A work on international political praxis during my journalism diploma days ...

1. Exposing Identity Politics
Identity politics spells out various meanings. This convenience is used by different
movements. It communicates something surreal yet ubiquitous in a society. It is used
as a wrapper for many movements from its inception. Some treat it as a counter
current for class politics; where as some others use it against nationalist politics.
There are some others who consider it as a prelude to the class politics. Beneath this
polymorphism and ambiguity there lay vexed questions on the terrains of identity
politics.
In the works of Michael Keith and Steven Pile [Politics and Spaces of identity],
modernist identity politics have created a sort of essentialism that rests on the
exclusivity of certain norms. They allege that this sort of exclusivity and selectivity of
modernist identity politics have made it very divisive. This was not congenial for
working toward a multiple, pluralized yet still radical conceptualization of agency and
identity.
We can see an array of works on the national identity discourses. It may tempt us to
think that identity politics have superseded the national polity. Simon Bekker defines
Identity politics as the search of reconciliation between nation building and demands
by different citizens for recognition of communal identity. He goes on to say that
identity politics has emerged as a primary challenge in many nation states. He accuses
the national tendencies to achieve homogeneity as the primary reason for the unrest
and ethnic conflicts. This conveniently ignores the external interventions that stir
ethnic unrest.
Moreover, homogeneity is an apparent ideology resting on the ethos of cultural
nationalism. In that sense, the attempt for a cultural homogeneity itself is an identity
politics. Rashtriya Swyayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which preaches a ‘Hindutva India’ is
one instant example for this. They are the ones who raise voice for uniform civil code
and hegemony of Hinutva ideology.
Thus any attempt to unify the nation based on culture or religion or language devoid
of considerations of productive forces and the social relations will become identity
politics in reality. Stanford Encyclopaedia highlights that identity politics strive to
achieve a political freedom for a specific constituency of marginalized people. But
this fails to explain the causes of marginalization. The awareness that only a particular
constituency of people is marginalized is because of identity politics. It confines the
perspective to specific identity ignoring the totality in exploitation.
In a market economy, if someone says that only tribes are marginalized, it is a cruelty
to slum dwellers and the millions in the unorganized sector. The process of
marginalization acts as a time warp for all those who labour. Only those outside the
dominant mode of production will be in a perpetual state of marginalization.
Detaching tribes from the dominant mode of production by way of identity politics
will only worsen their plight.
The case of Narmada Bacho Andolan (NBA) is a grim example of identity politics.
The apolitical struggle of environmental politics detached the struggling people from
the political process and its dynamics. Their voices became unheard in the political

2. ecosystem. What the identity politics has achieved in NBA is creating a perpetual
apolitical site. This generates a question: who creates marginalization, NBA or
National government?
Capitalism has evolved to become sustainable in ecology of unequal modes of
production. It no longer standardizes the economy. As capitalism now thrives on the
expanding market economy rather than nation states, it stimulates multiplicity of
choices. It is in this focal point where the pluralism of identity politics and the
market’s desire for multiple choices converge.
The question of identity rests on the epistemological currents initiated by modernism.
The essence of modernism lies in the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticise
itself, not in order to subvert it, but to enrich it more firmly in its area of competence
[Modernist Painting, Clement Greenberg]. Thus it inherits a tendency to criticise
itself. As self-criticism is the organic element of Marxism, it is easy to draw parallel
lines between Modernism and Marxism. The awareness of identity is a dialectical
process between objective knowledge and subjective experience. Identity is a
subjective knowledge of objective experience as well. It is rooted in both of them.
Thus identity is the dialectical product of objectivity and subjectivity. Identity of
identity is nothing but the labour process and life process. Hence identity is both
reflexive and self critical in nature. With the progress of either objective knowledge or
subjective experience identity undergoes transformation in form and content. This
means that identity of a child born to a religious family undergoes change if he studies
in a national institution and it changes further if goes on to work in a multi-national
corporate organization.
Thus if class is the dynamic product of self in labour, identity is the transient process
by which self changes. It is this volatility of identity that becomes the instrument of
imperialism. It captures one by its fractured identity and tempts to organize based on
it. Fractured identity and identity crisis can be rooted in both crisis in knowledge and
crisis in experience. It implies a crisis in the criticism itself. It is this fractured identity
or identity crisis that is being targeted by the architects of identity politics. These
formations of identity groups are not self made always. Imperialism purchases the
identity formations through various funding agencies. And using the power of money,
imperialism exercises hegemony over the identity groups. And using this funded
economy, identity groups will be integrated to the imperial market economy.
Collectively, these preys can be named as social capital.