These people do not seem to care about the historical fact of several millennia of sustained Hindu thriving in the Indian Subcontinent, nor about the present-day fact that Hindus are by far the biggest demographic in India, so every party should be begging for Hindu votes just on the basis of basic rules of democracy. For them, the BJP is by default the "bad party" in India because it is pro-Hindu, and the INC by default the "good party" because it is nominally secular.
In fact, they seem set on rejecting the historical tradition of Hinduism in the Indian Subcontinent. This makes India's constitution a mightily convenient document for these classes.
The tradition of Hinduism is intangible. The constitution, on the other hand, is a "real" book; it can be seen, heard, smelled, touched, even tasted, if you're particularly freaky about it.
The tradition of Hinduism has its own ideals to aspire to, its own prescribed goals to pursue. Not only are certain goals and ideals prescribed, but historically, people who have aspired for them have repeatedly, consistently illustrated their utility in living life well.
Rights and freedoms in Hindu tradition, just like in all other comparably old religious traditions, are enmeshed with duties and responsibilities. The constitution, on the other hand, gives individuals rights and freedoms, but no ideals to aspire to. The only "goals", listed in the preamble, are collectivist in nature and have no practical utility for the individual.
Incidentally, this breeds a unique class of people who, determined to replace intangible tradition and conscience with the tangible constitution, pursue the goals set out in the preamble - solemnly resolving to secure to citizens justice, liberty, equality, fraternity, etc. - as if they do have practical utility in themselves, as if they themselves are productive targets for day to day life. But that's a deviation of topic I am not willing to take right now. These are usually not very nice people to be around, let's just leave it there for now.
This leaves people with the "freedom" to make up their own ideals. Naturally, this all descends pretty quickly to the basest level that humans will go to.
We have the freedom to do what we want to do, but we do not have the freedom to want what we want to want. In other words, we have no control over what we want. Our idea of "freedom" usually ends at the first half of that sentence, but we need to remember the more important second half for the first half to have any meaning at all. Unless we can want what we want to want, doing what we want to do can be not only useless, but harmful.
The ideals in religions set out a pacesetter, a benchmark, by which to measure yourself. A modern liberal democratic secular world sets out exactly nothing in this regard.
In contrast to the studiously constructed, manmade origins of the Left's (ironically) intangible ideals, the tangible biological origins of religious ideals are revealed in the rampant rates of mental disorders like depression, anxiety, and the likes all over the developed world, which are, more than anything else, a lack of identification with a suitable ideal for personal development.
The scalar, unchanging "human" of "human being" has had its time in the sun. Perhaps now it's time for the vector, dynamic "being" to shine through.
Any ideal that demands sacrifice, hard work, or inconvenience instantly becomes public enemy number one in a system with rights and freedoms but no prescribed goals and ideals to aspire to, and the convenient becomes king. Any identity that demands some sacrifice of personal freedom is seen as [insert feminist buzzword here], because after all, are we not free individuals?
"Individualism" may be an important cornerstone of today's global society, but individualism doesn't end at being able to do what we want to do. This modern interpretation of the word is the greed-driven, ego-driven perversion of a path that must, of logical necessity, end in spiritual enlightenment, nowhere else.
Individualism without the desire to understand the things that the ego doesn't control (trivial things, such as sleep, hunger, heart rate, digestion, thoughts, and desires) is not "individualism" at all.
Individualism that is limited to the limits of the ego is just the ego - nothing more.
This ego-centric individualism is merely conformity masquerading in the skin of individualism. What's more, it is the worst kind of conformity - a conformity of individuals agreeing to succumb to base desires, agreeing to be weak, agreeing to be amoral, even deliberately immoral.
On the social scale, this ego-driven individualism is seen in the opposition to nativism, to tradition, to preestablished rules, in order to create a Homo novus who cares about nothing but convenient pleasure, and demands for himself nothing but the resources to achieve the same.
Tradition is seen from the lens of convenience, and thus usually discarded.
ScienceTM helps these 'folx' remain in their own echo chamber, because after all, what sane person would value intangible things over tangible things, right?
Even the change over time in the meaning of the word "sane" or "sanity" reveals this rot. The word "sane" originally meant "healthy", as seen in the famous Roman maxim 'mens sana in corpore sano' (a healthy mind in a healthy body). It is not for no reason that the Roman Empire lives on in the heads of young men all over the world rent-free. Nowadays, however, "sanity" has acquired a distinct smell of conformity and harmlessness rather than of health, per se. The Romans, of course, were big on intangible things such as glory, honor, and virtue, notions that are not only unfamiliar but "toxic" to the modern leftist.
On the personal scale, ego-driven individualism manifests in the fucked up dating world of today, where the gradual smoothening of individuals that makes marriage tenable over years, even decades, is seen as Toxic TraditionTM prima facie, and rejected out of hand.
If you remove the process of gradual fine-tuning that typifies all good marriages, from the equations of love, what are you left with? Just the naughty bits, basically - exactly what the modern dating scene seems to be all about.
I am not such a traditionalist that I will say "marriage is giving, giving, giving", but I will say that it's no wonder the institution cannot survive in a world based entirely on "taking, taking, taking".
For "global citizens" with eyes that see the world like this, it is the person striving for something bigger than himself that is the biggest enemy. By simply rising above what he used to be, this "Homo antiquus", if you will, shows the Homo novus a black mirror that the latter cannot face. He reminds them that they have turned their backs on what is good for the sake of what is convenient, and they cannot stand him for it.
Thus, Narendra Modi, the BJP, and the RSS become "divisive populists" in a country with 80% Hindus.
Elon Musk becomes a "toxic promoter of misinformation" for having the resources to purchase one of the Left's best mouthpieces and the courage and conviction to destroy its heavily and pretty openly biased censorship mechanism.
Donald Trump becomes [insert feminist buzzword here] for his terrible crime of ... wait for it ... Prioritising the country of which he is the democratically elected president!! Oh, the horror!! Oh, the horror!!
Globally, the great weakness of the right wing has always been its inevitable fragmentation. Unlike the left wing, which is based on a common intellectual framework which can be superimposed on any and all local traditions and ways of life, the right wing has no common framework to protect, apart from in the most abstract sense. The system the right wing protects is necessarily organic, native to each individual culture that comes up with its own, based on regional particularities. There cannot be a "Global Right" in the same way that there can be a "Global Left". Any lasting global alliance of the right wing can be based only on ability and a mutual pursuit of "the good", in whose admiration it so starkly contrasts with the left wing.
This is why local wins for right wingers can and should be celebrated by right wingers everywhere, because every right wing victory is also a dent in the Global Left's ability to control the narrative, which is essential to its success.
Due to its inherently artificial nature, leftist ideology needs to cut off dialog some way off from the fundamentals of human experience, whose origin it by its own nature cannot decipher.
This leaves a gap where right wingers can freely fly, but where leftists find no footing, because it goes deeper than their manufactured worldview. Hence, leftist rule, even in theory (unlike rightist rule), depends upon silencing those who go deeper than the party line permits.
In whatever election is upcoming where and when you read this, feel free to vote for whomever you want, but remember that, all other conditions being equal, only the right wing will allow you to vote for whomever you want. The reason minorities have always been able to live relatively trouble-free in India, right since prehistoric times, is the religious, right-wing mold of Hinduism, which saw a person for what they did, not for who they were. The reason job seekers from all over the world traveled to the USA and the UK during the 20th century was the religiously based, right-wing structure of these countries, which, again, respected the dignity of the working individual who could contribute to the bigger picture in some way. As far as I know, people weren't exactly lining up to move to the USSR or its allies during the Cold War, but the US, the UK, and Canada saw a constant stream of immigrants - this was no coincidence.
The Left may keep you fed and watered, but the Right will expect you to be able to put food on the table yourself. It takes some time and maturing to see the privilege afforded to you in the latter case and the disabusal of rights that comes with the former. Regardless of the unpopularity of this creed among children and adults with the brains of children, it is important to remember that teaching a man how to fish is more important than giving a man a fish. After a decade of what seemed like children gaining power everywhere, the adults are coming back, and I'm all here for it.
Disclaimer:
Beyond the stuff that seems to apply to real-life left-wing and right-wing political parties, I am more trying to get to the ideological foundations of the two sides, which are really the two faces of humanity, rather than their actual real-life political manifestations.
I am trying to judge the left wing and the right wing by their own rules. I may be biased, but I am trying to be fair.
Tanmay Viraj Tikekar
20/01/2025
