Patralekha Chatterjee | Politics of nostalgia hides the problems of the day
Deccan ChronicleImagine that your car has a flat tyre. India’s first Prime Minister, who died in 1964 and was the pet peeve of the BJP, is no longer being blamed for every conceivable problem in the country. The top one per cent of India’s population earned more than one-fifth of the country’s total national income in 2021, according to the recently-released World Inequality Report. As Hans Georg-Betz, a leading expert on populism and the radical right in affluent liberal democracies, argued in a May 2021 essay: “The evocation of a glorious past is a great way to make people feel good about themselves at a time when there is little to be cheerful about.” Donald Trump is a prominent case in point. Nostalgia could be ignored if it was simply a mild craving for the “good old days”, going back to decades or centuries as in India’s case.
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Patralekha Chatterjee | Look ahead, not at past: Anger, rage hurts India
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