Valson Thampu

Models of reality underlie types of government. No ideology, political style or religious mode can be understood aright without reckoning their underlying model of reality.

The unwitting disservice that Aristotle did to humankind was via his idea of reality, which comprised three principles: the Principle of Identity, the Principle of Contradiction and the Principle of the Excluded Middle. Put in layman’s terms it could read as follows. A thing is identical only to itself. The State, for example, is identical only to the State, and not to anything else. Secondly, the State cannot be its contradiction; that is, it cannot be an anarchy. Thirdly, there is nothing in between the State and anarchy. What doesn’t harmonise with the idea of the State is anarchic. So, one has to choose between the State and anarchy. There is nothing in-between. Unfortunately, what dwells in-between is the sphere of human welfare in general and personal liberty in particular. In such a scheme of reality, dissent seems anti-national.

Tolerance, many are worried today, is shrinking in India. It is necessary to understand why. Perhaps, the first thing to note in this connection is that there is nothing arbitrary about this development, which makes it all the more worrisome. More worrisome, because it is bound to get worse, going forward. I wish to God, I am proved wrong; but, going by the witness of history, there is little room to believe otherwise.

Consider, for example, the wide-ranging booking of people under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). As per records, more than 7800 individuals are languishing in prison, almost all of them awaiting trial, under its draconian provisions. In most cases, the charges levelled against them pertain to activities that, say, a decade ago, would have been deemed permissible in a democracy. This affords a clue to what is afoot in the displacement of ‘Nehru’s India’ by Modi’s India.
A model of reality is understood best by contrasting it with its opposite. Hegel evolved such a model. He differed from Aristotle principally in relation to the Principle of the Excluded Middle. To him, if this zone of reality is excluded, we not only simplify reality, but also exclude progress. Everything exists in a state of flux in history. As Lord Buddha said, we cannot step into the same river twice. Change is the only constant in this world. How can any change take place, if the intervening space between a thing and its contrary is ruled out? The progress, for example, from day to night is via twilight. After all, it is by transitioning to their opposites that most things become useful to the human condition. We don’t run lights by water; electricity needs to be generated from water, to power bulbs. Snake poison kills, but it saves life, if modified through an appropriate process, which holds goo for vaccines in general.

Going by the dogma underlying the New India in the offing –that there is nothing in between the State and anarchy- it is inevitable that dissent becomes anti-national. Dissent belongs to the ‘excluded middle’ of democracy. It exists in between dictatorship and slavery. India’s freedom struggle took place in this ‘excluded middle,’ of the Aristotelian model. So, our erstwhile colonial masters invoked the sedition law ever and anon. They would have been indignant, if anyone told them that they were intolerant of dissent! As custodians of the State, they were simply being energetic in protecting the State from anarchy. Those we venerate as martyrs and freedom fighters today were, to the keepers of the Raj, extremists and terrorists.

More and more people take pride in the re-formatting of India as a hard State. The idea of reality that underlies this ‘hardness’ –which is mistaken for vitality- is pre-modern. The outlook subsumed in the Constitution of India is Hegelian, rather than Aristotelian. The fundamental rights and safeguards guaranteed to citizens belong to the ‘excluded middle’ of the Aristotelian bandwidth of reality. The freedom of India is its offspring. If the Aristotelian idea were the last word on the human condition, despair, not hope, would have prevailed among the leaders of our freedom struggle. The possibility of freeing India existed in the ‘excluded middle’ between the Empire and anarchy. Indeed, the main argument of the defenders of the Raj was that the departure of the British would plunge India into anarchy!

It doesn’t matter what you practice: religion or politics. What matters is their underlying idea of reality. Jesus challenged and changed the idea of reality on which Judaism had erected itself. Hence the two essential features of his public ministry: teaching and miracle-working. He taught, not to increase religious knowledge, but to change people’s outlook on reality. He performed miracles for the same reason. ‘Faith’, in his scheme of things, is a quantum leap from the prevailing mode of reality to another. Jesus was Hegelian, rather than Aristotelian. More accurately, Hegel was more Christological than Aristotelian. That is to say, a democracy that is unable to generate a wholesome, effective opposition is bound to be wrecked, in due course, on its contradiction: dictatorship.

The opposition parties, on their part, need to know what it means to serve the people in a democratic society, and not degenerate into networks of obstruction. As per the Hegelian system, the outcome of the interface between thesis and antithesis should be the emergence of a higher synthesis. It is vital to the interests of the opposition parties that this higher synthesis emerges. Today, it is critical to their very survival. They will command credibility, and sustain the hope and zeal of the people, only when they kindle in them an expectation that something better, healthier is in the offing. They will be trusted and preferred only when citizens have reasons to believe that they are the midwives of that preferable and viable alternative. If and when a democracy degenerates into dictatorship, the opposition parties, not less than its formal butchers, will be condemned at the bar of history.