This article first appeared on Ritam
On June 19, The Ideas Page of The Indian Express featured an
article titled ‘Once upon a time, a nation’ in which noted novelist and author
Nayantara Sehgal attempted to argue that the outcome of 2019 elections was
based on ‘storytelling’ with no real basis. I disagree with her premise and
here are the reasons why.
Sehgal claims that the nation of 130 crore people has bought
a false story - again. The election result, she says, was no surprise to her
and that was largely because of Yale professor Stanley Jason’s study of
right-wing extremism and breakdown of democracies. Now, even as the mainstay of
her argument is that a story was built ahead of the elections to fool people,
what she presents in the following paragraphs is a spectacular formula story of
her own.
Sehgal links the formula, as attributed to Stanley Jason, to
contemporary India and draws the picture of a failing state. In Stanley’s
formula the rise of right wing is hinged on a sense of fear, resentment, anger
- be it in the form of mercenary majoritarianism or divisive nationalism. In
this scenario, citizens are labelled, excluded and feared and a mood of
hysteria is created. Even as Sehgal shows us this picture, she fails to notice
that her own words and world view are also aimed at stoking fear and distrust –
only hers is against a democratically elected government.