The last few days have witnessed events that bring to the fore about the free speech in India. A few days back, there was a post in Wall Street Journal on how Facebook allowed the alleged ‘hate’ posts posted by a BJP MLA of Telanagana to stand despite complaint on it. It indicated Facebook was hand in gloves with the ruling BJP in India in allowing free pass to their propaganda which WSJ deemed to be spewing ‘hate’ against Muslims. It seemed to target based on anonymous sources on Ms. Ankhi Das who was said to be behind these decisions. In no time, the left liberal brigade went on her linking her agenda to her sister’s association with ABVP, the student wing of the RSS. Yesterday, Bloombury Publishing withdrew or rather pulped its forthcoming book Adv. Ms. Monika Arora’s Delhi Riots-Untold Story. The decision was ostensibly due to inability to cope up with the pressure by strong section of left liberal brigade apparently led by William Darlymple who deemed it to be against the narrative they want to propagate. The last few weeks have also seen Prashant Bhushan being hauled for contempt by the Supreme Court. Incidentally, many right wingers have stood with Prashant Bhushan on grounds of free speech even though he has left no opportunity to put them in the dock.
It apparently seems free speech is a one way street. Free speech advocates on the left liberal coalition deem fit to certify what is free speech and what is not, an irony of sorts given they are reckoned to be apostles of free speech. In fact, it would not be wrong to state that free speech is becoming a sort of albatross on the neck of the right wing advocates. It is not akin to what Savarkar had talked about the consequences of cow protection in the face of the enemy attack. All the Muslim invaders had to do was use cows as their shields. Seeing cows in front, the Hindu rulers, unable to kill cows due to religious taboos associated with the ‘Go-Hatya’ backed out allowing the Muslims a free run. The Hindu rulers were killed, women raped, children and tortured and sold in slave markets while enjoying a feast of beef. This exactly seems to be replicating in the context of the right wing and its advocacy of free speech absolutism. The free speech is dead and so are the right wingers. This was discussed in some measure in a previous post.
Yet it begs to be answered on why the left liberal cabal rules the intellectual ecosystem across the world barring an exception or two. The cases where these exceptions emerge are invariably autocracies where the freedom of expression is virtually zero. In the context of India, the answers lie in quite a few factors. These factors apply in differing degrees to each sector or sphere but nevertheless demonstrate commonalities. Before one examines in specific the narratives that destroy right wing thought, one must look in general terms the factors that refurbish the left liberal driven narrative.
The first is obviously political. India once it earned its freedom became a laboratory for testing of Nehruvian ideas of India. The progenitors of this system of thought were obviously influenced both by Karl Marx who believed the historical duty of the British in India was to be liberate them from the practices of worshipping ‘monkey gods’ to the materialistic vision of the modern world as also the the antithetical views of Rudyard Kipling and White Man’s Burden calling it the historical duty of the Western civilization to reform the savage natives. To add was the Indira Gandhi’s decision to cede the public intellectual sphere in the socio-cultural domain to the left. Indira needed the political support of the left as she waged the battle against the Syndicate and thus in trade-off for political support, she conceded the socio-cultural sphere to the left cabal. Fast forward to the current regime, the left-liberal cabal is increasingly besieged and need to hit back at the right even if it were to be minor victories. In this context, the current battles can viewed as a rearguard action as India transits from the Nehrvian cesspool to rediscovering its long lost ethos. These battles for power in the socio-cultural intellectual sphere are rarely won without bloodshed and what one is witnessing is the last stages of those battles. Yet political factors is only one of those driving this narrative.
In 1979, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky published a seminal paper that redefined economics and decision making. The paper building on their Prospect theory introduced to the economic lexicon the jargon ‘Framing Effect’. They contested the theory put forth by neoclassical school that decisions were product of rational economic agents undertaking a cost benefit analysis. The framing effect argued that given the constraints information availability and further processing of information, economic agents based their decision on how they viewed the choices. In other words, if the choices were framed in certain methods, the decisions of these agents could be changed. It was not the incentives that skewed the choices but the manner in which the choices were constructed, framed and presented to the economic agents. This was a modus operandi which the left liberal system perfected for long. It was about the choices that were presented to the population which was deprived of the abilities to fact-check the information or process the information. They resorted to construction of mother narratives which would rather be undisputed. Instances include the historical oppression of the Dalits by the upper castes, historical injustices to Blacks by the Whites in the US, environmental pollution being detrimental to societal wellbeing, the Indian civilization being primitive thus unable to resist Western colonization among others. Once these mother narratives were entrenched, it was easy to introduce child narratives that would point towards achieving the objectives the left ecosystem intended to. The deracination of the Indian natives would be carried out or at least attempted to be Eccarried out using these narratives. The specific context and modus operandi would need some engagement but that is beyond the scope of this post for the moment.
Economics 101 had long posited that an entrenched player in a market will seek to erect barriers of entry to protect himself or herself from future competition, thus earning potential supernormal profits. One of the barriers to entry rests on the ability to control a key resource in the value chain. For long, the left have precisely done the same. In the context of the publishing industry, it has been the literature festivals. Apparently, Darlymple’s control on the Jaipur Lit Fest (JLF), the deemed prima donna, gives him the leverage to block books as per his whims and fancies. The Indian social, cultural and historical research, unlike the Western world, did not root itself in the Universities. It was the Councils of Research set up controlled the projects and the funds. Therefore, anything contrary to their wishes would be shut down and denied funds for research. In the movie and entertainment industry, the implied demand uncertainty meant few actors and producers and directors had more than disproportionate influence on the storyline and the cast creating a monopolized version in the industry. The universities and educational institutions did not have self-generated funds thus depending on government grants. The grants were driven by the left liberals who controlled the narrative. Similar processes could be discerned in the news broadcasting and print media industry. Thus one could observe the control of essential resource played a role in furthering the left agenda and shut the door for any right wing thought thinkers from establishing themselves.
To any agent susceptible to pressure from the cabal, it boils to the cost benefit analysis. The agent would obvious in thinking about the likely marginal costs and likely marginal benefits. Given the noise generated by the cabal, many become susceptible to bowing to the pressures from them. The marginal benefits for defying or resisting the pressure are too low relative to the marginal costs. Therefore, they tend to keep on the right side of this cabal. The corporate woke has its reasons and have been discussed at good length in the piece “Deciphering Woke Capitalism” It is about the left’s mastery over driving the narrative that makes them difficult opponents. Moreover, despite numerous differences within them, they are united when it comes to confronting their enemy, most prominently, a White male, a Jew or an Indian uppercaste. Like their brethren from Islam, any deviation on the part of the member with respect to the objectives sought to be pursued, would be seriously dealt with. In Islam for instance, conversions into the religion were welcome, but anyone converting out of Islam was put to death. This principle is followed very closed in the left liberal ecosystem.
The left liberal ecosystem knows the tide has turned against them. They are in many ways fighting a losing battle. They are licking the wounds of the Ayodhya Bhumi Pujan, something discussed in this post as the death of Mughal Man’s Burden. Therefore, it would have been imprudent to expect that they would not resort to actions that would seek to convey that the ecosystem is still alive. They are under some sort of pressure on Bollywood after the Sushant Singh suicide but they feel given the political connotations, time would ensure the storm is weathered off. Yet, the Facebook issue which of course is also linked to US elections and the Indian vote in the US elections and the Bloombury issue have brought to the fore the cabal still has a voice. The West frames its opinion through the eyes and ears of the left liberal cabal thus decisions by it symbolize the thinking of this ecosystem. In many ways, Indians allowed the West to dictate terms on the socio-cultural narrative of India thus paying the price today. This is unlike China which has controlled this narrative from within. Yet, contrary to the gloom, it is actually a portend of beginning of the defeat of the left. The rearguard battles are diry, there would be casualties but what is unmistakable are the signs of liberals increasingly exposing themselves, making mistakes that would not be obvious today but would magnify in the consequences for the ecosystem in near future.
Thoughts on Theory and Practice 