By denying the 15th August 1947 as the independence day of our country, the RSS chief has broken the ‘We’ of our country. He has put our nation under erasure. Hence, we have the challenge to denegate his negation. Maybe Jacques Derrida might offer us ways to understand and respond to it.
Denegation is not Hegelian anti-thesis. It is not simply by opposing the ideological moorings of the RSS-BJP that one can arrive at statis or higher synthesis that will embrace all Indians. Hegel’s Aufhebung will only multiply the divisive quotient of the ideological poles that conflict in our country.
The view of Mohan Bhagwat definitely fragments the ‘ we’ of our country yet we have to admit that it has a place within the very idea of India. Hence, the ideological conflict opened by the view of RSS chief cannot be cancelled by the dialectical mediation.
One might see within the play of these clashing ideologies field of differance of Derrida and as such, the view expressed RSS chief as well its rebuttal by Rahul Gandhi are both different and are delayed in reaching the mark of fullness of meaning and existence. Both views belong together within the immanence of the idea of India. They both exist in hyphenated condition in the immanence of the idea of India.
This means we have the challenge to abandon our logocentric thinking of India and take up a position of thinking India from the process of becoming. We, therefore, have to accept the challenge to think , India in the making and this making involves the clashing ideologies at play that are displayed in the view expressed by the RSS chief.
In fact, RSS carries the very idea of India that it rejects . It is by rejecting that idea of India , it lives it own view. The other India rejected by RSS still therefore, lingers within RSS. The other India has to be present in order to reject the same. What RSS does is interrogates the ability and legitimacy of the self-presence of other India
The view expressed by RSS wants us to think India within the either/ or structure of thinking. We have the challenge to abandon the either/ or mode of thinking. By rejecting it, we reject its dialectical trap and are enabled to deconstruct the divisive position of RSS-BJP combine. Otherwise, we are trapped withing the dialecticism of the oppositional logic of the position that RSS embodies.
Abandoning the dialectical logic, we are enabled to dislocate the hierarchies flowing from the ideological trap set up by the RSS-BJP combine. Hence, by refusing to binarize the RSS view , we are enabled to denegate it negative effects. It then becomes simply one of the voices within the polyphonic voices that forms India.
This way of making space for the views of RSS can indeed take out the conflictual sting from them. This new spacing of opposing views deconflictualize them and set them up under erasure. Putting something under erasure is spacing it into a vanishing point that is in an already and not yet condition. When the poisonous views of the RSS-BJP combine are kept under erasure, their biting teeth or fangs are broken. Hence, their view becomes toothless and pushed into all but worthless zone.
Deconflictualization of opposing views keeps everything in the archi-originary ‘Yes’ of India that informs the ‘ We’ of our country. By locating the corrosive vision of RSS-BJP combine within the this archi-originary ‘Yes’ of India, we place it within the plural voices that go to make the ‘Yes’ of our country.
It is in this Yessing that India becomes what it is. It is this Yessing that occurs within the plural Yes of Indians that the No’s and singularizing exclusionary hate-ridden views of RSS and BJP are obliterated. By spacing the views of RSS-BJP within the archi-originary ‘Yes’ of our country , we can disable the narrow exclusive politics of Hindutva
Living our Yes within the plural Yessing of Indians, we can put aside the entire moral-machinery of guilt-responsibility and debt-sacrifice mechanism of Hindutva and open moral floodgates based on generosity and responsibility. Moral machinery of guilt-responsibility and depth- sacrifice set up the calculus of loss and recovery and makes us think that we become winners by making someone loose. This is perhaps what lies beneath the hate politics of BJP and RSS.
Instead of loss-recovery calculi , the floodgates of generosity and responsibility can lead to affirmation and validation of every Indian and hold everyone in the embrace of the ‘Yes’ of India. The ‘Yes’ of India remains in its dynamic ‘Yessing’ makes space for everything Indian. This ‘ Yessing’ is not based on fear nor on calculi of a loss of golden past. Nor it is based on guilt induced by sense of debt to be paid to past. It just affirms the present and learns from the past as it anticipates a future unfolding of a harmonious and a happy ‘Yessing’ of our country.
The strategies of denegation are indeed best suited for being Indians today and can affirmatively deconstruct anti-India visions that break the ‘ We’ of our country. Denagation clearly resonated with the non-dual visions of the Buddhism and Advaitic tradition in our country. Denegation can indeed lead us to authentic praxis of being Indians. Such a praxis will remain in tune with the civilizational ethos of our country.
