Class is Thicker Than Communalism

Pratap Bhanu Mehta's impassioned plea for a genuine secular position in the polity is well received and sorely needed; indeed, this blog echoes his call, albeit for a position further to the left ("A Country in 40 Acres.") To my mind, he succeeds in trumping Omar Abdullah's "ridiculously feted speech" by showing how the political class fails to even attempt to alter the terms on which discussions like the Amarnath issue happen. They opportunistically cave-in to communal logic, even, ironically, if their own self-conception is "progressive," as Abdullah's no doubt is.

What is rather sad, however, is the accompanying editorial from the IE, "India's Identity." In trying to echo Mehta's statesmen-like posture, the editorial tries it hand at rising above the fray by calling for what Americans call "bipartisanship": reaching across the political divide to solve something that is of "national" importance. In this case, the Congress is being asked to reach over to the BJP.

Now, Mehta has already noted the emptiness of calling a position national rather facing the communal issue directly. While the editorial no doubt sees itself as avoiding this pitfall by pointing out the dangers of communalizing the Valley, it can't help but exude upper class anxiety at the spillover effects of communal violence. Bipartisanship is often the guise that class interest dons when its basic concerns are so threatened that petty squabbles between, say, the Congress and the BJP have to be put aside.

The same was called for by the IE on the nuclear deal, and the same has been the evidence with economic reforms, wherein a nominally swadeshi party has been happy to continue neoliberal reforms that are anything but. The parallel between the Congress continuing the BJP's nuclear jingoism in more palatable forms and the BJP continuing the Congress' economic reforms is really a clear statement of the common underlying class interest at work. The audacity to call this national interest not only occludes the communal underpinnings of the matter, it does precisely what the editorial either knowingly or ignorantly indulges in, namely the positing of a narrow interest at the national interest.