Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | Amid global stir, why are Indians so quiet on Gaza?

When the Angry Young Men of British literature -- John Braine, John Wain, Alan Sillitoe, Kingsley Amis and others -- were rampaging in the 1950s and 1960s, the highly successful W. Somerset Maugham remarked cynically that an additional thousand pounds a year would dissolve their anger. Actually, it wasn’t money alone that defused their protest but the opportunities created by the social revolution of the welfare state.

One looks in vain for a similar transformation in India. Young India doesn’t have the money which is mainly in the hands of billionaires who fund political parties through anonymous electoral bonds and snap up major airports.

At the same time, the obsession with caste suggests that a social revolution is almost as remote today as it was when temple entry agitated South Indian reformers. That leaves civil society at the mercy of India’s one great certitude -- an unchanging religious hierarchy that draws millions of voters. Additionally, the Hindutva project, its instrument for long-term social and political control, is useful in marginalising unwanted minorities.

Other concerns have been swept under the carpet. The upsurge sweeping through American university campuses where thousands of pro-Palestine protesters were arrested is a harsh reminder of the sudden silence of the torchbearers of India’s revolution to usher in a brave new world. That’s why it seemed like a flicker of future hope when students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, once notorious as the “red fort”, forced the authorities to cancel an invitation to Eric Garcetti, the American ambassador to India, to talk about US-India ties. “We are protesting against the US support for the genocide in Gaza committed by Israel”, explained the JNU students’ union president, Dhananjay.

It was a pity to miss out on Washington’s exposition of an important relationship, but the US ambassador’s presence would have been another propaganda event in an India that recently added insult to injury by abstaining when the United Nations Human Rights Council urged countries to “cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel.”

Time was when young urban middle class India was in the forefront of every protest movement against injustice. The “city of processions” -- Jawaharlal Nehru’s nickname for Kolkata -- lived up to its reputation with massive rallies chanting “Amar naam, tomar naam, Vietnam, Vietnam” (My name, your name, Vietnam is everyone’s name), as evocative a slogan as John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner!”

Now, it’s not Kolkata alone but India as a whole that seems to have abandoned idealism for avarice. A profusion of start-ups and dot-com millionaires herald the revival of the grab-as-grab-can 19th century free market under the label of “neo-liberalism”. Elderly British friends, veterans of the old Labour movement, ask me in wonder whatever happened to the liberal socialism they associated with Jawaharlal Nehru, Jayaprakash Narayan and V.K. Krishna Menon. They find the NDA’s market economics as un-Indian as “Howdy! Modi!” spectaculars.

Showmanship isn’t Indian. Neither is the pretence that “Vande Bharat” is more than just a marketing gimmick to repackage old merchandise.

“There aren’t any good, brave causes left”, Jimmy, the embittered anti-hero of Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, lamented. Russia’s ravaging of Ukraine has not touched Indian hearts and souls like the Vietnam war did. One reason could be that even those who surreptitiously yearn for an American “green card” dare not publicly champion the US military-industrial machine. Another is that race and colour being the ultimate realities, Indians object more strongly to Europeans brutalising an Asian nation and killing 882,000 Vietnamese. Russians and Ukrainians are indistinguishable from each other to most Indians.

Indian men are not afraid to die so that wives and children at home can survive. More than 147,000 of the casualties in the two world wars (excluding the three million killed in the 1943 Bengal Famine) were Indian. Now, the NDA government is pushing jobless young Indians into the trenches of West Asia through a pact with Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Of course they are not forced to go. But 1.3 crore Indians would not have migrated if home had not been so bleak. About a lakh give up their Indian citizenship every year because of inadequate employment opportunities in India.

A few might aspire to be Rishi Sunak or Sundar Pichai. Most sell their assets and raise funds to join the deadly queues trying to smuggle into the United States or drown in the Mediterranean seeking a foothold in Europe. Those who can do neither must shut their eyes to the surrounding misery, stuff their ears to cries for food, and block their consciences to appeals for help. Pressures will intensify with America’s economic slowdown, China’s reduced consumption and the construction crisis in Canada.

Meanwhile, Israel has virtually obliterated the Gaza Strip and continues to massively destroy life, property and the supporting economy. Not content with the havoc already wrought, Mr Netanyahu vows to invade Rafah to massacre more Palestinian men, women and children and further devastate the civic infrastructure even if Hamas sues for peace. The stark truth is that the Cairo and Qatari middlemen who are trying to bring about a ceasefire need not bother. Needing a ceaseless war against the Palestinians for his own political survival, Mr Netanyahu will not desist. President Joe Biden has again promised that the US will support him all the way.

It's shaming that while London, Berlin and Paris seethed with anger, Delhi and Kolkata remained placid. Of course, it can be argued that India’s necessary relationship with the US should not be sacrificed at the altar of West Asian wars. Israel’s side of the quarrel also deserves a hearing, especially after Hamas’s abominable conduct on October 7. The world’s most populous country, which never tires of repeating that it will soon boast the world’s third largest economy, may be said to have a certain responsibility to exercise such weight as it has for the benefit of the global community. But New Delhi’s ambition seems to be prestige more than action -- joining the high table of the United Nations rather than exercising its influence to benefit mankind.

That is power politics, the game for which the land of the Buddha and the Mahatma supposedly had no appetite. Perhaps Maugham was right after all, not just about literature’s Angry Young Men but Angry Old Nations as well. The JNU’s is the small voice of morality amidst so many serving their own ends.