Everything that is wrong with Indian Political Twitter (a thread)

I've been on Twitter since the time I was barely 16 (regret it very much) and I miss the time when the hot thing on Indian Twitter used to be the stupid jokes made by Ramesh Srivats or Sidin. Over the years, it has become an extremely polarized, bitter, and vendetta-driven place.

I think the fundamental problem with Indian mainstream Right Wing is that its existence is largely based on the premise that it is everything that the Indian Left Wing is not. (Derrida’s Deconstruction approach, if you will).

Historically, one can fairly assume that the founding of Communist Party in India (~1920) and Seva Dal (1924) must have played some role in the founding of RSS (1925). Even in Bombay of the 60s and 70s, Shiv Sena was promoted partly 'to free Bombay from the grip of communists’.

In the contemporary times, the so called thinkers of RSS function primarily to counter/defeat the left but not to bring in any RW original thinking. That’s why the small state of Tripura had become so important for the BJP to win.

That’s also why BJP doesn’t like Kerala and WB very much. Even in the Palghar incident, the first thing RSS 'ideologue' Sunil Deodhar said was to blame the communists.

The few good thinkers/politicians who had something original to contribute to the Right-Wing thought (Arun Shourie, for example) were mostly sidelined by the establishment.

It’s no less than a shame that a country with such a rich past has such a talent-less right-wing government. These people are really good at winning elections but terrible at running a country.

Right between the ideological institutions and voters exist the cheerleaders i.e. Influential Twitter supporters. A general assumption can be made that influential RW supporters are mostly STEM graduates.

Even in this group, the fundamental sentiment is that of historical victimhood of the LW dominance (mostly consisting of Humanities/SS graduates) in socio-political institutions than any ideological stand.

Is there any truth in this historical victimhood? Perhaps there is. The LW in India has always existed as elitist cliques/coteries/ of like-minded individuals and since they were part of the establishment for all these years, they allowed only those who thought exactly like them.

Meanwhile, people on the right, even the moderate ones who didn’t really want a Hindu Rashtra but called themselves Nationalists nonetheless (not everyone has read Anderson’s ‘Imagined Communities’, after all), were ridiculed and kept out.

This culture of taking a higher moral ground and calling-out originated from the left and so did this lack of empathy. The far-reaching impact of this lack of empathy was to push the moderate RW supporter to further extremes. Earlier, all he wanted was to be heard and discussed.

And now he wanted a goddamn Hindu Rashtra. When the power-tables turned with the arrival of the black swan called Narendra Modi, RW only built upon this lack of empathy. And that is how whataboutery, bitterness, and vendetta came into the picture.

Just as the LW has continued to indulge itself in calling out incidental bigotry and labeling everyone as Fascist, the RW continues to call out incidental anarchy and label every dissenter as a Naxal.

This extreme polarization and lack of a nuanced discourse have basically rendered Indian Political Twitter as useless. But the government knows very well that none of what happens on Twitter is hardly ever going to influence what is happening on the ground.

At this point, the LW is just venting out their frustration on Twitter and the RW is keeping them engaged. The status quo is maintained, the power equation remains unchanged and solid in favor of the government.

The government also knows very well that their greatest challenge won’t come from Twitter or from armchair opposition leaders but from someone like Chandra Shekhar Azad.

Azad is working on the ground and building public support against the government. A Shaheen Bagh rattles this government a lot more than a Twitter trend ever will.

Although, the situation on the ground doesn’t look good either. The distrust among people from different communities is so much that I fear it’s only a matter of time before we get into an anarchic, civil-war like situation.

A government that keeps entertaining the majority sentiment over rationale will ultimately cause this country to burn. And when your neighbor’s house is burning, your own house won’t remain immune for long.

So, anyone who really wants to protest the tyrannies of this government and hold them accountable or even throw them out, here are a few things that you can do:

1. Avoid calling out and unnecessary outraging. The purpose is to bring people into your fold, not push them further away.

2. Support people who are protesting and building a ground movement. Compel opposition leaders to hit the streets as well.

3. Find legal ways to pin the ‘villains with evil plans’ down. Pick bad individuals, not whole groups.

4. Twitter itself cannot be the ‘Call to Action’. ‘Call’ on Twitter but the ‘Action’ should be on the ground.

5. Lastly, be kind and empathetic to everyone, on or off-Twitter, pro or anti-government. :)

(in case anyone is interested in reading this thread as one single article) https://ilokesh.in/2020/04/23/everything-that-is-wrong-with-indian-political-twitter/