Whether a characteristic of political defeat, a sub-continental malaise or simply a fallout of the heat wave, lots of people are in denial mode. The BJP. Pakistan. Iran. Going into denial is a cover-up for failure; it’s a form of saving face, sometimes desperate, in the forlorn hope that the clock can be turned back. Governments, political parties, religious ideologues and individuals are all susceptible—how else to confront the harsh truth when reality bites so close to the bone?
The BJP should be getting into stride for its role as the parliamentary opposition. Instead it’s collapsing at the seams, bitterly divided, erupting volcano-like as its deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj remarked. For a party that prided itself on orderliness, inner democracy and efficient deployment of foot soldiers from its allied parivar, the BJP is plagued by resignations, leaked missives, power struggles and ideological torment. Its leaders can’t decide whether Varun Gandhi’s vitriolic attacks against Muslims were good or bad or if LK Advani’s insults against Manmohan Singh cost them the middle-class urban vote.
The BJP is a classic case of a party in psychological denial. It has revealed no plans for internal restructuring and announced no policy agenda of how it intends to take on the UPA coalition. In a hollow echo of the leaders, the party’s publicists burn up reams of newsprint in hair-splitting arguments and accusations that emphasise their inability to come to terms with their reversal of fortune. A good deal of back room and upfront diplomatic manoeuvring has been going on India-Pakistan relations in recent days but the BJP, usually the loudest to speak up, has contributed little. The only thing it has in common with the CPI(M) is that they make bad losers.
That’s because President Asif Ali Zardari is in denial too. He’s uncertain whether the Taliban or India is Pakistan’s greater enemy. If India, then he has no convincing answer for the world as to why Mumbai’s attackers can’t be tracked down and tried; and if the Taliban, it’s his only hope to negotiate renewed flows of anti-terrorism aid from the United States. But like Pakistan’s other rulers he’s in denial that some of the country’s most powerful institutions, such as the ISI and military intelligence, are the source and not the panacea for Pakistan’s potential slide into chaos.
Next door to Pakistan, simmering resentments are rising in Iran. Between one and two million peaceful demonstrators have clogged the streets of the Iranian capital in recent days to protest the election result that put the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in power. As supporters of the liberal candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, they want the election annulled. Many are demanding that the result be annulled. But Iran’s religious supremo Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is in denial. “By Allah’s favour, the presidential election was accurately held, and the current matters should be pursued legally,” he announced this week, ignoring the mass protests while President Ahmadinejad’s security police, the dreaded Basiji, have gone on rampage, flinging hundreds in jail, rounding up journalists, jamming foreign broadcast networks and the Internet. Tehran has been in turmoil—and its troubles won’t go away easily. But its rulers believe they have God’s sanction and are irreplaceable.
Going into denial mode is escapist and delusionary, a form of averting the gaze from immediate horrors and the uncertain future that lies ahead. Dictators, religious despots, plutocrats—more democratic public figures too—are given to bouts of a willing suspension of disbelief. WB Yeats summed up the fear of loss in his famous lines: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”
Going into denial mode is an attempt to defend the indefensible.