CLOSED MINDS PAINT ALL IN SHADES OF NATIONALISM

A billion heads, one thought. Or two: national and anti-national. So, in a way, India has achieved unity in diversity. Even the strident critics of the Modi regime fall into what seems to me a trap that automatically replaces intellect with morality.

-  CP SURENDRAN

Considering that everybody has an opinion and he or she is seemingly free to articulate it, we may flatter ourselves that we are talking about many things. In fact, we are talking about only two things: are you a patriot, or a traitor?

This leads to a kind of moral relativism, a difference of attitudes stemming from your prejudices, based on religion or faith, which enables one to approach an issue with an already set and 'superior' opinion. It is precisely this that Allan Bloom talks about in The Closing of the American Mind.

It is a disease. But there is a reassuring ease in the disease. Our democratic discourse invariably devolves to the binary of patriotism and treason. People and events must fall into one or the other of these two baskets. There are people such as Shashi Tharoor who try their best to raise issues to a higher level. But they are few.

Let me explain what I mean by the closing of the Indian mind by taking a few events that dominated the news just last month or so.

The outspoken Mahua Moitra, currently facing allegations of lending her parliamentary password and login ID to Dubaibased businessman Darshan Hiranandani so she could raise questions on his behalf in parliament, recently tweeted: "Where is the national interest when you used a Chinese national and a UAE national and three offshore companies to over invoice ₹13,000 crores of coal?"