Power makes us provincial. We become insensitive to the pain of the suffering other. Power, thus, not just provincializes the powerful, it also provincializes those on whom power is exercised. But those who are on the underside of boot of power refuse to remain on the underside of history. People who are losers of history are willing to wait for the coming of their time. Pankaj Mishra sees these people as alienated man of promise. These people are alienated from the promise of modernity and progress. The enlightenment concept of right bearing individuals quite free from the control of the crown and the church, having privacy of life and enjoy making of private wealth has come to haunt these people who feel being left out by modernity. This is why Pankaj Mishra invites us to perceive the complexities of our condition. We cannot simply take our condition as clash of civilization as described by Samuel Huntington. Huntington thesis is no longer tenable. Thesis of Francis Fukuyama who declared the end of history with the globalization of a democratic capital driven nation state became unacceptable as democracy itself became eroded with the rise of right-wing populisms.
Mishra points that it is no so much the religion that is the cause of our ills in the present. There is a definite history of the present. Our present is an age of anger and it has a past. The anger that we are seeing is the anger of the people who were left out of modernity. Mishra tells us that we are mistaken to see modernity as progress alone. There is a dark side to modernity. Walter Mignolo, a semiotician from Argentina named that dark side as coloniality. Mishra does not name it but lays is as the cause of the condition of anger that is manifested in our times. His book, the Age of Anger: A History of the Present demonstrates that the anger that is globally rising in the form of nationalism, populism and weakening of democracy is caused modernity itself.
We thought that modernity brought us freedom and prosperity and its work is still not complete. Unfortunately, our political leaders instead of representing us have failed us as they began to promote only the business interest through their office. Democratic leaders become business brokers and failed as legislators. This is why the liberal polity lost it to the people who felt that the liberals do not represent their interest. This discontent of the people was craftily used by the politics on the right. This is why we saw Trump like figures wining across the globe. England saw Brexit and India saw the rise of Modi.
We never really bothered about the losers of history. History to us was about the winners. The losers were forgotten and left behind. But there are no real losers. Humans want to fight their way out. They wait for the right time. It appears that the right time has arrived for the losers of modernity and hence we can feel the anger of these people across the globe. We are living in an age of anger. The people who got little or nothing of the pie of modernity are those who are riding this wave of anger. They are angry with our unjust and unequal system. They are angry with our commercial society, the global market economy, the nation state and utilitarian rationality. The losers of history are now making history. We will now have the history of the losers.
Losers of history are taking power all over the world. It is difficult to qualify them as right-wing. They do have the traits of the left wing too. Paradoxically, market capitalism has not received a blow but appears to live happily with this losers of history who enjoy power for now . But it is clear that market oriented democracy has begun to falter. Democracy everywhere is in crises and continues to socially, economically and politically disenfranchise some people. These new developments are also repeating the same fault of modernity. This why Mishra calls these developments as developments of Modernity.
And as such, they also produce new losers of history.
The new disenfranchised people are the new losers of history. Hence, the dialectic of anger will move to a new cycle. It is only a matter of time. The victims of populisms like the minorities in India will manifest their anger when their time will come. Maybe they are waiting for their time. Maybe the greatest demographic fears of the right-wing in India, become true one day. The spiral of anger is brewing and it will certainly show its disdain in time.
How are we to break this spiral of anger? If we keep creating the losers of history and remain in the oblivion about their plight, we are definitely going to give power to the Hegelian dialectics that will produce a future of anger. Therefore, it is important that we become sensitive to the losers of history and work to build new solidarities of peace. This is not easy because we have to have the courage to rise above the discourse of fear propagated by the rulers in the present. We have to resist the global turn to authoritarianism and promote non-dominating and dialogical leadership. Otherwise, thinking with the thread of ideas and their logic proposed by Mishra, we are in for a brutal future that will become night mare for humanity.
Think of India turning into an Islamic country. If Mishra is right, the politics of the present will produce a future that we do not desire. This future is in our hands. Hate politics cannot and will not take us anywhere. To save India and to safe Hinduism, Hindutva may have to die. We need to calm down our anger and open our minds and hearts to the plural ethos of society. Otherwise, nothing can stop us from bringing upon us the very thing that Hindutvadins are trying to avoid. Our islamophobia has to be addressed and new peace solidarities have to be forged and above all we have stop creating loser of history otherwise we will certainly see the history of the losers turning the clock on our country.
