The Fourth Class

From the little of what I have been able to understand about our educated, well paid middle class citizenry , I could split them into four broad classes evaluating them based on their political consciousness. These classes are unfortunately , not so distinct and may overlap here and there on various parameters.

The first class shall constitute the set of people who are not interested in politics or economics or even any discipline that does not help them earn an extra rupee. I express my admiration for this class ,the reason being that when you throw a political question to them , they in response, take out and brandish their ignorance proudly as a badge of honor. The second class involves people who are genuinely interested in politics and make very occasional,  desperate attempts to learn something . They are too time-constrained  to venture into these affairs since there is no contingent need for them to know .

The third class is an admirable section of people , who may be called as public intellectuals ,who have no qualms in stepping out of their domains and indulge into deep political learning to evolve a remarkable political consciousness.

The fourth class shall comprise of the set of pseudo intellectuals who theoretically belong to the first and second classes in terms of political knowledge, but succeed in masquerading as the first and only politically enlightened class of this country. It is this class which is special, that I shall talk about in this article.

THE FOURTH CLASS: WHAT ARE THEY TO ME ?

Let me begin generalization of the characteristics of this class even though there is not much diversity in them to work them into a clear hierarchy.

• ·         This class spends not more than one hour on news channels and papers and dedicate the rest of their leisure to social media.
• ·         This class has little or no knowledge on the very Indian concepts of caste, caste based reservation, license raj, strikes, secularism, Non- Alignment movement, feminism, National Freedom Movement, the Indian Partition theory but is equipped to speak for hours about them.
• ·         Since most of the aforementioned concepts have in one or the other way been ‘Indianised’ by M.K.Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru, they have a deep abhorrence and against these leaders and love fantasizing on conspiracy theories concocted about them by Hindu right wing groups.
• ·         This class firmly believes that India is poor because it is overpopulated and that Indian farmers have created large, unmaintainable  families for themselves and as a result commit suicide ,succumbing to their insatiable need to procreate.
• ·         This class believes that India languishes at the bottom of the table of developing countries only because of a lack of a well –built, dynamic Prime Minister who is not fettered by the compulsions of coalition politics.
• ·         This class has a sub-section of people who believe that the Muslim rulers of India were basically foreign plunderers who exploited our country and were transferring all the wealth of India to Persia and Arabia for more than five hundred years. They also equally believe that the British were no less than genuine evangelists of science, modernity and human progress who wanted to distribute the fruits of their prosperity to the barbaric, backward people of the Afro-Asian continents.
• ·         The class, as a whole believes that anyone who abstains from exercising his vote can be accused as a national traitor and that the present democratic system will help India reach unfathomable heights in the future.

MY COUNTERPOINT

I deem it utterly a purposeless exercise, in this space, to contradict or dispute the beliefs of the ‘fourth’ class and to establish through proper enquiry and analysis, an alternative outlook challenging their ideological foundations. In fact, during various casual ,verbal political discussions with these people , I have attempted to do so and failed grossly, and that was not precisely due to their overpowering erudition. These people , as I have mentioned earlier , speak passionately on the need for a utopian, rapidly modernized world without any social or economic divisions characterized by a very egalitarian distribution of wealth and prosperity. But behind this façade, there is a horrifying self-centredness that determines their political choices and beliefs. These people cannot be overcome through informed political discourse because their curtain of self-centredness shall  preclude any attempt to look beyond their spuriously formed beliefs.

A few years back, when UPA was in power, I was talking with my friend (whose upper caste origin I never related to his political belief till that very day),whom I genuinely believed to have a strong anti-Congress, anti-establishment leaning ,very similar to mine. He was so vehement in his opposition to the crony capitalism fostered by the Congress post liberalization and went on to add that , to obliterate the roots of Congress from the society , a well organised , spirited armed rebellion was necessary. I was nodding all the time in acquiescence till  he suddenly mentioned that a Narendra Modi can lead that rebellion and subvert the hegemony of Congress. I was surprised but I was able to establish with some facts that a BJP alternative to Congress was no less harmful to the country as the previous NDA regime had proved to be. I also added the tags ‘sectarian’, ‘communal’ tags to BJP during the conversation.  I was , meanwhile , apprehending the arrival of a counter-argument from him that would show the BJP in good light with the help of facts and events that characterized its seven year stint in the opposition. But the reply I received,  was shocking.  “The Congress have been running a government for Muslims for more than fifty years. The Hindu population in India has been waning ever since Independence. They brought reservation and stopped all upper-caste people from occupying Government positions and brought India to ruin. The Muslims ruled India for more than 500 years and now this Congress runs the government on behalf of them . How can India prosper ? Why you people are against ‘us’ ruling the country?”

The argument which was initially dwelling on economics and systemic failures threatened to veer into the territory of xenophobia and racism. I could not argue after that. That day marked a watershed in my understanding of public political opinion. I was able to find similar trends on various occasions with different sets of people. There were scenarios  when I had beaten some people with my argument that their beloved political dispensation was essentially pro-corporate and fascist, passing off as an egalitarian, welfare state. Their response suddenly , after so many hours of defending the system, used to be like “Yes. It may be bad. What about socialism then? Has it brought growth and development? Will it save India? Do the Russians and Chinese bathe in milk and honey? Didn’t millions of Russians die due to the Government’s policies??”

My point here is that the last question should have originated from the whole hearted acceptance of my contention that the system which they have been defending for so long, has been proving to be deeply ineffectual and socially deleterious and from a sincere eagerness to know whether a new form of government(not  a party) can change things for the better.  But it used to come out of their sudden frantic desperation to fill the holes of their darling system with the inadequacies of its supposed alternative. Walking out of the hall , everytime after a discussion, I used to get the feeling that they have not changed one bit and their “Yes.It may be bad” admission was just a passing lie . Their shattered drops of their conviction that the system is fair and just , would have regrouped and coagulated into its old firm solidity. When you meet them the next time and happen to talk about some other political development, you find that they are the same people with no noticeable change in what they think.

I do not have a problem with people like them if they openly declare that they vote for a political party only because it benefits them and there is no harm in doing so , in my opinion. But that’s the highlight of the ‘fourth’ class . They are no different from whom they vote for. They are a significant majority with whom I have long stopped talking politics. But I would be really glad to write more for them if they are willing to open themselves up for a mutual trade of ideas. You cannot speak high of capitalism all the time and remain protectionist , when it comes to ideas.