[WSMDiscuss] Imagining India for Contemporary Politics: What Should the Left Do?• Ravi Sinha

[Subhash Gatade]

Many thanks Mayur for pointing it out. Here are the necessary details


New Socialist Initiative invites you to a webinar on “Imagining India for
Today politics : What Should the Left Do?”

Speaker: Dr. Ravi Sinha

Zoom Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83236400368…

Meeting ID: 832 3640 0368
Password: Webinar1

Facebook live: https://www.facebook.com/newsocialistinitiative.nsi/



On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 12:12 PM mayur chetia via WSM-Discuss <
wsm-discuss at lists.openspaceforum.net> wrote:

> The attached poster is not visible. Zoom ID, Password and Link should be
> sent separately as well.
>
> On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 at 03:44, Subhash Gatade via WSM-Discuss <
> wsm-discuss at lists.openspaceforum.net> wrote:
>
>> *Invite for a Webinar - Sunday, 19 th July, 5 pm - New Socialist
>> Initiative     *
>>
>>
>> *Imagining India for Contemporary Politics: What Should the Left Do?*
>>
>> *• Ravi Sinha*
>>
>> Shakespeare said, what is past is prologue. A simple-minded rationalist
>> may be contented to assume that past is fixed as it has already gone into
>> the making of the present. Nothing can be done to change it. The truth
>> however is that past is being ‘remade’ every day. Imaginations of ancient
>> glories or of humiliating defeats in the distant past are being deployed in
>> contemporary politics all across the world. This phenomenon has been a key
>> element behind the resurgence of rightwing in many countries. Contemporary
>> India is a calamitous example where a perverse variant of mass-democratic
>> politics has been fashioned through the political ideology of *Hindutva*
>> resulting in serious damage to democracy and to people’s welfare.
>>
>> Contemporary politics is driven more pressingly to such ideological
>> re-imaginings in the conditions of vigorously competitive electoral
>> democracies. The phenomenon is far more pronounced in countries with a
>> significant minority (religious, racial, linguistic-cultural etc.) that can
>> be portrayed as a historical villain. The majority can, then, be mobilized
>> through the political process of polarisation in which some
>> historical-civilizational-social tectonic plate is deployed in the service
>> of electoral-political objectives. India is a pre-eminent example of this
>> tragic phenomenon.
>>
>> Invariably, left and progressive forces find themselves handicapped in
>> these circumstances. Attempts to prove that such polarising strategies
>> based on re-imagining the past are malignant turn out to be politically
>> ineffective. A typical response from such forces has been to counter the
>> *emotive* with the *economic* and to challenge *cultural nationalism*
>> with *anti-colonial, anti-imperialist* nationalism. These strategies
>> have failed miserably. Other social and resistance movements too have
>> attempted partial re-imagining of India’s past from the standpoint of
>> traditionally oppressed communities (Dalit, feminist, native-ist, etc.).
>> While offering some resources to the respective movements, these efforts
>> have failed equally miserably in challenging the *Hindutva’s cultural
>> nationalism*. The efforts of some of the liberal bourgeois forces, on
>> the other hand, to gain ground by partly imitating the *Hindutva* forces
>> (variants of *soft hindutva*) have been no more than a laughing stock.
>>
>> In this presentation and conversation we will try to grapple with this
>> challenge from the standpoint of left and progressive forces. Do we refrain
>> from dragging the past into contemporary politics? Or do we lay claim to an
>> alternative re-imagining of India which would be acceptable to and in the
>> interest of all modernist-egalitarian forces including all traditionally
>> oppressed communities? In addition to the political strategies based on
>> class, equality, rights and justice, what other cultural-civilizational
>> strategies can be fashioned that can defeat *Hindutva* and other
>> religion-based fascistic ideologies? What will be the place of such
>> relatively immediate strategies in the long-term and more fundamental
>> struggle against capitalism and in the epochal project of building a
>> successful model of future socialism?
>>
>> We hope to initiate a fruitful discussion on this challenge and on such
>> questions.
>>
>> [image: image.png]
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> ________________________________________
> ** Inspired by the World Social Forum, WSMDiscuss – the successor to a
> list named ‘WSFDiscuss’ started in 2005 - is an open, unmoderated, and
> self-organising forum for the exchange of information and views on the
> experience, practice, and theory of social and political movement at any
> level (local, national, regional, and global), including the World Social
> Forum.  Join in ! **
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