Topic Of The Day:-“Attitude to time”
Oddly, for all its fetishisation of 2019, the BJP is one party that has no systemic idea of the future. It might borrow a few glib ideas such as smart cities, yet it has no sense of the future as a set of strategies. The fetishisation of 2019 has to be understood in this context — 2019 is its end of history thesis. It has no sense of the future except of the NRI who combines modern consumerism with ancient history. The future is 2019 repeated.
The attitude to time is best caught in the complete absence of ecological thinking. It is content with linear time and progress. It dissolves the Planning Commission not because it was a Congress idea but because it was a futurist notion. The party is addicted to the ideas of nation state, progress and development pickled in the formaldehyde of the 19th century. Its patriotism is a deep devotion to repeating these ideas in the present. No other regime is as idolatrous of Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to ‘Make in India’ is an invitation to the likes of them to make India’s future because India as a regime is clueless about it — we are being out-thought and out-fought in every forum.
The BJP likes nationalism because it unifies time and history into a reign of uniformity. No party dreads plurality, diversity and difference as much as the BJP does. The Opposition has to re-read the BJP in this context. It should worry not only about a unified opposition or a unitary opposition but also decentralise the challenge to the regime. When the south appeals to a different language, the BJP has no answer. It has no idea of the vernacular. A decentralised strategy of multiple futures will be the first step in defeating the BJP because, as Mr. Shah knows, it is only when time is in official uniform that India marches to a single drum. The Opposition will lose if it imitates the BJP because its motley costume ball of ideas is no formal answer to Mr. Modi. But a set of plural strategies will confuse the BJP because it has no sense of dialects. In fact, the minute India responds either civilisationally or in the vernacular, the BJP is lost. It has no answer to the Bhakti movement, to Nanak or Rahim. The BJP’s idea of clock-time has no sense of what Raimon Panikkar called kairological time, i.e. time with cultural meaning. Once you multiply the notion of time, the inevitability of the BJP in linear time breaks down, and the RSS can no longer argue that it is a party whose time has come.
The BJP’s commitment to development, nation-state, big science are all attempts to subjugate time as history. No other party has less idea of alternative imaginations and alternative histories. The BJP’s notion of time is like a Tussaud’s exhibit where it wants to reduce politics to a five-year time-frame with Vladimir Putin, Shinzo Abe, Donald Trump as perpetual players where Mr. Modi returns in celebratory triumph after visiting them. Once India operates with a restrictive scenario of time, its rivals know it is predictable. In fact, desperate to be seen as well-behaved and investment-friendly, official India now presents itself as a simple extrapolation.
One has to now read the RSS as an organisation constructed in mechanical time. The shakha could be a creation of Frederick Winslow Taylor, founder of scientific management, as it is anchored on replication and repetitivity. It is frightening. Because it lives in time-linearity, the BJP is hostile to difference and diversity. The Congress, as Rajni Kothari showed, was built through accommodating difference, while the BJP suppresses any kind of difference as a sign of inefficiency. No other party is devoted to censorship of art, ideology, science as the BJP. By suppressing time as diversity, the BJP can control disorder.
Sadly, the two thought systems it has conscripted are spirituality and management, and both act as time-keepers to the nation. Both provide techniques of control. There is nothing spiritual about the BJP’s idea of yoga. It is instrumental, functional and more oriented to efficiency. It enforces a tutorial college sense of modernity without any sense of metaphysics or debate.
MEANINGS AND WORDS
1) Ranting
Meaning: Speak or shout at length in an angry, impassioned way.
Example: “She was still ranting on about the unfairness of it all”
Synonyms: Fulminate, Pontificate
2) Overdrawn
Meaning: Exaggerate in describing or depicting (someone or something).
Example: “Some of the characters were overdrawn”
3) Emphasised
Meaning: Give special importance or value to (something) in speaking or writing.
Example: “They emphasize the need for daily, one-to-one contact between parent and child”
Synonyms: Highlight, Spotlight
Antonyms: Understate, Play down
4) Conservatism
Meaning: Commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation.
Example: “Proponents of theological conservatism”
5) Ideology
Meaning: A system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.
Example: “The ideology of republicanism”
Synonyms: Doctrine, Creed
6) Exponents
Meaning: A person who supports an idea or theory and tries to persuade people of its truth or benefits.
Example: “An early exponent of the teachings of Thomas Aquinas”
Synonyms: Advocate, Supporter
Antonyms: Critic, Opponent
7) Impetus
Meaning: Something that makes a process or activity happen or happen more quickly.
Example: “The ending of the Cold War gave new impetus to idealism”
Synonyms: Motivation, Stimulus
8) Surrogate
Meaning: A substitute, especially a person deputizing for another in a specific role or office.
Example: “Wives of MPs are looked on as surrogates for their husbands while the latter are at Westminster”
Synonyms: Substitute, Proxy
9) Intrigued
Meaning: Arouse the curiosity or interest of; fascinate.
Example: “I was intrigued by your question”
Synonyms: Interest, Fascinate
Antonyms: Bore
10) Dealt
Meaning: Take measures concerning (someone or something), especially with the intention of putting something right.
Example: “The government had been unable to deal with the economic crisis”
Synonyms: Handle, Manage
11) Myth
Meaning: An exaggerated or idealized conception of a person or thing.
Example: “The book is a scholarly study of the Churchill myth”
Synonyms: Misconception, Fallacy
12) Rendered
Meaning: Provide or give (a service, help, etc.).
Example: “Money serves as a reward for services rendered”
Synonyms: Give, Provide
13) Desperately
Meaning: Used to emphasize the extreme degree of something.
Example: “He desperately needed a drink”
Synonyms: Seriously, Gravely
Antonyms: Slightly
14) Perpetually
Meaning: In a way that never ends or changes; constantly.
Example: “Perpetually hungry teenage boys”
15) Fetishes
Meaning: An activity or object that you are so interested in that you spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about it or doing it.
Example: “She makes a fetish of organization – it’s quite obsessive”
16) Impresario
Meaning: A person who arranges different types of public entertainment, such as theatre, musical, and dance events.
Example: “London’s leading theatrical impresario”
17) Millennial
Meaning: Denoting people reaching young adulthood in the early 21st century.
Example: “Most social networking groups are dominated by the millennial generation”
18) Prophesied
Meaning: Say that (a specified thing) will happen in the future.
Example: “Jacques was prophesying a bumper harvest”
Synonyms: Predict, Foretell
19) Glib
Meaning: (Of words or a speaker) fluent but insincere and shallow.
Example: “The glib phrases soon roll off the tongue”
Synonyms: Slick, Pat
Antonyms: Sincere, Inarticulate
20) Thesis
Meaning: A statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved.
Example: “His central thesis is that psychological life is not part of the material world”
Synonyms: Theory, Contention
21) Notion
Meaning: A conception of or belief about something.
Example: “Children have different notions about the roles of their parents”
Synonyms: Idea, Belief
22) Pickled
Meaning: Preserved in vinegar or brine.
Example: “Pickled onions”
23) Idolatrous
Meaning: Relating to or practising idolatry; idol-worshipping.
Example: “Idolatrous religions”
Synonyms: Pagan, Idol-worshipping
Antonyms: Vilifying
24) Reign
Meaning: The period during which someone or something is predominant or pre-eminent.
Example: “She was hoping for a long reign as world champion”
Synonyms: Incumbency, Tenancy
25) Dreads
Meaning: Anticipate with great apprehension or fear.
Example: “Jane was dreading the party”
Synonyms: Fear, Be afraid of
Antonyms: Look forward to
