An article was published in OpIndia.com titled The ‘right wing’ faces the danger of becoming the mirror image of the ‘left wing’.
It’s too soon to make such a judgement. The basic premise of the article is “Free Speech”, whether on left or right. While I completely agree with the author on this fundamental right for every citizen of this country, there is a very different issue that everyone is missing.
Any intellectual discourse or discussion is supposed to happen on level playing field of free speech, which has been traditionally denied to the ‘right’.
A JNU leftist has the privilege to shout “bharat tere tukde honge” and then become a celebrity panelist/speaker, while Kamlesh Tiwari is rotting in jail and just because he said something against a religion’s prophet. Here obviously I’m assuming that for left, “religion” is not above the “country”. If it is, what do we call them, alt-left?
Point of my argument is, as referred by the author of aforementioned article, left have gone beyond the point of no return. And this has been enabled as they enjoy unchallenged support from our academia, judiciary, media and entertainment industry.
Right finds it hard to even create an ecosystem to support itself. There is no unity among the right wing. Most prominent Right leaning personalities on Social Media want only to be lone wolf or just surrounded by certain like minded group of people.
With both the players as well as the fields being widely different for the Right, there is no chance of it becoming a mirror image of the Left, for there are no similar circumstances or enabling factors at all.
There is another reason why Right is never going to become mirror image of the Left. Historical facts support this.
Left doesn’t stop only at local brawl or protests or even at manhandling. It goes further on by completely obliterating the opposition. This happened in Stalin’s USSR, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and many more places. Millions of innocent died for nothing. Back home in India, evidences of left brutality can be almost seen on daily basis in Kerala and West Bengal.
The Left knows this, and to relieve themselves of the guilt, they accuse the Right of being violently intolerant and “fascist”. Only major example of fascism that comes to mind is Hitler’s Nazi Germany, which the Left paints as ‘Right’. Only that Nazi word itself has “socialist” in it.
Now, for the recent incident of Delhi University, first of all I will never go by the media claims and the leftist narrative. Since it’s a proven fact that left is great at manipulating emotions and playing victim, and with the Indian media being complicit in their machinations, I will not treat that as an example of Right turning into a mirror image of Left.
Secondly, I don’t support violence so I can’t be supporting ABVP indulging in it. Yes, I will not support it even though it was in response to the leftist violence, as latest reports suggest. But then what are the choices before the right? Scream their lungs out that no one hears? A media that is silent when right wing students are massacred in Kerala is supposed to give voice to the same? Or let someone like Umar Khalid spew venom against the Indian state?
Anyway, I have always had this question on my mind; what does being ‘right’ mean in India? A silent victim to onslaughts by the Left or just an outrage machine? How should Right assert itself when the Left is bringing only vacuous hatred and violent opposition in name of ideology? And all this while our elite intellectuals and liberals and the media paint the right wing as ISIS!
While supposedly big names on the Right take the neutral righteous course by not aligning with any party, and even deride fellow right-wingers as cheerleaders, trendveers, blind Bhakts, etc., Left brings in joint opposition from not just within India but from abroad as well.
For me, there is no way the Right can become mirror image of the Left as there are so many things that are fundamentally different. They are different DNAs.
With due respect to the author, I don’t think we can win this battle of ideologies only being righteous punching bags. Sometimes one has to beat their adversaries by employing their own tactics against them. This tactical maneuvering can’t be seen as being mirror image of the adversary.
