Which of us has not lost friends because of a difference in political ideology? Which of us has not known people who claim to be politically neutral, yet endorse an ideology of hate? Which of us hasn’t been shocked to find that people we thought we knew well believe the propaganda that is fed to them? Which of us doesn’t know otherwise intelligent people who parrot a distorted version of facts and who when you try to reason with them accuse you of being brainwashed by your political inclination.
If you are one of those people, Rahul Bhatia’s “The Identity Project: The Unmaking of a Democracy” is written for you.
The book starts and ends with how the politics of exclusion is projected as an inclusive and compassionate one. The book starts with describing the anti-CAA NRC Protests and the subsequent Delhi riots, and shows how over time the story that persists in public memory is very different from what people who were active participants remember it as. He shows how by repeating the same sequence of events again and again, it almost became the only truth!
The book would have been extremely powerful and timely, even if the author had left it just this, but he uses that as a springboard to dive into the history of the Hindutva movement- how it began, how it spread and the almost inevitability of it becoming the dominant ideology that it is today. By the end of this section, you would be forgiven for believing that the word “identity” in the title of the book refers to how the identity of the nation was rewritten from that of the secular nation dreamt of by the founding fathers and mothers, to what it has become today.
The author, however, is not down. He then dives into another issue- the Aadhaar project. He traces the project from its genesis to the many twists and turns it took before becoming this behemoth which can now potentially be used to target people in a way few other databases can. This was a project that was virtually thrust down on the nation, and today, far from helping the marginalized, it ends up being used to oppress them in ways that were not possible earlier.
The Identity Project is a book that you want to read in a hurry because you cannot bring yourself to put it down. But it is also a book that keeps you awake at night even weeks after you finish it. After reading this book, you end up relating every new article you read to something or the other that has been discussed in the book.
What, to me, makes the book extra special are the people who at great personal cost chose to stand on what they consider the right side of his street. There is the academician was brought up in a home seeped in the RSS philosophy, but who, after working for the RSS for many years, chose to move away and then write an expose on it. There is the victim of the Delhi riots who filed a legal case, and refuses to withdraw the case despite the pressured put on him to do so- he continues, hoping that someday he will get justice. You feel for these people, you understand what motivates them and you admire the courage that empowers them to do what they do.
The problem with books like this one is that they are mostly read by those who are already convinced. Books like this should ideally be read by those who are sitting on the fence, but they tend to dismiss such books as mere propaganda, while continuing to fall prey to everything they see on social media. This makes it even more imperative for us to read books like this, because it helps you marshal your arguments to counter the false interpretations which are passed off as ‘the truth’.
The book was released internationally under the title, “New India”. One hopes that the India being described is a blimp and not the real India. One does doubt it though.