Aunindyo Chakravarty's Foucauldian imbecility

Is Bengal a part of India? Sometimes one has to wonder. Consider the following article by Aunindo Chakravarty in Scroll.In.

Sometime in the 1970s, a troupe of urban musicians travelled through Uttar Pradesh to collect local songs about the Ramayana.

Why did they do so? It was because Lord Ram was born in Uttar Pradesh. That is where worship of him is most intense.

Every now and then, they would perform these songs in villages where they had camped for the night. People reacted in entranced euphoria. In one village, an old man began to dance, tears streaming down his cheeks, as he sang along to a popular ditty – “Aaj mere Jeevan mein Ram prabhu aaye.” Today, Lord Ram has graced my life.


This came as a revelation to the Bengali leader of the troupe.

Why? He had gone to U.P specifically to gather folk-songs about Lord Ram. What did he expect to find? That the local people would demand songs about Spiderman? That they would get grumpy if they had to listen to their own devotional music?

Ram has never been a primary deity in Bengal.

But Bengal is not Uttar Pradesh! Don't Bengalis know that?

That place belongs to Durga-Kali, several mother-goddess cults, and to a lesser extent, Shiva and Krishna. Even in death, where people in the North chant “Ram naam satya hai”, Bengalis say “Bolo hori, hori bol”, invoking Hari or Krishna.

So, it seems Bengalis are amazed that non-Bengalis have different customs and traditions. Even if a guy specifically goes elsewhere to gather material about those different customs he becomes amazed when the local people actually adhere to those non-Bengali ways.

This is mostly true for much of the southern states, where Shiva, Vishnu, Murugan, Ayyappan, and other local deities rule the religious imagination. So, is it possible that the entire nation could be united by the idea of a Ram Mandir?

Yes. This is because Lord Ram is a Hindu deity. But all deities are considered the emanation of the same univocal Godhead. Hinduism is the religion of more than 80 per cent of the population. Furthermore, back in the Eighties, there was a popular TV serial on the Ramayana. Viewership was estimated at 82 per cent.

Does it really “fulfil the dreams of a billion Indians” as one news channel claimed?

Yes. If India can build a Temple, it can also defend its borders and help poor people rise up. If it can't even build a Temple, it can do nothing.

Even a decade ago, the answer would have been a resounding no.

The question then was whether India would punish Pakistan for the terrorist attack on Bombay. The answer was a resounding no because the Nation was ruled by a corrupt coterie of incompetents and cowards.

The limited affective response to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement outside the Hindi-belt, marked the limit to the BJP’s expansion in other states.

The BJP and its allies did well in Gujarat and Maharashtra- which are not Hindi speaking. However, they are predominantly Hindu.

The rise of political parties claiming to represent backward castes and Dalits in the 1990s – and their continued dominance in UP and Bihar for much of the 2000s – made a cross-caste alliance of Hindus extremely difficult.

But the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992. The Congress Government put in an Ordinance permitting a Temple to be built on the site. The problem was that nobody could agree on what that should look like or how it should be done. Thus the thing had to be resolved by the Courts. The question was which party would gain credit for building it.

The author thinks the rise of Dalit and OBC parties mattered in this connection. This was not the case. They are still Hindu. The problem was that the Left was still powerful. Everybody paid lip service to 'Socialism' and 'Secularism' because when they were growing up the Soviet Union was believed to be wealthy and powerful. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Indian left- especially in Bengal- looked strong. The fact is, Jyoti Basu could have become P.M in the mid Nineties. The CPM could have become a National Party and Congress's biggest rival. But the gerontocrats of the politburo rejected this option for some obscure ideological reasons. This did not mean the Left was a spent force. In 2004 they were the indispensable ally which permitted Congress to form a Government. But they were as stupid as ever. They objected to the US nuclear deal. Manmohan Singh showed unexpected resolve. Then Left hooliganism in Bengal went too far and they lost to Mamta whose goons have beaten the shit out of them. They are now utterly moribund. For the first time in history, the BJP is the main rival to the ruling party in that State. They are unlikely to prevail. They don't seem  to have a CM candidate. In any case, Bengali politics is a criminalized affair. Best to steer clear of it.

This was not just a problem for the BJP in the field of electoral politics

This is mad! The fact is the BJP was able to run a Government from 1998 to 2004. In the late Eighties it had just 2 Members of Parliament. It was the Temple agitation which put them on the map.

but also for the Sangh Parivar in cultural-ideological terms.

Without Advani's 'rath yatra', they had nothing except sonorous oratory and, to some extent, a reputation for being less corrupt than Congress and not as crazy as the Left.

Backward caste politics was often accompanied by an attack on the Great Tradition in Hinduism by calling it Manuvaad.

Only at the elite level and only within Dalit circles. Nobody else knows who or what a 'Manuvaad' is.  OBCs voted for increased 'reservations' and for their own corrupt or criminal leaders in the hope that some money would trickle down to them. But they could be both pro 'Mandal and pro 'Mandir.'

As OBCs and Dalits got access to power, they promoted their own Little Traditions within Hinduism, challenging the Sangh’s version.

Nonsense! An OBC politician had to pretend to be a hayseed. He'd have looked a fool if he started getting worked up about Theology. Some Dalit academics may have talked bollocks, but all academics talk bollocks. What made Mayawati a successful C.M of UP was her own extraordinary courage as well as good old fashioned caste-arithmetic.

What changed in the past 10 years?

Rahul Gandhi was expected to take over the running of the Commonwealth Games in 2010 the way his Dad had taken over the running of the Asian Games in 1982. When he didn't do so, we thought it was because he'd decided to channel popular anger at the corruption and incompetence of the Congress old guard so as to sweep them aside and lead his Party into the Elections as a 'Mr. Clean' representing 'Young India'. But he refused to step up to the plate. Congress had no P.M candidate. Nobody, apart from the BJP, did. It was a case of Modi or Nobody. True, Mulayam Singh said he wouldn't mind being P.M because voters in UP had decided to make his son, not him, CM. But having been rejected by your own people is no recommendation for the top job.

Congress and the Left have declined in a stunning fashion. That is what has happened over the last ten years. This Bengali author must have noticed that Mamta trounced the Commies in 2011. Why does he think that happened? Being Bengali, the poor schmuck thinks it must have something to do with Finanz Kapital or Globalised Neoliberalism or Capitalism's final crisis or some such shite.

A new hegemony
The process was set up in the decade before that.

But the processes of that decade were set up in the decade before it and so on and so forth.

This was the rise of finance capital in India.

So, Narasimha Rao was to blame! But Rao inherited an empty Treasury! The IMF put a gun to India's head. Manmohan Singh took the bold step of scrapping a whole bunch of stupid regulations. But none of this would have happened if Rajiv Gandhi had not been profligate.

As we know today, India’s illusory economic boom between 2003-’08 was mostly driven by finance.

This was true of every country. But the economy had already grown substantially.

Companies raised big money from banks and the stock markets, and invested it to build capacities. Expressways, airports, mega power plants, steel and cement factories were being planned and launched every day, way beyond what domestic demand could support.

You could write this of every country under the Sun! What was unique to India was that the savings of ordinary people were trapped in Government Institutions which lent that money, often in a corrupt way, to Corporates. But this had been true under Rajiv and Indira as well.

It was a valuation game.

That may be true of America or Europe. In India the thing was corrupt. But this had always been a problem. Back in the Sixties, Nehru got the Government to back a 'Nuclear Physicist', Dr. J.D Teja, to set up a 'Shipping Empire'. Unusually, he actually spent a little time in jail.

The writer thinks India is America where Markets matter more than Corrupt deals.

The markets rewarded companies that were expanding, without looking at their earnings potential. Analysts invented new ways to make companies with low-earnings look attractive – sum-of-the-parts, replacement cost, value-unlocking, acquisition potential. Those who understood finance became the most valuable employees in the corporate world, because they both provided finance and sourced it.

Sales and marketing also took centre stage, especially in the fast-growing telecom, durables, automobiles and consumer goods sectors. Like the finance department, people working in the sales and marketing divisions ended up with the biggest bonuses. Engineers, designers, administrators, shop-floor managers, began to tell their children that it was best to get an MBA and specialise in finance.

But, if you wanted to be a billionaire, not work for one, you needed to give a suitcase full of cash to the Manager of a Nationalised Bank or other such Government Institution.

The rise of finance and trade had a significant impact on the hierarchy within the elite. Traditionally, mercantile groups within India’s forward castes have dominated finance. It was but natural that people belonging to these caste groups would occupy key positions in trade, finance and entrepreneurship in the post-liberalisation world. But their influence on India’s political life had been historically limited.

Has this guy never heard of Mahatma Gandhi? Who does he think financed him? It was these Jain-Vaishnava-Marwari merchants, with their conservative values and obsession with Ahimsa, who took over the Indian National Congress from the Anglophile 'barristocrats'. Even the Parsis, who speak Gujerati, had to toe the line- or atleast the richest of them had to toe the line. The lower middle class was pro-British and many emigrated after Independence.

Mainstream political scientists have tended to ignore the savarna influence on Indian liberalism.

For the excellent reason that it was Parsi led and focused on Economic grievances. The 'savarna' element was vernacular and mobilized popular Religion. Viceroy Landsdowne remarked that 'Cow Protection' was what had given Congress grass roots support. Liberals were not interested in Ganapati festivals and holy cows and so forth.

I submit that this was a Brahmin-Kayastha vision, which developed during the Raj, privileging the pursuit of knowledge, statecraft, law, and treating trade and business with disdain.

This may be true of Bengali compradors or rentiers living in Calcutta. But Calcutta continuously declined in political influence. Had it not been for the martial skills of non-Bengali Sikhs and Hindus, it would have gone to Pakistan.

Rajendra Prasad was Kayastha. He got his start organizing the Bihari Kayasthas against the Bengalis. But his thinking was very different from that of his Bengali caste-fellows. One can speak of him as having a 'savarna' mentality. But, it is notable that he gave up everything to follow the Mahatma. Another case in point is Jayprakash Narayan. Compare his trajectory to that of Bengali Kayasthas who had studied in America.

It seems this Bengali author, who thinks Indian Corporate Finance works in the same way as American Corporate Finance, is completely ignorant of what was happening outside Calcutta!

This left constitutive traces in the way post-Independence Nehruvian-Socialism constructed the state’s ideology.

Nonsense! Nehru was initially rather cautious in his approach to the Economy. He appointed non-Congress 'rightists' like Deshmukh and TTK. But they surrendered to the lure of what Nehru's cousin, Ambassador Kaul, called 'free money'. Mahalanobis, a Bengali, did- it is true- preside over this shit-show. Why? He was too much of a gentleman to understand that 'Agency Capture' had occurred. The Planning Commission was a corrupt tool in the hands of a few Business Houses. On the other hand, it did strangle the Textile and 'Wage Good' sector in the belief that this would hurt particular 'conservative' mercantile groups. It also resolutely opposed the Green Revolution. But by the mid Sixties it was obvious that it was completely useless. Bengali Mathematical Economists and even Philosophers! were only useful because they put an honest face on a corrupt practice. That is why Indira chose Amartya Sen's first mentor to be Planning Chief while a Philosopher was her Industries Minister. Obviously, this was for the benefit of Sanjay and his cronies.

There was a time when IAS candidates had to pretend there was a 'Gandhi-Nehru ideology'. But that time has long gone. There was a Gandhian fantasy- paid for by mercantile castes- and there was a Nehruvian fantasy- paid for by the US. Then the Chinese invaded and the threat of Famine loomed. Begging bowl diplomacy is all very well, unless there is a big hole in the begging bowl. So, Indira turned her back on fantasies. But not on corruption.

This got amplified in the Indira period, especially in the 1970s, when she ideologically aligned with the Left.

The Left, on orders from Moscow, became her poodle. She showed her contempt for them by letting their 'long march' be through Institutions as worthless as JNU. If the Commies don't have a dynastic arse to lick they sulk and withdraw into themselves. That's why they wouldn't let Jyoti Basu become PM. A Commies job is to wait till there is a Dynast, or Mummy of a Dynast, whose arse they can lick.

But this dominant national culture began to erode

when kids with Post Graduate degrees could not get jobs. On the other hand, if they emigrated and sold hot dogs on the street, they could rise up. I recall a senior Indian diplomat who had visited his former boss, Sir Raghavan Pillai, who had gone into the private sector in the UK. This diplomat found that Pillai had to iron his own shirts! Chee Chee! Not even having a khansama to bring chota hazari and bed tea! The silly man should have got a UN sinecure after retirement! Alternatively, if he had become a hopeless alcoholic, he should have got a Directorship in some Nationalized venture so as to provide for his family.

Only later did this bureaucrat realize that Pillai- as well as the people who sold hot dogs in the street so as to save enough to start a proper business- gained more satisfaction by doing something useful and beneficial for Society rather than talking bollocks while leading a parasitic existence.

with the introduction of economic reforms in the mid-1980s.

But, the brain drain had begun well before that. People with useful skills in Public Sector industries emigrated so as to exercise their talents properly. Some grew rich. Some did not- but they had the satisfaction of making the world a better place by doing what they loved.

By the end of the 2000s, the tables had turned. The idea of entrepreneurship dominated public imagination.

This may be true of Calcutta. But when has the Gujarati or Punjabi or Chettiar or 'Andhrapreneur' turned up his nose at entrepreneurship? Look at the Patels or other 'dominant' agricultural castes. The may, as a hedge for the family, put one or two sons or daughters into the Public Sector, but they pool their savings to start businesses.

And with that, the culture of the traditional mercantile castes acquired hegemonic status.

Gandhi achieved 'hegemonic' status because he was from a traditional mercantile caste and was supported by others of his ilk. Only a stupid Bengali would blather about hegemony at this late hour.

I would argue that contemporary Hindutva is the ideology of these dominant caste and class groups.

who are oppressing the proletariat, innit? The vast masses of India worship Marx and Lenin and Che Guevara. These 'dominant castes' are trying to brainwash our people into the worship of Rama and Sita and Krishna and so on. This is all the fault of Finanz Kapital! Boo to Capitalism!

While it has a history that is at least a century old, this Hindutva was refashioned in the past 20 years using artefacts and signs that were already available in public discourse – Bollywood movies, TV soaps, Amar Chitra Katha, calendar art, and hagiographies of business-leaders. Like all hegemonic ideologies, this too is being adopted by other castes and classes as well.

Very true! Look at Kipling's 'the Bridge Builders'. It shows that the ignorant masses of India were chanting the name of Karl Marx, not Kali Ma. One British officer said 'hey, coolie, have you heard of Lord Ram?' 'Ram?' the coolie replied. 'Do you mean Rousseau? Listen, old boy, Rousseau is old hat. You should read Das Kapital.'

A new social coalition
There was a parallel process taking place in the world of backward caste politics. Most political parties founded by backward caste leaders in North India had privileged single dominant OBC groups within their power structure. They even tried to build cross-caste alliances with forward castes, to avoid sharing power with other backward castes or Dalit groups.

So what? That is how caste politics works. The fact is, the demand for OBC reservations dates back to the Fifties. Anyway, it was in the South that anti-Brahmin parties first broke the Congress monopoly on power. But this trend had existed much earlier in the Century when the Justice Party was winning on a restricted franchise. But, such movements came to be seen as too chummy with the Brits so the spadework had to begin all over again.

This has completely disrupted the caste-arithmetic in states like UP and Bihar,

That 'disruption' was visible in the Sixties. Lohia and JP retain their importance in Indian political history because they opened the gates for 'peasant leaders' like Charan Singh.

which together account for more than one-fifth of Lok Sabha seats. The most backward castes and non-dominant Dalit groups are no longer swayed by anti-upper caste rhetoric. The BJP has been able to persuade them that it offers them a greater share in political power than the Yadav-dominated Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar.

How? That is the crucial question. No doubt, this fellow thinks it has nothing to do with better Governance or 'last mile delivery'. It is all the fault of FinanzKapital and Gramscian hegemony and other such puerile shite.

Anecdotal evidence tells us there has been a renewal of ‘sanskritisation’ amongst some of these caste groups where they are reviving origin-stories which position them as ‘fallen’ Brahmins or Kshatriyas. This is a fertile ground for contemporary Hindutva.

Genuine research shows people now want to be seen as Vaishya or Bania but with the benefit of reservations. Interestingly, a lot of people are adopting 'Jain-Vaishnava' diet. This is the opposite of Srinivas's 'Sanskritization'. Moreover, people prefer to quote vernacular 'riti' texts- e.g. Tulsi or Kamban- though great Sages like Valmiki retain their place. But Valmiki is claimed by a Dalit community.

The process through which the new Modi-Shah BJP

Modi is Ghanchi, i.e. OBC. Shah is Jain. So much for 'Sanskritization'.

has been able to assimilate social groups, which would have otherwise been outside the party’s fold, is obviously much more complicated.

There is nothing complicated about 'assimilating' patriotic Indians by biffing India's enemies and providing better governance.

One crucial method has been to use government subsidies and schemes to directly target the poorest, who often happen to be the most backward castes and marginalised Dalits.

But this must be done in a caste-blind manner. The fact is almost all Indians are poor or are related to the poor. Livelihoods are precarious as the lockdown has shown. We need 'one nation, one ration card' immediately. My guess is that all our Cities are going to go in for things like Tamil Nadu's 'Amma canteens'- where you get good quality subsidized cooked food.

The state has created a welfare network, on which sits new electoral alliances. For many, the Sangh Parivar’s social network has been the route to access the state.

That defeats the purpose as Mamta has realised. She disintermediated her party goons from 'last mile delivery' because they kept raping everybody and demanding kickbacks.

If a political party uses its own 'network' to distribute goodies, then bad guys enter the party so as to control the distribution of goodies and make money for themselves. But, as the Communists in West Bengal discovered, they won't risk their lives fighting for you even if you enriched them. When the going gets tough they will turn their coats.

In effect, for them, Hindutva represents – to coin a term – a “state-community”, where the state and society are indistinguishable.

No. Hindutva has always meant that Hindus should put aside their theological differences and work together to get rid of casteism and dynasticism and cowardice and corruption in high places. A democratic nation is one where Society and State are distinguishable in the sense that the latter serves and is subordinate to the former.

This process has helped the BJP win the majority of seats in UP in 2019, in spite of the formidable alliance of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party.

Pakistan helped Modi win big. For the first time, India was hitting the bad guys on their home turf. Why speak of a BSP/SP alliance as 'formidable'? One may as well speak of cats and dogs as presenting a United Front in the Struggle against Fascism.

New aspirations
The deliberate communalisation of public discourse through social media – ably aided by mainstream media – has indeed played a huge role in gathering these groups together under the Hindutva umbrella.

This silly man and the people he worked for deliberately turned public discourse into elitist shite. They pretended they were part of a battle against Fascism. But Indians don't know what that word means.

The fact is the resurgence of violent Islam has caused all whom they attack to cluster together under a confessional identity. Why? Because if we don't hang together, we will hang apart.

Much has been written about it. What has probably been ignored is how certain regional cultures have acquired hegemony over everyday practices, especially of the middle-class.

Very true! Just see how Tamil people have taken to talking Gujarati! Bengalis now refuse to eat sandesh. They demand shrikhand.

The status that Bengal had in producing cultural ideals

disappeared long ago. Those guys continued to think of themselves as smart long after everybody else gave up on them. This author tweets ' Our liberal pundits who blame the opposition's "lack of effort" for India's political climate, should read a bit of Foucault, if they aren't smart enough to read Marx.'

Foucault literally died of ignorance. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communists actually read Marx and discovered he had said 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution.' Marx wrote badly but he isn't difficult to read at all. Anyway, Kantorovich had given Marxian Economics a coherent mathematical model for the Labour Theory by the end of the Sixties.

is now occupied by Gujarat and Punjab. The Gujarat-model is not just an economic ideal, it is a lifestyle.

I would say Delhi and Mumbai are objects of Tardean mimetics. Nobody wants to be a farmer. Gujarat has Prohibition. Nobody wants that- at least in the author's own profession.

Punjab is presented in popular imagination as a combination of affluent farmers and Non-Resident Indians. Bollywood cinema and Hindi soaps promote these cultures – albeit as stereotypes of wealth and prosperity.

This may have been true 20 years ago. Has this cretin not seen Udta Punjab?

It is telling that Amit Shah’s roadshow in Kolkata, ahead of the 2019 elections, had garba and bhangra performances.

Why? Because a lot of donors, or potential donors, are Gujjus and Punjabis who made Kolkata their home a hundred years ago. It was the most developed part of India back then.

The BJP’s show managers had clearly realised that these cultures had become aspirational for the average Calcuttan, who once treated everything non-Bengali with scorn.

I doubt this is the case. I personally thought Shah damaged his party by his antics. Those guys need to project a good CM candidate. Garba and bhangra and Vivekananda are all irrelevant.

It would, therefore, not be surprising if people outside the Hindi belt also feel emotionally connected to the idea of a Ram Mandir. It is also a byproduct of the overall process of the spread of Hindi, and the cultural practices associated with the language, across non-Hindi speaking states.

This is nonsense. All Hindus care about is that another Temple is coming up. We each have our own 'kuladevam' but there's no harm in going to the shrine of some other deity because, it turns out, they are all avatars of each other.

The Modi-Shah BJP has also reimagined the relationship between the state and the people. Elections are not central to this vision.

No. They are its foundation.

The objective is to create a community of subjects, who are no longer citizens. They owe absolute allegiance to the leader.

Yes, yes. We get it. Modi is Hitler. Shah is Mussolini. But all is the fault of FinanzKapital. Boo to Capitalism! Hegemony is causing coolies to forget their devotion to, if not Karl Marx, then Foucault (coz many of them aren't very smart at all). Instead they are being brainwashed into thinking they are Hindus! Yet, as ten gazillion Bengali public intellectuals have discovered through painstaking research, Hinduism was invented by a British guy called Lord John Smith. He also invented garbha and bhangra and bharatnatyam. This was all a cunning trick played by FinanzKapital which had discovered that Indian coolies were constantly turning the pages of Das Kapital and underlining portions of it and writing in the margin 'How True!'.

They are children, and he is their guardian. He takes decisions for them, in their best interest. The leader’s decisions do not need the active support of the subjects. Indeed, at times, the people might even suffer for the larger goal envisioned by the leader.

This cretin thinks we are children. So he tells us a nice story about FinanzKapital and some British guy who invented Hinduism and then some evil Fascists, who were not from Bengal, who used Gramscian Hegemony to brainwash Foucault reading coolies into the false belief that they were actually members of the same pan-Indian Religion.

This is carefully played out in the idea of the Ram Mandir, and the attendant iconography, where Modi is seen to be larger than the deity himself, holding his hand and taking him to his rightful abode.

Not just Modi, everybody else there was bigger than the deity- Ram Lalla. Some of those priests looked bigger than Modi. This means he was their liddle babykins. That's how 'iconography' works- right? If you see a President or Prime Minister flanked by tall and muscular Security Personnel, you immediately say- 'how sweeet! Look at that cute little baby! I could eat him up with a spoon'.

Modi, with his longer hair and almost flowing beard, is presented as a Rajarshi – a king who has attained the status of a sage.

But he was still just an itty bitty baby because some others present were bigger than him.

The “state-community” finds its purest representation in the Ram Mandir, where India returns to an imaginary Ram Rajya, outside the “western” idea of democracy.

Very true! I remember what happened here in England when Theresa May was chief guest at the Swami Narayan temple. Suddenly everybody started wearing saree and dancing garbha. This cretin isn't telling stupid lies at all.

This is a crucial moment in India’s politics

Nonsense! The Supreme Court settled a long running property dispute. The BJP seems to have managed things quite well. If the Temple is up and running by 2014, this may sway a few votes in the area. But the thing does not matter very much. India has more urgent problems.

– one that completely reverses what the liberal vision of the nation tried to establish.

There was no 'liberal vision'. There was a 'Communist' vision, but it turned out to be shite- except in Kerala where it was meritocratic. Liberals don't care if Temples go up all over the place. Commies get very upset- but they are shite.

It is not just about secularism, it is about modern-liberal ideas of liberty, individualism and rights.

The Supreme Court decided the Case on the basis of Legal Rights. That is how Liberalism works.

That project stands defeated in this battle. The question is whether this is the end of the war.

What war? Look at West Bengal. Where did all the Commies run off too? Mamta's goons kicked the shit out of them. They have gone back to reading Foucault in a forlorn and dejected manner. Much good may it do them.