipur in Bihar.
08:49 And Lalu Prasad Yadav, a young Chief Minister then, arrested the BJP leader.
08:54 Communal riots happened. The Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992.
08:59 In 2024, the Ram Mandir was built at the site.
09:03 Lalu Prasad Yadav didn't attend. But in that, there was his ideological stance unlike many others.
09:10 But the RJD is an outlier in that sense. I know what they stand for.
09:16 In this issue of Outlook, we take a look at some of the regional and national political parties
09:22 and the shifts in their ideological stance as they strive to navigate political power, coalition politics and opportunism.
09:30 It is a reminder for us and for them about what they stood for once, lest we forget.
09:36 Dravida Munitra Karzgam, DMK's Udayanidhi Stalin, who is also the DMK's Youth Wing Secretary,
09:43 said a few months ago that ideology is more important than power.
09:48 We hope this isn't the end of ideology.
09:51 According to a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms, ADR, between 2016 and 2020,
09:58 443 MLAs and MPs have defected and contested elections from the new host parties.
10:06 Did they abandon their ideologies? Or did the parties they came from dilute their own?
10:11 Did they do it for power or for survival?
10:14 And if the BGP is wooing leaders from other political parties, is it not then diluting its ideology
10:22 by getting people who stood for something else earlier?
10:25 Bell had argued that in the post-1945 world, welfare state and secularism,
10:31 mixed economy and political pluralism were largely accepted ideas.
10:36 That's why the ideologies that demanded those had become redundant.
10:41 We need more ideology, not for utopia, but to come out of dystopia first.
10:47 Not to get to heaven on a faith ladder, but to find our place in these times and in this country with ideology.
10:55 To reject or to embrace.
10:57 It's not my job to tell anyone what they're supposed to choose, but I want to be sure of who stands for what.
11:04 We must therefore ask for a return to ideology in this election season before it's too late.
11:11 For this and more, read the latest issue of Outlook.
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