Eminent Marxist political theorist and philosopher Prof. Ejaz Ahmad expressed concern that there could be an upsurge in the ‘spectacular resistance movements’ emerging across the country if there is no political center around which they can align. He was ‘The Making Sense of Our Time: Democracy, Debate, Decent’ on Sunday, organized by the Bengaluru Collective and director of the Hindu Hindu Publishing Group N.
Parallel to the ultimately losing Arab Spring movements, he said, “How do you bring these various resistance movements by farmers, minorities, students, Dalits in relation to each other, is it not in a way that remains fragmented?” “. The real question in India is whether there can be a political center around which these forces can unite. “The powers that try to suppress it are increasing in unethical ways with the structures of the liberal state,” he said.
Underlining the crises and failures of liberal democracies, he said that while democracy had failed as a system of governance, democracy was actually of dissidents. “I think, really democracy, we need socialism. There is some deep inconsistency between democracy and capitalism that only produces elite power.”
It is in the increasing inequality of classes and extreme polarization due to neoliberal economic policies that the right wing has found its place around the world, he observed. Describing the ongoing peasant movement in India as “the first major movement on the question of neoliberalism”, he said that the government has also put its heel. “When farmers say that Narendra Modi does not withdraw the agricultural bills, because ‘Ambani and Adani’ will not allow them to do so, there is truth to this. Benito Mussolini once defined fascism as becoming a state and a corporation.” Did, what we are seeing today. This is a global trend and India is no different.
However, he said that the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was not in the traditional mode of fascist takeovers, but the acquisition of institutions from within. “He filled the bureaucracy, military and judiciary with his sympathy as much as possible. When they finally arrived [to power] There was widespread acceptance and consensus for his ideology and politics. Now, these institutions, including the judiciary, are ensuring that this government remains in the foreseeable future, ”he said.
Pro. According to Ahmed, the roots of the democratic crisis in the country are very deep. He spoke of the failure of the Indian state in the first decades when it did not form a popular basis for democracy by rising above caste, caste and classes. “There has always been a specific bias, which makes us 10% democracy,” he said, adding that to root democracy, an informed citizenship is a prerequisite for which not only freedom of the press but education is important . “For this, we had to not only struggle for a literal rhetoric, but a fundamental social struggle on the question of separation of religion, caste, church and state and equality for all citizens. But there has always been a prejudicial bias in our democracy, social and education policies, ”he said.
He identified three factors influencing and creating our times: the collapse of the Soviet Union that made capitalism truly global for the first time; New technology that has broken the territoriality of production; And the transfer of global capital from West to East Asia. In this newly emerging geopolitical order, we are witnessing a recurrence between the West and China, the rise of a global competition. “India is gaining weight with the United States.”
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