Why Left-liberals justify views like 'Bharat ke tukde honge'

The JNU episode has hogged headlines for a week or so. It was yet another attempt of the Left-liberals to bring discredit to the government. As in the past, Left-liberals tried to portray it as their battle for liberalism and freedom of expression. However, once again people have refused to be hoodwinked. They are now more deeply conscious of the fact that talk of liberalism by the Left is nothing more than crocodile tears.

The events in JNU are downright condemnable.

Also, no one can defend any kind of violence as reactions to the same. The police have registered cases against those who have indulged in violence and the culprits will and should be brought to the book. Good that at least a few individuals belonging to those ideological groups in our country who have always directly or indirectly defended the violent outrage of Left extremists are now realising the futility of the same.

While no one can defend violence, it is noteworthy that certain groups known for left-of-centre ideology have not come out with any unequivocal condemnation of those who not only joined but orchestrated the chorus of "India ki barbadi" and "Bharat tere tukde honge" slogans unabashedly defending violence. Even for the Congress vice president, it took three days to condemn the clamour at the JNU campus for further vivisection of India.

Expectedly, most of those who belong to the Left-liberal groups have taken to the streets condemning the violence in Patiala House Court. While such violence deserves strongest condemnation beyond doubt, advocates of Left-liberalism in India must try to understand as to why their brand of liberalism lacks credibility.

There are at least three main factors that have made the liberalists sound utterly insincere, bordering on a downright hippocrates. Selective outrages over acts of intolerance, tendency to relish in disrespecting the sensibilities of majority communities, and politics of ideological untouchability manifest this insincerity making their talk of liberalism less of a commitment and more of a matter of convenience.

Politics of hurt emotions is the most revealing example of the Left-liberal hypocrisy. Their positions on visa to Taslima Nasreen, ban on The Da Vinci Code or their recent opposition to a seminar on Ayodhya issue at a Delhi campus put a big question mark on their commitment to freedom of speech. People of India are smart enough to understand as to how, immediately after the results to the Bihar Assembly elections were announced, the entire intolerance debate disappeared with almost no competition for "award wapsi".

Also noteworthy is the fact that the Left-liberals have always taken up the cause of freedom of expression whenever Hindus have complained about their sensibilities being hurt - as in the cases of Wendy Doniger or MF Husain. But when other communities come out with demands of banning a book or a work of art, Left-liberals habitually look the other way. This smacks of either politics of convenience or cowardice, or perhaps both. In the process, they underscore the fact that in Left-liberal scheme of things, majority sentiments have less value, as perhaps they do not form a vote bank.

The commitment of the Left-liberals to non-violence has always been doubtful. Hence, one need not be surprised to know that Leftist activists in Kerala have hacked several RSS-BJP volunteers to death in the last 40 years. As recent as just three days ago, a BJP worker was murdered in broad daylight, right in front of his parents at Kannur in Kerala. But since he belonged to BJP-RSS, neither was the murder condemned in strong words nor was there any human rights group demonstrating in any university to protest this incident. The agenda of "Bharat tere tukde honge" seems to have taken off with cutting BJP-RSS workers into pieces. No edits, no comments, no posters or poems, much less a film by any of the Nanditas or Patwardhans.

With their minds closed and prejudices firmed up, the Left-liberals have always betrayed a clannish mentality. They have all along pursued crass ideological untouchability. Have you heard any RSS-wala ever being invited by any of the Left-liberal establishments to deliver a lecture or share some ideas or an experience?

If an RSS-BJP sympathiser meets a Left-liberal, he is either totally ignored or at the best ridiculed. In academia as well as in media, Left-liberals create a circle of their own, giving any RSS-BJP sympathiser a sense of a pariah.

One cannot deny that Narendra Modi becoming prime minister was the most intolerable of the developments of the contemporary era for them. All their talk of intolerance is mere outward manifestations of this fundamental stomach-ache.

Left-liberals have always treated persons belonging to other ideologies as second-class citizens. Why should Rahul Gandhi object to the appointments of academicians with RSS leanings in universities? Simply because of their RSS leanings do they become less eligible? And if it's about political thought, why only persons with Left leanings deserve to be decorated? Simply to allow them perpetuate "you-scratch-my-back-I-will-scratch-yours" game? Is it not ideological apartheid?

For several years, JNU was treated by the Left-liberals as their fiefdom with students belonging to other ideologies as an anathema. This also explains why there is complete absence of any recognition in media or in the established NGO circuit to the social service of RSS-inspired organisations.

Objectivity, an essential ingredient of any academic discourse, has always been missing in Left-liberal idea of nationalism. They have always opposed the idea of cultural unity of India, brazenly denying the fact that India, as a nation, is a land of diversity because of its unity. What we celebrate is unity in diversity and not the other way round.

In fact, certain Left-liberal academics have always stressed their idea of India as a conglomeration of multiple nationalities, which it just is not. Many of them have written about not just Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh as a nation but also Khandesh, Marathwada and Malwa as nations. The CPI(M) website, mentioning about party programmes, says "The Communist Party of India (Marxist) works for the preservation and promotion of the unity of the Indian Union on the basis of real equality and autonomy for the different nationalities that inhabit the country and to develop a federal democratic State structure... "

Emotional integration is the cornerstone of our national unity and in that sense BJP has always talked about the idea of "One-Nation One-People", something totally unacceptable to the Left-liberals.

BJP believes in in-built, organic unity of India while for many Left intellectuals, unity of Indian nation is an artificial construct. No wonder then, the concept of "Bharat tere tukde honge" hardly disturbs them, much less they don't denounce it as an idea that has to be thrown out lock, stock and barrel.