Decade Of Liberal Bondage

The bitter secular-communal polarisation of the Ayodhya movement has, fortunately, yielded way to more pragmatic responses. Whereas a decade ago it was not unusual to encounter someone who threatened to migrate if the BJP came to power, honour is satisfied if you say you like Vajpayee but loathe Narendra Modi. After his ‘secular’ experiments, even L.K. Advani has joined the kosher list.

In its 10 years, Outlook has never made any pretence of upholding ‘objective’ journalism. Its editor has made no secret of being a paid-up member of the pseudo-secularist establishment. The magazine’s denunciation of Modi was so single-minded that it misread the mood of Gujarat at the ’02 assembly polls. Yet, Outlook for me is obligatory reading, not because I agree with the ‘spin’, but because its out-and-out bias is delightfully transparent. Outlook is a little more than the impish quirkiness of Vinod Mehta; it epitomises a mindset which I find utterly reprehensible but without which life would be a little less challenging. If it didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it.

In terms of positioning, Outlook has established its distinctiveness. Like The Guardian, which I once read avidly but now find loathesome, Outlook epitomises the false progressive humbug of India’s liberal intelligentsia. During the seven years I spent in India Today, the positioning of Outlook was, quite naturally, frequently discussed. I always maintained that in the battle for the weekly magazine space, Outlook would never get the upper hand as long as India Today steadfastly focused on those who had a stake in India. In practice, this meant articulating the interests and worldview of those who stood for social stability, low taxes, resurgent patriotism, ethical politics and a zero tolerance of terrorism. This was the obverse of what I feel Outlook epitomises—liberal angst, condescending secularism, ngo activism and a belief that terrorists are misguided souls and jehadis not inherently evil. For Outlook, Pokhran-II demanded the aesthetic dissidence of Arundhati Roy and the Kargil war spelt a campaign of nit-picking over defence preparedness.

It’s a different matter that India Today has moved on to embracing lifestyle. Outlook remains wedded to the infuriating certitudes of the liberal fringe. It has still not abandoned its celebration of the moderate Muslim, the self-effacing Hindu and the empowered Dalit.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Outlook. It’s a permanent reminder of what I am not and, perhaps, what I used to be. Outlook is a nostalgia trio for a 50-year-old lapsed liberal who can still preface all references to the ogre of Gujarat with the words "my friend". Its context may be Indian, but it epitomises the ethos of another age—when Bob Dylan warned of the Hard Rain and Mick Jagger celebrated the Street Fighting Man.

The tradition of public discourse in India is astonishingly feeble. Indians may be naturally argumentative but they hate to be contradicted. Irony, sarcasm and understatement, the three pillars of the English language, are more often than not lost intransmission. Above all, we lack the ability to laugh at ourselves. In this environment, Outlook has kept alive, albeit for the wrong causes, a tradition of irreverence. A magazine aimed at those who notionally love their chateaubriand, its list of holy cows is naturally small. Its unpredictability is delicious, even if its targets are horribly misplaced. I can’t think of too many Indian publications that would celebrate 10 years of faulty living by publishing the ‘other’. Perhaps some liberals are better.

(The author is a former managing editor of India Today.)