A Tribune Special...Crisis of political culture
A radical and qualitative change in the leadership of ideas and values is the biggest investment for Haryana, says Rajbir Parashar
WITH the much-hyped potential of industrialisation and economic growth in the National Capital Region of Haryana coming at the centrestage of policymaking, somewhere around and amidst us all there is a massive turning point in the history of modern, contemporary Haryana.
The present historical juncture offers an occasion to survey the ‘overt’ as well as the undercurrent tones, formative and transformative factors of Haryana politics and culture.
For this, one has to go beyond the rhetoric of statistical or real strides in progress or individual successes or failures in managing political number games — the seductive parameters that reveal only half-truths. The most complex spot of Haryana politics and culture is the challenge to resolve its social and cultural contradictions with the best possible tools evolved by our nation as a democracy.
This challenge is multi-layered and its manifestations are pluralised in the recent historical experience, to name a few — Dulina, Harsola, Gohana and Mirchpur eruptions against the Dalits in Haryana. The murder of Manoj and Babli has already become a permanent point of reference to the incessant “honour killings” in the state. On questions of social democracy and individual freedom, Haryana continues to be a divided self, facing its internal cultural ruptures.
The apparent responsibility for this crisis lies with the political elite. Across party lines, the politicians of Haryana have yet to prove that they are not merely poor scraps of what our freedom struggle produced as the “democratic capital” in this region. The political idiom as reinvented by this political elite from time to time is two-faced — one formal and public and the other that really determines the pragmatics of political mobilisation and routes to power.
The one used in the public domain requires a verbal affirmation to the constitutional democracy and liberal commitments that legitimise any political party in the country. And the other, the undercurrent idiom is the real and result-oriented one. It is broadly Jat and non-Jat in its popular manifestation and the dominant parties consciously preserve it as the main contradiction of Haryana society. It is the most subtle, yet the crudest, facet which continues to be the consensual ground from which the ruling elite derives its life and sustenance, its ‘contesting’ and mutually harmless character.
The youth of Haryana — of all castes and all regions — is the real causality of this power game. Extra-constitutional formations and aspirations like khap panchayats are the real gainers in terms of maintaining social hegemony and perpetuating their retrograde agenda, even mustering competitive voices of support for amendment to the Hindu Marriage Act or ban on same gotra marriage from eminent leaders of dominant political parties of the state.
The health of social democracy in Haryana is best exposed in the working of the khap panchayats in the state. They are its self-styled modes of discontinuity with its liberal and modern hungers and are examples of self-revenge — a relationship of hatred towards the ‘other’ — the law of the land as ‘modern’ and ‘democratic’ presence in its indigenous traditions. Khaps are cultural formations naturalised by innocence or sheer respect for tradition but becoming ruthless avengers on the sons and daughters of Haryana. To them, their caste, gotra and khap have a universal continuity with the elemental Puritanism. They, the chieftains of khaps, are watchmen of a moral order of nothing and everything.
They are bent upon extracting and safeguarding a cultural future out of social laws which are already overspent and over consumed. The same gotra issue is but a strategy of perpetuating the game of hide and seek — cultural hide and seek.
Haryana as whole is participating in it. This game is being played in the open/ blatant space of a ‘silence’ — a silence in league with its spectators from all strata, caste and regions of the state. Only sometimes, the spectacle of female foeticide makes the mood somber and self-reflective because adequate ‘brides’ are not around for their sons.
Without succumbing to the popular description of Haryana politics and culture as rigidly caste-based or khap-centric, it is also useful to look at how the ideology of the ruling elite is seized by the Arya Samaj ethics as the only philosophy capable of redeeming its cultural anxieties.
Decades back, the Haryana that under the influence of Arya Samaj concentrated its social-economic energy to draw its sons and daughters towards education and some sort of Enlightenment, is now standing against it. At least it is divided over what to make of the education that conspires to induce self-choice and individual freedom as permanent features of individual behavior and social values in its cultural ethos. This self-choice and individual freedom, though presently practiced by women and Dalitsonly in limited terms, is now being perceived as an aberration.
This also necessitates a reference to the rise of the Bhupinder Singh Hooda phenomenon with an unmistakable family background of a genuine linkage with the Arya Samaj movement. The Chief Minister of Haryana has largely emerged as a shrewd blending of the late Devi Lal’s ‘well intentioned’ politics and the developmental zeal of Bansi Lal, but his will power and vision to counter and check the hegemonic aspirations at the socio-cultural level have yet to crystallise.
However, the fact that politicians are easy to blame, to segregate and target as short-sighted, opportunist, parochial or whatsoever we like to say, does not exempt the educated middle class of Haryana from its hitherto failures and historical responsibility in the times to come. The teachers, lawyers, doctors, advocates and other sections of intellectual class have to initiate a critical relationship with the political culture of the state or the socio-cultural reality that shapes its politics.
These ‘enlightened’ sections have yet to display and use the substance of education and ‘enlightenment’ for the larger good of society. A radical and qualitative change in the leadership of ideas and values is the biggest investment for Haryana.
Instead of practicing docility, silence and servitude to the discourse of power and hegemony, the educated sections have to play the role of a catalyst in evolving a vision of cultural transformation. And it has to be done not for any particular village, region or caste but the future of composite Haryana — the promising and youthful Haryana emerging out of the carnival of the Commonwealth Games.n
The writer is Associate Professor, Post-Graduate Department of English, RKSD College, Kaithal, Haryana
WITH the much-hyped potential of industrialisation and economic growth in the National Capital Region of Haryana coming at the centrestage of policymaking, somewhere around and amidst us all there is a massive turning point in the history of modern, contemporary Haryana.
The present historical juncture offers an occasion to survey the ‘overt’ as well as the undercurrent tones, formative and transformative factors of Haryana politics and culture.
For this, one has to go beyond the rhetoric of statistical or real strides in progress or individual successes or failures in managing political number games — the seductive parameters that reveal only half-truths. The most complex spot of Haryana politics and culture is the challenge to resolve its social and cultural contradictions with the best possible tools evolved by our nation as a democracy.
This challenge is multi-layered and its manifestations are pluralised in the recent historical experience, to name a few — Dulina, Harsola, Gohana and Mirchpur eruptions against the Dalits in Haryana. The murder of Manoj and Babli has already become a permanent point of reference to the incessant “honour killings” in the state. On questions of social democracy and individual freedom, Haryana continues to be a divided self, facing its internal cultural ruptures.
The apparent responsibility for this crisis lies with the political elite. Across party lines, the politicians of Haryana have yet to prove that they are not merely poor scraps of what our freedom struggle produced as the “democratic capital” in this region. The political idiom as reinvented by this political elite from time to time is two-faced — one formal and public and the other that really determines the pragmatics of political mobilisation and routes to power.
The one used in the public domain requires a verbal affirmation to the constitutional democracy and liberal commitments that legitimise any political party in the country. And the other, the undercurrent idiom is the real and result-oriented one. It is broadly Jat and non-Jat in its popular manifestation and the dominant parties consciously preserve it as the main contradiction of Haryana society. It is the most subtle, yet the crudest, facet which continues to be the consensual ground from which the ruling elite derives its life and sustenance, its ‘contesting’ and mutually harmless character.
The youth of Haryana — of all castes and all regions — is the real causality of this power game. Extra-constitutional formations and aspirations like khap panchayats are the real gainers in terms of maintaining social hegemony and perpetuating their retrograde agenda, even mustering competitive voices of support for amendment to the Hindu Marriage Act or ban on same gotra marriage from eminent leaders of dominant political parties of the state.
The health of social democracy in Haryana is best exposed in the working of the khap panchayats in the state. They are its self-styled modes of discontinuity with its liberal and modern hungers and are examples of self-revenge — a relationship of hatred towards the ‘other’ — the law of the land as ‘modern’ and ‘democratic’ presence in its indigenous traditions. Khaps are cultural formations naturalised by innocence or sheer respect for tradition but becoming ruthless avengers on the sons and daughters of Haryana. To them, their caste, gotra and khap have a universal continuity with the elemental Puritanism. They, the chieftains of khaps, are watchmen of a moral order of nothing and everything.
They are bent upon extracting and safeguarding a cultural future out of social laws which are already overspent and over consumed. The same gotra issue is but a strategy of perpetuating the game of hide and seek — cultural hide and seek.
Haryana as whole is participating in it. This game is being played in the open/ blatant space of a ‘silence’ — a silence in league with its spectators from all strata, caste and regions of the state. Only sometimes, the spectacle of female foeticide makes the mood somber and self-reflective because adequate ‘brides’ are not around for their sons.
Without succumbing to the popular description of Haryana politics and culture as rigidly caste-based or khap-centric, it is also useful to look at how the ideology of the ruling elite is seized by the Arya Samaj ethics as the only philosophy capable of redeeming its cultural anxieties.
Decades back, the Haryana that under the influence of Arya Samaj concentrated its social-economic energy to draw its sons and daughters towards education and some sort of Enlightenment, is now standing against it. At least it is divided over what to make of the education that conspires to induce self-choice and individual freedom as permanent features of individual behavior and social values in its cultural ethos. This self-choice and individual freedom, though presently practiced by women and Dalitsonly in limited terms, is now being perceived as an aberration.
This also necessitates a reference to the rise of the Bhupinder Singh Hooda phenomenon with an unmistakable family background of a genuine linkage with the Arya Samaj movement. The Chief Minister of Haryana has largely emerged as a shrewd blending of the late Devi Lal’s ‘well intentioned’ politics and the developmental zeal of Bansi Lal, but his will power and vision to counter and check the hegemonic aspirations at the socio-cultural level have yet to crystallise.
However, the fact that politicians are easy to blame, to segregate and target as short-sighted, opportunist, parochial or whatsoever we like to say, does not exempt the educated middle class of Haryana from its hitherto failures and historical responsibility in the times to come. The teachers, lawyers, doctors, advocates and other sections of intellectual class have to initiate a critical relationship with the political culture of the state or the socio-cultural reality that shapes its politics.
These ‘enlightened’ sections have yet to display and use the substance of education and ‘enlightenment’ for the larger good of society. A radical and qualitative change in the leadership of ideas and values is the biggest investment for Haryana.
Instead of practicing docility, silence and servitude to the discourse of power and hegemony, the educated sections have to play the role of a catalyst in evolving a vision of cultural transformation. And it has to be done not for any particular village, region or caste but the future of composite Haryana — the promising and youthful Haryana emerging out of the carnival of the Commonwealth Games.n
The writer is Associate Professor, Post-Graduate Department of English, RKSD College, Kaithal, Haryana
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