Right now in India, there is an ideological project that aims to break up the country not by democratic means or by winning elections, but by constantly undermining and weakening India’s institutions, traditions, and practices. The opposition is working to erode public trust in the very foundations that give the Indian republic its legitimacy. Their goal is to create instability and chaos, similar to what has happened in Nepal and Bangladesh.
At first glance, things like ongoing doubts about the EVMs, the Election Commission of India, election commissioners, or other constitutional bodies might seem unrelated. But these issues are part of a bigger, more serious trend: the politics of delegitimisation. Opposition parties are promoting the false idea that public confidence in India’s institutions, constitution, laws, and civilization is steadily declining.
They question the EVM and SIR process whenever they lose, and call any government they do not win illegitimate! In a democracy, it is important to allow criticism of institutions like the Election Commission, Parliament, the judiciary, and the government. However, there is a difference between holding institutions accountable and making people believe they cannot be trusted at all.
The former is healthy for democracy, but the later can undermine its legitimacy. Delegitimisation is often a first step in revolutionary politics and to overthrow a system, people must first believe it lacks moral or political legitimacy. This usually involves a coordinated campaign to make citizens lose trust in the institutions that support their republic and this is where the situation starts to resemble the basic principles of Maoism.
Maoism is not simply an ideological movement, since it aims to achieve change of power through violence. The Maoists hold that the present political and social system must first be discredited if a new ideological order suited to their vested interests is to be established. Although armed Maoists have vanished from the jungles of India, the current challenge is an urbanised Maoist insurgency. Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China was not just a fight for political power.
It was also an attack on cultural memory, as he opposed the ‘Four Olds’, old ideas, culture, customs, and habits and worked to erase tradition by destroying scriptures, institutions, temples, books, and historical artifacts. Currently, opposition parties in India are trying to introduce a milder form of the same intellectual instinct into the political system. The situation is different since India is not China, and its democratic and civilisational traditions cannot be limited to the Maoist experience.
A clear case is that of tribal groups as throughout history, tribal societies have maintained rich traditions such as sacred groves, ancestor worship, historical records, community institutions, festivals, languages, dialects, and a deeply pious relationship with Jal, Jungle, and Jameen. The ideological similarity between some sections of society and political parties, and their tendency to interpret these indigenous traditions as exploitation, patriarchy, superstition, and oppression, should be examined.
In Bastar, Chhattisgarh, many disagreements have arisen over the administration of last rites. Tribal people have refused converted Christians the right to be buried in the burial ground, and the judiciary is now involved. Although religious conversion is constitutionally a matter of personal freedom, cultural erosion is a valid topic for public debate. Although the government has won the armed struggle with determination, the campaign through extremist narratives is a bigger challenge.
This is where the Indian National Congress party’s current political actions require thorough examination as clear signs suggest the organization has adopted a stance sympathetic to Maoists to obtain power by any means. The Congress has likely become an accessory, a tool, and an ideological vehicle promoting what Mao carried out. Recent speeches by the leader of the opposition show that India’s inherited civilization traditions are seen mainly as structures of oppression rather than stores of memory and identity.
All inherited institutions are being tested, and every Indian tradition is asked to prove that it has progressive qualities. Yet a great civilization could not survive if each generation felt ashamed of its inheritance and customs. Mao likely never believed a society can be freed from poverty without first being freed from its culture, modernized without risking losing its roots, or reformed without being asked to forget.
Therefore, India’s response to Maoism should not stop at eliminating leftwing extremists from the jungle. It must also uphold the idea that tradition does not automatically mean oppression and modernity does not automatically lead to liberation. This is a risky intellectual course since a great civilization exists simply because each generation agrees with all its ancestors did and everything it endures because it has the confidence to reform itself without losing its essential character.
India’s civilisation has, over centuries, changed, absorbed, discussed, adapted, and reinvented itself. Reform movements have opposed social evils, new ideas have been adopted, customs have developed, philosophical views have clashed, and different religions and communities have come into contact, influenced, and sometimes contested each other. India’s ability to embrace diversity without cultural amnesia is solid proof.
Opponents of India regard this as a point of dispute because it differs so much from Mao’s conception of revolution. It serves as a lesson for those who view India’s civilisational inheritance mainly as a set of hierarchies ready to be abolished. The Congress party is likely trying to establish an argument that, by accident, lends legitimacy to the same intellectual environment that previously gave Maoism its moral terminology.
Since all other means of gaining power have ended in complete failure, their desperation is causing them to adopt the radical left’s agenda since it is either electorally or intellectually convenient, there being no alternative but anarchy. India must question the idea that existing society is an obstacle, that tradition is mainly conservative, and that resorting to armed disruption is naturally liberating. This is why the struggle over legitimacy is important.
If people believe elections are fundamentally suspect, constitutional institutions compromised, governments illegitimate, and cultural inheritance shameful, then the basis of democratic society will weaken even if no insurgent fires a bullet. The Congress party’s plan for India is simply to carry out exactly what Maoism has successfully done, and India needs to make sure that no ideology, whether communist, colonial, or missionary, manages to change its communities in a religious or ideological sense.
India does not have to choose between tradition and development, since it has modernized without compromising with its past. This is our greatest asset, and that is the reason why those who are working to undermine the India story always start with its cultural, traditional, and customary memory. Perhaps for this reason, the politics of delegitimisation starts with institutions, then turns to traditions, and finally aims to make a civilization doubt itself.
India should uphold the view that democracy enables institutions to be questioned without them being destroyed, that traditions can be reformed without being ridiculed, and that communities can modernize without being deracinated, and our civilizational pride does not have to mean opposition to progress.
*Ujjwall Deepak is Spokesperson, Bharatiya Janata Party, Chhattisgarh, He is an alumnus of Columbia University, USA. (Views are personal)