Malavika Kasturi, an Associate Professor of History in Toronto & Mekhola Gomes a Postdoctoral Fellow, attacked and tried to scratch out the eyes of a JNU historian for daring to suggest that, for Hindus, India has been a nation for thousands of years.
They write in the Wire-
At a time when history has become an ideological site for the redrawing of the idea of India, we write with the conviction that as professional historians we must be responsible in the interpretations of facts and arguments, especially when writing for the wider public.
Professional historians aren't responsible for shit. This is because they are stupid and ignorant. Smart people don't study History.
The idea of India is, quite simply, that it is a nation which is overwhelmingly Hindus whose borders, where non-Hindu, are contested. Ten years ago, this may not have been obvious because, for the first time since Independence, a non-Hindu was in charge. But, it is now clear, that non-Hindu was merely the Regent for a self-confessed janeodhari Saivite Hindu Brahmin who visits Temples. Thus, whereas Politics may be an 'ideological site', Indian History is merely an idiotic site where shitheads from Toronto can pretend to know something about a country they feel fortunate to have left.
It is with the same conviction that we responded to Shonaleeka Kaul’s “The Idea of India: A Historical Corrective” published in The New Indian Express. In this reply to her rejoinder, “The Empire Strikes Back: Ad Hominem as History” we restate the fallacies and inaccuracies in Kaul’s articles which suggest that the idea of India is based on an “ethnic” and geographical unity that can be traced back to the 5th century BCE.
Kaul is correct. She, like Rahul Baba, is a Brahmin. Her religion does indeed prevail from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari. No doubt, the pale of settlement, beyond which caste would be lost, has expanded. But by the time of Ashoka, over two thousand years ago, Brahmins were found all over what is now India. True, Muslim majorities have ejected them from ancestral land. But India itself has a massive Hindu majority. Stupid people, like the authors, thought Sonia's Congress was anti-Hindu. Perhaps it was. But it has bitten the dust and will only rise from it by embracing 'Hindutva'. These two sad losers haven't got the memo.
Kaul notes historians, geographers, and political scientists distinguish between the idea of a nation and nation-state.
But does not go on to say that historians and political scientists are as stupid as shit. Geography isn't real high I.Q but it is an idiographic discipline and has no business talking nomothetic shite. There is no single 'idea of a nation'. In America, there is a 'Nation of Islam'. Its idea of Nation is different from that of the 'idea of Britain'- which, it seems, is currently fraying. A particular person may have multiple conflicting 'ideas' of what a Nation means. By contrast 'nation-state' is an abstraction which could be considered a 'term of art' for a particular, shite, type of discipline. But, as a concept, it is essentially contested.
These two Toronto desis don't have the I.Q to grasp these sorts of distinctions.
However, the creation of India as a distinct geo-body, as “national space,” and its cultural and territorial configuration as Bharat is very much a product of the 19th century.
No it isn't. These two shitheads haven't noticed that Pakistan and Bangladesh and Burma went their separate ways. What is left is Hindu majority Indians 'idea of India' which corresponds to Kaul's conception. The Brits found they had to administer India along its own historical joints and ligatures. Ceylon was separate because it was Buddhist. Burma separated because it was Buddhist. Pakistan separated because it was Muslim. What was left was either Hindu majority or not sufficiently non-Hindu to go its own way.
According to Kaul, a nation is defined as “a notion consisting of a jointly held sense of belonging to a common territorial and cultural entity.”
Hindus have that. They are an overwhelming majority. So India exists.
Further she claims that her article “goes on to demonstrate concrete examples of such an understanding of India in history.” Yet, it is disingenuous for Kaul to argue that she is speaking of an idea of India that is merely cultural when she emphasises the importance of its presumed territorial unity.
Territorial unity arises if one can cross jurisdictions and settle elsewhere without loss of identity- which, in India, means caste identity. Germany had lots of princes and Bishoprics and so forth. But it was defined as a Nation long before it was united by the sword.
Kaul claims that the idea of contemporary India rests on imaginations of geography and space as spelt out in several ancient texts.
No. She isn't a fool. She knows very well that other Hindus like herself know that the idea of India is based on the zone of permissible settlement without loss of caste. Within her own sub-caste, or mine for that matter, it was only four generations ago that caste ceased to be extinguished by 'crossing the black water'. But people like Motilal Nehru, who helped break that taboo, compensated by devoting them to the Nationalist cause.
She suggests that the Indian nation has had geographical coherence and meaning since ancient times.
This is quite true. Indian Kings dreamed of themselves reuniting the entire territory under their own Rule. No doubt, the margin advanced or retreated but there was a large, diverse, stable core which persists to this day.
However, B.D. Chattopadhaya
who actually knew some History, unlike these two cretins, but who didn't know shit about Game Theory and coordination problems and Schelling focality and thus was helpless as a babe in explaining the 'reverse Game theory' which is State ideation and formation.
has ably cautioned us against making such anachronistic connections between early representations of space, geographical imaginations, and the modern nation.
But the fellow was wrong. He didn't know Economics and thus had a shit theory of history. Hindu India is like Han China but with castes rather than clans. No doubt, its National identity suffered much more from Turkic invaders. But it reasserted itself- thanks in part, to the Brits who did see themselves, on the prayer of people like Raja Ram Mohun Roy, as protecting the feeble, and feebler minded, Hindu from the aggressive Muslims- and it is now clear that there was never a Secular interregnum, there was simply a Brahmin dynasty and a competing, largely non-Brahmin, Hindu National Party. Socialisms would come and go, but they were caste based.
In other words, it is ahistorical to seamlessly project categories and concepts of the present (nation) onto older cultural categories like Bharatavarsha.
It is ahistorical to seamlessly project categories and concepts from the shitty little brains of Leftist cretins onto anything at all. The fact is, we have reason to believe that the guys who run things overwhelmingly believe in Bharatvarsha and Jambudvipa and so forth. By contrast, their mouthing of Commie bullshit or Ivy League bullshit was merely a case of monkey see, monkey do.
All students of history are taught that we must strive to grasp the past on its own terms and not reduce it to the present.
That is because students of history are as stupid as shit. They must be taught not to masturbate in class. Non history students don't have to be told that the pizza they ate yesterday must be grasped on its own terms. You must not 'reduce it to the present', in the form of a turd, which you try to grasp and lovingly hand to your Professor in lieu of your homework assignment.
Undoubtedly, the idea of a modern Indian nation has been a contentious one.
Coz non-Hindus didn't like it.
While some made a case for envisioning India as a composite nation of many cultures,
but one majority Religion which considered that nation to be unitary
others including Muhammad Ali Jinnah and V.D. Savarkar held the view that nations were based on religious communities.
Jinnah proved his point. Pakistan and Bangladesh exist. That's not contentious at all.
The ideas of citizenship and the nation-state based on Savarkar’s understanding of the nation are especially pertinent in India today.
No. They were enshrined in the Constitution. Non-Muslim Refugees got Citizenship. Muslims who had fled across the border weren't allowed to return. Indeed, the Custodian of Evacuee (later Enemy) Property harassed some Muslims till they emigrated in the Fifties or Sixties.
Such religious nationalism in India, based on unequal citizenship rights, is connected to exclusionary laws and processes like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens.
The first confirms the status quo. The second was pushed through by the Supreme Court in fulfilment of promises made 35 years ago which, however, had legislative form from the early Fifties itself. In other words, nothing changed. These two cretins don't know enough history to distort it. They can merely repeat lies.
Thus, it is the ethical responsibility of historians to guard against anachronisms and abuses of history to justify notions that exclude any group on the basis of language, religion, or ethnicity.
The ethical responsibility of shite historians is to fuck off to Toronto where they may receive intellectual affirmative action and be nurtured as victims of horrendous epistemic self-abuse.
What these losers are trying to do, in essence, is try to sound smart without actually fooling anybody so Whitey will feel sorry for them and give them tenure so that they can minister, in their turn, to equally abject cretins.
In essence, in the attempt to link a reductionist and simplified understanding of geographical imaginations to contemporary ideas of national space and the nation-state, Kaul does a hop-and-skip citation of the Mahabharata, Vishnu Purana, and Xuanzang’s travel accounts before taking a giant leap to incorporate the philosopher Shankaracharya.
She could have quoted B.D Choothopadhyaya quoting the Raghuvamsa etc. to fill in those gaps.
Throughout the broad period she covers, from the ancient past to the present, there were many conflicting geo-bodies,
Nonsense! 'Geo-body' is a term coined by a Thai Professor. But Thailand is nothing like India. It is not the case that Sanskrit would have been displaced even if a Dravidian King had united the country.
spatial practices and political formations, spanning the shifting borders of empires and sultanates. In her rejoinder, when questioned, Kaul adds uncontextualised references to al-Biruni and Abul Fazl to argue that all these imaginations of space are “nonetheless hardly distinguishable.”
In Thai history, we can distinguish 'geo-bodies' which had practical effects- e.g. whether Khmer or Thai would be spoken. In India such effects are hardly distinguishable. Biruni & Abul Fazl had access to Hindu scholarship. They were reporting the Hindu communis opinio. But that hasn't changed very greatly. Kasturi might try asking her Granny. Gomes may not have this option.
However it is important to note who Kaul cites, how she cites them, and more importantly who she leaves out.
These cretins cited some Thai guy. What's next? Will they quote a Cambodian chick with a dick?
In her original piece, there was no room for spatial imaginations from the cosmopolitan world of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal empire or other genres of writing in Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, or regional languages.
Why? Because it was short. These two cretins give no space for spatial imaginations from the cosmopolitan world of the Toronto Sultanate or Montreal's empire or other genres of writing in various comic books.
For example, there is little space for the cultural imagination embedded in the hagiographies of Sufi saints about travel and space studied to such good effect by Simon Digby in this framework.
Digby was a nice guy. But he was utterly unpretentious. He understood very well that Pakistan meant to stamp out the collectives defined by vernacular Sufi Saints precisely because they represented recalcitrant territorial formations of a 'Zomia' type. In other words, the Sufi inhabited the 'shatter zone' of Empire. This tensions exist even in the Iqbal of asrar-e-khuddi. Data Ganj Baksh reproves Aurangazeb for 'zamin-bhook'- land hunger.
Digby could be considered an 'old India hand'. He was certainly treated that way by 'Native Chieftains'- or their no good sons whom I used to drink with. Those old Raj families knew everybody who was anybody in the sub-continent either directly or though one of their matrimonially allied branches. You dared not put on side when talking to one of those broken down old sticks. He's be able to tell your Grandfather was a tehsildar not a Nawab. But they were good sports and kept quiet about it. I once told some elderly dowager that, as an Iyer, I am the hereditary Grand Duke of Ireland. Sadly, we were chased out by the leprechauns. Still, I was organizing an Iyerish Restoration Army- the IRA which she might have heard- and if she'd like to donate the price of a Guinness to the good cause I'd be sure to make her a Countess once restored to my proper sphere in life. She refused to make a donation but did put away the Sherry and made me drink a strong cup of tea to help the scones go down. Good people, as I said, but sadly lacking in 'cultural' or 'spatial' imagination. I suppose that is why they ruled over such a large proportion of the globe.
Despite her subsequent references to al-Biruni and Abul Fazl, in Kaul’s arguments the Sanskritic “tradition” appears as the glue binding Indian culture and the nation together.
Why the scare quotes? Kaul is Hindu- like 80 per cent of the population. Sanskrit is the glue which binds her to me and most of the bits of India together. Persian may hold Iran together. Arabic may hold Arabs together. In India it is Sanskrit loan-words which makes Malyalam almost intelligible to the Garwalhi.
This vast corpus of texts cannot be read in a linear fashion to fit into a preordained idea of India from the ancient past.
Nonsense! There is a way to do it and Hindus have been using that way of doing it for two thousand years.
We should also not be surprised that complex notions of the spatial organisation of the world existed in pre-modern India.
Nor that the simple ideas that Hindus still have were shared by their forebears. It has always been helpful for Hindu to say 'these are regions where the language is strange, the dress is different, the cuisine is different, but which are still sufficiently like our natal place such that we can settle there without loss of caste- i.e. ability to retain membership in an endogamous grouping sharing the same religion and customs. '
While cosmological and spatial imaginations certainly exist in these texts, Kaul reads into these imaginations “ethnic” and “geographic” criteria to serve as the basis for the nation.
While these cretins refuse to do so despite the fact that those 'cosmological' and 'spatial' imaginations were directly and continuously invoked in the creation and preservation of the Republic of India.
Yet making ancient “ethnic” categories into a basis for belonging
is what actually happens all over the world. No doubt, there are immigrants. But they are minorities. Consider Britain. Priti Patel may be of immigrant parentage but, like Bhownagree, the first Indian Tory MP, she identifies so much with the dominant ethnicity that she comes across as a British chauvinist unsympathetic to asylum seekers. In the US, Bobby Jindal or Nikki Haley exemplify this sort of assimilation.
introduces the fundamental question
which is answered by the Price Equation as modified by customary law
of who gets to belong to the nation and who is to be excluded.
Those descended from nationals and those who assimilate and become nationals are included. Everybody else is excluded. This is as true of Canada as India- though, no doubt, both countries take in a few refugees.
While there were different evocations of community and selfhood, to suggest that these were subsumed into a unified geo-cultural space since the 5th century BCE is not substantiated by the vast and rich body of interdisciplinary work by scholars of Persian, Sanskrit and regional language texts.
These politically correct cretins mention Persian before Sanskrit!But then they speak of 'regional languages'. This means they admit Sanskrit wasn't regional. What could it be other than National?
DNA studies shows a lot of intermingling till the caste system became endogamous some 2000 year ago. That is an ancient enough date for any Nation to be getting on with. No doubt, some territory was lost and some territory was gained. However, many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis don't consider themselves to be of a fundamentally different stock than Indians. Yet, they are separate nations. Do any 'Persian, Sanskrit and regional language texts' explains why this is so? No. The fact is non-Hindus have good reason to be wary of Muslim majorities. This is not to say that Hindus can't do ethnic cleansing. It's just that they aren't as keen on forcible conversion.
Our two cretins are troublingly selective in their choice of targets for attack.
Kaul is troublingly also selective in her deployment of the work of scholars including Diana Eck and Sheldon Pollock. She relies on Eck’s assertion that India is a sacred geography forged by pilgrimage over centuries. This is a shaky pedestal upon which to build an argument about the nation. Sacred space is not the same as national political space.
Unless, it has actually become so.
Similarly, when Pollock writes of a South Asian cosmopolis bound by Sanskrit, his writings are clear that this Sanskrit cosmopolis does not map onto modern-day India either culturally or territorially.
Yet, this is what we see. It is not the case that Pakistanis or Bangladeshis study much Sanskrit in school.
Pollock in fact highlights the instability of geographical imaginations of Bharatavarsha (The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, 2006, p. 193).
So what? There has been no instability in the geographical actuality of Bharat, that is India.
To tie this idea of a Sanskrit cosmopolis stretching across South, Central, and Southeast Asia to the cartography of Indian nationhood is further evidence of the kinds of selective reading we highlighted in our rejoinder.
But it is these cretins who are doing the tieing! Indians would have no objection in a greater 'Akhand Bharat' coming into existence. The fact that Muslims don't want anything to do with the scheme is the fly in the ointment. A Nation may want more expansive borders but must make do with what it can defend.
In fact, Kaul’s The Making of Early Kashmir (2018) has been subject to extensive criticism for its de-contextualised and anachronistic use of sources.
In other words, Hinduphobic cretins tried to scratch her eyes out. But those cretins get dumped on in their turn and thus hightail it to Toronto.
There is a lack of clarity in these cretin's writing about their argument's relationship to India. It sounds like the sort of shite you are safer peddling in Canada so as to come across as a refugee from Fascism with complex educational needs due to a deprived childhood and being subjected to incessant epistemic self-abuse.
There is a lack of clarity in Kaul’s writing about her argument’s relationship to the Nehruvian “idea of India” – cultural unity produced by diversity.
No there isn't. Nehru was a Kaul. His vacuity was of a similar stripe. Apparently, his brother-in-law had some knowledge of Kashmir's ancient history. Kaul is probably related to the Nehrus in multiple ways going back centuries.
The idea of India is multiple, for civilisational narratives are part of modern national projects.
But cretins holed up in Toronto can contribute nothing in terms of ideas or narratives. Their job is to display an abject imbecility such as can only arise by reason of mental retardation and horrendous epistemic self-abuse in a backward part of the world.
If Kaul wishes to speak of unity in diversity, as she does in her rejoinder, then she seems to be in agreement with the Nehruvian idea of India as enunciated in the Discovery of India (1946). But, this is not at all what her original article suggested. Why write a “corrective” if Kaul is merely trying to reinvent the wheel?
Why do these cretins write at all? Let them buy an air-ticket and come to India and catch hold of Kaul and scratch her eyes out.
It would be disingenuous to believe that historical debates in public forums are not shaped by their contexts, just like the “cultural” texts and connections Kaul discusses.
Fair point. But, the historical context is- you cretins fucked up big time. Your side lost. Why? You didn't give a toss about India. You were just trying to get to Canada- or anywhere Whitey might take pity on you and offer you tenure on the basis of intellectual affirmative action and the terrifying type of intersectionality that your epistemic self-abuse represents.
We are concerned about the world that Kaul’s conception of the past is taking us towards at a time when the “new republic” of Hindutva has been announced.
So, these cretins aren't worried about Modi. They are worried about Kaul. Why? Fuck is wrong with them? Will they be able to escape Canada and get to California by bashing Kaul? Let us hope so.
In a moment when history is being used to aid and enable majoritarian nationalism,
Fuck off! Majoritarianism is kicking cretinous Historians in the goolies and telling them to fuck off to Toronto pronto. But this is a universal trend.
it is more incumbent than ever that historians become part of these debates and intervene in ethical and responsible ways.
In other words, lie their asses off.
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