I have been noticing a funny thing recently:
~ People to my left are sharing Subramanian Swamy’s quotes and indulging in whataboutery.
~ People to my right are hailing non-alignment as the guiding principle of our foreign policy and suspending judgment until the evidence is in.
यह क्या हो रहा है दुनिया में?
So, either the right or the left has moved.
Or both.
Or maybe I have.
Or maybe the world has gone mad. Finally.
OK, jokes apart, what is really happening here? Let me try to put it in perspective, if I may.
I have always said that the world of extremes is like the Earth. Spherical. Go in any one direction far enough and you will end up on the other.
The right and the left start off as minor deviations in perceptions and politics, looking more like different ways to view and react to the same thing. Like different colours. One is saffron or white or green, and the other, red or blue (this is in the Indian context; Americans won’t get the colours). This is the point, I’d say, that they are the brightest. You can choose a colour and still not hate the other. You can enjoy the colour you have chosen and try another once in a while just to see what the world looks like from the other side.
Then, they move slightly further apart, and as they get deeper saffron/white/green/red/blue, they have differences in principles, then even further to a straight-up division on morals, and start looking more and more like polar opposites as they reach the most extreme they can reach without losing their identities. At this point, they are the exact opposite of the other, and it is easy even at this point, to choose a side based on ideological principles, even if one disagrees on methods and politics. But it is not easy to switch now. Or at least it becomes a life-altering decision to do so when the colours are so deep.
However, this is where a funny thing happens, as these ideologies (and ideologues) keep moving further from the centre. Once they start receding even further and becoming even darker, they come closer on the other side of the sphere, first becoming silly and irrational, meaning one finds it difficult to explain or justify one’s stand based purely on the ideological principle as different from the ‘other’ because, at some places, one is standing rather close to the ‘other’ side, then becoming harder and harder, and more and more dangerous and sinister.
As they travel further into their stand, they become more and more extreme, they darken all the way, eventually meeting around the sphere with the ‘other’ side and merging to become the pitch black of pure hate, steeped in irrationality, and firmly trapped in the swamp of dictatorial enforcement of dogma and woo with no reference to reality or indeed, humanity or humanness. Their transition is complete. As is their insanity. There is now no difference and you might as well switch sides without anyone noticing. It is all the same.
I want no part of this. If the choice is between your way and the highway, I’d take the high way (no, that isn’t a typo). Every. Single. Time.
I choose to believe, preach, or practice on that which appeals to my intellect and conscience, and not merely to fit in a crowd of emotionally stunted people who have painted themselves into a corner and are not just incapable, but actually unwilling to unstick themselves from the said corner. I am, if you really need a label (and I give several of them at the end of this article; take all of them) to distinguish me from the right or the left wing, a centrist.
I know both sides love to mock and insult centrists, not just among their own in-groups, but even between each other. I know they think we are some kind of losers or fence-sitters. They think the nuance we speak of is just a cover for our cowardice. They think the greys we insist on seeing are simply not there. Interestingly, both of them agree with each other that by remaining neutral or seeing subtlety and continuum in certain areas, we are ‘enabling the oppressor’ (with the ‘oppressor’ being whoever they define as one, with both sides insisting they are right, of course). And both of them agree that we are the ones who are stopping all progress by being the dogs in the mangers, the people who are ‘vote katuas‘, the politically promiscuous ones who will stick to a liberal stand, erring on the side of caution and empathy, understanding and forgiveness, fairness and benefit of the doubt, and trying to see as many angles of the situation as possible, the people who are primarily responsible for their particular side not winning (whether elections, a debate, a vote, a point, whatever), the people who need to carry the burden of whatever shit the society finds itself in today.
I am sorry, my friends. I refuse to get carried away. I refuse to pick a side and stick to it unconditionally without matching it from time to time with my inner voice and conscience. I refuse to pick a leader. Or a party. Or an ideology. And never change. I refuse to not evolve. I refuse to not see greys and nuance. I refuse to carry the baggage of the past in deciding everything about the future, without changing anything even when new evidence presents itself solely because I have painted myself into a corner by picking an ideology and letting it dictate my intellect and spirit. I refuse, my friends, to die on a hill of your choosing.
I am a liberal, centrist, secular, democratic, humanistic, politically promiscuous (love this phrase I heard first from Rajiv Tyagi), independent-minded, thinking individual. And I refuse to be a slave to anyone. Or indeed anything.
