http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/images/nehru_signing_the_constitution.jpgThe idea of India performs a remarkable feat with utmost dexterity: pushing a right-wing agenda (like the defence of private property) through progressive, left-wing values and proposals. The Indian constitution, on which the idea of India largely rests, is so replete with values like democracy and even social transformation that it needs enormous critical acumen to cut through its many radical-sounding layers. Large sections of the left pathetically compete with each other and render liberals jobless in trying to don the mantle of being the true defenders of this idea and the Indian constitution. . . . Let us have a closer look at one key component of this idea of India embedded in the Indian constitution -- secularism against communalism (meaning mostly Hindu majoritarianism). . . . Hence till today the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 engineered by the ruling secular Congress or the 2002 pogrom of Muslims backed by Narendra Modi who is the Prime Minister today (and innumerable 'small' massacres or riots) would never be 'enough' to account for the persistence of communalism as a normal feature of Indian society, and not just the handiwork of a narrowly defined 'Hindu right-wing'. There have been approximately 60 major communal riots since 1961. A huge majority of them took place under the rule of the ideologically secular Congress and very few under the ideologically communal BJP. Anyone can see that communalism is an internal moment of secularism and not a deviation from it -- but the defenders of the secular-democratic idea of India deny this. They present secularism as the way to defeat communalism. . . . How does one fight communalism, in this formulation? Of course, by 'strengthening our secular constitution' rather than directly fighting communal forces! Thus, when in the Bombay of the 1960s the right-wing 'fascist' Shiv Sena directly attacked and decimated left-wing forces, the left ran to the police and law enforcement agencies for protection, pretty much repudiating the struggle on the ground -- they thought that they should struggle within the constitutional norms, uphold secularism and not fall into the trap of the right-wing to lure the left into a fight outside the limits of the constitution. The left 'sincerely' upheld the constitution only to lose the battle. The constitution is the perpetual price the left happily pay for their perpetual defeat and deep decline in India!

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