The second world war had a huge impact on the mindset of the then ruling heads of powerful countries. There was a shock at the level of destruction and a sense of horror at the loss of lives. When the public outrage started shaking the thrones of the powerful, the ‘great’ ones decided to usher in a new ‘liberal’ world order.
Simply put, the victors of the world war II decided that all the conflicts were due to strong regional or religious identity among the respected groups and thus we need to bring world closer to make sure people of different regions, religions, beliefs can begin to mingle more thereby weakening the pride in the ethnic identities that people had.
Remember, this was the time when the colonialism was still considered righteous. Imperialism was still being discussed while communism and Marxism were used to be considered as the answer to all the problems of the world. This was also the time when the leader who killed 6 million Jews was considered a villain while the leader who killed 3 million people in India because they bred like animals, were followers of a ‘beastly religion’ and thus deserved to die, was hailed as the ‘greatest the democracy produced’.
So, in the aftermath of the world war II, these ‘non-racist’, ‘liberal’, ‘believers of democracy’, ‘left-leaning’, ‘religion hating’ winners of the war decided to teach the entire world ‘how to live peacefully’ and solve differences amicably by forming a world body, United Nations, where they set on the high pedestals while giving all others the second degree of membership.
This was the foundation on which the liberal world order started taking shape where most of the Asian countries were deprived of any say. They were just mere participants in the Great war while the concerned parties were mostly the western powers which had become powerful by looting the Asian and African countries for centuries. After Indians got Independence in 1947, it was forced to be a part of this new world order without being given an option.
Slowly, over the years, now it seems, that world order which came into being seven decades back is now crumbling all over the world. The rise of right-wing leaders with strong native identities and known cautionary approach towards minorities or immigrants all over the world is a signal that people are fed of up this elite Utopian idea which looks good when discussed under the roof of a huge bungalow with a glass of wine in hand and a Cuban cigar in the mouth but has little capability in solving the problems on the ground for the common masses in the real world.
When the people start questioning the immigration of ‘outsiders’ in the very countries which were re-populated after eliminating the entire native populations, you know the time has come a full circle. It seemed like a good idea in the beginning but what made it go so bad so rapidly in the last few decades?
The answers are – Greed, Entitlement, hypocrisy and holier-than-thou attitude.
The Marxist and left ideology started spreading around which used to abhor religions because they thought that the only God that was worth praying was Marx. The winners consolidated their powers by spreading the values which they thought were liberal. They told the natives of the respective countries that they were intolerant and needed to change their old ways, lose their ancient identity and make this world a big happy place by accepting people from all faiths, all backgrounds.
So far so good, if you can call it that. Religious, ethnic identities started weakening all the over the world including India. However, after a relative peace for the first few decades, this world order faced its greatest challenge in the form of the rise of Islamic terrorism. How to deal with something which according to the powerful elites did not fit into their new framework of looking at the world. They had thought that they had successfully defeated the religious fundamentalism by weakening the religious identities but now it was looking otherwise.
The self-appointed liberals and powerful elites dealt with it by saying ‘all religions have fundamentalism and by and large all religion preaches peace’. Although that sounded good it did not change the ground realities. Crime started increasing due to rampant immigration and refusal of most of the immigrants to assimilate with the mainstream of the adopted country.
Slowly, vote bank politics in the democracies all over the world became popular which further led to the ‘blocka-isation’ of the ‘minorities’. Politicians found this amazingly easy way of getting a lot of votes without actually doing anything. It was easy to appease, spread fear and get the minorities and immigrants on your side. All you had to do in return was to close your eyes to the things these powerful religious leaders were up to.
Rather than calling the spade a spade and dealing with the threat, people asking questions were termed as ‘Islamophobic’. Their hypocrisy, greed for power, a sense of entitlement over the power centres of the world and on top of that, a sense of contempt for the common masses who were bearing the brunt of their policies and ‘liberalism’ – led to the mass level disenchantment of the common citizens from this world order.
This is when the ancient identities, old ideologies especially religious ones started making a comeback. People started looking in the past for solutions to the problems of the present. Ancient Hindu/Indian civilization values started resonating with the masses. Open religious heads started gaining popularity who was not ready to be apologetic about their religious identities or calling the things as they were.
Their words and thought process were resonating with the people who were facing the brunt of the hypocrisy of the liberal world. The liberal establishment expressed shock when leaders like Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsanaro, Rodrigo Duterte, and other hard-line leaders started coming to power with huge mandates. They just could not see that the world had changed in front of their eyes. If you won’t deal with the problems of the people, they will find someone who will.
Having unable to digest the defeats of the ‘liberal’ establishments one by one all over the world, they are now resorting to blaming the people for becoming racists, bigots, intolerants, fundamentalists, etc etc. Liberals are openly calling Indians as religious bigots for electing Narendra Modi with even a bigger majority in 2019. The same liberals labelled Donald Trump as a white supremacist leader and his supporters as racists.
The change is not easy. When a more than seven-decade-old world order crumbles there are bound to be a lot of noises especially when those voices have an unfair control over the intellectual sphere. But the people have stopped listening. They are not ready to see their leaders from the prism of their ‘liberal secular values’. They are more comfortable judging them based on their own old, ancient value system rather than this new, biased, hypo-critic value system that has become the oxygen supplier for the violent, unjust forces that are hell-bent upon destroying the world and their way of living.
These voices are going to get louder as this redundant world order crumbles to dust and a new world order emerges out of its ashes that can solve world problems rather than blaming the people for raising them.
