The Bangla Dream, Part 8 - The Buffet on Offer

In the “A House of Grain” chapter of A Wounded Civilization, V.S. Naipaul makes the following pronouncement:

But the alarm had been sounded. The millions are on the move. Both in the cities and in the villages there is an urgent new claim on the land; and any idea of India which does not take this claim into account is worthless. The poor are no longer the occasion for sentiment or holy alms-giving; land reform is no longer a matter for the religious conscience. Just as Gandhi, towards the end of his life, was isolated from the political movement he had made real, so what until now has passed for politics and leadership in independent India has been left behind by the uncontrollable millions.

As the passage above again demonstrates, Shuddho, the ruling formula and borrowed Dreams of the Old Elite, was an incomplete and disjointed set of alien beliefs that was simply unfit and incapable of acting as a positive Dream for the people of Bhārata in the long-term.

So the question that naturally follows is: If not Shuddho, then what?

Let’s start with the options on the table.

In the current global political and ideological landscape, the assailing winds of which are now landing on our shores, the dominant culture, blared across all forms of media, is American culture. In particular, it is liberal/progressive American culture that has emerged as an all-conquering ideology, one that aims to homogenize every emergent, regional culture into a consumerist and conformist sludge. This culture is sometimes imposed explicitly (a recent example being the unstoppable advance of ESG norms for corporations and sometimes adopted by the non-American populations naturally and voluntarily.

This is because culture spreads through technology.

Therefore, in the two decades (1995-2015) of worldwide internet proliferation, with an internet still largely uncensored outside of China, American liberal culture dominated. In this period, this culture became a sort-of global aspiration culture for English-speaking people everywhere in the world, which created a kind of homogeneous, default, global culture and language. Anecdotally, every Bhāratīya who has grown up in an urban setting knows people who can only visualize their own lives through the language and events of American TV shows like FRIENDS and The Office. Let’s call this American Homogeneity, or as it is more commonly known on the internet, Global Homogeneity (Globalhomo).

From our perspective, it is clear that Globalhomo is where the current iteration of Shuddho looks-towards for power and patronage. This is how we can understand the phenomenon of English-speaking journalists “failing-upwards” to write in foreign platforms, discredited “experts” from the country landing cushy jobs in Ivy League institutions, etc. Globalhomo is the bridge that makes this strange reality possible.

Unfortunately, since 2015, the only worldwide competitor to Globalhomo has been a reactive backlash to Globalhomo itself. The Brexit-Donald Trump phenomenon can be seen as an example of this happening in the Home Country of Globalhomo (the United States) and their broader Anglo cultural colonies. Recently, even political leaders in places like France have warned about the creeping American homogenization in countries across the world and their internal discourse. Therefore, internationally, most people are either choosing Globalhomo (e.g. Germany) or aimlessly thrashing out against it. And as a result, the global ideological landscape has become barren.

For Bhārata, this global ideological desert represents a special kind of problem. We remain reliant on the Globalhomo home-base (the United States and its cultural colonies) for technology and financial investment. But these are the very things through which Globalhomo spreads organically to other countries! So the very things we need to expand our economic growth, will import Globalhomo into our offices, our OTT platform output, our urban “aspirational” and “chic” culture, etc.

But another reason why this is an issue for us is that throughout the last 200 years, the Shuddho Elite who has been in-charge of Bhārata has lived ona steady diet of Borrowed Dreams from the rest of the world. The Brahmo Dream borrowed from the Enlightenment; the Fabian Dream borrowed from John Ruskin and his successors; The Red Dream borrowed very explicitly from its German and Russian prophets. And Shuddho … well Shuddho is a very indigenous concoction of our Old Elite. At least we can give them that!

So, the problem for the vestiges of the Shuddho elite today, is that the global well of ideas seems to have dried out. No such “great ideas” are in the ether right now that can be repackaged into Bhārata, especially when compared to their equivalents in the 19th and 20th century. The only option on the table is Globalhomo, which is a very unimpressive idea but that will not stop the Old Elite from trying to implement it!. It is, in the words of Albert Camus in The Rebel, ”the horizontal religion of our times” - a flat, barren, wasteland of consumerism, homogeneity and degeneracy. Even today, the Shuddho Elite of Bhārata continues to look to its usual sources for inspiration, and finds nothing but the coarse sand of re-packaged Globalhomo.

For our New Dhārmika Elite, Globalhomo is an unfortunate reality that cannot be wished away. It is a genie that cannot be put back into its bottle. It is here to stay, as are the winds of capital and technology that carry it. Somehow, the New Elite of Bhārata will have to find a way to show a Dhārmika Dream to the very people whose minds and hearts have been captured by a weird blend of Shuddho and Globalhomo. The New Dhārmika Dream must emerge after either vanquishing or co-opting/subverting the Globalhomo epidemic. This part is unavoidable.

However, this should also be seen as an opportunity of obvious excitement - there is an ideological vacuum that is just waiting, begging, for us to fill it. Not just in Bhārata, but across the world! It is a daunting task, but not as daunting as it can sometimes seem…

Authored by Samyak Dixit. Published by Brhat.