Why A Certain Class Of ‘Right-Wing Commentators’ Cannot Be Taken Seriously
There are three reasons to stop taking a certain strain of 'right-wing commentators' seriously.
The first is simply the unchecked, unabated sarcasm.
Sarcasm has its place. Sarcasm has its value. It also has its limits.
Used sparingly, it makes your speech/content/article that much more interesting. Used at the right place, it can reveal the absurdity of your opponent's position. Used with the right words, it becomes that hit joke which people will recall with amusement years later.
But when sarcasm becomes your default first language, it starts to repel people. They start bypassing or avoiding your writings/videos just as commuters avoid that road which has an open drain flowing besides it. It stinks. Going on that road means you will have to cover your nose and hold your breath.
Something similar is happening with a growing cluster of right-wing commentators; whether in their writings, or their videos.
When sarcasm becomes your first language, then regardless of the breadth of your vocabulary and the depth of your grammar, you are only able to convey contempt. Your implicit, if unsaid, message is that the target of your sarcasm is unworthy of serious consideration and normal conversation. You do not consider that person or group even worthy of a normal response and hence choose to talk to them, or about them, in sarcasm only.
Since at least the middle of January when the UGC released the 'equity guidelines' that have since been stayed by the Supreme Court, the target of this sarcasm has been either the RSS, Modi, BJP, or the supporters of RSS, Modi, or the BJP.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to take these commentators and their interventions seriously because they themselves do not seem to take the RSS or BJP seriously. Their tweets make it plain that they see them not as responsible, conscious agents who have been working with and in Indian society since at least a 100 years but as irredeemable, lost causes.
A normal expression of disagreement or a complaint implies that the one complaining attributes some agency to the other side. The complainant thinks that there is a good chance of convincing the other side to see and appreciate the complainant's point of view. Above all, a normal expression of disagreement implies that the first person holds the other to the same moral, ethical, and logical standards as himself.
But once someone resorts to sarcasm and sticks to it, the implicit message therein is of moral, ethical, and logical superiority. Then the one indulging in sarcasm is not expecting anything from his target. Worse, he holds them in contempt.
In this case, it is not difficult to see that even as these commentators claim to speak for 'Hindu causes', they hold the two tallest contemporary Hindu leaders, Narendra Modi and Mohan Bhagwat, in utter contempt. If you want to be taken seriously, at least your ideological starting point, your ground, should be logically defensible. Frequently mocking the two tallest Hindu leaders while claiming to be 'standing for Hindu causes' is not an act of a logical mind.
If all you can provide to the discourse is mockery and contempt, then it shouldn't come as a surprise when the discourse holds you in contempt and makes a mockery of you.
The second reason to not take these commentators seriously is their complaints about Modi and RSS not meeting ideological standards they never claimed to chase in the first place.
A recent clip doing the rounds shows one such commentator saying something to the effect of — 'Modi is the most leftist Prime Minister of India'.
Yes (even if), so?
In his first speech in the Parliament (the one where he famously broke down), Modi claimed that the poor would be the priority of his government. Over the succeeding years, he has expanded the social welfare ecosystem many times over.
Narendra Modi is a politician and his primary responsibility is to attain and retain power. To do that, he is doing whatever it takes. If that doesn't conform to the ideological persuasions of this commentariat, too bad.
And it's not as if Modi has abandoned 'right wing' ideas. Bank balance sheets have been cleaned up. RBI has been cautious to a fault in decreasing rates. And the Indian government was chasing steep fiscal deficit targets even as the effects of the pandemic had not fully subsided. If anything, one of the qualities which stand out in Narendra Modi, the policymaker, is his consistent preference for common sense over any specific economic ideology. If it makes sense and is in national interest, he does it. Regardless of whether the policy is leftist or right.
Much the same logic applies to caste issues too. This commentariat has been ranting since January about the BJP's and RSS' turn towards the SCs and OBCs. Here is a fact-check for them: The RSS has been 'turning' to the SCs since at least the last 60-70 years. Dr Ambedkar has been a part of the Sangh's Ekatmata stotra since at least the 1970s. Modi literally washed the feet of safai karmacharis at the 2019 Kumbh. He refers to Dr Ambedkar with reverence since before he became the Prime Minister. There is absolutely no change in either Modi or the Sangh's views on BR Ambedkar or the SC community since at least the last six decades. These commentators are patting each other's backs for not even beating a strawman but for punching the air.
And since we ARE discussing caste — if referring to an icon of the SC community with respect helps in the cause of Hindu unity, who really are these commentators to object? It doesn't mean that the Sangh or BJP endorse every single word which Dr Ambedkar wrote or said in his life. It only conveys to the SC community that the Prime Minister and the organisation he comes from respects their icon. It strengthens Hindu sangathan (organisation).
As has been discussed in these webpages previously, Hindu survival is contingent on Hindu sangathan. If this commentariat thinks that it is a project to be mocked and constantly criticised, they cannot complain if people stop taking them seriously.
The third reason to not take these commentators seriously is simply the profanity.
A switch to profanity is the "ad hominem" move — attacking the person rather than the idea. Ad hominem arguments themselves are a crude move in the first place. An action which lowers the standard of the conversation. If you add profanity on top of it, it's like stepping barefoot into a slurry of mud only to be told that it's actually a pile of fresh elephant droppings.
Again, once you resort to profanity, you are pushing the facts and merits of your argument to the back and bringing your antipathy and emotions front and centre. At that point public discourse becomes a public brawl.
Second, at least to this writer, the choice to use profanity conveys an emotional weakness. A loss of confidence being dressed up as bravado.
If you are confident of your logical or ideological position, you will be willing to wait to see its triumph. Abuses or profanity betray a fear. 'What if the other person is proven right? Let me abuse him now itself and claim victory'. Unless I know better, I would treat it as an impulsiveness arising out of emotional and logical weakness.
What all of this has done is to make it difficult for someone attempting a genuine criticism of the Sangh, BJP, the Central government, or Modi. This commentariat has queered that pitch so bad that even well-argued and factual criticism of the Central government or the BJP has to make attempts to differentiate itself from the incessant rants of this group.
Many have begun comparing such figures to Ravish Kumar. The one word which comes to mind when you say 'Ravish Kumar' is kunthaa (कुंठा). Kunthaa is jealousy, a grudge — yes, but far more profound. If jealousy comes from the surface of the sea of emotions, kunthaa comes from the lowest point of its deepest trench. They say kunthaa is born out of unmet expectations.
What expectations this commentariat had from the Sangh or BJP is anyone's guess. But the consequences of those expectations going unfulfilled cannot be a public nuisance. And that is what their interventions have become.
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