Verdict 2009 has been out since almost a month now and the “new-old” establishment is well entrenched in New Delhi, Pakistan is swinging from Taliban style anarchy to US sponsored democracy, Nepal is stuck between Maoist “rock” and theocratic “hard” place, Sri Lanka has emerged from its war on terrorism and is contemplating quasi-ethnic-cleansing, Bangladesh is stuck in a geopolitical void and is hypnotically jaywalking backward in time, global economy is either tethering on the verge of collapse or is playing hide and seek with capital markets, amidst all this calm chaos monsoon has decided to give a go by, but New Delhi is calm...

The soaring summer temperatures of north India seem to have had a paradoxical freezing effect on India’s power centre, for New Delhi is almost as cold as ice. It is almost as if New Delhi is trying to dismiss all the doomsday pundits with the same contempt that realists have always reserved for a Nostradamus. After all, haven’t all doomsday predictions gone wrong since time immemorial? Just sit back and take a look at it quietly: maybe it is not about another doomsday, maybe it is a cross road in the life of a nation that is meeting with glorified silence from the media and contemptuous disdain from the powers that be. It is life as usual in the power corridors of New Delhi with no time to spare for a clumsy little crossroad in the life of India, after all there are “greater” heights that have been scaled and “bigger” victories that have been achieved; greatest of them being the so called overwhelming endorsement of “secularism” by the world’s largest democracy. The liberated and omnipresent Indian media seems to have been collectively blinded by the sharp arrows of triumphalism in the so called battle between communal and secular forces of India in which they were participant observers on the secular side of the divide; hence they seem to be missing the turning points of the unfolding plot. If that is the case of power and its collaborators, the state of the so called “opposition” is worse. Like a combatant Hindu who has lost it all and is now wrangling within himself to choose the righteous path of Nirvana as the last resort; the BJP seems oblivious to all the crossroads ahead and henceforth, and has lost its own self belief in the karmic turmoil for power. That has been the historic irony of India’s destiny.

Any civilization that has an intrinsic mechanism of support systems to status-quoism and historic antipathy towards forces of change can survive the wrath of time through internal brooding and spiritual elevation but can never attain its material and historic destiny of a great super power. India’s has been a story frozen in time for centuries, like a lady who is eternally pregnant but never delivers. When Rome was attacked everything came to a standstill but when Alexander the great attacked India, her people were the least bothered, farmers tilled the land, traders bought their trade, pilgrims travelled to their holy places, kings ruled with disdain and the enlightened continued teaching their disciples. People of this land were elevated beings who thought of war as just another necessity and yearned to be on a higher plane, but it was also as if they were not concerned about such banal issues as the fate of the nation. The collective mind of the Hindu populace is incapable of understanding such a mundane aspect as the necessity of statehood whilst it can decipher such complexities as the philosophy of existence. It can also be argued with equal conviction that the karmic fatality of Hindu philosophy puts such a premium on pro-active stances that it hardly has any chance of surviving the wrath of status-quoists. Thus at every crossroad the biggest sufferer has been the Hindu ideologue, the greatest loss has been that of the nation (or the idea of the nation) and the Hindu has sniggered at his own predicament with the half formed image of “karma” laughing a sinister laugh from its elevated pedestal.

Many a people and ideas have invaded and ruled India and the Indian psyche and they have all been successful as long as they have maintained status quo. The Mughals were successful as long as they followed the middle path and maintained the pretence of Sufi-ism through such megalomaniacs as Akbar. When Mughals became more and more confident and indigenized and tried to disturb the state of affairs and dropped the pretence of Sufi Islam in order to proscribe more stringent Islamic practices through the likes of Aurangzeb, they lost their power to rule and the British happened to India. British were also successful as long as they maintained status quo vis-à-vis Indian traders, petty kings and politicians with life-size egos. The day they tried to disturb these forces, a Mahatma came to the rescue of status-quoists. Independent India has been an extended study in status-quoism through the guise of socialism, so much so that whenever a meek effort has been made at change the more the things have come to remain the same. Elections 2009 have been a “proud” reaffirmation of that continuing chain of India’s karmic cycle and what is more, we have a whole new garb of secularism to maintain status quo.

Another inherent Hindu malaise is unquestioned and unflinching loyalty to the king and the ruling dynasty which has continued through 60 years of Indian independence in the form of Nehru-Gandhi dynastic model being replicated at the local level through the Scindhiyas, the pilots, the karunanidhi-marans, the Goudas et al. Brief experiments like the post emergency bundling together of disparate forces under Jayaprakash Narayan or the V.P. Singh led congregation of motley group of so called grass-root leaders were nothing but blips on the otherwise uniformly clear radar of India’s nascent democratic history. The only time there was historic change in the recent history of India was when Vajpayee led India towards a whole new path of attaining potential super power status. The idea of India was growing from strength to strength under the first real leader India had seen, India was living an impossible dream, testing nuclear weapons, challenging China, engaging USA, calling Islamabad’s bluff, creating unprecedented prosperity in middle India, starting revolutions in telecommunications and transportation; in short realizing India’s true potential. But it was a short lived dream and status quo was restored before long. Every time there have been opportunities for change, the universe has seemingly conspired to keep India locked in the sameness of being. Just look at the past 100 years of India and it is replete with examples of “the other” being always having to vacate its place for the more “central” form of continuity. Either it has been Gandhian hatred for Indian right or Nehruvian hypothesis of socialism or more recently federal ideology of regionalism, in one way or the other status quo has been maintained. When a Subash Chandra Bose challenged the path of freedom struggle he disappeared mid air leaving behind a legend which was of no use to India’s plight. When a Vallabh bhai Patel was perceived as the perfect anti-dote for Nehruvian thought process he conveniently died early without leaving a legacy behind. When a Lal Bahadur Shastri came up as an alternative, it was almost as if he was pre-destined to die a pre mature death. When the syndicate of such tall men as Kamraj, Nijlingappa, Morarji Desai etc came together to form an alternative to Indira Gandhi’s Congress, the idea itself had to meet its end without achieving anything of significance. The list is endless but the underlying theme is common, India has always maintained continuity so much so that purists can even argue that economic liberalization also was a product of the first non Nehru-Gandhi congress government that lasted a full term. With such historic data to support continuity, there was no chance what so ever of elections 2009 coming up with any other result than what finally they did come out with.