Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Distributed Attack

Just some thoughts I was having, and wanted to muse on...

Should India have multiple centre-right conservative parties, instead of just the one BJP?

At first glance, one might be inclined to say that this is the wrong way to go, because it would make conservatives more divided and bickering. But on the other hand, I think having multiple conservative parties would make it more difficult for the Left (and especially their media henchmen) to target one single party, or single set of leaders, as they currently do now against Advani, Modi, etc.

By not providing the Left with a single large target to rail at, it then would make their politics of caricature and scapegoating much more difficult. They would always be forced to reinvent new caricatures for each new face that they encountered, which would increase the risk of exposing their game. It would also confuse their simple-minded vote-banks, who would have more difficulty figuring out whom to presumptively scorn.

What would then prevent the multiple Hindu conservative parties from falling into bickering? Well, the fact that they actually have an underlying over-arching ideology that binds them to a common cause. This is what would keep them relatively coordinated with each other, even while they all existed under different names locally.

Think of the internet, and how it was designed to be resilient against catastrophic attack as a distributed network.

You can even see that modern jihadism has managed to pull this off, with umpteen number of jihadi groups operating under different names, so that it's hard for the society to keep track of them all. They are still able to coordinate their fight against us, because they are all bound together by Islamic fanaticism.

The Left are ideologically weak and brittle, and would thus have more difficulty imitating such tactics, because they are more dependent on personality cults (witness the Nehru-Gandhi phenomenon). And so if they were to try and divide themselves into many different groups, then each of these would end up going its own way, with each being loyal to its local personality cult leader, and caring little about the others.

The fact that the Hindu Right has a stronger ideology and more robust belief system in comparison to the rentable mercenary Left, means that the Hindus are much better positioned to fight a distributed guerrilla campaign against a large and lumbering Left that cannot stay unified without a large unifying collective.

Comments?

6 comments:

Harish said...

San,
My 2 cents..
Well in many ways a distributed network i believe has what's allowed Hinduism to survive over the centuries...think of castes, sects etc..

I do not subscribe to this multiple conservative parties idea, simply because given the fragemented and (weak) nature of Hindu society we would be constantly bickering.. Think of all the (Hindu)casteist parties. We need strong centralist forces amidst Hindus.. not more fragementation please...

Also u r take on th leftists and their ideology is IMHO not right.. For all their follies, leftists are steadfast to their views and go to any extent in enforcing them.. They have strong belief systems(however inane they may seem) and thats their strength

Unfortuantely, Hindus do not have such strong belief systems. We love to wallow in pithies and cliches.. e.g "All religions are the same" kind of gibberish..and hence I am sorry to say Hinduism is incapable of defending itself in the 21 century..

We lack the intellectual gravitas, the social cohesivevess, and the moral fibre to take on our detractors.. I am sure i am not gonna make many fans out here in this blog but I dont think Hinduism has really adapted to the challenges of 21 st century..

tat_tvam_asi said...

I proposed a similar idea a few years back. The good part is that Hindu nationalism can take different forms in different states, conditioned to the local preferences and perception. The bad part is - there will be major conflict on the economic front. The BJP is dominated by Swadeshis in most states outside western India and Punjab.

The BJP-1 will keep Hindi states. Gujarat, Maharashtra and Punjab will go to BJP-2. South will be taken care by BJP-3 while Orissa, WB, Assam and the rest of the northeast will go to BJP-4. If this is too much, the first two can be one party while the latter two can form the second party.

Discipline is the key - the decline of Shiv Sena that we are witnessing indicates that we Hindus haven't learnt from their failures. ABV and LKA helped avoid similar fate for the BJP. I am willing to tolerate their ideological dilution for their contribution to keeping the party united.

Overall, I think Hindu nationalism will get a boost from this move. But I am sure RSS will be nervous about the consequences.

Thank you San, for another great topic!

murali said...

I bickered with you over this issue.You had some not so nice things to say about me.I am not so sure about 'hindu' unity.But a huge section of the intelligentsia and the decent folk hate commies,chinkos,christists and the religion of peace.Given that we have our own divisions based on ehnicity,language etc,this is the way to go.It will damage our 'unity'.what more is left to damage.As a believer in vedanta,there is a natural intellectual/ethical elitism to our national faith.It is never going to mean much to the masses.In TN,it has never meant much to the neanderthals.Look at its selfishness over water resources/reservations.It comes to conflict with thinkers in Karnataka and Kerala.

We have to trade the meaningless monolithism with a coalition of hindu interests.That was what Congress was in its heyday.

Unknown said...

It might be better to have a strong Dalit leader with Hindu leanings. Shri Modi himself is 'OBC' but has made caste immaterial. The RSS needs to produce a Mayavati equivalent.

socal said...

It is questionable if 'divided we stand' can be true for Hindus. The existence of castes has helped us over a long haul but let's not forget that we've been shrinking. So, that's not feasible anymore. Hindu cohesiveness has still some way to go. The more liquid the castes become the more coherent will be our response.

Kashyap Shah said...

1. Firstly Hindus are not united. So we need someone who keeps us united irrespective of the caste/tribe. Someone like Modi. For it is Hindu..no caste
2. Secondly we need to go out and vVOTE..for God's sake...the educated/middle/upper middle class hindus enjoy the election day and do not vote
3. BJP needs to instruct its leaders to stop speaking as soon as a mike appears in front of them. This verbal diahorrea gives the maximum points to the leftists and others...proof - Sushma swaraj
4. Remove anyone from the party who breaks the decipline. On the long run it will help
That way I dont think we need more rightist parties...we dont want another shiv sena