Politics, Morality, Identity: An Intimate Quest

What should be the wider political responsibility of those who are in the non- party political process? What should be our creative role in the present climate of fragmentation, distrust, individualism and considerable ideological churning? Can we play a supportive role to the processes that are attempting to create viable platforms of alternative democratic politics in which ordinary people feel enthused to participate? Indeed, what are these processes?

These are not easy questions to deal with. Here, we share some reflections on these issues. Today, in almost all the initiatives which are contributing to the process of democratising politics, we find that in terms of political perspective, programmatic priorities and strategies, there are a number of differences that keep these initiatives disparate and divided. Undoubtedly, the task of achieving the objective of becoming part of a process which will culminate in a broad democratic platform in which millions of people can participate, and assert their political ideas, requires many nuclei working around this vision. This implies that a self-conscious effort with tremendous humility will have to be made by many active in these presently disparate efforts if they want to both stem the political and moral crisis and contribute to the democratic political and cultural regeneration of society.

To a significant extent, such a platform will subsume many of the functions of a healthy political party. Such a forum will have to comprise of a loose cluster of indigenously funded and supported voluntary initiatives – from single-issue based groups to mass movements –– giving organised expression to human compassion as well as sustaining and nurturing humanistic values amidst the various struggles for power in society. This platform would have to involve mature social and political activists as well as provide the space to nurture leaders, who are capable of running the system creatively whilst continuing to challenge the many layers of endemic oppression, exploitation, exclusion and degrading disparity within the country and beyond. This requires a perspective of politics in which providing societal leadership and being part of mass-struggle are parts of an integral whole.

When struggle and providing creative political leadership for pro-people purposes becomes the goal, a wide range of dichotomies, debates and dividing lines will begin to assume secondary or tertiary significance. For instance, from an academic point of view, political intervention through action and through intellectual activity are two distinct pursuits. However, when seen from the viewpoint of mass political intervention, the boundaries between mobilisational activism and cerebral activism become irrelevant. Each activist has some intellectual discipline and training which is often not respected by people with a purely academic background. Nevertheless, a mass movement and its subsequent institutionalization does bring activists and academics more integrally together. Whatever be the formal academic qualifications of a person involved in a democratic mass movement, she/he will have to engage herself/himself with the nitty-gritty of politics.

The other dichotomy which would lose its divisive edge is whether an activist belongs to an NGO/CBO (Community Based Orgaznisation) or a mass movement. All mass organisations have people with diverse backgrounds and different social, political, and cultural persuasions. The movement/ organisation has to evolve its ideas, norms, work ethics and political culture which is not necessarily dependent on the diversity of different individuals within the initiative.

During periods of rapid social change, a plurality of moral-political codes comes into being and each segment judges the other –– often with rigid and purist norms—with its own specific set of codes. It is therefore axiomatic that immorality in society may be projected in excess of the actual moral decline. We need to recognise that a purist moral position may not necessarily contribute to the enhancement of wider political morality. In fact, building a moral political movement requires significant tolerance and patience to involve and nurture a wide spectrum of "ordinary", "frail" people.

Importantly, Gandhi’s politics generated mass movements as well as institutionalised political parties. Was this not due to the fact that he did not act on the principle of exclusion? His basic messages, including matching the ends with the means, were for society as a whole. He did not fragment society into two or more ideologically fraternal or adversarial camps and acted on the basic principle of universal values which he saw as a basic underpinning of a culturally plural and democratic society. Today, our learning and our socialisation has alienated most of us from the culturally specific and rooted idiom of Gandhi and we have failed to appreciate the universal dimension in his politics. The crisis is not of personal morality alone. After all, the absolute number of moral and idealist activists produced by the Indian National Congress is arguably higher than the combined number of idealists produced either by Hindu and Muslim religious extremists or by the socialists and communists. At another level, even today, despite the hue and cry about the moral degradation in society, the number of individuals who value personal morality is quite staggering.

The issue therefore is not exclusively of the decline of idealism and morality in politics. It is the scale of involvement of idealist people in a mass movement with larger collective goals. A movement organisation needs to be adequately complex and mature so that people with varying personal and moral capacities can participate in it.

Political morality is determined by an overall political assessment, where personal morality, is only one variable. In other words, the relative importance of morality in a particular political context is as much dependent on the intrinsic worth of moral issues as on the political context itself. What generates the crucial difference is not only personal morality but also the content and practice of politics itself. For example, most of us who are from middle class backgrounds may be personally authentic human beings but our survival continues to be dependent on the perpetuation of economic and social inequity, oppression and corruption. It is obvious therefore that the struggle against an immoral social order or against corruption is a profound political task requiring us to individually and collectively explore a more creative personal and political praxis. In this context, we must also critically note that, to a large extent, most NGO activists in the third world imitate or generate hierarchical patterns of social action more than their western/northern activist counterparts who make much more effort to reduce the contradictions of personal and organisational lifestyle and vertical organisational structures.

Similarly, many who state that there is a serious dichotomy between ‘the priorities and strategies’ of idealists and pragmatists are unable to adequately capture the complexity of political morality of mass-organisations. Working out the contours of political morality is not the same as working out personal morality. Even the Bahujan Samaj Party or the Bhartiya Janata Party who claim little commitment to the relationship between ends and means have at least as many ‘idealists’ and ‘pure’ people as the ‘pure’ parties, groups and movement platforms have. As we have already argued, personal morality is only one of the elements that is essential for the achievement of wider political morality. Personal morality is relatively less complex. Nurtured by socialisation and the development of a personal worldview, it is also sustained by the moral capacity of the immediate and the wider peer group.

On the other hand, political morality is influenced by a whole spectrum of social, psychological. political and historical experiences of a wide variety of political actors. The manner in which political actors define the sub-sets of ‘we’ and ‘they’, or ‘ally’ and ‘adversary’, greatly influences the terrain of political morality. For example, a large number of idealist, and democratic individuals do not appear to criticize Laloo Prasad Yadav, whose regime has many scandals and scams to its credit. It is not that they fail to see his corruption. Most of them believe that a corruption tainted LK Advani with a communal and fascist machine of the RSS/BJP/Shiv Sena behind him are a bigger danger to a plural, civilised society than a corrupt Laloo Prasad Yadav whose ideological frame is pluralist and non-communal and whose survival plank is social justice for the oppressed people of the country.

The present juncture underscores how the very professing of a progressive ideological frame, opens up new spaces in politics and society. No one can dispute the hollowness of Indira Gandhi’s slogan "Garibi Hatao" (Abolish Poverty). However, it did contribute to the escalation of political stirring among the poor and, to some extent, even to the wider participation in the JP movement of 1974 of hitherto oppressed groups. Another example is also from the Congress. During its period of moral decline, it used the identity anxieties of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs to sustain its political machine. However, because of its claimed non-communal ideology and its plural character, it could not communalise wider socio-cultural sensibilities to the extent of the BJP-RSS— particularly after the Somnath Rath Yatra of 1990. In the post-election situation, when the short-lived BJP government tried to woo elected individuals belonging to other secular parties, they were unanimously spurned which, while it may not be reflective of the personal morality of individuals belonging to secular parties, is definitely indicative of the political force of the value of secularism which compelled them to take a moral political stand. Significant political space has opened up in a post-election context where an overwhelming majority of Indians voted for a secular and plural polity.

These examples have profound lessons for non-party activists who must actively engage themselves with the critical issues of secularism, comprehensive consolidation of democracy and the active politicisation of an increasing number of people which should not be seen as priorities meant for others. It is therefore particularly unfortunate that many working towards the decolonisation of- consciousness or against global capitalist designs are choosing tactical alliances in a wholly decontextualised manner with communal forces which are essentially destructive of the plural, secular fabric of India. The history of our political process is replete with the grave portents of such naive tactical alignments.