By Vinay V. Viswanathan, O.P. Jindal Global (Institution of Eminence Deemed To Be University)
DRAFT
ABSTRACT
“Demoralisation, Destabilisation, Crisis, Normalisation”—this is the soviet model of ideological subversion as presented by KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov in his interview with G. Edward Griffin, ironically in the year 1984. It’s a widely believed conspiracy theory in various circles of discourse that this interview is of a prophetic nature, signalling the coming of a dystopian future of communist supremacy. Contextualising the discourse into the framework of an Indian perspective, this paper aims to push the argument that the type of subversion laid out within the interview is not just ineffective, but nearly impossible. Owing to a variety of factors, the subversion of Indian culture across the epochs of history has been a task of insurmountable nature, even to the most influential social waves which have washed across the globe. While parallels can be drawn between the modern atmosphere of online discourse and the social trials of Soviet Russia, giving some credence to the claim of subversion at play on a syllogistic level, the walls erected by millennia of social stratification and organisation cause this type of subversion to fall woefully short of culturally transforming the Republic of India in any substantial fashion not already integral to the land’s customs and values enshrined within its Constitution.
Keywords: Ideology, Subversion, Caste, Culture, Counter-narrative.
Subverting the Strata
The year is 2016, and when the year is at its end, large swathes of people across the Western Hemisphere act like the world itself is at its end. Donald J. Trump wins the American Presidential Election and becomes the forty-fifth President of the United States of America. Distraught progressives fall to their knees in despair, screaming at the heavens that have forsaken them. The heavens they did not spare an iota of thought before this Freudian slip. Looking further east, but still very much in the same hemisphere, the United Kingdom leaves the European Union by popular vote, signalling a popular sentiment of rightist isolationist ideology imbibed within the English populace. News Anchors decry the death throes of progress. Setting aside the political opinions of the masses—and make no mistake, in this age, everybody is desperate to have an opinion, consequences be damned—it is an undeniable fact that these two events had effects that rippled across the entire world. Political polarisation was at an all-time high in the aftermath, and populations across the world underwent a disillusionment spell unlike anything in history (Maher, Igou, & van Tilberg, 2018). The state of discourse obviously devolved alongside the upward trend of polarisation, and it all came to a head in August of 2020, where the internet was set ablaze by the release of the official debut trailer of Call of Duty: Cold War. As the seventeenth entry in a long-running game franchise which has out-earned the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Bhat, 2019), it set the internet ablaze in discourse about the featured interview of Yuri Bezmenov, and the subversion of a nation through ideological infiltration of the institutions. With the polarisation reaching a fever pitch in the very same year due to the riots following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Yuri has entered the spotlight once again.
There are parallels which can be drawn between the state of modern discourse, especially online, and the ‘show trials’ undertaken within the USSR during Stalin’s reign. The details can be found in the historical accounts compiled within the book Everyday Stalinism (Fitzpatrick, 1999). The relentless critique manifest in these media trials is reminiscent of an almost dialectical negation of the individual before a group that has asserted itself as the arbiter of public morality, and their reach extends far past the simple aggressive tweet or press statement. When left unchallenged, the effect on free speech in mainstream discourse cannot be called anything other than chilling. High profile and upper class members of society are dragged as Nazis simply for an expression of an alternative perspective (Moses, 2021), jobs are lost even by the laymen (Court, 2022), and in all such cases, there is no legitimate forum of defence which can be called a fair hearing of the accused.
While the West’s political atmosphere continues to evolve, Bezmenov’s ideological subversion is not applicable to the social structure of India. This is due to the stratification inherently enforced by the caste system, which has been in place for nearly the entirety of the civilisation’s inscribed history. Nicholas Dirks (2001) has gone into great detail regarding the nature of this stratification; the deep-seated categorical organisation of individuals into sections of society with defined roles arranged within a grander hierarchy. The layers to this hierarchy carry a depth and compel all within the society to conform to a non-malleable social structure imposed upon every individual physically present within the borders of the landmass. The Malabar Rites are a prime example elaborated upon in the book, wherein the populace could be converted into Christians while still observing the hierarchical strata of caste.
The moment the Vatican outlawed this form of conversion on puritan grounds, all the upper caste converts to Christianity were swift to leave the Church behind and return to Hinduism. This meant that only the untouchables, ostracised by the society for not adhering to the caste system, could be converted, and as they were social outcasts with no real influence, their conversion could nary influence the culture of the land to any notable extent. These attempts by missionaries from various nations at the religious and cultural conversion of residents of India have been documented within Dirks’ book, and all of them ended in monumental failure the moment the lines of caste laid down by the higher social order of India were encroached upon. This phenomenon is exactly why the model of subversive warfare will fail. Because it has failed during the subversion of Hindu ideology attempted by the Church in centuries past. The nature of the caste system, therefore, lends itself to an inherently reactionary form of politics; the utter rejection of progress into a different social order is visible even today, where lower caste children are killed for drinking from the taps reserved for upper caste people (Jangid, 2022). The crux of Bezmenov’s warned encroachment upon the boundaries of educational institutions lies in their potency and reach as the political climate of the nation progresses, but when the institutions themselves fail to reach a huge swathe of the Indian people, especially those with power at the grassroots level such as the schools in Rajasthan, subverting them is hardly a tactic worth consideration.
REFERENCES
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Court, A. (2022, July 1). Midwest transplant slams NYC bodegas, Twitter mob gets him fired. New York Post. Retrieved September 17, 2022, from https://nypost.com/2022/07/01/midwest-bro-slams-nyc-bodegas-twitter-mob-gets[1]him-fired/
Dirks, N. B. (2001). Castes of the Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Fitzpatrick, S. (1999). Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jangid, K. (2022, August 25). The Death of Inder Meghwal: While there are doubts over how the boy died, it is a fact that untouchability is practised in the villages of Rajasthan. The Hindu, p. 7.
Maher, P. J., Igou, E. R., & van Tilberg, W. A. (2018). Brexit, Trump, and the Polarizing Effect of Disillusionment. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9(2), 205-213.
Moses, T. (2021, February 11). Gina Carano fired from The Mandalorian after ‘abhorrent’ social media posts. The Guardian. Retrieved September 17, 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/feb/11/gina-carano-fired-from-the[1]mandalorian-after-abhorrent-social-media-posts
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