Of Dharma, ethics, politics and an impending Dharmayudh

Political events in the last 48 hours have once again reminded us of the utter lack of ethics and the immorality of the politics practised by the Centre Left in India.

In what is the most shameful pursuit of politics over the rule of law and basic ethics, the CPI-Mafioso has given an ultimatum to Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan if he refuses to toe the party line.

CPI-M’s Kerala secretary Pinarayi Vijayan is accused of illegally favouring awarding contracts to renovate two hydro-power projects to Canadian company SNC Lavalin 12 years ago when he was the state’s power minister. The multi-crore scam case is currently being heard by the Kerala High Court.

Next you had this unbelievable resort to violence in two State Assemblies of Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.

In Uttar Pradesh you had the unholy nexus between Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Manmohan Sonia Gandhi lead Congress coming apart over the CBI’s handling of the disporportionate assets case against Mulayam Singh.

With Amar Singh’s foul mouth coloring it with choicest invective, we are starkly reminded that as much as the Congress may want to put lipstick over a pig with its projection of Rahul Gandhi, it has to go to bed every night with unsavory characters like Amar Singh for its survival.

 in Andhra you had the gutter politics of personality conflicts, nepotism and unbirdled egose scripting what can at best be dignified as a street fight between the Telugu Desam’s Chandrababu Naidu and the Congress Y.S. Rajashekar Reddy.

These events are yet another reminder to the BJP on how it must define the fundamental faultline for the coming Lok Sabha election.

Offstumped revisits the question of how to frame the debate for the upcoming election starting with this post that originally appeared in June of 2008.

Last week while penning down the Tale of Two Tortoises, Offstumped had another epiphany. This time on the oxymoron called “Progress Liberalism”. Multiple stories in the Mainstream Media over the past few days have only further validated it.

Here is a sampling.

CNN-IBN asking this question – Will America elect a Black President ?

The Telegraph asking this question – Tears for film and verse, not a drop for riots ?

So what do these questions tell us about Progressive Liberalism ?

To better appreciate this let us pose these questions in a different way.

Can America elect a President being blind to his skin color ?

Was Mr. Advani guilty of not discharging his constitutional duty in response to riots ?

The difference between the above questions and the previous set, posed by the mainstream media that professes by “progressive liberalism”, lies in the premise. Where the above questions were mainly concerned with righteous conduct, the previous set of questions were mainly concerned with the outcome and more specifically a certain kind of outcome while being unmindful of how exactly that outcome was arrived at.

That friends is the fundamental nature of “Progressive Liberalism”. It does not ask you if your conduct was righteous but instead asks you if a certain goal was achieved.

So what are these goals??

These goals are mainly of two varieties and both of them are rooted in emotions and not in fundamental truths.

The first variety is commonly found in the psuedo-intellectual few and stems from a deep sense of guilt. This sense of guilt arises largely because of an inability to reconcile hard and bitter truths. So you have this pursuit of moral equivalences to dither on capital punishment, or this talk of root causes to rationalize and apologize for terrorism?and of course the ultimate guilt trip – political correctness.

The second variety found in the ignorant many ususally follows the first and is a result of the psuedo-intellectual’s need to assuage his or her sense of guilt by instilling outrage and indignation in the masses by painting them the victim. It is this victimhood that has spawned the culture of entitlement and a false sense of justice called Social Justice. The results range from Communal Socialism, Minority appeasement, Vote bank politics and the incendiary politics of affirmative entitlement.

It is on these twin emotional pillars of “guilt” and “victimhood” that Progressive Liberalism rests causing it to care more about outcomes and goals than about ethics and values.

This is the fundamental reason why “Progressive Liberalism” is Adharma for it fails the “desireless action” test of Dharma.

It is this immorality of the politics of Nehru-Gandhi Mandal that draws inspiration from “Progressive Liberalism” that has to be the defining distinction between the Left and the Right.

As Team Advani looks to fight the Dharmayudh in a few months from now, it is all the more imperative for them to draw the battlines very clearly by making this not just about “Change” but about “Change” that is just, righteous and uncompromising on ethics in public life.

More on this Dharmayudh in the next 3 posts.

Filed under: Dharmayudh-2009, Lok Sabha Polls 2008-2009, betrayal of aam admi