To ‘be’ something is different from ‘identifying’ yourself to be ‘that’ something. ‘Being’ requires a firm moral stance based on self-derived and reasoned principles, it is reflected in ‘actions’. ‘Identifying’ to be ‘something’ is reflected only in ‘words’; in ‘action’ it only leads to hypocrisy.
For instance, the 21st century ‘liberals’ and ‘feminists’ in short are the ones who fall under the latter category. Almost all institutionalized organizations that ‘identify’ themselves with ‘liberalism’ and ‘feminism’ fall under the latter category. Their adherent followers who rely on these institutions to continuously update their moral stance on what they ‘think’ they ‘believe’ in, also fall under the latter category.
The same hypothesis can be applied to ‘religious people’. The religious people, of any religion, be it from Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and so on, also fall in the latter category in the sense that no religious person follows his religion in the 21st century in its absolute terms. If you are a follower of the Eastern orthopraxy religions, you still have the advantage to proclaim that, “My religion is a way of life, it is not orthodox and is susceptible to change with time”, and rightly so. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and other Eastern Philosophical Schools of Thoughts are susceptible to change, but how often do they? That’s the question.
But leaving that, if you were to be a follower of the Western orthodox religions, you cannot proclaim that. If you follow anything that’s against the written command of your God, you cease to be a ‘Christian’ and ‘Muslim’. In that sense, I would argue that no one is actually a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew in this, unless not for those people whom we call ‘extremists’, ‘fundamentalists’, and ‘terrorists’. Anyone who have studied these religious books, with objectivity, would come to the same conclusion. ‘Extremists’, ‘fundamentalists’, and ‘terrorists’ fall under the ‘being’ category while the ‘moderates’ fall under the ‘identifying’ category.
Any political movement, in my opinion, should be judged based on the ‘actions’ of its adherent followers, at a particular instance of the time period. I would like to make a distinction between what I think, there exists, between a ‘political movement’ and ‘political philosophy’. A ‘movement’ is a form of ‘action’, an expression of ‘being’ and driven by ‘philosophy’. A philosophy is a form of ‘thought’ expressed in ‘words’. It’s very rare to find a person whose actions are based on the philosophy he expresses through his words. More often, it is the case that there exists a sheer contrast between the philosophy the person proclaims to believe in and expresses through words before the mass audience and the actions he chooses to perform.
‘Movements’ are responsible for changing the meaning associated with its ‘philosophy’. ‘Movements’ itself is a sign of change in the ‘thinking’ of its adherent followers. With that in mind, I think it’s now reasonable to argue that the 21st-century’ liberalism’ has been corroded and corrupted by its followers’ actions. It’s meaning has changed in regards to the 21st century, especially today. The actions of all the self-proclaimed ‘liberals’ and ‘feminists’ today, reeks of mental-hollowness, hypocrisy, little self-awareness, elitism, and latent arrogance.
Perhaps the only thing they are good nowadays is to invent new and exciting buzzwords, that sounds intelligent and cool to them but aren’t really. They have mastered the art of mockery, and ridicule any person who disagrees with them intellectually. To them, it’s not disagreement but simply a ‘misinformed’ opinion based on ‘misinformation’ or ‘wrong facts’.
The same is true in case of moral stance. Anyone who differs from their accepted stance on morality, is simply a conservative moron, a ‘Bhakt’ [a sacred word for a devotee in Hinduism, being used to shame Hindus who support BJP]. Anyone who differs intellectually is publicly shamed in the age of micro-blogging sites. Most of the times, the people who disagree with them on certain issues, are forced to apologize for their opinion just because a cult of self-victimized little whiners are hurt by their ‘words’. People are losing their jobs to put out an opinion in open, which in itself is an indication of the current state of these ‘philosophies’.
These people, in my opinion, have isolated themselves from the reality altogether so much so that ‘truth’ for them have become racist, sexist, and other forms of ‘-ist’ and ‘-ic’. Criticize Islam, and there it is – racist and Islamophobic you are. Criticize feminism going overboard and congratulations! You’re now officially a misogynist who should have been aborted before birth. Question abortion and off you go, you conservative buffoon. No matter what, there’s always a label ready for you.
Think about the 2014 Indian election when BJP government won. From that day onwards, the incident that followed among these lobbies is not a just mere coincidence. The way they cried intolerance in the case of cow vigilantism but remain silent during West Bengal murders. If they win the election, democracy wins; but every other times democracy was and is in danger from the ‘fascists’ BJP. In doing so, these people are not recognizing the hypocrisy of their actions and definitely not realizing that they have become what they are fighting. The 21st century Fascists.
Whatever happened to the ‘liberalism 101’, “Do not feel absolutely certain of anything”? Whatever happened to the ‘intellectual vow’, “I will never discourage thinking and if met with the opposition, I will endeavor to overcome it by argument instead of authority or force”? Whatever happened to the vow, “I will not use power to suppress the opinions, even those which I think are pernicious”? Whatever happened to the intellectual stance, “Intelligent dissent is more pleasurable than passive agreement”? Whatever happened to the moral stance, “I will speak the truth, however inconvenient it may be”? People who follow these rules now, unfortunately, are being labeled with negative connotations. Liberalism is being hijacked by the people who don’t follow it themselves, giving it a bad name. Unfortunately, there is no one to reclaim it back. Being a liberal or a conservative is a personality issue not political. However, that’s something for another time.
Let’s look into feminism as well. ‘Feminism’, the political movement aimed to grant the women equal rights as men. At least that is what it was in the beginning. With the changing times, it’s definition changed in theory by its followers. Today, in theory, it stands for – the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. Many people who are thinking, “Wait! what’s the difference between the two definitions? Isn’t there only two sex?” Oh boy! You trans-phobic illiterate [add more good words here yourself!], how can you say that? It’s 2018! How dare you hurt my ‘sentiments’? Apparently, they, and by ‘they’ I mean ‘feminists’ & ‘liberals’, have updated the number of the sexes in the recent years if you don’t know. So either you should upgrade yourself with the ‘facts’ that they ‘think’ is ‘correct’ or you are ‘wrong’. Period. End of discussion.
Don’t you dare raise the issues and problems faced by men, especially those who are suffering because of gender bias laws that are favoring women worldwide in almost all democratic countries, don’t! Otherwise, you’re an MRA – a misogynist organization filled with male chauvinist. Blame everything on ‘patriarchy’, because apparently, that’s the best we can come up with to silence criticism. Call ‘masculinity’ toxic. Shame on the young boys for the fact that their body produces testosterone. Make the straight males guilty of their sexuality. Just don’t blame us, us meaning women, because ‘our body, our choice’. But hey! you cannot sit like that. That’s man-spreading! In India, the level of these problems exists in online campaigns and universities but then whatever happens in Universities happens five years or a decade later in public spaces. The movement of feminism aims to destroy ‘patriarchy’. Most people, however, don’t understand the depth of what ‘patriarchy’ means to feminists. It’s, to state simply, is the indigenous culture and tradition of the land.
In India, it’s Hinduism. And hence, that’s their main target. In the US, it’s Christianity, hence that’s their target there. It’s never against Islam though because the Prophet was the first feminist for your kind information and Rama a ‘misogynistic pig’ as said by Sita. You can get enlightened by Audrey Truschke, assistant professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University-Newark and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University, on that matter.
Just remember to agree with her on every point and not question her ‘scholarly’ work [whatever that means to her!] otherwise block you, she would! But wait a minute, isn’t feminism about equality? Suzanna Danuta Walters, a professor of sociology and director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, disagrees with you by asking,”Why can’t we hate men?” Judge yourself! Women and Gender Studies is a disaster discipline which Indian Universities have imported from West and we’ll pay a heavy price for it within a decade or two from now on, much like how we are paying the price of importing Marxism through Urban Naxals and Maoists.
The current age movements of our times are driven by the underlying Postmodernist Template. Postmodernism is a philosophy that negates all ‘Grand Narratives’. On a deep level, it states something along these lines, “There is no such thing as true as everything can be interpreted by different people in an infinite number of ways. Hence, the truth is non-existent and what we believe to be true is simply a narrative set by the one who holds utmost power at a particular instance in time. Hence, destruction of all Grand Narrative is the way towards progressiveness and to overcome the oppression by those in power”.
This line of thinking seems true to most people and most often they fall for it. The reality, however, is that it’s a partial truth. And it is this partial truth which Hinduism itself says out quite clearly, “There are multiple infinite paths towards truth”. It is a fact that we hold truth claims rather than truth itself. Postmodernism goes wrong when it says, “There is no truth. It all depends on power”. This power template is due to Marxism. Marxism lays out the economic divide between two classes – oppressed and oppressor in modern-day terminology. What postmodernists did in the late 1970s in France, people like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida is that they brought in the Marxist class division on every narrative. It was Derrida who gave the word, ‘phallogocentrism’, a word that is used to refer to the privileging of the masculine (phallus) in the construction of meaning. This is what became the feminism’s new ‘patriarchy’.
Hence, it’s important to deconstruct ‘patriarchy’. So what is the product of patriarchy, you may ask. The answer also includes science and truth. If the meaning is constructed by power, if there is no truth and the truth is decided by power, if the masculine is the center of the construct of that meaning and hence truth and science, then all these things must be questioned and destroyed. This provides an interconnection between the postmodernism and feminism.
Postmodernism and Marxism are incoherent with each other on philosophical levels. But then again, coherence is a ‘patriarchal’ construct of science and logic, hence must be destroyed as well. So what’s the effect? Well, you stretch Marxism to all other domains of human existence. The oppressed and oppressor are no longer decided based on the economic divide, but also in terms of gender [man vs women], caste [ Upper Caste vs Lower Caste], skin colour [White, Brown, Black], imagined races [Aryan vs Dravidians] and so on. This divides the society into group identities and pins them against each other as groups fighting for power.
The most virtuous group among them is one which was supposedly historically oppressed and the most vicious are the ones historically privileged. You cannot question whether it is even true, the narrative that who were oppressed in the first place, otherwise you are a bigot, a fascist, an oppressor yourself if you happen to belong to perceived oppressor majority and a traitor to the cause if you happen to belong to the oppressed minority. In essence, if you favour reservations like the policy, you’re a communist/neo-Marxist/postmodernist in action regardless of what you think you are. In principle, you are following those philosophies. This is another one of those areas where the right wing associations fail miserably for most parts.
They also play on the game whose rules are laid out by Marx and Derrida type philosophers. In essence, there is no right wing or left wing in India when it comes to politics. They all play in grey zone and are all influenced by Marxism in their policies. The game of group identities is played by all for that’s the only way to win elections in India. However, this would result in Breaking India forces getting more coverage or the so-called defenders become the exact same offenders.
In conclusion, it is evident from the actions of the left that it has indeed become the new fascist, still living under the illusion of being against fascism. They are the establishment, still living under the illusion of being against the establishment. It’s time to wake up and move forward. India is the land whose culture rests on Hinduism and Buddhism. Both of these philosophies lay importance in the seeking of truth and walking the middle path. It’s time to adopt the teachings of these Dharmic traditions and stop playing the identity politics or else we pay the heavy price in blood in near future.
