The problem

A friend of mine was listening to me, quarrelling with people about the regime. He said he respected my anger but then he asked me why I quarreled in terms of old categories like right/left, secular/communal. The old dualisms prevent the imagination of a new plurality, the invention of alternatives.

Wickedly, he added, I sounded like a nineties character, dated but desperate to be relevant. He explained that it was not my categories that were irrelevant; it is just that they had become deeply banal. There is little to choose between right and left, Trinamool and CPM. There is nothing enzymatic about them, they create no new dream, posit no fresh metaphor. In fact, he argued that the regime outlasts us because we carry out the battle in terms of old categories.

He referred to the COVID crisis in which we are still immersed and said it was a tragedy in many forms. It revealed our illiteracy about the indigenous, our indifference to the marginality of the migrant; it exposed our distance from the informal economy and revealed our middle class obsession with timetables. But beyond this, there was a tragedy few spoke about or even acknowledged. This was the sheer mediocrity of ideas that haunted the COVID period. Stereotypes and clichés survived in splendour and what we missed was the availability of ideas.

My friend argued that the potency of the regime diminished in and of itself. It is populist, authoritarian, banal. It presents itself as a third rate skit. It has no ideas to offer. In fact, he claimed what haunts one today is the emptiness of Indian democracy. At no time was India so devoid of ideas. India needs to be grounded in different kinds of storytelling, relocated in philosophy and civilization, not pot-boiler spirituality. These ideas need to be lived out differently creating a different sense of anticipation and drama. It is tragic that at this stage the adda, the coffeehouse, the dhaba are declining as a theatre for ideas.

My friend pointed out a mere idea is not enough. It has to be wooed, mapped, embodied, welcomed. Hospitality to an idea is as important as hospitality to a people. An idea requires genealogists tracing its roots and pedigree. An idea needs a coating of gossip, the companionship of debate around it.

This issue of Seminar is an attempt to create that companionship, the warmth of argument and its heat. It is an attempt to begin again the celebration of ideas that India currently lacks. It is an experiment in that hopeful direction.

One has to understand that celebrating ideas demands sensitivity to it as a rule game. It is a rule game that has now acquired a radical seriousness. The old political triangle of liberty, equality, fraternity needs a fourth strand. Liberty has emphasized freedom and individuality and equality has become access but also uniformity, a wish for standardization. Fraternity has become a collective form of uniformity. What one needs is a celebration of difference which says ‘I differ therefore I am.’ Difference creates the mutuality of the other, the basic civics of society. This issue is a search for that plurality of ideas. The invitation to a new generation of writers is obvious. It is also an invitation to enjoy debate, differ and celebrate the adda that India once was. Seminar as a magazine is bit of an adda in print. Enjoy.