Hatred as Ideology

“We are Indians.” That was the last cry of Angel Chakma from Tripura who was attacked brutally in Dehradun a few weeks back by India’s neo-nationalists. He was just 24 years old. A student of MBA and son of a Border Security Force constable. He was killed by India’s patriots who mistook him for being Chinese. Even if he were Chinese, why should he be killed? The answer is simple: HATRED is what drives India’s current realpolitik. 

“I am an Indian,” Ramnarayan Baghel cried too as he was lynched by a group of RSS men in Kerala on 13 Dec, four days after Angel Chakma was attacked in Dehradun. He was a 31-year-old migrant worker from Chhattisgarh. The RSS men in Kerala mistook him for a Bangladeshi. Even if he were a Bangladeshi, why should he be killed?  The answer is simple again.

The attack in Kerala took me by surprise. Kerala was known for its high level of openness to outsiders. The poison of right-wing nationalism has contaminated this state too!

Prime Minister Modi’s hatred of Muslims and Christians is no secret. After he became the PM, India witnessed thousands of attacks on these two minority communities. When you found a political ideology on hatred, calamities are sure to happen. This is not uniquely Indian problem now. India is a textbook illustration of a universal problem.

Hate Simplifies, Democracy Complicates

Borrowing Arundhati Roy’s phrase, we may say that running a country using sectarian hatred reveals “the end of imagination.” You need imagination to run a democracy. Democracy thrives on complexity: competing interests, plural identities, and negotiated truths. Hatred of perceived enemy-communities can simplify all that, flatten the complexity. You just divide society into binaries: us vs them. Hindus vs non-Hindus, patriots vs traitors, urban Naxalites vs culture police. Hindustan ya Kabristan. Such bifurcations simplify the sociopolitical reality. And they satisfy you emotionally, giving you a sense of belonging and pride. And power. But it corrodes a lot of other things.

When political discourse is reduced to slogans and enemies, citizens are no longer encouraged to think; they are programmed to react. You worship a different God? OK, then you die. You eat a different food? Die, again. Eliminating others is easy (and apparently fun too), especially if the others are a vulnerable minority.

The bonus is that critical questions about unemployment, inflation, education, healthcare, injustice, etc are drowned in that cesspool of hatred. Manufactured outrage is the cheapest and most effective political weapon when confronted with disadvantaged enemies. Hate is a distraction masquerading as purpose in contemporary India.

The Moral Cost: Normalising Cruelty

Hate-based ideology naturally justifies cruelty. Ramnarayan Bhagel’s body had more than 80 injuries, according to his post-mortem report. Eighty fatal injuries. Inflicted by religious ideologues, nationalists, patriots! On a helpless human being.

Hate-based ideology portrays one group as dangerous or impure or antinational. Once you do that, any injustice inflicted on them can be explained away as ‘necessary.’ Lynching becomes “spontaneous anger,” discrimination becomes “defence of culture,” and silence becomes “national interest.”

Look at the speeches delivered by India’s right wing these days and you will understand how language once considered extreme has become normal now. Prejudice has become national policy. Violene attains social acceptance.

A society that learns to look away from suffering eventually loses the ability to recognise injustice at all.

Hate Is a Poor Substitute for Governance

Hatred does not create jobs, improve schools, or build hospitals. It does not fix agrarian distress or address climate vulnerability. It helps redirect public discontent towards convenient scapegoats.

The BJP’s biggest failure is creation of leaders – political and religious – who pretend to be civilisational saviours rather than elected representatives of the people. They hide their incompetence, their lack of administrative imagination, behind the mask of culture and patriotism and religion. Their failure is portrayed as sacrifice. Their incompetence becomes conspiracy by perceived enemies. Hate fills the vacuum left by unmet promises.

Create what you love instead of destroying what you don’t

Let me end this too with Arundhati Roy. “Raging against the past will not heal us,” she wrote in her essay, The End of Imagination. “History has happened. It’s over and done with. All we can do is to change its course by encouraging what we love instead of destroying what we don’t.”

True nationalism is rooted in care – for people, institutions, and the future. We need leaders who care for these things.

Related Post: The Insanity of the Right Wing