Trapped In Cynicism: The Post-Ideological Liberal's Opposition and the Everyday of India's Right Wing

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In India, this form of cynicism has become the liberal class's dominant mode of engagement. Modi's supporters are dismissed as "bhakts," caricatured as irrational, unthinking masses. But this gesture, far from being subversive, is a ritual of withdrawal. The liberal does not wish to engage with the forces that produce majoritarian sentiment; rather, they perform their distance from it. What masquerades as critique is in fact resignation—a refusal to confront the ideological terrain upon which the Right has built its mass appeal.

A recent example of this dynamic unfolded in the controversy surrounding comedian Kunal Kamra's satirical performance targeting Maharashtra's Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. While the liberal class applauded Kamra's irreverence, interpreting it as radical resistance, this moment was less an act of defiance than a celebration of cynicism itself. Drawing from James C. Scott's notion of "weapons of the weak," one could argue that such satire represents subaltern forms of resistance. But to elevate symbolic gestures to the status of political resistance in a context of creeping authoritarianism is itself a form of ideological misrecognition. The joke, in the end, is on us.

While liberalism dissolves into cultural critique and irony, India's Right wing has mastered the art of everyday engagement. It offers its followers not just a politics, but a meaning for their existence. Through daily rituals of hate, pride, and myth-making—whether in the form of anti-Muslim rhetoric, nationalist spectacles, or dreams of Akhand Bharat—the Right constructs a lifeworld for its adherents. It provides purpose in a disenchanted world, a sense of agency in the midst of powerlessness, and a form of solidarity in an era marked by capitalist atomization. For the rich, it becomes a shield against alienation. For the poor, it offers symbolic power in lieu of material empowerment.

Unlike the liberals, who cling to abstractions and moral purity, the Right is tactically nimble. Its ideology is flexible enough to absorb even the language of its adversaries. The recent support for a caste census by the BJP-led government—a demand historically championed by Dalit-Bahujan movements—is illustrative. It marks a moment where the Right strategically mobilizes the grammar of social justice to consolidate power. In contrast, opposition parties have only found traction when they returned to ideologically grounded discourse—drawing upon the emancipatory legacies of Phule, Ambedkar, and Lohia. The lesson is clear: ideological rootedness, not moral grandstanding, builds mass politics.

And yet, liberal dissent continues to judge the powerful and the powerless by the same ethical standards, applying a universalist morality that ignores the structural asymmetry of caste and class. Political correctness becomes a ritualized performance, more concerned with language than with liberation. Ironically, the ruling regime has co-opted even this. A chaiwala is Prime Minister. An autowala was Chief Minister. The RSS flirts with queer inclusion. A Dalit man and an Adivasi woman have occupied the presidency. Representation becomes the mask that legitimizes the machinery of repression. Fascism, it seems, has learned to wear the language of political correctness as camouflage.

In such a world, the task of the oppressed is not merely to expose the falsehoods of the ruling class. The ruling class no longer lies—it manufactures truth. What the oppressed need, instead, is to construct their own Big Truth: not a nostalgic invocation of local wisdom or cultural memory, but a politically organized, collectively articulated Truth rooted in the material lives of the marginalized. Cynicism will not save us. Satire will not liberate us. Moralism will not organize us.

To confront fascism, we must reclaim the terrain of ideology—not as doctrine, but as a praxis. We must imagine political forms that are willing to speak in the language of power, and act with the courage of conviction. Only then can the working castes and classes move beyond critique and toward transformation. Until then, we remain trapped—not just in oppression, but in the illusion of resistance.

Trapped In Cynicism: The Post-Ideological Liberal’s Opposition and the Everyday of India’s Right Wing

Dr. Rahul Sonpimple

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