The Rohingya are a community of Muslims concentrated in the northern parts of Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine. Rohingyas may also be Hindu. There have been Muslims in Rakhine for a thousand years but their numbers were substantially increased by migration from British India, particularly Bengal, during colonial rule. Rakhine was originally a Hindu/Buddhist Kingdom with an Indo-Aryan language similar to Bengali. The Burmese only began to assert themselves there a thousand years ago. Before the recent forced exodus to Bangladesh, the Rohingya population in Myanmar was estimated at a little over a million, but that figure is contested. Naturally! Burma has been getting rid of Indic origin people- whether Hindu or Christian or Muslim for many decades now. The word Rohingya gained salience so as to create a different type of entitlement for these people who speak an Indic language and who wanted to accede to Pakistan at the time of Independence from Britain. The last census did not count them because the government did not wish to recognize Rohingya as a legitimate identity. Instead, they called them Bengalis so as to make clear that their fate would be similar to that of other Indian origin people. Including Rohingya refugees in nearby Bangladesh who fled during “clearances” conducted by Myanmar’s military rulers in 1978, the early 1990s, and 2012, their total number is likely larger. D'uh!
There are other Muslim communities in Rakhine and Myanmar, but they are culturally and ethnically different from the Rohingya, who have been singled out for violent discrimination. Because they wanted to accede to Pakistan- of which Bangladesh is the successor state. Their distinct dialect and ethnic “otherness,” combined with their concentration in northern Rakhine, have made them seem to Myanmar’s rulers unassimilable and a threat to the integrity of this avowedly Buddhist state. They speak an Indo-Aryan language. They genuinely are ethnically and linguistically different and don't want to be part of Burma. Furthermore, the Rohingyas have acquired a reputation for Islamic militancy because of their diaspora community in Saudi Arabia.
In late August 2017, Rohingya militants attacked police stations in northern Rakhine using knives and homemade bombs. So as to drive out the Burmese Buddhist minority and accede to Bangladesh. Twelve members of the security forces were killed. The Myanmar military retaliated by burning Rohingya villages, killing and raping civilians, and forcing more than half a million Rohingyas to flee to Bangladesh. So as to drive out the majority which threatened the Burmese minority and, longer term, not have to cede territory to Bangladesh.
The scale of this ethnic cleansing represents the most extreme triumph of majoritarian politics in South Asia. The Bengali Muslim majority failed to drive out the Buddhist minority in a particular area but, instead, was chased out by the Buddhist army of Burma. The scale of this ethnic cleansing was tiny compared to the ethnic cleansing that occurred during and after the partition of India or during the Bangladesh war. More than 15 million Hindus have been expelled at one time or another from Bangladesh. Buddhists in the Chittagong hills- linguistically and ethnically related to populations in Myanmar- have been driven out or reduced to a minority in Bangladesh.
The reason the Rohingya's suffering pales in comparison with what has happened in Muslim Bangladesh is because Burma, historically, has been much less densely populated.
The persecution of the Rohingya has made Myanmar something of an inspiration to majoritarian parties in neighboring states. Rubbish! Burma is a shithole. It does not inspire anyone. The Indian government, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, announced in mid-August that the 40,000 Rohingyas in India (refugees from an earlier exodus) would be deported because they were illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are deported by every country. Bangladesh has continually persecuted and expelled Hindus. They aren't keen on keeping the Rohingyas because they have been radicalised by the Saudis who, at one time, granted them refugee status before changing their minds and booting them out. Even in early September, after the ferocity of the Myanmar army’s “clearances” was known and the extent of the exodus became apparent, no one in Narendra Modi’s administration voiced even the pro forma expressions of concern by which governments often acknowledge widespread human suffering. India, quite correctly, signalled that it didn't want and wouldn't take Rohingyas. Had Modi done a Merkel and said 'Come one, come all', he'd have had to do a U turn because the Rohingyas aren't going to find decent livelihoods in over-populated India. Furthermore, there is even less tolerance of Wahhabi inspired 'militancy' in a Hindu country than in Islamic Bangladesh.
Majoritarianism—the claim that a nation’s political destiny should be determined by its religious or ethnic majority—is as old as the nation-state in South Asia; it was decolonization’s original sin. Sheer nonsense. This claim predated the nation-state. It was the basis of the Freedom Struggle. Why? The British were a minority in India but lived in nice houses and had the best jobs. So the majority grabbed power and kicked them out. Postcolonial nations in South Asia began with varying degrees of commitment to the ideal of a pluralistic, broadly secular state, but after a decade or so of independence they were either taken over by military rulers or transformed into religious states by majoritarian politicians. Every single 'post colonial nation in South Asia' began with zero degree of commitment to the ideal of a pluralistic, broadly secular state. Pakistan was created for Muslims and was based on ethnic cleansing ab ovo. India was wholly Hindu- which is why its official name is 'Bharat'- though the cowed Muslim minority was retained for its labour power and obedience as a voting block. Ceylon, on relinquishing Dominion status for full fledged independence was clearly Buddhist and racially chauvinist. As for Burma- it was and is a shithole.
Pakistan was carved out of British India to create a Muslim-majority country, and although its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, seemed at times to support the idea of a secular state, the genocidal violence of the 1947 Partition more or less purged the country of its non-Muslim minorities. In its short-lived constitution of 1956, Pakistan formally defined itself as an Islamic republic, and it has remained one for over sixty years. So, you were lying about Pakistan. It was always a confessional state.
Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, was founded in 1948 as a secular nation, but by 1956 its Sinhala Buddhist politicians were pushing to redefine it as a Buddhist republic with Sinhala, the language of the Buddhist majority, as the sole national language. This is misleading. People like Bandarnaike had a more complex identity. Indeed, the monk who killed him converted to Christianity before his execution because back then identities were fluid. This majoritarian push was aimed at marginalizing Tamil speakers, a substantial non-Buddhist minority concentrated in the north and east of the country. No, competition within the elite got out of hand for sociological reasons peculiar to Ceylon. Bangladesh, which won independence from Pakistan in 1971, was established as a secular Bengali-speaking nation though Hindus had to continually run away from it but after a coup in 1975, a military regime turned it into an Islamic republic. (The Supreme Court restored secularism in 2010, but Islam remains Bangladesh’s official religion.) Again this is misleading. Mujib was by no means a pluralist or a genuine secularist. He had dropped the pretence of Democracy before being killed. Coup and counter-coup followed. It was not the case that the military imposed Islamism. The fact is everybody- even the Afghan Regime- was trying to show itself as Islamic to get petro-dollars. India, for example, was throwing a hissy fit for being excluded from the Organisation of Islamic Nations.
Major General Aung San, who brought about Myanmar’s independence from Britain after World War II and was assassinated in 1947, envisioned it as a secular republic. Because he was the founder of the Communist Party of Burma. The constitution of 1948, however, which established Myanmar as an independent nation, conferred full citizenship on most ethnic minorities but withheld it from the Rohingya. Because they were contiguous to East Pakistan and wanted to join it. Throughout the 1950s, the government of U Nu, the country’s first prime minister, accommodated the idea of a Rohingya community and held out the prospect of citizenship for Rohingyas. U Nu was a moralising, Dale Carnegie spouting, nutjob. He made Buddhism the State Religion and banned beef. The census of 1961 even recognized “Rohingya” as a demographic category. Because U Nu was off his head.The evolution of Myanmar into an explicitly Buddhist state began in 1962 when a military government seized power in a coup d’état and enforced a Buddhist nationalist ideology. General Ne Win's first act on taking power was to abrogate U Nu's decisions re making Buddhism the state religion and banning beef and so forth. He was to the Left of U Nu. This process culminated in the 1982 Citizenship Law, which officially denied Rohingyas the possibility of full citizenship. Ne Win was as crazy as a bed bug. Okay, the Communists were even crazier, still it is sheer lunacy to speak of Burma as other than a batshit crazy shithole. No process culminated in anything. You just had murderous nutjobs killing each other in the jungle and sensible people running far far away.
Ironically, it was during the transition to civilian rule between 2012 and 2017 that the country became a purely majoritarian polity through ethnic cleansing and by formally excluding Rohingyas in particular and Muslims generally from every democratic process and institution. What fucking transition to civilian rule is Kesavan talking about? There is some window-dressing that is all. The violence of 2012 (which prefigured the ethnic cleansing of 2017) resulted in 120,000 Rohingyas being expelled from towns in northern Rakhine and confined to camps for internally displaced persons. There was a lesson to be learned in 2012. That lesson was majorities don't matter. Guns do. The 2014 census was designed to exclude “alien” minorities; nearly a third of Rakhine’s population went uncounted because the Rohingya refused to identify as Bengali Muslim, which would have lent credibility to the claim that they were foreigners, not citizens. Rohingyas are a side-issue for Burma. The 2014 census was about reaffirming the Buddhist nature of the country and the potential of that religion to bridge ethnic divisions. The census was used to compile the new electoral rolls for the country’s first democratic elections in 2015; it effectively disenfranchised the Rohingya and led to the total absence of Muslims from Myanmar’s parliament for the first time since independence. So what? There was no parliament a lot of the time and even when there was some token sort of Parliament it had no power.
That year, the government confiscated the registration cards that had entitled Rohingyas to health and education services and, until recently, to the right to vote, which they had previously been granted at the whim of the regime. Because, the right to vote is really has always been so very important in Burma. The cards were the only official documents of residence or identity that they possessed. Yeah, right! Like having an official document will prevent your being shot by the Army.These administrative actions successfully established Buddhist supremacy in Rakhine and in Myanmar as a whole. Administrative actions mean shit in Burma. Guns establish supremacy. Rohingyas were in a majority in North Rakhine but they've still had to run for the lives. Why? Was it some 'administrative action'? Is it because some clerk took away some piece of paper from them? Nope. It was because they didn't have nice guns whereas the Burmese army is very very good at shooting unarmed people.
The absence of an important minority from both the electoral process and parliament is the sort of total victory that majoritarians in South Asia have long dreamed of but never achieved. Utter nonsense! Pakistan always kept some token 'minority' Parliamentarians and even Ministers. So what? They didn't just ethnically cleanse Hindus, they also perpetrated genocide on Baluchi and Bengali Muslims. In 2014, a year before Myanmar’s elections, Narendra Modi led the BJP to an absolute majority in the Indian general elections. That is why India has expelled millions of Muslims in 2015, 2016 and 2017. His majority was historic because it did not include a single Muslim member of parliament from the BJP. But the BJP did put up Muslim candidates and, what's more nominated Muslims to the Upper House. But twenty-three Muslims of other parties were elected to the Lok Sabha, the Indian parliament’s lower house; the absence of any Muslims from Myanmar’s legislature was a more comprehensive victory for majoritarianism. Parliament has always had a lot of power in India. It has always had none in Burma. It is no surprise that a right-wing Hindu nationalist party in India would keep its distance from Muslims, but in Myanmar it was the liberal opposition, the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, that didn’t field a single Muslim candidate. The 'Hindu nationalist party' fielded a lot of Muslim candidates. They didn't get elected. So they nominated Muslim MPs to the Upper House. By contrast, Nobel Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi didn't field any Muslim candidates at all! Mukul Kesavan knows MJ Akbar- he has probably written articles for him. Would it surprise him to learn that his old comrade is a Minister in the BJP government?
The NLD may have excluded Muslim candidates for strategic reasons—to ride out the anti-Rohingya sentiment stirred up by extremist clergy, to defer to the military’s prejudices during the sensitive transition to democracy, to avoid antagonizing Rakhine’s Buddhist majority—or because of the prejudices of its own members. Or maybe, the NLD doesn't want to get shot in the head by the real power in Burma- guys with guns. The result was the political marginalization of an already threatened minority. Wow! I wonder how Mukul Kesavan would have analysed the Shoah. No doubt, he would have painstakingly correlated the decline in the number of Jewish legislators in the Reich to increased majoritarian pressure upon an already vulnerable community. Myanmar in 2017, with a parliament free of Muslims and 600,000 Rohingyas violently driven out, has proven that it is possible for a religious majority to achieve political domination. OMG! Religious majorities achieve political domination everywhere under Democracy! Burma isn't a Democracy. The reason the Burmese are dominant in some- not all- parts of Burma is because they are better at killing and chasing away anyone who challenges their army.
Majoritarianism insists on different tiers of citizenship. No. It only does so if the majority is doing less well than some specific group. Members of the majority faith and culture are viewed as the nation’s true citizens. There are Gulf countries where the 'true citizens' are a minority. This does not matter- provided it can kill or eject any other group. The rest are courtesy citizens, guests of the majority, expected to behave well and deferentially. Quite true unless the Judiciary rules otherwise. But, in that case, we are speaking of a Democracy under the Rule of Law- a wholly different kettle of fish. To be tolerated at the majority’s discretion is no substitute for full citizenship in modern democracies. Unless the Rule of Law obtains. It is a state of limbo, a chronically unstable condition. Which is why sensible majorities- like the Hindus of India- vote for the Rule of Law. A polity that denies full citizenship to its minorities will, sooner or later, politically disenfranchise them or expel them on the grounds that, despite being residents, they aren’t citizens at all and actually belong elsewhere—in India or Pakistan or Tamil Nadu or, as with the Rohingya, in Bangladesh. Myanmar has three categories of citizenship: citizen, associate citizen, and naturalized citizen. The Rohingya are classed as foreigners. Burma isn't under the Rule of Law. If it were, this classification would have been struck down. Suppose I were offered Burmese citizenship in return for setting up a munitions factory in that country. Would I think 'Aha! as a Burmese citizen, my investment will be safe.'? Nope. I'd know that the regime robs anyone it wants to. There is no rule of law. Burmese citizenship is worthless.
The one South Asian state that had formally resisted the temptation of majoritarianism until the 1980s was India. Really? How come I can't eat beef in many Indian States? Why is there a 'Directive Principle' in the Indian Constitution encouraging States to ban beef? Founded as a constitutional republic in 1950, it treated its substantial Muslim minority (it has the third-largest Muslim population in the world) as full and equal citizens. Muslims did not want to be 'full and equal citizens'. They wanted to share power equally so that half of the Legislature, the Cabinet, etc would be Muslim even if they were only 20 per cent of the population. Despite its being 80 percent Hindu, there was no formal sense in which India’s religious minorities were expected to assimilate into Hindu culture. So, Hindus are nice guys. Okay. How is that relevant in discussing Burma? The only parties that demanded this assimilation, such as the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the political ancestor of Modi’s BJP, were minor regional parties that had little power. For the first twenty-five years of the republic, under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru and then his daughter Indira Gandhi, India remained a constitutionally secular state. Under Nehru, many educated Muslims emigrated to Pakistan. Under Indira, they were massacred. Under Modi, Gujerati Muslim entrepreneurs who had fled India started to return home and ramp up investments in India. Today, there are Pakistani Muslims applying to work and reside in India. If there was even an iota of truth in Kesavan's thesis, Aziz Premji should be packing his bags to flee to Karachi. Why isn't it happening?
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the political balance shifted following the Emergency, Indira Gandhi’s experiment with authoritarian rule between 1975 and 1977. But the new politics was also shaped by pogroms. In 1983, two thousand Muslims of Bengali ancestry were slaughtered in a matter of hours in the town of Nellie, in Assam. (Unofficial estimates place the number of deaths at more than ten thousand.) The indigenous Assamese who perpetrated the massacre thought the Muslims were illegal migrants from Bangladesh whose names had been included on the electoral rolls. Bangladesh, then a relatively new nation, was seen by unsympathetic neighbors as a net exporter of people, and since these immigrants tended to be Bengali-speaking Muslims, they looked and sounded conspicuously alien. Assam is multi-ethnic. It includes non Indo-Aryan speakers who have no love for Bengalis. India's North East has endemic tribal problems and is similar in that respect to Burma.
The 1983 massacre in Assam was a landmark in Indian politics. Nonsense. It had zero impact outside the North East. The student organization whose anti-Muslim activism culminated in the pogrom established a political party that handily won the next provincial election. Which didn't change things in New Delhi at all. The incident demonstrated that illegal immigration was a serious problem, that Bengali Muslims were a political scapegoat, and, most significantly, that pogroms could be politically profitable. Any yet there were no wider ramifications at all.
In 1984, the assassination of Indira Gandhi by two of her Sikh bodyguards led to the systematic murder of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere. Her son, Rajiv Gandhi, won a large electoral victory after this pogrom, and the lesson of Nellie was reinforced, this time at the national level. There was no 'lesson of Nellie'- nobody gave a flying fart about either Bengali Muslims or Bodo headhunters. Ask a Tamil or a Gujerati or a Haryanvi about Nellie and they will have no idea what you are talking about. Mrs Gandhi, however, was an icon. She was compared to Goddess Durga. Subsequent pogroms of Muslims in Bombay (1992–1993) and Gujarat (2002) were followed by electoral victories for parties like the Shiv Sena and the BJP that were complicit in the violence.
What is Kesavan talking about? He is a South Indian. He very well knows that the Shiv Sena consolidated itself as a 'sons of the soil' movement targeting South Indians. Muslim extremists, reacting to the Babri Masjid destruction, provoked a backlash from which the Sena profited.
The BJP had consolidated itself in Gujarat after a Congress Minister, with the help of a Don ('Raees' as played by Shah Rukh Khan) imported explosives from Pakistan's ISI to stage a terrorist incident. The don then killed a Muslim M.P who exposed his dealings. The Home Minister in Delhi got on the case. The don ran away to Pakistan but came back after falling out with his patrons. The police killed him because they had been on his pay-roll. The whole thing became a public scandal. Congress had shat the bed in spectacular fashion. The BJP, by contrast, was respectable.
Thus when Congress backed Corporators in Godhra, on orders from the ISI, massacred some Hindus, the backlash against Muslims was beneficial to the BJP- and Modi in particular. Why? He called in the Army and gave shoot to kill orders to end the anarchy. He brought Gujarat under the Rule of Law by having gangsters shot out of hand. Congress, very foolishly, went after him for shooting bad guys. The result was that they lost the one effective card they have- viz. a supposed concern for the poorest. Thus they have been routed. What's more they have gained an 'anti Hindu' (and therefore anti-national) tag. Rahul is now trying to reverse this by projecting himself as a Saivite Brahmin. The most recent posters of him in his constituency depict him as Lord Rama.
There has been no formal disenfranchisement of minorities, but majoritarian parties in India have learned that encouraging violence against minorities pays off electorally.
Violence against minorities means mobs running amok. In India, Hindus are not just the majority, they are also educationally and commercially ahead of Muslims. Hindus don't want to kill Muslims. They want to get rich of their labour.
Violence against minorities means mobs running amok. In India, Hindus are not just the majority, they are also educationally and commercially ahead of Muslims. Hindus don't want to kill Muslims. They want to get rich of their labour.
All the Hindu asks for is that Muslim gangsters and terrorists are shot out of hand. The only thing that 'pays off electorally' is good Governance and brighter economic prospects.Majoritarian violence had become a shortcut to power throughout South Asia.
Sheer nonsense! The Khalistanis sponsored 'majoritarian' Sikh violence against Hindus in Punjab. What good did it do them? An ex-Royal- Amarinder Singh rules the roost there.
How about Kashmir Valley? Was the ethnic cleansing of Hindu Pandits 'a short cut to power' for the militants? Nope. They are either dead or languishing on short rations.
Rajiv Gandhi certainly presided over a huge pogrom of Sikhs. But he lost the election.
There are no shortcuts to power- at least in India. Majorities- at least Hindu majorities- aren't murderous by nature. Listen to Narendra Modi give a speech. He has spent his entire adult life preparing for his role. Rahul Gandhi got a shortcut. Listen to his speeches. They are shit. Why? He hasn't prepared for the role thoroughly enough.
In Myanmar, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, insecure military rulers sought legitimacy by aligning the state with its religious majority, while in India and Sri Lanka, nativist parties won elections by promoting the idea that the nation was being subverted by predatory minorities.
Utterly wrong! Pakistan was created as a confessional state ab ovo. Mujibur Rehman was part of the Pakistan movement as a firebrand student leader. However the civilians were shit at running the country and, furthermore, the Bengalis formed the majority. However, they were militarily weak. So the Army took power. But Ayub Khan wasn't an Islamist at all. He actually brought Fazlur Rehman back from Canada to synthesise a 'modernist' Islam to overcome sectarian divisions.
Yahya, ludicrously, appointed General Pataudi- the one sober colleague he knew of- as a Minister for Islamic something or other. Bhutto threw Pataudi into jail for this! But it was Bhutto who declared the Ahmadis to be non-Muslim. Zia, it is true, went one step further even trying to ban the saree! Mrs. Pataudi, however, stuck to her accustomed costume and Zia could but grin his hyena grin.
Sri Lanka was different from India in that the elite was highly anglicised and Christianised. The upcountry Buddhist Sinhala felt left out. Tamils got English education and took the clerical jobs. Thus the Sinhala felt left out. Still, what plunged Sri Lanka into anarchy was the threat of a 'Burgher' army coup. Thus the military was emasculated. This meant crazy Leftists could try to effect a coup. At that juncture, both India and Pakistan came to the rescue. The Sri Lankan Army- like the Bangladeshi army- had terrible morale because the leadership was distrusted or divided.
In India, by contrast, the Hindus ruled the roost. The poor 'poojary' in the village could see that the country was ruled by a Pundit. The two bit shop-keeper saw that a 'Bania' was revered as the 'Father of the country'. Even the Princes were happy because it was their former Estate Managers who were running things.
It is true that some on the Left distrusted the Army. But the Army proved its worth. It genuinely preferred fighting the enemy on far frontiers to laying siege to the Capital.
By the end of the twentieth century, majoritarian parties were either in power or the principal opposition in every South Asian nation. Kesavan is too modest in his claim. By the end of every century, majoritarian parties are in power in any Democratic country. This is also true at the beginning of every century and in the middle of every century and at every point in between.
Thus a party called 'The Muslim League' is not in power in Norway. It is in Pakistan. Similarly a party called 'Christian Democratic Party' is not in power in Pakistan though it may be in Germany.
In his essay for Islam and the State in Myanmar, a collection that addresses the relationship between Myanmar’s Muslims and their government, Benjamin Schonthal demonstrates the extent to which Buddhist majoritarianism in Myanmar is akin to Sinhala nativism in Sri Lanka, noting recent meetings between the Sri Lankan Bodu Bala Sena (Army of Buddhist Power) and the explicitly anti-Muslim monk-led 969 movement in Myanmar. Ashin Wirathu, its most notoriously Islamophobic preacher, visited Colombo in late 2014 to sign a memorandum of understanding between the Bodu Bala Sena and 969. People in both countries, Schonthal suggests, “are beginning to see their own actions in a broader regional framework.” Sri Lankan Buddhists have a special place for Thervada countries like Thailand and Burma and so on. In the Fifties, there were some English speaking 'Humanist' Buddhist monks in Burma who were constantly meeting their even better educated counterparts in Burma. Then there was a Leftist 'Liberation theology' type of Sri Lankan monk who would correspond with similar shitheads in Burma. One version of the CIA 'Domino theory' stressed the supposed subversion of the Sangha in South East Asia by clever Sri Lankans. It was all fake news. Monks don't matter. Guns do.
In another essay in the collection, Nyi Nyi Kyaw compares 969’s campaigns to those of Hindu chauvinist organizations in India like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the BJP.
Right! Coz a guy named Nyi Nyi Kyaw is such an expert on India! Does he really think some shitty little bunch of nutjobs in his shitty little country can produce a World Statesman like Narendra Modi?
The supposed fertility of Muslim men and their practice of polygamy are seen as threats to the future of Buddhists in Myanmar. The allegation is that Muslim men are waging a “Love Jihad”; as Kyaw notes, Ashin Wimalar Biwuntha, a 969 monk, has accused Muslim men of seducing Buddhist women “for their reproductive tactics. They produce a lot of children, they are snowballing.” But Muslim men in Burma are being killed or forced to flee for their lives. What chance of 'love jihad' do they have?
The terms “Love Jihad” and “Romeo Jihad” are lifted straight from the lexicon of Hindu bigotry. Kesavan is a Hindu. Clearly these terms feature in his lexicon. They don't in mine- but then I am merely an Iyer whereas he is an Iyengar. The BJP and its affiliates are committed to fighting so-called predatory Muslims practicing “Love Jihad” with street vigilantes organized in “Anti-Romeo squads.” Once again, Kesavan may be speaking from superior personal familiarity with 'the BJP and its affiliates. No doubt, he routinely beat up MJ Akbar for being a Romeo. Perhaps that's why MJ Akbar joined the BJP. As a Minister, Akbar is probably prowling around beating up Romeos even as I write this now. The chief minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu monk called Yogi Adityanath, has for years led a private militia, the Hindu Yuva Vahini (Hindu Youth Force), in the battle against this phantom enemy. So, they are battling ghosts are they? How come they aren't a public laughing stock? Oh! They belong to a majority community. Kesavan believes that any majority community is completely bonkers. Start killing a few people from a minority and, immediately, that majority starts voting for you. In fact, his principal credential for the chief minister’s office in 2016 was his proven ability to mobilize the “Hindu street” against Muslims. Okay! So that's how to become Chief Minister. Just get a few street urchins to beat up Muslims and you too can rule over India's largest State! It's so simple!
The terms “Love Jihad” and “Romeo Jihad” are lifted straight from the lexicon of Hindu bigotry. Kesavan is a Hindu. Clearly these terms feature in his lexicon. They don't in mine- but then I am merely an Iyer whereas he is an Iyengar. The BJP and its affiliates are committed to fighting so-called predatory Muslims practicing “Love Jihad” with street vigilantes organized in “Anti-Romeo squads.” Once again, Kesavan may be speaking from superior personal familiarity with 'the BJP and its affiliates. No doubt, he routinely beat up MJ Akbar for being a Romeo. Perhaps that's why MJ Akbar joined the BJP. As a Minister, Akbar is probably prowling around beating up Romeos even as I write this now. The chief minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, a Hindu monk called Yogi Adityanath, has for years led a private militia, the Hindu Yuva Vahini (Hindu Youth Force), in the battle against this phantom enemy. So, they are battling ghosts are they? How come they aren't a public laughing stock? Oh! They belong to a majority community. Kesavan believes that any majority community is completely bonkers. Start killing a few people from a minority and, immediately, that majority starts voting for you. In fact, his principal credential for the chief minister’s office in 2016 was his proven ability to mobilize the “Hindu street” against Muslims. Okay! So that's how to become Chief Minister. Just get a few street urchins to beat up Muslims and you too can rule over India's largest State! It's so simple!
The imagined threat of demographic extinction at the hands of fast-breeding, evangelizing Muslims is central to majoritarian mobilization in India, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. So the majority communities in India, Sri Lanka and Myanmar are utterly devoid of rationality. Is it because they are somewhat dusky in complexion? Several Indian provinces have passed laws that strictly regulate religious conversion. So have most Muslim countries.Their unstated goal is to prevent conversion to Islam or Christianity; conversion to Hinduism, on the other hand, is seen as reversion. It is referred to as ghar wapsi, or “homecoming.” In the discourse of Hindu majoritarianism, all Muslims and Christians are ancestrally Hindu. Makes sense. Historically, when Muslims or Christians become sizable in numbers they make things hot for Hindus and finally either expel them or are themselves beaten into submission.
Myanmar remains at the vanguard of majoritarianism in South Asia, in its capacity to violently expel an ethnic minority, disenfranchise those who remain, and make the prejudices of Buddhist chauvinists into law. Pakistan has been way more successful in expelling religious minorities. The Organization for the Protection of Race, Religion, and Belief, popularly known as Ma-Ba-Tha (the abbreviation of its Burmese name), began in 2013 as a campaign to pass what were collectively known as the Race and Religion Protection Laws. In a little over two years these laws were approved by the legislature and signed into law by the president.
Of all the laws governing monogamy, birth control, religious conversion, and interfaith marriage that implicitly target Muslims, the most flagrantly discriminatory is the Myanmar Buddhist Women’s Special Marriage Law. A Buddhist woman under twenty years of age needs parental consent to marry a non-Buddhist. By contrast, in Pakistan and many other Muslim countries, a Muslim woman can't marry a non Muslim at all. Local registrars are empowered to post marriage applications. The couple can marry only if no one objects, but any citizen can contest the application, causing it to be challenged in court. In the event of a divorce, the woman automatically gets custody of the children. The purpose of the law is to make intermarriage between Buddhist women and non-Buddhist men as difficult as possible. Monks, priests, and majoritarians in every country in South Asia will have taken note that the government of Myanmar has been able to stand out as the defender of the faith by legally discriminating in favor of the country’s majority on the basis of religion. Pakistan is a country in South Asia. Why should it take note that there is less restriction on Buddhist women in this matter than there is on Muslim women in their own country?
Majoritarianism in South Asia isn’t necessarily about targeting Muslims. Because Muslims are the majority in two South Asian nations and have very successfully targeted and decimated non-muslim populations. Nor is it provoked by the need to discipline recalcitrant minorities in general. Majoritarian politics results from the patiently constructed self-image of an aggrieved, besieged majority that believes itself to be long-suffering and refuses to suffer in silence anymore. Really? What 'patient construction' was required for massive killing of Hindus in East Pakistan in response to the Hazratbal incident? A hair goes missing in Kashmir and Hindus are killed in Dacca? Why?
What about pogroms against Copts in Egypt? What 'patient construction' of suffering at the hands of this minority occurred?
ISIS slaughtered a lot of Yezidis. Where was the 'patient construction' there Dr. Kesavan?
The cultivation of this sense of injury is the necessary precondition for the lynchings, pogroms, and ethnic cleansing that invariably follow.
Yes, yes. Very true. When the Whites exterminated the Tasmanians it was because there had been a 'patient construction' of a sense of injury. This was the necessary precondition for hunting down the natives as a matter of sport.
Majoritarianism promotes equal-opportunity bigotry. Really? Whites were a minority in South Asia. Did they show no bigotry towards the majority? Still, Whites didn't ethnically cleanse South Asia because they didn't want to settle there. They were solely concerned with making money off the labour of the people- whatever their religion or race- settled on the land.
Majoritarianism promotes equal-opportunity bigotry. Really? Whites were a minority in South Asia. Did they show no bigotry towards the majority? Still, Whites didn't ethnically cleanse South Asia because they didn't want to settle there. They were solely concerned with making money off the labour of the people- whatever their religion or race- settled on the land.
Where Majorities feel they are making money off the minorities, they may be bigoted but they preserve the appearance of equality under the law so as to provide an incentive to the minorities to be as productive as possible.
Yes India's Hindu majority is very tolerant and morally high toned but only at such times and in such places as it profits by the labour of the minorities.
But this is also true of Europe and America and everywhere else.
Kesavan concludes by saying- 'The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya is a particularly vicious chapter in a long history of majoritarian nationalism in South Asia. Unless that history is acknowledged and its legacy contested, more tragedies lie in store.'
What he is really saying is 'listen guys, I'm from South Asia. I've studied its history. People like me are important. You should give us more money and prestige so that we can research history and explain it to the stupid people who are the majority in South Asia. That way, tragedies can be averted'.
This is self-serving shite. The ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas is a wholly unremarkable chapter in Burma's long history of expelling Indian people. 'Majoritarian nationalism' isn't a big problem if the Majority is Hindu and minorities are peaceable and productive in a manner which enriches the majority. Even if they are fractious, shooting a few bad guys in a timely manner defuses the problem.
It may be that Islam is a different kettle of fish. Even after ethnically cleansing all non-Muslims, these guys still seem to slaughter each other on the basis of sect or tribe or clan. But, surely, that's only true when the rule of law breaks down.
Buddhism too may appear to have some pathology absent in Hinduism. But there's a sociological reason for it. Essentially, the pre-Independence Hindu intelligentsia were not wholly deracinated (as in Ceylon) or entirely adolescent (as in Burma) in their thinking. It was only some 'phoren educated' people of Kesavan's generation- i.e. 'Midnight's Children'- who came of age in the Sixties or early Seventies- who write and talk utter shite. So long as people thought Rahul baba would follow in their footsteps, Congress declined. Now, he is rediscovering his Brahmin roots and claims to be 'janeodhari'- Congress may go back to being the party of Brahhmins like Mukul and me. Why? Because true Secularism means Prime Minister should be the son and grandson and great grandson of Prime Ministers only. Anything else smacks of 'Majoritarianism'. Mind it kindly. Aiyaiyo.
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