India for all practical purposes refers to the East of the East and US of America is the West of the West, and the twain, wise men said, shall never meet. In the span of two days, one rolling after another, like the wheels of a great Juggernaut, bashful, arrogant wheels, changed the way we look at the world. We have been raised with a concept of right and wrong. It was a good idea which provided a pattern to a world which is as illogical as the forces of nature, its whims unfathomable, its furies uncertain. But those ideas were formed in a dynamic world, and were as volatile as ecosystem in which they were formed, raised and eventually flourished.
Wisdom is like a freshly caught fish and goes stale quickly. The biggest wisdom which survives time is the one discovered by good, old Darwin, whose law of survival, the survival of the fittest is one which has survived change of civilizations, change of regimes, and change of political seasons. Men are feeble animals. We have nothing except our minds which is our probably most formidable organ. We do not have the speed of a leopard, the strength of an elephant or the teeth of a Lion. We do not even have a killer instinct to compare the wild animals. We develop it mostly out of our necessity or hatred. We are the devices for our minds to play with. We are able to protect ourselves, and more importantly our future generation using mostly this great faculty nature has provided us with. We cannot have any of the wisdom, with the whitest of it form, fool our minds. Our minds are watchful, and are mostly driven by nothing but survival instincts, which also converts into the customs and culture which has stood by us against the harshest winds of time.
Security, survival instinct is something which drove the United states to make an odd choice of Trump as their president. This does not preclude that those who insisted that Hillary ought to win were also driven by their own survival instinct. The Pundits declared the results of the elections from their high pulpits and then went on designing the results to suit their deductions. US probably never had it so bad. There was no good choice. They had to chose between the worst and the less bad and there was no way of knowing which was which. This is not about deriving the same. It all will depend on which side your were looking it from. One had a string of misogyny on his side, another a history of defending a child molester and repeat offender of a rapist. But it was not about morality and righteousness. That is where Hillary got it wrong, and Trump, accidentally or somehow got it right.
The elite thought leaders, those who thought they knew it all ignored the man who was going to vote. They had made that mistake earlier in India, in 2014. The elite media, the intellectuals threw their weight behind Congress and the man on the street, the man driven by the most primitive instinct, of survival and security, went with Modi. This essay is not about finding equivalence between the elected, between Trump and Narendra Modi. While Trump came into politics as an amateur, Modi has spent all his life in public work, even though not as a politician; while Trump has been known to have splurge in wine and woman, Modi has been near-ascetic in his life. This is not a commonality between the two elected men, this is about the commonality between the two electorate. There were people who placed themselves on high pedestals and laughed, speaking sermons about the goodness, the righteousness, the love. Those were the same people whose role in spreading violence via various modes was thoroughly exposed. The ecosystems were established, just as it was in India in 2014, and everyone wanted it to continue, under the garb of justice, feminism, liberty, call it whatever high sounding name you might, it was the elite and the powerful and the classy, busy trying to serve their own survival instinct, the continuity of things as they were, no matter how many people were dying.
There was another class, which could see things, in spite of supposed lack of education more clearly. They could see, even with their intent of preserving the left-leaning, falsely righteous way of life, the fire of violence which they had lit far away in Asia, was slowly extending, like a forest fire and reaching to their shores. The liberal elite in their greed and their lazy lustful existence had almost missed the fire which followed the warmth. I do believe all men are equal, must love another, and must be free. But there is again this thing about the way things are done, the way things have preserved the life of the original inhabitants. It is about survival. The new coming in to far shores and wanting the change the ways of life of those who have been raising generations in those lands is scary idea. It is unavoidable, but it is fearful when it is done by force. It gets people raise their guards when they feel that the change those coming in threaten to bring with them will not be slow amalgamation of cultures, which takes and preserves the best of the two worlds, but will be a clash of civilizations. There was a new wave threatening to overwhelm those who felt it was their land. Amalgamation requires a certain level of flexibility on the part of the two parties. It is impossible when one party considers its inflexible orthodoxy as its right. And the history around the world was not very reassuring. And nobody bothered to reassure them. How could they trust the guest who instead of respecting the customs of the host, wanted to have his own customs, at least for himself, if not to impose them on his host. Not for now, they felt when they looked at other countries of the world. No one bothered to assure that man, if they did, it was not seen in their actions. The man on the ground, who do not read the complex yet luminous words of those who lived in safe, secure surroundings would not understand them and if they understood them, they could not believe them. They were pulled away by their affluence so far away from the poor that they could not understand him any longer. Even after Trump won, they called his voters the working class white men, a description full of disdain and even xenophobia towards those men, although they will blame them with the same.
They could not address the fear of the man they call- semi-literate, working, white men. The hatred to the man oozes through their words. They call themselves liberals, and while they mocked the insecurity of the man on the street in America, they are now driven mad by their inability to maintain a status quo, which could have protected their polished, prosperous way of live, for them and their off-springs. So we find the pretense of peace is gone and wicked hatred in the beings of those who once were voice of righteous sanity is exposed. In India we have seen the bile spill on the editorials, over champagnes. Both Modi and Trump, to the elite represent the men who came from nowhere. They come from the place were one life stands for one life and majority life is not lesser than the minority life. The assumption that just being in majority population brings a lot of confidence in people is incorrect. Poverty, lack of power makes people week. Another assumption that Majority populace can never come together as one unit is also wrong.
This is one common factor about #DeMonetization. When Narendra Modi made announcement of cancelling the legal tender of existing currency, a strange euphoria gripped the nation, which sustains even today as people have started facing hardships. The elite, the righteous of the nation, the old order, media and erstwhile rulers alike are not able to understand the phenomenon. They don't understand that the poor are not so unhappy. They had little to lose, they know you have lost big. Your losing big gives the poor a chance to hit at equality much more certain than what all those lofty leftist lectures offered. It offers them a future for their children. Those who have never seen the hardship will never understand this. The poor can go a day without even food for the welfare of their children. It is all about survival instinct. It is about protecting our selves and our future generations and their distinctly Indian identity. Luxury makes our understanding of social principles and identity concerns weak. Those with bungalows in Lutyens will not understand this. But this is what connects Indian poor in favor of Narendra Modi with those voters of Trump. It is about fear and it is about the disenchantment of the fearful from those who mock their fears, who call their natural instincts, evil. It is not about race or religion. It never is. It is always very basic. Sometimes fears are genuine and one ought to address them. Once we had politicians and writers and thinkers who would do that without apology. Those who spoke of the English way, or American way or Indian way without squirming and feeling ashamed. Majority is also a voice and has its own fear and you cannot trample over it. That is democracy. Cultivating minority-only politics will serve only so far as long as the majority does not feel threatened. When there is pollution, action is taken in Lutyens, the last man in the street is as vulnerable as a fresh migrant, and as afraid. Someone ought to listen to him. You cannot think for him. You have to listen the his thoughts floating through the air. You cannot merely shout rhetoric in his name without giving his thoughts a voice. You cannot shout him down. That is what happened in the US, that is what is happening in India, when a Kejriwal or Mamta or Mulayam claims that the poor is getting discomforted for the government action on black money. Poor is not greedy, he will let go of his today, for the tomorrow of his children.
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