About Right Conservatives

First let me give a few details of myself- it helps later. I grew up in a family of anti-communists, but either of my parents were not very clear about their positions, but were very clear about their apathy to the left. Such an attitude was not formed because they considered the left as godless, or they thought Marx was an idiot, or because of the fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat could be most destablising. Like most people, they simply did not like the government in our state.

My grandad from mom's side was a lot more articulate. A freedom-struggle man, and a government man on top of that, he always believed in the Grand Old Party of India. His talks had so inspired me in the childhood, that even today, despite the rampant opportunism that characterizes Congress, I still feel assured when it is in power.

So we are secular, liberal, democratic and symphathetic to the poor.

Focus now on my formative years. The typical middle class in Kolkata is anti-commie. The reasons are simple- the old commies desperately wanted and tried to make Kolkata look like a village. Industries were made to move, or better, shut down. Thousands of Bangaali souls have to depart to "foreign" shores (usually Bangalore and Delhi, but alien places all the same!) for education and opportunities. How could they not hate the Left?

Yet such a milieu can be a fertile ground for some to be a commie. Anti-establishment (establishment defined by popular opinion) always works. But Cable TV and Tom Clancy ruined it. I mean if the "West" is cool, how could they be wrong when they say the Soviet Union is an "evil empire" and its better to be "dead than red"?

So I became and still am, an anti-commie.

But Right conservatives amuse me. The weird hatred towards muslims (and even christians) is something I am yet to fathom. But then a beef-eater can hardly understand the nuances of religion, especially one's own. Twenty-odd years of liberalism has made me defiant of most social norms and sadly etiquettes. Joint families, ram-rajya, the vedic gyan, astrology and the exotic wonders of India all seem anachronistic to me.

Delhi woke me up to casteism. We had little of that in Bengal but suddenly I had to grapple with the biggest manifestation of the conservative ideals in our country. I mean, how many of us ordinary Indians loathe muslims? Most of us do think they make the majority of our terrorists,
they love to live in squalor, they do not take believe in immunisations or education and they make more babies, but we do not 'hate' them.

But we are serious about our caste.

I know I am not the model guy. But a part of me (hell, lets be honest- the whole of me) think I am better than them. Contrariwise, the astute, grave and paternal geriatric- the head of the Indian family- he may seem generous, caring and wise- is the problem. Behind his avuncular affability lies an unbending faith to a social order that asphyxiates freedom of thought, expression and action.

It may not seem so, but us, the mall rats and the ungodly brats are better than them. We may indulge in a lot of excesses and do a lot of bad stuff. But we do not 'hate' and perpetuate 'hate'.

Interestingly, conservatives do not like their counterparts from foreign lands. There are very few who wholeheartedly support Bush. Not for them the "working classes of the world unite". In fact, it is their hate of the malevolent and vicious "other" that drives them.

The Hindu fundamentalist needs the Muslim fanatic.