At the threshold of 2025

Last year, when Hamas attacked Israel many herald it, almost all TV talk shows in our neighborhood, a moment of arrival for Palestine. At the close of the year, it is a huge catastrophe for humanity, loss of lives, blood and destruction. The global political landscape is filled with vulnerabilities and uncertainties, more than ever. Trump’s triumph is also read as a ray of hope for peace and stability. For, he has won against the calculations of the American establishment. The economic distress worldwide with technological divide has created a new hierarchical system. It is being feared a global phenomenon, ‘new caste system’, hierarchical in nature. Those who have access to latest technologies with sufficient flow of money shall survive anywhere, irrespective of the established nature of stratification.

The world is now in smart sites with smart technologies and smart houses with data store of health runners and mobility directives. The advanced countries have more such pockets, where as the rest of world despite a huge chunk of population live with little significance. With uncontrollable boundaries, there would be increased surveillance, more on migrants and with renewal rise of cult-cultural populism. That would defy civil social movements, instead, would generate political strife on identity lines to make civil politics skeptic. It would be a shift from privacy and personal choice to new social, economic and cultural choices based on digital data world with cynicism and trust deficit. The intelligence agencies would have more counter international shadowing.

The rapid transformation of technology with AI becoming a reality has gone ahead of human rational chase. The global transformation has occurred in virtual sphere so intensely that indiscernible is to be believed. Science and faith, both are politically engaged. It has given rise to cult politics, where the powerful individual is out from the rest how so much he or she is a product of the rational institution. It has made youth radicalized and repulsive to feel concerned for social making. The secular parties and ideologies are at defensive. What is happening is that the structures are colliding.

Once private, religion has become public and politically accepted. This is where cult politics becomes distinct to party politics, a post truth. Human Rights stand is contested and reconciliation is presumed weakness. Crushing the opposition, how so ever legitimate, is justified sagacious assertion, fetching ranking in discourse media.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979, which resulted in a major realignment of Middle Eastern politics. Its fissures with the revolution in electronic technology and social media boom spread out in fractured movements, countering one another in a multicultural global world. Its counter movement within the region was socially engineered that too went across the borders. The western world could not save itself once it went out of control, the taste of asymmetrical   extremism. Its manifestation was September 11 attacks in US.

This led to the war against regimes. Arab Spring apparently advocated as the hailing movement for bringing down decades old dictatorships, proved germinating seeds for the ruin of Middle East.  Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria all were plunged into civil wars. Democracy as it turned out, unfolded an arena, where Turkish Muslims, Christian religious Right in America and Hindu nationalists in India could express freely and would compete for power.  The electronic networks and digital world transcend the boundaries in moments to spread the religiously inspired messages and opinions with a sense of competing. Primordial history has at least plank for conversation to untie the current vulnerabilities. Technology clubs faith to swim together in the virtual world, where power elites little think about humankind. Post-Modernity and religious historicity have blended to generate political consciousness of identity politics, which seems rational to talk about.

This has political ramifications in an economically and technologically divided world.  Hardly did any newspaper or even state apparatus predict such a radical change in Middle East and in our next-door neighborhood, Bangladesh.  West Asia is fragmented, its pocket countries have emerged business locales and transit staying.  Arab, Iran and Turkey, all positioned to its individual power elite interests. The European countries have lost their vigor, its common glue; NATO is day and night ridiculed by U.S, for its archaic   rationale. Russia is regaining its place and China is set to take new turn.

The close of 2024 has brought to the threshold, where its ruinous landscape is in search for new sites. South Asia is in waiting list after Iran’s apprehensions. Israel has come to a position to dictate to new Middle Eastern order of its choice. Taliban once a strategic asset for Pakistan has become liability; Pakistan jets have bombarded four locations of TTP inside Afghanistan. Pakistan is far from its political stability amidst its slow economic recovery.

This has lessons for us as well. The political elites should not take India’s stability for granted. Its strength despite hideous noises is its pluralism and blended traditions of mutual intergroup dependency. RSS Chief, Mohan Bhagwat’s statement of December 19, 2024 is a ray of hope to give direction to the ruling elite how digging primordiaism is self defeating. Interfaith accommodation and its vibrant pluralism is the unique strength of Indian society. The National Movement with this capital could give course to the early leadership for sustained democratic journeying of the nation. India perhaps is the only country which has flourishing parliamentary democracy among all post colonial independent countries, imagine! It has to be valued. The present cannot be taken without context.

That context is to be understood with introspection. India is diverse, plural and social cultural varieties are blended in the civilization cord. Dialogue and reconciliation have space in these pluralities, which has provided moral plank for give and take, culturally and socially accepted. Accepting institutional ruling elite by the opposition and respecting the opposition is the essence of democracy. Crushing it generates fascism, which in the long run nourishes the seeds of civil strife. We witness it around us in our neighborhoods. Hurting, domestic violence, increased use of drugs, mental stresses with rapid changes affects poor and vulnerable most. Give poor and vulnerable hope to live with dignity. Trusteeship with civil institutions needs to be strengthened.  That is the message of 2024.

Prof Ashok Kaul, Retired Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Banaras Hindu University