Mission Civilisatrice Incongruities of meta-narratives

ANUJ MISHRA

Meta-narratives galore in mission civilisatrice, especially from pugnacious populists and lascivious leftists. The person, despite the despises earned from very many detractors, and there are countless, justifiably as well; that appears to be having the last laugh in heavenly kingdom, indeed is Mao. No pun for a purported dialectical materialist –for the Middle Kingdom always considered itself the inheritor of heavenly mandate and Mao was no less of an emperor in essence.

Communist jargons lived up its utility just to the point of propelling Mao to power, when he declared, “Chinese people have stood up”. No condescending inheritance accorded to vaunted legacy socialism, communism or Marxism. A century had lapsed since Communist Manifesto came out in 1848. Mao was shrewd enough to be blasé in 1949.

After all growing Chinese assertiveness today harkens back to Mao’s resurrection of Imperial China, albeit in red cloak –while Marxism is so passé. Even the attempt to maintain communist façade is betrayed by assiduous application of Deng Xiaoping’s resurrection of ancient Chinese parable of irrelevance of colour of cat as long as it caught mice. Chinese have been catching mice with gusto ever since. Farcicality of historical imitation, however, appears eerily horrifying whenever there is talk about repeat feat of Mao’s revolution elsewhere.

Could any sane person still revere the pantheon of bearded and brutal sages of communism, particularly Lenin, and the “dread” Stalin –as Martin Amis detailed in Koba the Dread? Especially after reading the following story published in New York Times on May 7, 2012. In the University of Maryland’s annual clinico-pathological conference on the demise of historical figures, this year the forensic and pathological verdict has been that Lenin died ultimately of Stalin’s poisoning. What the assassin’s bullet couldn’t get, dear comrade’s profound proletarianism got.

The reptilian insurrection had sowed its seeds early on. Need we still harken back to Lenin derailing

constitutional process and rendering the constituent assembly useless before

instigating essentially a coup d’étatthat was

propagandized as “October Revolution”? Or that order to shoot farmers who

couldn’t feed the Red Army as it consolidated the

“revolution” came directly from Lenin? Salvaging this steep farcicality has had

utterly ludicrous and

at times ultimately

buffoonish hagiographic epithets galore like: “People’s”, “Great”, “Dear” or even “Awesome”. Don Quixote would be outshone. With Sancho Panza on

tow, there was even a self-declaration of being an innovative “rightist communist”. Like Schrödinger’s cat an ultimate duality or more aptly duplicity –the ideological vacuity at its extremely degenerative stage.

However, amateurism of mission civilisatrice, especially regarding identity

politics in fragmented society highly destabilizes the state (re)building which is pre-requisite for both

stability and democratization. A successful state-building is premised upon ethnic cohesion, nationally consolidated identity and robust state institutions. Aiding state-building is much more than piece-meal and palliative initiatives on fringe benefits; it requires strategic investment in infrastructure, especially; transportation, power, communication, health and education.

The contretemps in identity inflation is very dangerous as it easily relapses into atavism and revanchism, which is exacerbated greatly by openly advocating

lustration of societal ills through targeted calumniation and defenestration of an entire identity group. Certainly raising the spectre of pre-Second World War Europe’s strum und drang by targeted vilification of Jews by Nazism for narrative of collective victimhood is not the paradigm of social inclusion. Virulent and

insidious racism are generally by-product of Manichean outlook. Multiplex society requires multiplex understandings. Kermit science catechism is not applicable in state-building in complex and diverse societies as exemplified by dissipation of melodramatic KONY 2012.

Going back to enormously influential mission civilisatrice– what it is that it

offers to salvage the imminent descent into chaos?

After all the proselytizing that undergoes with

intensity in the missionary position have those on the receiving end with little independence but relentless banging of “ideas”, “paradigms”, “knowledge” and the very amorphous

“vision”.

It’s amazing how supposedly atheist radicals find fellow travellers in ardently theist missionaries in one of the most unparalleled experiment in “paradigm shift”. But then politics calls for strange bedfellows and radicals are only the recent ordinands graduating from their romantic deism. Would the messiah condone this looming chaos? However, the zealous evangelising itself has much maligned the messiah–à la Monty Python’s piercing caricature of apocryphal messiah in Life of Brian. The westerly wind of reason and science itself appear eclipsed by the “good news”. Lucretius must be turning in his grave.