McCarthyism Afflicts Indian Democracy: Protesters Are Branded 'Maoists', And Those Who Dare To Love Beyond the Boundaries of Their Faith 'Jihadists'
By
Badri Raina
15 December
2020
Just to
recall: the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945 led to a “cold war” between the
United States of America and its war-ally, the then Soviet Union.
Illustration: The Wire
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In the US,
from early on, it had come to be feared that communists were infiltrating all
aspects of American life – the universities, Hollywood, journalists and writers
found themselves under watch.
This has
been called the era of the “red scare” – tellingly caught in several movies, an
instructive recent one being Guilty By Suspicion.
The
anti-communist crusade was led by a senator from Wisconsin – rather wretchedly
for two reasons: one, this was a state rich in memories and artefacts of the
war of liberation, and secondly, because it was to be my alma mater in the
early 1970s, a time of life I cherish.
Joseph
McCarthy’s propaganda apparatus led to a situation where everyone was induced
to suspect everyone else, and when many took it out on those they had grudges
against by falsely snitching on them to the infamous House Un-American
Activities Committee.
That
Committee had come to be established in 1938 with the writ to investigate any
and all Americans suspected of communist sympathies. Abolished in 1975, its
jurisdiction was transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.
As a
result, the lives of scores of extraordinary and reputed artists, movie-makers,
writers, sundry intellectuals came to ruin by innuendo and suspicion. Even the
great Charlie Chaplin was not spared calumny.
Any liberal
individual or organisation that was less than euphoric about the capitalist way
of life was dubbed a communist agent. If you were not a rightwing nationalist,
you had to be an enemy of the people.
This
menacing zeitgeist was enacted with acute insight in the play The Crucible
(1953) by one of the intellectuals who had also been summoned to answer charges
by the House Un-American Activities Committee, namely, Arthur Miller (better
known to the general readership as the author of Death of a Salesman, a play
that dramatised the tragic rat-race that informs the cut-throat competitiveness
in the capitalist way of life). Miller brilliantly cast the anguish of the
moment in terms of an equally infamous 16th-century New England witch-hunt,
when numbers of women were put to death on accusations of having been
practising witchcraft. Miller showed them to have been victims of vendetta and
personal grouse, depicting the collapse of a whole social order into suspicion,
hate and revenge.
An
Indian Deja Vu
During the
decades after the Soviet revolution, of course, socialist ideology had great
purchase all over Europe, the US and the “Third World” as well. In early,
post-Independence India, for example, great prestige attached to visions of a
welfare state that would not allow capitalist entrepreneurs to let the
“free-market” ideology wreak havoc on the lives of penurious and illiterate
Indians.
But, as we
write, the hold of the Left has shrunk, and generation next has gone over to
forms of life that make the main chance available and that enable the
consumption of goods and services far more numerous and enticing than were a la
carte before the “reforms” that began in 1991.
Yet, the
Indian establishment since 2014 has found it useful to resort to McCarthyism
when faced with informed critique of its policy directions, or challenged by
public protests: as it did at the time of the agitation against the
constitutionally dubious Citizenship Amendment Act, it has once again, taken
recourse to a “red scare” propaganda in an attempt to debunk the unprecedented
democratic mass action by India’s farming community. Word is now out to the
complicit media that it is the Maoists, who else, who are behind the current
protests.
So, Joseph
McCarthy who expired early in 1957 is nonetheless alive and kicking still.
And, once
again, the good old tactic is intended to discredit any and all who challenge
the increasing hold that crony corporates have been acquiring over the policy
direction and wealth of the taxpayer’s rupee. Any Indian who is not a lover of
capitalist “efficiency” on behalf of the haves must be a dangerously anti-national
communist.
This of
course involves a Trumpean delusion: we are to understand that only communists
are unhappy with the government policies of the day – a presumption
contradicted by the ravages wrought in people’s social, cultural and economic
lives across the board during the tenure of the current Central dispensation.
And, one
has never quite understood why being a communist must unarguably mean being of
the devil’s party. That the word communis (Latin) simply and endearingly means
“to hold in common” is a little-known thing. But, even so, to the extent that
the capitalist ethic is to own and possess, the idea of sharing itself is
anathema, enough to dub communists prime antagonists of course. Another matter
that even now, penurious left parties score instructive electoral victories
despite all odds (like in Bihar).
Mccarthy’s
Tentacles Elsewhere Too
The
communists are not the only ones posing mortal harm to the realm. McCarthy’s
other finger points to enemy number two – the Muslim Indian scheming to entice
“innocent” Hindu women into wedlock with a view solely to swell the Muslim
population.
This May
Be Christened The “Love Scare”.
Thus, laws
are being enacted to prevent such disloyal atrocities from happening. The
concept of amour is in any case rather non-existent in much of the world’s
rightwing thought, and affinity of this dastardly kind, even if among fully
grown adults, spells the doom of corruption to the polity. These naughty acts
of amour threaten to dismantle the ordained rule of paternalism and patriarchy
over the lives of young ones, till such time as they become parents and
patriarchs themselves. The frustrating and wretchedly insoluble conundrum
remains: why do young women and men fall in love, when such indulgence is
allowed to frisky gods alone? And, in any event, why do they fall in love with
the wrong sorts of people, without as much as a “if you will” to Mom and Pop?
And, why do they not, when love afflicts them, remember to keep the nation
first?
Thus also,
as with McCarthyism of the past, spies are everywhere to catch such
anti-national cuddlers and hand them over to the authorities, after, of course,
fair-sized vigilante comeuppance, often with cops in gentle attendance. It
would seem that Marx in the first part and Freud in the second conspire to
compromise India’s march to greatness.
As to the
videos that inevitably surface, did not Herr Goebbels teach us how to deny that
which may be well in our very eyeball?
To a point
where now, in a recent case, dutiful cops barged into a mosque, disrupting not
a dangerous interfaith marriage but one between a Muslim man and a Muslim woman
on the strength of that authoritative vigilante word, took them into the thana
where they were held for a night, and only then let out into the cold.
As is well
known, the Indian male, in any capacity, tends to have rather a dim opinion of
a woman’s intelligence, and no opinion whatsoever of her right to her own
decisions.
Only the
goddesses are vigorously worshipped for the bounties they have the power to
bestow.
Therefore,
the Indian justice system may make all the insistent constitutional noises to
emphasise that this course of action on behalf of state agencies and
collaborating vigilantes comprises a heinous denial of the right to life and
choice enshrined in the all-important Article 21 of the republic’s sacred book,
and that no private agency or public authority has any business to interfere in
such matters, so what. Wisdom crieth on the bench but the brown shirts know
better.
Only
McCarthy reigns.
Given, therefore
this double jeopardy of a “red scare” and a “love scare”, the republic is truly
in a double bind – one that no doubt helps the powers-that-be to keep the
nation safe from the disloyal extremes of public misbehaviour.
Best way to
prosper: do not wear red, and do not be looking for love.
If you do,
McCarthy will know.
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Badri
Raina has taught at Delhi University
Original
Headline: Red Scare and Love Scare: Two-Pronged McCarthyism Afflicts Indian
Democracy
Source: The Wire
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