Marx vs. Mahabharata on Campus India

AS A GRADUATE STUDENT IN THE UNITED States, I was often intimidated by professors, especially those who taught comparative politics, international relations, economics and extolled the virtues of the ‘advanced economies’ and free markets, free trade, and free enterprise. Their lectures grated on my ears, filled as they were with praise of the centrally-planned Indian economy, nationalised industries, social banking and so forth. My belief at that time was that leaderships committed to equality and liberty, rather than economic growth and periodic elections, would prove more effective. I believed the colonial experience of the third world, far from inculcating enlightened values, was likely to have generated cynicism. The prevailing ideology of that era focused on a concept known as ‘political development,’ a state of grace which required all nations to model themselves on Western countries. The parameters of resemblance included democracy in which elections and peaceful transfer of power were key signposts, complemented with laissez-faire economics.  Over the years, many developing nations did indeed begin to resemble first world economies, providing a degree of freedom for markets and business. There was also widespread embrace of democracy in the sense of regular elections. As such, all the superstructure markers of free markets and democracy were installed. But true to my concern in those graduate classes, commitment to a liberal and egalitarian social order was missing. Nowhere was this better illustrated than in India where far-sighted founding fathers adopted a Constitution that provided ballast to classical liberalism. Even then, cynical political formations built around regressive beliefs sprouted to challenge the liberal values of the Constitution.  In the first instance, the challenge came from doctrinaire Left political parties still hung over from the Cold War. But in recent years, however, recourse to divisive religious bigotry has helped its propagandists reap handsome dividends. A case in point: the battle being waged within Delhi’s showpiece Jawaharlal Nehru University between students and faculty on one side, and the government-backed university administration appointed to push the ruling BJP/NDA government’s hindutva agenda. My sympathies are unhesitatingly with the students and their teachers.  But let’s also understand that the agenda of JNU’s students and teachers is far from liberal. In their azaadi narrative, they pay lip service to classical liberalism. While they are inalterably opposed to insidious, creeping hindutva, it is also clear they allow no form of dissent against the dominant Marxist narrative of JNU. As such, their commitment to classical liberalism is suspect and their economic development prescriptions are likely to be statist, exactly what they have been all these years.  There’s an element of disingenuousness in the liberal left protest against the BJP/Modi government’s effort to implant its hindutva ideology on the JNU campus. All these years and to this day, JNU has been an incubator for Marxist propaganda opposed to the neo-liberal agenda of “liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation”. Amazingly, hindutva was allowed to co-exist in the Marxist ecosystem of JNU. This JNU conundrum is a perfect illustration of the dilemma that French philosopher, Jean-Francois Revel…