• Valson Thampu

Humankind’s march to civilization, history tells us, was marked by a shift from violence to dialogue as the means to settle disputes and resolve issues. Dialogue and debate imply reciprocity guided by objective norms, fair-play, and equality of opportunity. They become irrelevant when reciprocity gives way to unilateralism. With that, the stage is set for democracy transitioning to dictatorship.
A significant feature of our democracy today is the decline and devaluation of debate and dialogue. This is not surprising, given three factors: (a) the increasing faith in, and glorification of, violence. Words uttered in political exchanges bristle with violence. What is worse, it is considered a mark of charisma and authority. A strong leader is one who exudes violence, of which ‘iron-first’ is a familiar metaphor.
(b) Secondly, we are sliding into the pseudo-religion of hero-worship, which is a function of the backwardness of a people. Only in helplessness and bewilderment, in a context of disempowerment, would a people seek, and repose blind faith in, a messianic figure. Hero-worship not only presupposes, but also perpetuates under-development. The empowerment of the people could destabilize the absolute-yet-fragile control of the demagogue over them. People’s development awakens in them a craving for personal dignity and freedom, which makes meek submissiveness unacceptable to them.
(c) A growing allergy to liberal culture characterized by free-thinking. Free-thinkers are stigmatized and targeted as ‘urban Naxals’. The allergy to thinking is easily explained. Demagogues secure a stranglehold on the people by playing up their emotions, for which any means is assumed to be licit. ‘In love and war’, as the aphorism goes, everything is fair. Cast politics in the mold of war, as is the case at present, then all means shall pass, including the goal of wiping out the opposition, of which ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ is, as Modi would say, a mere trailer. The allergy to the Constitutional ideals of freedom of thought and expression bespeaks extreme insecurity. Only what is established on thin ice needs to be protected in anxious defensiveness. The people kept in an enclave of propaganda-bred illusions could feel cheated, if they are allowed to imbibe a sense of reality. The advent of truth runs counter to the propagandist pressure maintained on them continually. Its super-edifice could collapse, if the truth is pronounced, like what happens to darkness at the advent of light.
Three distinguished citizens of India, whose patriotism and personal stature cannot be in doubt – former Supreme Court judge Madan B Lokur, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, AP Shah, and senior journalist N Ram- proposed that there be a nationally televised debate on key issues between Prime Minister Modi and Rahul Gandhi. One would have expected that this would be music to Modi’s ears, whose prowess as a public speaker is assumed to be of mythological magnitude. In contrast, Rahul is, as the BJP would have us believe, a mere Pappu: no match to Modi’s oratorical skills and mastery of facts. To the surprise of all, Rahul accepted the proposition at once. Incredibly, there is a deafening silence from Modi’s side!
The reasons for this -if it is not anti-national to seek reasons in such matters- are atleast two. (a) Modi belongs, by training, tradition and personal inclination, to the culture of hierarchical authority in which matters are ‘dictated’, not debated. To debate with some is to come down to his level. It is to compromise one’s absolute authority, which is unthinkable. Can anyone in the Parivar ever imagine the RSS Supremo -Mohan Bhagwat- involved in a debate with anyone, including Modi? He dictates. He is obeyed. Everything that Modi has done in public life reflects this culture. Not once has he interacted freely with the media; even though the media has been overly obsequious to him. What suits Modi’s genius is of the kind exemplified in ‘man ki baath’. It is carefully choreographed unilateralism pseudo-morphed as free interfaces. Every recent interaction that Modi has had with cherry-picked media persons of fawning submissiveness to him, belongs to the same order. Modi is comfortable only in this mode.
(b) Modi learned an unforgettable lesson from the traumatic interview he had with Karan Thapar at the outset of his national launch. He realized how insufferably uncomfortable it is to have to face unregulated questions regarding problematic events like the Gujarat riots. The biting irony here must be noted. A man becomes a victim of his own contrived view of reality and gets crippled by his flattering success in making that prevail by might and main. Situate such a man outside the ambit of the skewed narrative, he will cut a sorry figure. This is, arguably, the double-edged advantage post-truth politics offers. You can create any web of untruth and foist it on the people. But you can thrive by it only if it is insured against accountability. To debate, or to dialogue, is to be answerable.
The quintessence of the democratic culture of dialogue and debate is accountability. Remove accountability and enshrine propaganda as the oracular means for determining truth, at once you exit the framework of democracy. The existential violence lurking beneath the veneer of unilateralism is the abolition of accountability which can remain legitimised when the people are maintained on a diet of mendacious propaganda. In contrast, dialogue and debate presuppose openness to seeking the truth on the part of both sides, subjecting themselves to objective norms in a framework of equality.
What’s truly alarming is that an anti-egalitarian slant is deemed basic to development. Democracy is made out to be obstructive to development. Only a glorified dictator can drive the nation towards the haven of development. What if, in this process, the people are driven like cattle to a destination of which they haven’t the foggiest idea? Well, that is the short-term pain that all must accept to attain the long-term gain of outlandish prosperity. This should remind Christians of Jesus’s words to Satan in the first of his Temptations: ‘Man does not live by bread alone….’ At what price shall be earn our bread: freedom?