History, we have been instructed, is now the story of warfare, now of the struggle for existence, now of the evolution of the species, now the unfolding of a divine idea, of the effulgence of religions, of patriarchy, of class struggle destined through the unity of evolving contradictions to reach the fullness of justice for humankind, the progression of inventions and technologies unleashing modernity, and so on.
Post the idea of modernity, it has come to be seen by some others as merely an ephemeral play of language – forever open-ended, never reaching any final resolution or meaning.
The ideologue, Spengler, proffered the metaphor of a cartwheel for history, holding that just as there have been climatic earth cycles, there are also political cycles in human history.
Thus, just as in the rotation of a cartwheel, the point that touches the ground and then progresses upward inevitably returns to touch the ground again, so also, different systemic arrangements of history have a life, move on, and return when we think what is gone never returns.
So, consider this: the advent of inductive science brought with it a flush of enquiry and possibility in a slew of human thought and material endeavour.
In its wake, science opened up a market of both ideas and goods and services for capital to operate in.
Capitalism in its burgeoning required the destruction of old feudal constraints across the board, and so spawned the idea of democracy as an idea, rooted in the productive potential and dignity of the human individual. But when it came into full ascendance, Capital saw that science, which had brought it into being was now its enemy.
What it required was technology, not science, or if you like, a science that was now directing all its ingenuity not to explore further truths, or question Capitalism and the social order it came to spawn, but to devise newer instruments for generating and accumulating wealth.
Soon, this endeavour began to see that along with science, democracy too was a potential antagonist.
As wealth came to be monopolised, ideas of social, economic and political equity spelt danger to the now entrenched power of Capital across the board.
Clever protagonists soon saw that the protection and furtherance of what they had achieved would now require strategies for quelling the free mental agency of people at large.
Nothing could achieve this project of silencing better than the deployment of race, religion and nationalism, ruthlessly propagated among the mass of people through facilitations made available by technology.
Hitler used the radio to great effect.
Since then, we have seen the relentless use of electronic media, and now what is called rather outlandishly the ‘social media’ to condition the ‘popular mind’ to unquestioningly receive whatever the posers-that-be dish out in “national interest.”
The cartwheel, however, turned after the defeat of Fascism in Europe, and a renewed liberalism seemed to once again suffuse the political climate of the globe.
The destruction wrought by war facilitated the ingress of the benevolent Marshall plan to rebuild Europe as a democratic enclave and, more to the point, a “free market” ready to receive the munificence of American productive forces.
Decolonisation across continents released a flush of human freedom and new dreams among the oppressed peoples of erstwhile slave states, as it were, to make their own new future along the best principles of political and economic liberalism.
Democracy once again became a desired handmaiden, and new, emancipatory constitutions came to be fashioned in so many decolonised territories.
But, canny indigenous colonisers were waiting in the wings to replicate many of the social, cultural, and political strategies of foreigners who had kept these realms in thrall.
So now look around you. Democracy in a plethora of countries is once again moving on and bringing the cartwheel back to touch the ground which it had left behind in the decades of the thirties and the forties.
Wherever democracy is retained formally still, this is, as the barber double of Hitler in Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece, The Great Dictator, perorates in that immortal speech he makes to the masses, it is done to squeamishly deflect popular shame, as did the fig leaf, while intending to destroy it soon as political power is achieved.
So, in our day, there are two kinds of democrats—those to whom the idea of democracy is a non-negotiable principle that encapsulates the march through historical time of humankind’s most just and ethical strivings, and those to whom it is a mask to be discarded as soon as it has served its purpose.
To wit, there are those of us who think that the 15 crore electors in the Lok Sabha (and more, 18 crore in the Rajya Sabha) whom the suspended 146 members of the Indian parliament represent, are equal citizens of the republic who have charged their now-suspended representatives with the task of holding the government of the day to account every step of the way, and those others who think that the only legitimate citizens and electors are those who have voted for the ruling party five years ago.
There are those of us who still believe that parliamentary etiquette, an idea now routinely thrown at helplessly protesting public representatives, requires most of all that when parliament is in session, the executive must first make averments in the House on issues of national concern before they proceed to propagandise among the captive media, and there are those who think parliamentary etiquette is limited just to how members should sit or stand in the House, or what papers or placards they carry even if out of desperation at never being allowed to open their mouth on issues that most need to be aired in the “people’s interest.”
There are those of us who begin to see that the right wing ultimately, desires a one-party parliament, and those who think why not.
And the “why not” Indians are also those who never cease to berate the communist parties for desiring one-party rule. Never mind the irony that over the last fifty years or so, India’s parliamentary communist parties have indeed worked rather more genuinely than others to preserve multi-party democracy.
So, returning to the cartwheel, it does seem that country after country that were proud democracies are now spawning The Great Dictator yet again, on the strength, also once again of ethno-racism, religious bigotry, nationalist revanchism and so on, including sanctioned violence against those presumed to be opposed to such ideas.
It remains to be seen if the days of eugenics may also return.
In our case, representatives of some 60% of the electorate seem to have woken up to the menacing turn of the cartwheel.
But it remains to be seen if their awareness will come to find a matching agony of commitment to push the cartwheel from its position.
As we write, it is a toss-up, dicey to bet on.
