Abp Thomas Menamparampil

1)    The Weakening of Ideals: In India, those of the Founding Fathers
It is good to give a renewed look at the most relevant manner of fulfilling of the Christian mission amidst the anxieties of today’s rapidly changing world. In India, for example, we are no more living in an atmosphere that the Founding Fathers of the Nation envisioned and sought to create. With the 2019 election, it would seem a New India is in shaping.

It was in 2012 that I picked up in Kolkata airport a 650-paged book with the alarming title “Breaking India,” authored by Rajiv Malhotra of Princeton USA and Aravindan Neelakandan of Tamilnadu. Within a year it had gone through four prints. When I picked up another copy in 2014, it was the ninth impression. It seems to sell like a thriller in spite of its heavy appearance… a veritable labyrinth of argument where the main issue too often goes out of sight. By 2016 it had gone in for the fourteenth edition. By the time I saw its copies in the Kochi airport recently, it had been translated into Tamil, Hindi and Kannada.

The chief target of the authors were Christian missionaries, Western Churches, secular intellectuals, think-tanks, NGOs, aid-giving agencies, foreign governments, and Human Rights groups, whom they accused of working hard together for the disintegration of India. Putting it briefly, it argues that the attention that these agencies are giving to the weaker sections of Indian society and the smaller ethnic groups, like the Dravidians and the Mundas, and their interest in their identity, development, and growth, have for their aim the breakup of India.

A ready response would be: the threat to the nation, rather, comes from those who spread prejudices against minorities, diverse ethnic groups, and well-meaning social workers; those who discourage intelligent thinking and independent social research… and most of all, those who promote an ideology of ‘exclusivism.’ Those who plant hatred into the hearts of people, they compromise the future of the nation.

Arguments proposed in the book had consequences: a large number of Christian NGOs have been stopped from receiving funds, foreign scholars have been turned back from attending conferences in India, intellectuals and religious superiors have been refused entry into the country, social workers and missionaries have been harassed, and heads of institutions and organizations have been humiliated by the lowest officers over accounts.

Meanwhile, it is well-known that the Right Wing political groups receive impressive financial assistance from Non-Resident Indians (NRIs). How much of it goes to support deviant Hindutva activities like bashing beef-eaters, beating up Christian praying groups, thrashing political critics, and acting as violent moral police is uncertain. One thing is becoming clear: we have moved a great deal from the ideals that Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore, Nehru, Patel and others fostered in Indian hearts.

2.    The Weakening of Ideals: at the World Level, Disillusionment with Democracies.
Let us put this situation against the changing world reality. “We live in an era of radical uncertainty” says Yascha Mounk, a lecturer at Harvard University in his recent book ‘The People Vs. Democracy’ (Mounk 25). No one could foresee even a few years ago the election of persons like Trump, Duterte or Modi to lead a modern democratic nation. While Trump vows to wipe out North Korea, Duterte seeks to annihilate all drug addicts and Muslim-dissenters in the Philippines, Modiji wants us to count the dead bodies at Balakot. ‘Politically correct’ statements today are considered ‘spineless.’

Such vocabulary and attitudes would have been thought impossible in Gandhi’s India, in a democracy. Yascha Mounk argues that the world political mood is fast changing. There is increasing disillusionment with chaotic, non-performing, exploitative democracies that have fallen into the hands of leaders who look after merely party/corporate interests. Some of them excel in noble rhetoric but are least worried about the concerns of the lower classes/rural masses in their own countries. They look on them with contempt. On the other hand, authoritarian populists like Trump, while using rough words, cater to the interests of specific groups with specific concerns (e.g. the fear of the Whites against immigrants). Russia and Turkey have changed “fledgling democracies into electoral dictatorships” (Mounk 2). However, hopes raised by these burgeoning dictators may end on the rocks.

3.    Value-systems, Ideas, assumptions today are shaped by the Market World Culture
Even in long established democracies, democratic traditions like intelligent debate, popular participation, full scope for human talent, and warm relationships among different communities are floundering. Most of all, elusive corruption has risen to the highest levels. The Government-Business nexus frightens the weaker citizens. Fake media confuses society. This has led to a “generalized loss of trust in authority,” in institutions, and in journalists (Giridharadas 92), (not excluding ecclesiastical leadership!).

Elected leaders have only one anxiety: the huge amount of money they have spent during the last elections has to be recovered (Mounk 81). Therefore, they spend half their time fund-raising in view of the next-elections: they keep close to the donors, lobbyists and special interest groups; and the rest of the time with their own party-men and peers, and with cultural and financial elite, so that they have no time for the people whom they represent. Unfortunately, it is such self-interested elitist groups that shape the value-systems, ideas, and assumptions of the present-day politicians (Mounk 87)…and gradually of society. Which means, effectively, democracies have long ceased to be democracies. All that the ruling clique tries to do is to ensure an “artificial boom in election years” to win votes (Mounk 60).

We have just gone through one such spell in India. Political structures are being manipulated. Democratic values meet with no respect. The quality of parliamentary debate has plummeted. The anger of the farmers and the unemployed has risen to new heights. Emotions decide issues.

The anger of those left behind is understandable. On the one hand, there has been a 60% growth of crorepatis in the country during the last 3 years; which means, there are 81,000 crorepatis in India today. Eighty-three percent of the MPs belong to that group, 430 of them in all. Meantime the Poverty Index (MPI) of Oxford University shows that half the population of a state like Bihar live below poverty line.

4.    Ideas Shape Actions; Actions Shape Ideas, Ideas Get Planted Deeper
The Indian business elite are searching for places, where safe investment is possible, where resources can be exploited and cheap labour obtained. They need spaces. Tribal land and dalit zones seem easiest to be grabbed. They are looking for a ‘Strong Hand,’ a Fascist leader, to discipline the dissenting groups. The poor and the unemployed who do not care about ideologies, just want an ‘honest’ ruler who will attend to their immediate interests and will abolish all institutional roadblocks. They do not object to ‘illiberal’ government initiatives (Mounk 8), e.g. being hard on minorities, dalits, tribals, dissenters, free press…engaging in fake encounters, launching raids on critics, and filing cases against protesters.

In India this trend has developed another dimension. Unlike the secular Fascisms of the West, the Indian version makes full use of the religious fervour of the majority community to deepen power and diversify its locations, making the interplay of respective influences extremely subtle, elusive and untraceable. In the long term, it is far more menacing. It involves mobilizing unruly street elements, cow vigilantes, lynch mobs, crowd-pulling godmen, land grabbing corporates, conniving police-officers, and fire-breathing cultural fundamentalists. The mob-violence the Fascist masterminds inspire is described as anonymous ‘Law and Order problem,’ and their perpetrators remain unidentifiable and untraceable.

Voters are angry at their inability to influence policies. And ultimately in frustration, the masses who feel disempowered surrender to a populist demagogue who promises to take their interests forward.

Indian Fascists have a long term strategy: weakening the separation-of-powers in our Constitution, especially by controlling the judiciary through selective appointments and interferences, staffing of universities with personnel compliant to Hindutva ideology, re-writing of textbooks with a skewed presentation of facts and a biased re-interpretation of history, making the media toe the Ruling Party line, enlisting the support of gurus and godmen for catching votes and for investing money at tax-havens. The strategy includes also a plan to hit the economy of the weaker sections: e.g. the beef of the Muslims and dalits, the rubber of the Christians, the spices of the tribals. Meanwhile, beef export from licensed cow-slaughter centres owned by big Hindu and Jain business houses has gone up beyond calculation.

The real victims are unemployed youth from humbler communities who are taught to appropriate the anger of the Hindutva elite in order to get the more unpleasant works done, like chaotic protests, street violence, demolition of masjid, or post-Godhra mayhem. Of late, a jingoistic atmosphere is steadily growing in the country, glorifying the performance of soldiers, exaggerating border tensions, the army chief making statements too frequently, glorifying ‘surgical strikes.’ Thus Savarkar’s dream comes true: “Militarize Hindudom.” As the people grow anxious, the government feels fully in command.

5.    Money Decides Issues, Especially the Fate of Weaker Parties
Yascha Mounk frankly admits, in virtually every case in which Populists have taken power or been re-elected, it has been due to‘deep divisions’ within the ranks of their opponents, whether it be in Hungary, Turkey, US, or Poland (Mounk 190), or in India. The Opposition parties have been rushing after portfolios and prominences to excess, and not working for unity for national benefit. “Held together by money and favours,” bargaining for power and position becomes the main task of weak parties patched together: fragmented, fractious, partisan, ideology-less, power-hungry. Money alone decides issues. Big Business has political Giants under their thumb, no matter what their public image. Pramod Mahajan frankly admitted that 90% of the BJP money came from the corporates (Naqvi 189).

People, tired of taking and giving bribes, finally opt for an “anti-establishment maverick” who promises the ‘heavens.’ It is out of a sense of helplessness that people surrender to Strongmen. However, once in power, these adopt inflexible positions. The rest of the political bunch keep busy bargaining for vote-catching before elections, for power-distribution after elections (Rosenbluth-Shapiro 35).

6.    The Market World Value-system Kills the Sense of Responsibility
Politics is no more about social construction, but power-sharing, favour-distribution, money-laundering, cheap populism. Where donors count more than voters, voters come to be taken for granted (Rosenbluth-Shapiro 40). This is true even more of ‘coalitions cobbled together.’ With disempowered parties and political alliances, governments themselves become disempowered (Rosenbluth-Shapiro 126). No wonder that in the recent Indian elections, people voted against the possibility a feeble, ineffective coalition, under the like of which they had suffered a long time.

‘Unrealistic promises’ merely undermine public confidence. Populist leaders can make promises or launch projects irresponsibly or recklessly without attending to their costs, and without being able to see who will bear the burden. It is the nation that pays in the end…and the average man. One cannot forget that every policy has consequences on other policies (Rosenbluth-Shapiro 28).

Left parties, if they are responsible, will attend to business and consumer interests as well; and similarly, Rightists will ensure labour protection, health, social insurance (Rosenbluth-Shapiro 32). Favouring workers should do no damage to the interests of business; favouring business should not fail to do justice to the working class (Rosenbluth-Shapiro 35). But these things fail to happen.

Conscientious political parties must take responsibility for the consequences of what they do beyond the next election. Ultimately it is the nation that must win, not parties for their own benefit. (Rosenbluth-Shapiro 250). If the Opposition party has the same sense of responsibility, they will offer intelligent and well-studied criticism, and not disrupt parliamentary proceedings nor have recourse to rowdy behaviour to press their point. They constitute government in waiting, therefore they remain principled and dignified (Rosenbluth-Shapiro 74).

While they evaluate and criticize the possible negative consequences of a proposed project for the sake of its better implementation, they will never block a worthwhile proposal merely to gain political advantage. They monitor implementation and evaluate performance (Rosenbluth-Shapiro 37). But, alas! It is the opposite happens that happens today.

7.    The New Dogma: It is Glorious to Be Rich. Consequence: ‘Winners Take All’
We have looked at some of the problems of the day and find ourselves helpless in a rapidly changing scenario and before mighty forces in the political and economic fields. As we have seen, most people feel convinced that it is the self-interested elite groups in those fields that shape the value-systems, ideas, and assumptions of the present-day (Mounk 87).

Pope Francis holds the same view. He said in Cagliari some time ago, “Money is in command! Money lays down the law!” (Osservatore Romano 25.9.13). Those psycho-social forces at work in society as whole, affect everyone within it. Churchmen do not remain untouched. Everyone shares the same DNA. That is what makes the Pope cry, “Money must serve, not rule!” (EG 58).