Introduction
John William Gardner (1912-2002) was an extraordinary thinker and public servant. After undergrad and graduate studies in psychology at Stanford University where he set a number of swimming records and won many championships, he got his PhD from UC, Berkeley. He then taught briefly at Connecticut College and Mt. Holyoke before serving in the US Marine Corps during World War II. He joined the Carnegie Corp. of New York in 1946, becoming its vice president in 1949 and president in 1955. Though a Republican, he was Secretary, Health, Education and Welfare during 1965-68 and helped implement much of the Great Society agenda of President Lyndon Johnson. He went on to found “Common Cause,” an advocacy group for citizen participation in government and campaign finance reform and served as its Chair from 1970 to 1977. Finally, he was Professor of Public Service at Stanford University from 1989 to 1996.
This blog is a reflection on his thesis about “Unloving Critics, Uncritical Lovers” (UCUL), its extrapolation to the present day not only in the USA but all over the world and in India as well.
Cornell University 1968
In his celebrated commencement address at the Cornell University on June 1, 1968, John Gardner imagined how scholars in the 23rd century may look back on the then state of affairs in the USA and observed:
“… They pointed out that twentieth century institutions were caught in savage crossfire between uncritical lovers and unloving critics. On the one side, those who loved their institutions tended to smother them in an embrace of death, loving their rigidities more than their promise, shielding them from life-giving criticism. On the other side, there arose a breed of critics without love, skilled in demolition but untutored in the arts by which human institutions are nurtured and strengthened and made to flourish. Between the two, the institutions perished.
“The twenty third century scholars understood that where human institutions were concerned, love without criticism brings stagnation, and criticism without love brings destruction. And they emphasized that the swifter the pace of change, the more lovingly men had to care for and criticize their institutions to keep them intact through the turbulent passages.
“In short, men must be discriminating appraisers of their society, knowing coolly and precisely what it is about the society that thwarts or limits them and therefore needs modification. And so must they be discriminating protectors of their institutions, preserving those features that nourish and strengthen them and make them more free. To fit themselves for such tasks, they must be sufficiently serious to study their institutions, sufficiently dedicated to become expert in the art of modifying them.”
Content and Context of the UCUL Thesis
Gardner’s ideas were expounded back in 1968 which was no ordinary year. In May 1968, student riots forced France almost to the brink of civil war. USA faced widespread protests against the Vietnam war forcing Lyndon Johnson out of the Presidential race in March. On 4th April, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, leading to riots all over the country. On 5th June, Robert Kennedy, the frontrunner in the Presidential race was assassinated. Clashes between protesters and police broke out at the Democratic Party Convention in August. In November, Richard Nixon ran on a platform of law and order and patriotism and won against incumbent Vice President and Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey and independent candidate George Wallace, the former Governor of Alabama.
The 23rd Century Vision
However, Gardner was not merely reflecting on the political turmoil in the USA in 1968. He positioned himself in the future and warned that the trends seen then, if left unchecked, would lead to the destruction of institutions. He outlined the antidote to the UCUL phenomenon in the last para of his address quoted above. In the fifty-five years since then, UCUL tendencies have only become stronger and more widespread across the globe.
UC and UL May Not Be Mutually Exclusive
It is interesting to speculate if UC evolved out of UL. In the beginning, when the nation and its institutions were being built, most people may have been Uncritical Lovers (UL). Increased political awareness may then have led to a growing section of Critical Lovers (CL) some of whom may have been Loving Critics (LC). The growing toxicity of politics in subsequent decades may have gradually forced this group to become Unloving Critics (UC). In other words, there may be a UL-CL-LC-UC continuum along which citizens may be constantly shifting position.
Possible Reasons for the Rise of UCUL
The continuum postulated above assumes ‘steady state’ politics. In the last fifty years or more, politics in country after country has tended to become more competitive at best and more intolerant at worst. Since the 1980s, post-World War II consensus on the welfare state came to be challenged by the political right ending finally in neoliberals capturing power. Irrespective of whether the political right or left is in power, the underlying economic philosophy is that of neoliberalism with its deep distrust of the state and its welfare policies and abiding faith in the ability of the private sector alone to deliver prosperity for all. The rise of China in the last forty years forced the acceptance of the inevitability of globalisation and the need for a rules-based new international economic order. This consensus too did not last long. The rise of unemployment, inequality and opposition to immigrants converted an increasingly wider section of the citizens into unloving critics.
Breakdown of economic consensus has had political consequences. The absence of leaders in mainstream parties to articulate coherent policies to address the everyday concerns of the citizen led to a new breed of politicians positioning themselves as unloving critics who alone can reform the system from within after they first capture power and office. Making America Great Again, Brexit and New India are all examples of this process at work.
Polarisation – Cause or Consequence?
The above narrative fails to answer the question whether polarisation is the result of the divide between UC and UL or if polarisation itself came about because of the actions of UC and UL. This brings to the fore the importance of the role of political parties. As governments failed to deliver on their poll promises of reasonable wellbeing for all citizens, political parties began to look for charismatic leaders who could be more persuasive with the voters with even their outlandish promises. This led to the diminution and destruction of reasonable leaders and to the rise and rise of demagogues and delusionals (to coin a new word).
As an UC, once the demagogue is in power, he builds up his base with more and more UL. Issue-based politics degenerates into a contest between opposing personalities. As issues no longer matter, facts, study and analysis become irrelevant. Words such as post-truth, alternate reality are used to describe this new world. From the end of independent free press through the rise of corporate media and the emergence of social media now, both UC and UL are being fomented with ulterior motives.
India in the 23rd Century?
In India, the UC and UL binary has become desh drohis and desh bhakts. Since 2022, following the Prime Minister’s Independence Day address, the ruling party in India is fixated on ‘Amrit Kaal’ (or ‘Elixir Era’ in one rendering) and his vision for a New India that will be a developed country by 2047. It is impossible to challenge predictions over a longer time horizon as there are many imponderables. However, in the hype created, these look seductively feasible. Hence it behoves concerned citizens to examine if the vision is consistent with the trajectory on which India has embarked in the last decade.
It is tempting to follow Gardner and situate ourselves in the 23rd Century and wonder how institutions that have built India and sustained it all these years might look like then. However, it is not clear if they will survive that long. In this scenario, the doubts that arise are will India emerge as a less-flawed Westminster-style democracy or a stunted presidential polity, with the States considerably weakened in terms of bargaining power and status? Will Parliament be a vibrant forum for the exchange of ideas, criticism and oversight or will it be further marginalised? Will multi-party politics survive or one-party rule prevail both by design and default? Will the Supreme Court assert itself and restore public confidence in the ability of the higher judiciary to intervene in time on behalf of ordinary citizens to safeguard their rights and interests? Will the Judiciary allow its own doctrines like the Basic Structure be hollowed out by an aggressive Parliament and Executive? How will institutions like the Election Commission, CAG, CBI be restructured and governed? Will freedom of the media be restored in letter and spirit? Beyond the amendments to the various legal codes already proposed, will there be a complete overhaul of the justice system with a fair and justiciable balance between the security concerns of the nation and the day-to-day survival issues of common folk? Will we be happy to be merely a ‘developed’ country according to some metric or want to be a truly ‘emancipated’ nation liberated from our prejudices based on caste, creed, gender and superstition? Will India have become a significantly less unequal society by design? Will the scourge of everyday corruption disappear or will we continue to hide behind false proxies such as ease-of-doing-business?
To this list of questions can be added other concerns of the country, including whether it will survive as New India or Naya Bharat or fall apart due to the political incompatibility of various regions or deliberate polarisation of society along the lines of (desh) bhakts and drohis. It does not look as though we have the luxury of time on our side.
The Antidote
To end the UC-UL confrontation, Gardner exhorted future citizens to become “discriminating appraisers of their society” and “discriminating protectors of their institutions”. He urged them to be “sufficiently serious to study their institutions” and “sufficiently dedicated to become expert in the art of modifying them.”
Beyond the blame game of electoral politics, Gardner’s sage advice of ‘Modify, not Destroy’ is what we Indians must take to heart. Will the Prime Minister himself lead this ‘Modification’ project and will his own party and the opposition support his effort? Sadly, we cannot be sanguine either about our leaders or their followers.
The Election Commission has just announced the schedule for elections to five State legislatures next month. After that, the general elections to Parliament will be due in May 2024. Ideologically, the ruling party seems to believe that it can continue to win elections and stay in power by appealing to the majoritarian UL (bhakts) and going after the opposition branding them all as UC (drohis). On its part, the opposition, without focused leadership, continues to flounder and fails to make the institutional decimation of recent years a matter of concern to the voters. They have so far been unable to demonstrate that are not the UC they are being painted out to be but can be Loving Critics (LC) and Critical Lovers (CL).
Clearly, the sharp escalation of the confrontation between UC and UL was not anticipated by Gardner. One wonders how he would view the utter dysfunctionality of institutions in the USA where even a single party is so polarised that it cannot agree on a nominee for the Speaker of the House. In UK, UC of the EU regime engineered Brexit from which the country’s economy may never recover fully. The conflict between Hamas and Israel is a tragic example of the UCUL phenomenon playing out in disregard of the historical injustice done to the Palestine people. The Russia-Ukraine war is in a way a consequence of the UCUL tussle over NATO. Examples from other parts of the world abound.
Gardner’s thesis is often reduced to this quote: “Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers”. Gardner had assumed of course that leaders will not themselves foment either polarisation or the ensuing crossfire. As that becomes increasingly the case in India and elsewhere, the leaders are more to be censured than pitied.
An abridged version of this blogpost has been published in the Deccan Herald newspaper today. This is the link to that piece:
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/unloving-critics-uncritical-lovers-2726369
S. Krishna Kumar
14th October, 2023
Devanahalli
Blog # 82
Talk the Walk 