Why patriotism is no substitute for morality
Articulating such issues in the language of everyday ethics is not easy. However, with the use of metaphor and storytelling, our moralists need to do so. Democracy, in that sense, is always a futuristic framework which has to be built into the choices we make today. Every choice now is one for the future. India, if it wishes to remain democratic and survive beyond majoritarianism, must consider a more supple, unconventional and innovative democracy.
Let's take an example. The great Nicobar project has been a source of tremendous controversy. Indian environmentalists and journals have assembled a formidable critique of it. Yet, after the Pahalgam incident, these environmentalists are treated as anti-social and antinational. Today, within the national security state, not only have external and internal security been combined, but also war and development.
The Great Nicobar project is now viewed as a military initiative aimed at countering China. It is China, more than Pakistan, that is a threat to democracy. China has even fewer problems with genocide.
One has to open up new dialogues and perspectives on China. One of the most critical and urgent problems we will face is a set of dams China is building above the Northeast. These dams can annihilate the economy of the Northeast and become a tool for ecocide. The challenge is how to dialogue with China on such a critical issue that involves the life, livelihood and fate of marginal groups on both sides of the border.
The question is about handling such issues democratically. The problemsolving faces new problems of the future that we have not thought about as a polity. In this context, one has to rethink the importance of peace and Gandhian thought. Gandhi did not spend time thinking about either the concentration camp or the atomic bomb—those are the limits his idea of satyagraha has to meet. We are facing not just mechanical obsolescence, but more a genocidal exuberance.
India has to rework itself as a civilisation. Reinvent itself as a democracy. Its current frameworks, though successful thus far, may not survive in the future. We need to talk to China differently. We need to create a politics that transcends the Trumps.
We need to create a vision of South Asia that goes beyond the current frameworks of the United Nations. Peace can no longer be a restricted, passive word—it has to invent possibilities, alternatives that go beyond the immediacy of war. This is democracy's greatest challenge: to invent a future where peace remains central to the visions of South Asia and the world.
Shiv Visvanathan is a social scientist associated with the Compost Heap, a group researching alternative imaginations.
(Views are personal)
(svcsds@gmail.com)
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