By Aariz Imam
Finished watching Peaky Blinders season 6 and I had a very startling revelation. The plotline from season 5 had veered towards the British and European politics of 1930s after the protagonist became an MP in the House of Commons. The period is shown as a churning phase where fascism is on the rise in Europe.
From the conversations and the plotline one gets an idea that on the ideological front the opposite of fascism is socialism and not secularism. Nowhere one gets to hear the word secularism which I realised as an afterthought was very strange given the word secularism has its roots in Britain or probably Europe (so far as popular memory goes, I can’t tell).
Back in India these days since it’s very difficult to engage in anything without a consideration for the contemporary politics, I was compelled to think that why this fundamental distinction between the two prominent ideologies is not being underlined today in India when it’s all the more needed given fascist ideology developing on a similar scale.
Brooding further when one scans the leaders from the current lot one can hardly imagine a socialist face beyond Lalu Prasad Yadav, Nitish Kumar and Mulayam Singh Yadav who were born out of socialist movements.
Of the three Mulayam Singh has hanged up his boots while Lalu has been practically left incapacitated owing to his failing health and legal tangles. This leaves only Nitish Kumar who is still active in politics and whose claim to rise has been socialism.
Now since Nitish Kumar has been in alliance with the fascist party for now around quarter century it presents a very unique case. A man who was born from a socialist movement continuing to be bedfellows with fascists for quarter century has never happened in the world.
With this unholy alliance Nitish Kumar has not just abdicated the very fundamentals of socialism but has etched his name in the most unique way as the saviour of fascism which even the most orthodox fascist followers would feel tough to denounce.
That one of the most prominent socialist contemporaries not just oversaw, but in a sense enabled and emboldened it’s rise would be a topic of global research interest when the rise of fascism in 21st century India will be studied. And like the Peaky Blinder Thomas Shelby O.B.E, despite the veneer of secularism, that would be the legacy that Nitish Kumar would leave.