Opinion Why Indian liberals love Zohran Mamdani but ignore Chandrashekhar Azad

Commentary like this runs the risk of attacking strawmen. But the Indian liberal is a flesh-and-blood person we have seen, maybe even in the mirror. Apart from hailing from socially and economically privileged backgrounds, the liberal expects a certain “classiness” in public life along with taking progressive positions. This means being cosmopolitan, fluent in English, and well-versed in the manners of high culture. They appreciate radicalism in art. They know their Picasso. They lend their voice to global causes, like Gaza — although not so much for Sri Lanka or Sudan. They are secular, but of late, are willing to consider post-secularism too. They know the nuances of woke behavior like any Western liberal.

One can understand why the Indian liberal identifies more with Mamdani than with Azad. Zohran Mamdani is the son of Mahmood Mamdani, a globally renowned academic, and Mira Nair, a globally renowned filmmaker. Azad’s father worked in a government school in UP. Mamdani can speak to perfection the language of Marxism and anti-colonialism. Azad speaks of Ambedkarism. In the liberal’s eyes, Mamdani is a global figure from NY who speaks for global causes, like Gaza. Azad is a Hindi-speaking UP-wala who speaks about the local issue of caste. The Indian liberal would love to live in New York; would they want to visit Nagina? Between the global and the local, the liberal always chooses the global. And then they are perplexed that “India that is Bharat” does not match their ideals.

These are all general points, though. More specifically, liberals are those who are afraid of two major powers in India — the state and the community. They fear a powerful state that would violate their rights as individuals. They also fear powerful communities that can dictate what they should wear, what they should eat, who they should marry etc. But both state and community are political realities in India that cannot be wished away. Individual rights in a country like India mean nothing without an authority to enforce them. In a country of diverse caste, linguistic and religious communities, a strong state alone can protect individuals from potential unlawful abuses in the name of community. If the state starts to favour any particular community, then both state and community act as extensions of each other.

The Hindu Right is a lot more agile and adroit in understanding the power of state and community. In response to decades of allegations that it is elitist, the Hindu Right has actively supported and promoted leaders from marginalised backgrounds. President Droupadi Murmu is the best example. Throughout the country, the RSS and its affiliates work among OBCs, SCs, and STs, expanding their cadre base and bringing diversity to their leadership. In comparison to the Hindu Right, it is the Indian liberal intelligentsia that is a caste-class homogeneous lot.

Azad knows the challenges he faces, but is ready to hit the streets to face them, as are Akhilesh Yadav, Priyank Kharge, Tejashwi Yadav, and Udhayanidhi Stalin. These next-gen leaders have been quite successful in their regions in mobilising the youth. They understand the pulse of the masses and can speak a vocabulary that is relevant to their constituencies. But the vocabulary of these leaders does not have the intellectual attractiveness that the liberals see in Zohran Mamdani. What liberals fail to understand is that if Mamdani has to traverse a hill, Azad and the others have to move mountains.

How heroes are chosen depends on the time, place and the people. Mamdani may be needed in New York for an alternative politics, but India already has those who are putting up a good fight for the spirit of the Republic, for secularism, social welfare and social justice. They may not meet the high intellectual standards of the liberals, but they meet democratic standards. Indian liberals on the other hand are just elites who are distant, perhaps even divorced, from the Indian demos, the people.

The reason Indian liberals are picking irrelevant heroes is mostly because they themselves are irrelevant to Indian politics. Liberalism in India, as elsewhere, foregrounds rational dialogue with seasoned empathy as the way of doing politics — which works for academic conferences, clubs, literary meetings and film festivals. In a democracy where a majority of the people do not have access to these spaces, it is finally the space of the street which matters. Azad knows what to do there, with or without liberals praising him.

The writer is Smuts Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge