What is new about the new India championed by PM Narendra Modi? Is it an India that forgets its Dharma? There is a lot of ambiguity and non-clarity about the reality of new India. It appears to speak in multiple voices. We can hear Hindutva voices speaking through the idioms of development. Though it is optimistic in its tone, we cannot overcome a sense of suspicion that the discourse which is associated with it, triggers amidst us. I am afraid the euphemistic term, new India seems to be masking its homogenized uniform for a plural India. The context from which PM Modi proclaimed the coming of a new India demonstrates that he was not just describing an emerging India but was interpreting it. Therefore, it is important to discern the hermeneutical keys that underpin this triumphant posture. We might have to ask: do we have a loss of paradise/hell when we are told that we are on a threshold of a coming new India. Will this new India be a strong India? Does it both signal and celebrate the weakening and destruction of the secular and plural fabric of our country? Maybe the term new India operates as a cover that hides the loss of secular, tolerant and plural ethos of our country and in a very real way becomes a catalyst that triggers the same loss.
The term new India provokes a triumphant point of entry into a new era. It certainly resonates with the electoral promise, the ‘acche din’. It does suggest that we as a nation are entering into an auspicious time. Such a time is viewed as a spring of good, happy and peaceful times. Unfortunately, post-proclamation of new India, what we are witnessing is everything other than good, happy and peace for all. We seem to have entered a new India without dharma, and anarchy is reigning in the name of upholding the ideals of democracy, justice, law and order. The stealing of the electoral mandate in Goa and Mizoram, vegetarian nationalism enforced on people of UP though a strict enforcement of the law that offers no alternative to the people, the stealing of other bills through the Finance bills, the weakening of democracy through corporatization of the political parties by the removal of the limit on corporate funding while mandating Aadhaar card for all citizens for their financial transactions seem to indicate that the new India ushered by PM Modi is an India that forgets the dharma that is emanating from our civilization from time immemorial.
Can we have new India without our civilizational values? Can we allow dharma or dhamma (Buddhist ideal) to die on the altar of politics guided by crass lust of power which is sustained by hate of other Indians and governed by unbridled capitalism? We already had a glimpse of the new India that the central Government wishes to take us to. It is new in a sense that it has clearly dumped dharma and dhamma. We cannot trace Niskama Karma anywhere in the horizon. All these high ideals do not have any room in the new India of PM Modi. Nor does the new India seem to believe in Vasudeva Kutumbakam. The mass fear psychosis that is unleashed in UP after the new government is put in place suggests that the new India has no qualms to put the reins of power in the hands of alleged psychopaths and hate mongers. The new India seems to be happily enacting a ritual that will sacrifice the lives and livelihoods of the meat vendors in UP and comfortably forget the Upanisads that are considered as the supreme spiritual solace across the world. Do we want a new India that is keen to re-enact sacrificial rituals and forget the directives of the Upanishads? The Muslims, women, dalits and other minorities are the new sacrificial lambs that are going to be slain on the altars of the new India. Therefore, we must ask. Do we want a new India without dharma? Will adharma rein in what is named as new India?
India certainly needs its civilisational values. Maybe India needs a new Buddha, new Mahavira or a new Upanisadic water shed. We may even need a new Gandhi, Ambedkar or Perriyar to halt what the destruction that is masking itself under the euphemism of new India. Argumentative nature of Indians cannot be allowed to die. Our universities have to be saved from the prophets and high priests of new India. The numbing of the media and the anaesthetization of the general public have to be resisted. While the new India seems to empower the silencing of the masses and provide a culture mixed with Hindu religion as an opium to our people, we cannot afford to stand silently watching the de-peopling of our people. The new India is running hard on the wheels of controlled information in the mainstream media and free mis-information in the social media. All Indians need a leap of consciousness to resist the mass deception called the new India.
The seeds of loot and destruction that are sowed in the name of new India appear to be nothing short of being anti-India. We may have to employ dhvani method of suggestive hermeneutics/meaning to decipher it. What does the stealing of mandate in Goa and Mizoram and the stealing of other bills through the Finance bills (to insulate them from discussion and debate in the parliament) suggest about the new India? Can we use the Indian suggestive aesthetics / dhvani to understand new India? We can notice that dhvani is actively used by the high priests and the prophets of new India. Although these priests / prophets are prophets of doom, they employ dhvani to suggest meanings that trigger positive thoughts which then assist them to cover the dark face of new India. Dhvani is used to engineer a mass reception of a diabolic new India. Hence, to halt and resist what passes of as new India requires us to resist its social engineering. May be we need to take a leaf from the explosive Sphota linguistic tradition of Bhartahari. Sphota can explode/break any given meaning making system. Sphota tradition of meaning can assist us to deconstruct and dismantle the meaning, the meaning making and the circulating apparatus of new India. Indeed, the old India has the resources that can contest, interrogate and dismantle the deception of new India.
(The Author is Professor at Rachol Seminary)
