Ravinder Kaur is Sikh. She has written an article in Aeon which blames fellow Sikh Manmohan Singh for all Ind's ills. Why? Because she is as stupid as shit. She thinks what attracts f.d.i is not low wages and no Unions but some 'narrative' of revived chauvinistic glory. Yet, she must know plenty of regimes, very different from what obtains in India, which have attracted much higher per capita f.d.i purely on the basis of low wages and no labour militancy.
The early 1990s was a moment of fragile hope and anxiety in India.
No. It was a moment of National Bankruptcy. Then, Manmohan Singh grabbed the opportunity to scrap India's crazy 'license permit' Raj. He and he alone could get away with it, because he was trusted by all sides. This unassuming and very hard working man prevailed because of the excellence of his character, the quality of his intellect, and the purity of his motives. In an unexpected twist, Manmohan was later rewarded with two terms as India's Prime Minister. He remains venerated to this day though he had, and has, all the dynamism and charisma of of a dead goldfish floating upside down in the toilet bowl. Still, the fact remains, there are no corruption charges against him or anyone in his family. History, as he himself suggested, will judge him kindly.
Kaur is a Historian. But she is based in Copenhagen. Perhaps she has been eating too much Danish cheese. God alone knows why she is now seeking to blacken a truly great fellow Sikh's name and fame.
The nation had just ‘opened up’ its economy to join the world of free markets, a post-Cold War ‘end of history’ global world.
Indians thought Fukuyama and Kojeve stupid shitheads. There was no 'end of history' or 'Nietzchean last man' for us. Why? We had actual Zarathustrians. Dadabhai Naoroji attended the Second International along with Rosa Luxembourg though already 80 years old. Saklatvala was one of the first Communists to be elected to Westminster. Kerala was the first State anywhere in the world to elect a Communist Government.
Indians- including people like Manmohan Singh- have forgotten more about Marxist economic theory than Copenhagen Kaur will ever learn.
The seductive formula held out the promise of foreign investments, high economic growth, and of unleashing the caged spirit of Indian enterprise.
This had always been on offer. India could have chosen that path at the same time as South Korea and Taiwan and so forth.
It also promised more consumer choices to Indian citizens, dreams of a better life and, most of all, a chance to set the nation’s course to resplendent 21st-century futures.
As opposed to what? Resplendent 19th century futures?
The forward march to market liberalisation also entailed breaking away from India’s legacy of economic nationalism: the anticolonial economics of swadeshi (literally, ‘of one’s own nation’) or self-reliance.
Hilarious! India was staving off mass starvation on the basis of PL480 food shipments from Uncle Sam! A begging bowl is not the badge of 'self-reliance'.
Swadeshi had dominated Indian economic policy and thinking since
much before
national independence, and it prioritised autonomy over the nation’s resources.
From the time of Ranade, Indian economists had been 'Listian'- i.e. took Germany as their model. But this did not mean they didn't want export led growth.
The boycott of foreign-made goods was the most popular expression of swadeshi politics.
Gandhi restricted this to textiles. He was cool with imports of capital goods because that's what his financiers wanted. But this was perfectly 'Listian'.
New Indian economic policy
made by Manmohan Singh who had been part of the old Indian economic policy team
in the 1990s threw open the consumer market to foreign goods. Swadeshi-school economic thinkers termed it the ‘coca-colonisation of India’. In this dramatic transition to free-market capitalism, Coca-Cola became both a sign of the worldly pleasures now available to Indian consumers, and of the treachery of ‘selling out’ to foreign corporations. In 1977, Coca-Cola had been banned by the Indian state. The company was subsequently turned into a nationalist venture that sold an Indian brand of soft drinks called Thums Up.
Kaur does not mention 'Campa Cola' which was produced by the previous franchisee for Coca Cola. Interestingly, the founder of the group- Sardar Mohan Singh- and subsequent owners were Sikhs. Thums Up was produced by the Chauhans who sold it to Coca Cola. But the Chauhans aren't Sikh.
By the 1990s, Coca-Cola was not only back in the newly liberalised India, it bought the Indian brand to expand its operations in the market. The corporate sale of Thums Up to Coca-Cola illustrated how liberalisation and globalisation had displaced the principles of swadeshi economic nationalism.
It illustrated nothing. Nobody cared. The truth is that wasteful competition was averted. The Chauhan's Parle group, which has split up, concentrated on other products.
The free-market lobby, it was ruefully remarked,
by rueful shitheads
had ‘sold out to big business’ and turned its back on India’s anticolonial dream of economic Independence.
A dream which involved begging for food from Uncle Sam despite the fact that India is a nation of farmers
Though advocates of swadeshi as well as socialist activists
who were utterly senile and smelled bad and thus were avoided by everybody
contested liberalisation in the early 1990s, few grasped the full consequences of India’s transition to free-market capitalism.
Nonsense! Everybody grasped the consequence of the Nation not going fucking bankrupt
Liberalisation of India proved more than the question of foreign consumer goods or foreign takeover of companies that socialist and swadeshi advocates alike aimed to prevent.
The above sentence proves Kaur does not know English. She should have written 'Liberalization of India proved to involve more &c. You can't prove a question.
In the 21st-century global economy, the nation-state is itself undergoing transformation into an enclosure of global capital.
Meaningless gibberish! Do Americans wake up in the morning saying 'OMG, we have turned into an enclosure of global capital!?' What about China, which has received a heck of a lot more f.d.i than India because they will kill Labour agitators or Environmental protesters? Does any subject of Chairman Xi have any doubts as to whether China is a Communist country rather than an 'enclosure of global capital'? If you are arrested, should you write to the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange begging for clemency? No. You need to start babbling broken praise of Mao and Xi and the Chinese path to Communism.
In the 1990s, India began courting foreign capital to rejuvenate its economy through global investment programmes.
No. India had run out of foreign currency reserves. It courted capital inflows of any sort to stave off an inflationary spiral set of by currency depreciation
What initially began as a push to sell ‘Made in India’ goods in global markets
Export subsidies had always been there. That's why, in London in the mid Eighties, I bought cheap Indian suits at Marks and Spenser as well as cheap Indian color TVs. So did Indian tourists because this was cheaper in pounds than in Rupees! In other words, the export subsidy was stupid. It was one reason the country soon ran out of foreign exchange and had to go cap in hand to the IMF.
would soon turn into a ‘Make in India’ project seeking to recast the country as a veritable ‘factory of the world’ for global manufacturing.
But India won't fix its paternalistic Labor laws and love of thuggish Trade Unionists so 'Make in India' is restricted to places where the police beat the shit out of 'activists' like Nodeep Kaur.
At the turn of the millennium, a historic publicity campaign portrayed India as an investment hotspot in the global markets. The campaign name was ‘India Shining’, and it was an accurate description of the postcolonial country’s transition to capitalism.
But this was for internal consumption! To get f.d.i all you need to say is 'we iz shit poor. Wages are lower than China. Also we kill Trade Unionists slowly and painfully and publicly.'
By offering India as a refuge for global capital
a refuge? Coz global capital was in an abusive relationship with Ordoliberalism which would keep kicking the shit out of it and accusing it of being 'passive agressive'? Is that what happened?
No. India was a cheaper alternative to China. Global Capital didn't need no steenkin' refuge. If Ordoliberalism got stroppy, Global Capitalism wrecked its anus but good.
made available through state-led investment programmes,
There were plenty of state-led investment programs in the late Fifties and Sixties. As, Manmohan's mentor, Ian Little pointed out, investing in shit is a shitty idea. All that matters is the r.o.i. Little started off as a philosopher before becoming quite a sensible Development Economist. Amartya Sen went the other way- but he was never sensible. Manmohan is the hero of a story in which Bhagwati and Sen and everybody else ran away to feather their own nest. But Manmohan wasn't alone. Montek too stayed behind. That's Sikhism for you. It involves staying behind and working hard to build up the country while everybody else rushes off to secure tenure somewhere nice.
the metaphor signalled a deep transformation.
It signaled that the Left was senile and useless and could be wholly disregarded. Jyoti Basu had a chance to be P.M in the mid Nineties. His politburo put the kybosh on that. Why? They were brain-dead tossers.
The infusion of capital made India shine in the theatre of the world economy – or, in the language of policy experts, its structural adjustments and lowering of trade barriers were aided and abetted by global financial institutions (the IMF and the World Bank) and facilitated by the state.
What made India shine was high value adding software and B.P.O exports. Otherwise it wasn't going great guns and attracted less per capita f.d.i than poorer- and at one time more chaotic- countries like Bangladesh. Indeed, Indians themselves were investing in China and Bangladesh and so on though Chinese wages overtook Indian wages sometime in the Nineties. However, per unit labour costs are the only thing that matters. Chinese investment in infrastructure has created a 'separating equilibrium'. Moreover, China is now doing high value infrastructure export. How come? Edwin Lim, back in the Eighties, persuaded them to buy the best- even if the best was Japanese- for infrastructure. There was a learning curve but China soon moved up the value chain. India could have done the same thing. Manmohan and Montek tried to push the thing through, but the woke nutters could gain more money and fame obstructing India's rise.
This move altered the old compact between nation and state.
No it didn't. Nothing political changed. The Left just got a lot older and more incontinent.
Once structurally adjusted, the nation became a site of production,
as opposed to what? a site of destruction?
its territory a reserve of untapped natural resources,
or tapped natural resources
its population a ‘demographic dividend’ that both produced and consumed,
as opposed to just shitting all over the place while quietly starving to death
and its culture a unique brand identity.
Because previously India did not have a unique brand identity as a place with Maharajahs and Mahatmas and Elephants and Snake Charmers.
India Shining represented a nation and state bound to an optimistic vision of economic growth and prosperity,
as opposed to the pessimistic vision of the Club of Rome which dismissed India as a basket case which had better be left alone to starve quietly to death
the erasure of colonial shame, and even the restoration of a golden, and mythical, Hindu past.
That Hindu past is the reason India exists. Where non-Hindus are in the majority, there is separatism.
Originally fashioned to help India acquire a unique cultural identity in the global economy,
Manmohan Singh knew the global economy does not give a shit about unique cultural identity. But this was common knowledge. It was fucking obvious. All that mattered was low wages and shooting Trade Unionists in the back of the head if they tried to wreck things.
this soft-power mythology of the country as an ancient Hindu nation soon became a powerful tool in the religious nationalism of Hindutva.
But Hindutva had been the main driver for Nationalism- among Hindus. British Viceroys had been commenting on this since the 1880s!
This great, ancient, pre-Muslim civilisation, Hindu nationalists insist, represents the authentic India.
Well, it does represent those portions of India where there is no secessionist movement.
This recent transformation of the nation-state in India provides another counterexample to the misguided promises that a flat world of free markets would make nation-states extinct.
Who the fuck ever gave any such promise? Did Brits or Americans ever think their Nation would disappear if they went in for free trade? No. Of course not. Don't be silly.
On the other hand there were some 'International Socialists' who believed the State would wither away once Communism prevailed.
Proponents long imagined that globalisation – shorthand for unrestrained mobility of capital, goods, people and ideas – as a world-in-motion, an open-ended market trade sans barriers. National borders were to become superfluous.
This is bullshit. America and Europe and Japan and so forth have never said they will lift immigration restrictions upon people who look like me. If we want to settle in those countries we have to have useful skills and to be able to pay a lot of money for the privilege.
The story of globalisation itself has been told in the language of movements – flows, motions, networks, mobility, circulations and fluidity. The image is of perpetual motion.
As opposed to the permanent stasis which Kaur herself approves off.
The India Shining campaign discloses how the nation-state not only defied the predictions of its end, but was undergoing a makeover to become a capitalist ‘growth story’ in the global economy.
The India Shining campaign disclosed nothing except that Ad Agencies are stupid. The thing failed because the price of onions brought tears to the eyes of the people. Incidentally, Manmohan's popularity as PM went up when his wife was found to know the price of onions in the mandi. She herself bought the vegetables for her hubby's dinner. BTW she is a good kirtan singer and a Professor of History.
This shift becomes especially apparent in the old developing world, which, at the turn of the millennium, global financial institutions and investors imagined as a frontier of emerging markets.
Why at the 'turn of the millennium'? There was big f.d.i in the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties and Nineties.
The turning point came in the 1990s. That is when the ‘triumph of liberalism’ in Euro-America energised the contentious project of neoliberal reforms in the Global South.
Bullshit! Irma Adelman got the South Koreans to undertake these reforms in the early Sixties. Taiwan, on the advise of two Chinese American Econ Professors at Cornell, did the same thing a little earlier. Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia after the fall of Sukarno made out like gangbusters with f.d.i inflows.
With the counterweight of communism gone, liberal economic reformers pitched their plans as the only viable future for the developing world.
Why? Because everything else had failed. But reforms don't need to be 'liberal' at all. Shooting Trade Unionists and Environmental Activists works even better.
Financial institutions and think tanks, such as the Foreign Policy Centre launched in 1998 by Britain’s prime minister Tony Blair and his foreign secretary Robin Cook, encouraged countries of the Global South to make structural adjustments and ‘open up’ their markets to foreign capital investments.
But Cook was reviled and insulted to his face. Blair was too oily to grapple with.
This formula promised economic prosperity to the postcolony and a future as a great power, to win a seat at the table of global politics. India stood as the forerunner among the postcolonial nations that cautiously embraced the liberal project of capitalist reforms.
Why is this stupid female pretending India listens to worthless foreigners? We told Cook to go stuff himself. As Edwin Lim of the World Bank noticed, India had more first rate Economists- including Manmohan himself- than any other country the Bank dealt with. But, in India, woke 'activists' could get more money and fame, thanks to foreign NGOs, to obstruct development than guys like Montek Singh Ahluwalia could get by pushing the thing through. Kaur herself has got a cushy berth in some shitty Academic Dept in Yuroop by pretending to be a woke activist. But what this Sikh woman is doing in this ignorant, illiterate, article is putting all the blame for India's current political climate on smart and patriotic Sikhs- most signally, Manmohan Singh.
Given its sheer complexity and size in the world economy, India’s decision to embrace market liberalisation served as a compelling example. Among policymakers and journalists, the ‘India Story’ became a shorthand for the promised good times to citizens and profits to investors of the country’s turn to neoliberal economics.
But f.d.i failed to materialize because the truth soon became obvious. India has very high compliance costs re. Labor and Environmental laws. 'Inspectorate Raj' had replaced 'Licence Permit Raj'. Activists were PILing Companies into bankruptcy. That's why Manmohan took a strong line with
1) foreign NGOs
2) Naxals and their urban counterparts
3) the old Left which opposed the 123 nuclear agreement with the US.
To counterbalance things, Manmohan did lock up some Hindu 'terrorists' by fabricating evidence. One such, the Nun Sadhvi Prayag, defeated Congress strong-man Digvijay Singh on his home turf in the recent elections. She is still out on bail on some bogus charge.
What the Left did not understand that what was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander. PIL is a double edged sword. Now Lefties are getting sent to jail as 'urban Naxals' just as Hindu monks and nuns were sent to jail. They don't like it one bit.
The India Story raises the question: what does it mean to love the nation in the 21st century?
In Kaur's case, it means getting the fuck out of India even if it only to Copenhagen- a place so dully provincial, it makes Jullundur look like the New York of the Algonquin Club.
To ask this question already seems an aberration, given that the ideal of the nation is at odds with commodification and market transactions.
Sez who? The Danes? Do they really want to go back to Viking raids, as opposed to buying and selling, so as to acquire resources not available at home? Is this what is discussed in the faculty lounge at the University of Copenhagen? Does Prof. Sven say to Prof. Kaur, 'Ja! You are right! We must outfit a long-ship to raid the coast of Ludhiana so as to secure strategic reserves of makkian de roti! How else are we to get our hands on that precious aphrodisiac?'
After all, Indians have long imagined the nation as sacred, a dynamic moral-spiritual project with a common history of love and suffering.
Nonsense! They have imagined it as a 'karma bhoomi'- i.e a place where certain actions, of a ritual or soteriological type, have efficacy.
The origins of 19th-century cultural nationalism in Europe lay in
18th century ideas which in turn were based on 17th century ideas which in turn dated back to the time of Charlemagne which in turn dated back to Tacitus.
the idea of nations as ‘organic beings, living personalities’ that demanded sacrifice and devotion, a ‘special kind of love’ that exceeded all others to sustain this virtual person.
is a notion found in the Bible and which was old when the Assyrian Empire was young.
Nationalists presumed the nation to be a unique being with an inalienable civilisational essence and a timeless history, and with its territory personified as a sacred being.
No they didn't. Some may have written in that style but only if they also wrote in that style about everything else. But this represented a tiny and wholly unimportant aspect of any Nationalist movement under the Sun.
To love the nation, then, was to celebrate the geist (spirit) of the volk (people), the national romance that embraced natural landscapes and their ethnic inhabitants.
But one could do this without being a Nationalist! Has Cophenhagen Kaur never heard of Rabindranath Tagore? The guy wrote the National Anthem for both India and Bangladesh. But he was not a Nationalist. In 1917 he published a book on the subject which said ' nationalism is a cruel epidemic of evil that is sweeping over human world of the present age, eating into its moral vitality'. Lots of lyric poets who celebrated 'volk' and 'ethnos' prayed for the survival of whichever Empire they lived under knowing the alternative was fratricidal war and ethnic cleansing.
Stalin, by contrast, pushed through a Nationalist theory for the Communist party- which is how come the Reds had to support the creation of both Israel and Pakistan- perhaps Kaur thinks that guy was into celebrating geist rather than Gulags.
The ultimate expression of nationalism was martyrdom for its cause.
But the very word 'martyr' arises out of a Religious, anti-Nationalist, context. There were 'martyrs for Science' before there were martyrs for the Nation.
For Indians engaged in the anticolonial struggle, the figure of the mother goddess, Bharat Mata (Mother India), a feminine embodiment of the nation’s territorial expanse, served as the sacred object of devotion and sacrifice.
This stupid woman is publishing this at a time when Sikh leaders in India are saying 'It is against Sikh Religion to say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. It seems Copenhagen Kaur thinks only Hindus engaged 'in the anticolonial struggle'.
So how could the sacred nation be put at the disposal of investors in the marketplace?
The same way America and Germany and Japan and even Stalin's Russia benefitted from f.d.i and paid for it through export earnings. You may as well ask 'how could the sacred nation go potty? Where might it be doing so? Oh. I see. Sacred nation is going potty inside cranium of Kaur. That is why her skull is full of shit.'
What renders the nation transcendental and open to exchange in the market is imagining it as a living organism,
Nonsense! It must be imagined as having a Legal personality of a Corporate type. This is what happens in actual fact. Once a Nation is signing International Treaties then it is de facto sovereign. But Legal personality- such as that possessed by the University of Copenhagen- does not require imagining that it is a living organism which is quietly going potty inside the cranium of poor, potty, Kaur.
a unique being that can be dressed up as a branded investment destination.
and then undressed and paraded around so everybody can see its buttocks and dangly bits. Chee! Chee!
That its landscape holds untapped natural resources and its people are consumers and producers enabled the state to represent the nation’s cultural identity, turning it into a corporate brand identity.
Every landscape- or seascape- or asteroid or planet has 'untapped natural resources'. All people everywhere are consumers and producers- though some, like me, are producing stuff nobody will pay for. Yet States don't come into being just because there is a landscape and some people on that landscape. Governance costs money- it uses up scarce resources. This has nothing to do with 'cultural identity'. Nor is it really the case that such States as do exist are at all similar to 'Corporate Brands'. The fact is any Corporate Brand can be bought if you offer enough money. It represents mere capitalized 'goodwill' of a type well understood by Accountants. By contrast, no State can be bought though no doubt there are one or two cases in History where an Empire has sold a parcel of land- e.g. the Louisiana or Alaskan purchase.
To love and be devoted to the nation, then, means to
get the fuck away- if only to Copen-fucking-hagen
work to enhance the brand value and economic potential of the nation. It means adding value to the nation by projecting it as a profitable, market-ready investment destination.
Which is best done by keeping wages low and shooting 'activists'.
The logic of 19th-century cultural nationalism is turned upside-down:
Because people are asked to abandon their mother tongue and native literature and mores?
the nation’s market value as a profit-generating commercial enclosure becomes a mode of affirming the worthiness of the people (volk) as a great nation.
Is this what Kaur sees happening in Denmark? Are young Danish students told to give up their Viking raids so as to concentrate on affirming the worthiness of volk as a great nation by exporting more cheese? Perhaps that is what is happening at Kaur's University. She herself should be congratulated for her heroic role in combatting the Viking menace to Albion's peaceful shores. But for her, them Danes would be back demanding Danegeld from BoJo and taking it out of his ass in trade if he fails to pay up.
The more the brand-new nation attracts and generates capital, the more it legitimises its aura, its claims of essence, its identity as the chosen people, and its natural ties with the landscape.
Who knew? Them Danes sure are a peculiar people! Kaur came from a sensible country which isn't a 'brand-new' nation at all. But then she went to Copenhagen. There she has discovered that Queen Margrethe II is constantly struggling to attract and generate capital. If she fails for even one moment, the natural ties of the Danish people with the landscape will evaporate. Gravity will cease to function. Danes will start floating upwards to be blown away by the winds none knows whither.
The infusion of capital continually generates something that exceeds capital –
output? No. Don't be silly. Copenhagen Kaur is writing this.
the aura/spirit or the non-extractable difference that’s ploughed back to generate brand capital.
But that is merely what Accountancy terms 'goodwill'. It can be bought and sold unlike spirits and auras and ghosts and other such shite inside Kaur's cranium.
In short, the cultural difference distilled into a corporate brand is put to work to generate capital, and capital in return enhances the claims of cultural uniqueness.
Then the brand is bought by an International Conglomerate. So what? Who gets their knickers in a twist about things like this in the third decade of the Twenty First century?
The commodification of the nation consecrates too the very idea of state sovereignty in ever-new forms: the visual power to celebrate the revitalised nation and to see and show the national territory and its population as valuable factors of production available to global capital.
This may be happening for Kaur in Copenhagen. But it isn't happening to anyone else. The 'visual power to celebrate the revitalised nation' existed in Soviet Republics as well as Salazar's Portugal and Ayub Khan's Pakistan. It is a big feature of national life in Cuba and North Korea as it was in Pol Pot's Cambodia. Why? Visual power exists so long as people have eyes and can use them to see. What Kaur lacks is the insight to see that she is babbling portentous nonsense.
Consider the Brand India publicity material, which mostly appears as a repackaging of the familiar cultural exotica – from yoga to wildlife, from colourful festivals to Ayurveda – in global aesthetics for its consumers in India and the world. What is crucial to this cultural politics of brand-making is not just what’s inside the image-frame but what’s kept outside it: for example, the near-absence of Muslim figures or symbols in the Brand India imagery.
Muslims chose to go their own way- wherever they were in the majority and strong enough to do so. Manmohan Singh was a refugee. Kaur must have relatives who had to flee their homes after Partition. Why is she playing the innocent here?
If there’s an exception, it’s the presence of the Taj Mahal, the 17th-century Mughal monument built in Indo-Islamic style. This mausoleum is a permanent thorn in Hindu nationalist politics, but one that can’t easily be evicted from Brand India. The monument is India’s prime tourist attraction and a world heritage site that generates steady profits.
What is Kaur saying? Countries have Tourism Ministries and those Ministries have an Advertising budget. OMG! How sinister! Is this not proof that The State is Up for Auction?! No. It is also not proof that State is a chick-with-a-dick who will love you long time for 5 dollar. Still, if imagining otherwise gets you off... different strokes for different folks- right?
The logic of Brand India also extends to rearranging the sociopolitical landscape.
Why does it not extend to doing the washing up and hoovering under the sofa? That's what I want to know. Fuck you logic of Brand India! Fuck you very much!
Critical to this transformation is how brand-making opens up a fractious politics of visual re-territorialisation of the nation.
India has fractious politics in plenty. But is anyone getting exercised over 'visual re-territorialisation'? No. Not even Rahul Baba has mentioned anything so silly. Kaur is simply lying her head off.
Who are the chosen people who inhabit the visual surface of the nation-brand? A form of public recognition of the nation’s cultural essence, that unique visual representation acquires legitimacy when the state sanctions it. It is here that the Brand India imagery assumes significance – the predominant choice of pre-Muslim Hindu cultural practices in the image-frame eventually becomes the cultural mainframe of the nation.
This happened in 1946 when Muslims voted overwhelmingly for the Muslim League and Hindus voted overwhelmingly for the INC. What followed was Partition and ethnic cleansing- more particularly in the Punjab, as Kaur knows all too well. Why pretend Manmohan Singh was responsible for things which occurred when he was in short pants?
The celebratory representation of cultural Hinduism as symbolic of modern India marginalises all other religious groups and the multicultural identity of postcolonial India.
First Buddhist Burma went its own way, then the Muslim majority areas split off- where they were strong enough to do so. After that, India had a Hindu identity. Since Hindus aren't interested in converting Muslims or Christians- they used to think of Sikhs as brothers- we got what we have.
As a result, the ideas ‘India’ and ‘Hindu’ are increasingly conflated in the public imagination.
But 80 percent of that public is Hindu. The other 20 percent may hate India as much as they hate Hindus but they get killed if they run amok. This, at any rate, is the complaint made by Soros funded public intellectuals. Why can't Hindus just sit quietly while their throats are slit? Chee, Chee, Modi is as bad as Macron- innit?
(For example, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi recently laid down the foundation of the country’s new parliament in a ceremony with mostly Hindu rituals.)
Ministers have been presiding over 'Bhumi Puja' for construction of all sorts of public buildings for many years now. Modi is no more guilty of offending against 'Secularism' than Jairam Ramesh or Rajiv or Indira or President Rajendra Prasad. True, in that last case, Nehru asked Prasad not to attend Bhumi Pujan of Somnath Temple. But Nehru did not resign when Prasad went ahead. Nehru accepted his Head of State's decision.
The secular and egalitarian roots of the foundational anticolonial nationalism are giving way. Taking its place is unabashed Hindu nationalism that neither brooks dissent nor is willing to share power with the minority groups.
Very true! Macron should share power with ISIS. BoJo should share power with Starmer. Biden must go humbly to Trump and request him to very kindly move back into White House so they can share power together.
By producing images of the nation and its culture, and marketing them to global investors,
This does not happen. 'Global investors' laugh at that sort of schmaltz. All they care about is r.o.i. That depends on cheap labor and 'activists' getting shot or thrown in jail.
the state asserts its power.
No. As Manmohan realized, it asserts its power by curbing foreign NGOs and jailing 'activists' as seditionists or terrorists or whatever.
Historians of nation-states have a saying: states make (or, in this case, re-make) nations, not the other way around.
But such historians are as stupid as shit. Nobody listens to them.
State power demarcates the ‘domestic’ affairs of the nation as a forbidden territory for external actors.
It may do so or it may not. Most of the time, it doesn't bother. America did not crack down on Foreign Governments pandering to their own diasporas in the States unless there was a risk of war or other types of hostility. Look at Ghulam Nabi Fai. Everyone knew he was a Pakistani agent but that was cool so long as Pak was seen as an ally. Then, it turned out, Osama was sheltering in Abbottabad. Suddenly Fai was under arrest and doing time.
But the tacit bargain is that the state manages and facilities capital mobility and, in return, retains the power to rearrange the domestic sphere without external interference or sanctions.
India is a big and strong country which, as Indira showed, can fuck up any external threat or internal enemy. It does not need to make any 'tacit' bargains at all. Denmark may have to because, if it fails to attract investment, its people will start floating in the air to be blown by the winds none knows whither.
This transaction became apparent in August 2019 when the Indian government revoked the special autonomous status of Kashmir.
Because the Supreme Court said in 2016 that J&K had no shred of sovereignty. Its position was worse not better than any other Indian State.
Two developments took place simultaneously: the region was ‘shut down’ in a curfew with an internet blackout to stymie political protests and at the same time ‘opened up’ for business.
But these 'developments' were recurring in every decade since Independence! Does this stupid woman really not know that a lot of non-Kashmiris have land there despite the letter of the law? Is she really suggesting that MNCs will invest there as part of some 'tacit bargain'? Is she utterly mad? The fact is J&K is high wage and high uncertainty. The Valley is a shithole. It will be sealed up and left to stew in its own bile. A portion of remittances will be taxed away so that the place pays for its own policing.
The revocation was accompanied by an official announcement of an ‘Investor Summit’ that invited investors to witness first-hand ‘the business-friendly policies of the Government, assess infrastructure, natural resources, raw material, and skill and un-skilled manpower and identify business opportunities in the State’.
This is for the Indian investor. The last thing India wants is foreign MNCs with boots on treacherous ground. The fact is, the rest of India must see that it is getting something back in return for keeping the jihadists out of the Valley. This is a classic game theoretic 'skin in the game' ploy. Pak will be deterred if they think India is making money from the region and wants to grab PoK to make more money yet. The Chinese have shown that providing an economic rationale for expansionism makes its military threat point more credible.
It’s hardly a surprise, then, that India’s march to become the ‘factory of the world’
which China already is
– a global space of production that contains natural resources, cheap skilled labour, technology as well as a vast consumer market – is an essential partner with pro-capital Hindu majoritarianism.
Which, as Manmohan Singh showed, is prepared to go to war with foreign NGOs and to throw activists in jail on trumped up sedition charges.
At the heart of this alliance is the pursuit of economic growth, a project that calls for discipline and obedience to the strongman leader who ‘means business’ in more ways than one. This strongman appeal of Modi as a hyper-masculine Hindu leader is how he first attracted and won support from captains of industry.
No. He won support by doing a deal with farmers. Modi was prepared to cancel any land deal the farmers decided they didn't want. But this meant that, unlike the Communists in West Bengal, land that the Industrialists got was land the local people were happy to hand over. Tatas had to abandon Singur because the peasants revolted, the Communists fell and Mamta came to power. But the Tatas and Adanis and so forth haven't had to flee Gujarat because the people have not been robbed. They have made a mutually beneficial deal and have stuck with it.
Capital has long favoured authoritarian leaders
which is how come the US and the UK are ruled by ex-Generals or Admirals.
who can capture resources and put them at the disposal of investors, and also produce good news campaigns to celebrate the ‘growth story’ of the nation.
The Chinese Communist Party has certainly done so. Who could be more authoritarian than Chairman Xi? But Capitalists don't love him. Trump, an actual billionaire, was the first to blow the whistle on that despot. But Biden, at least for the moment, is following in Trump's footsteps. Why? Capitalists understand that 'residuary control rights' matter. Authoritarianism will want to keep those for itself.
This is where the domains of politics, economics and publicity come together to shape the contours of pro-capital Hindu nationalism.
Stupid Danes may believe this shite. But lots of people who read Aeon are Indian. They know all about 'Hindu Nationalism' because their great grand daddy or mummy was part of its first expression in their own province. We grew up with the thing. We can read its canonical texts in our own mother tongues. We know it existed long before any one had heard of Advertising or Public Relations or Private Equity funds targeting emerging markets.
The special kind of love for the brand-new nation requires a steady channelling of positive, uplifting images into the global public sphere.
But India is not 'brand-new' at all! The love Modi invokes is very ancient. That's how come he has a beard shaped like that of a Vedic Rishi, or Sikh Sage, rather than one like a Hipster.
It also means overlooking and countering negative images that might harm the nation’s brand value in the world.
In other words, ignoring shite spouted by Copenhagen Kaur
The need for consistent good news to keep optimism alive is at odds with the requirements of democracy.
No it isn't. Democratic politicians need to project optimism about their chance to come to power or retain power. Democracy would fail if politicians said 'What's the fucking point of voting for me? I'll lose. I'm just a big fat loser. Also, I just sharted. Don't look at me! I'm a complete mess. Just like this country. We should all just commit suicide.'
The heart of democracy is dissent,
No it isn't. It is assent- most particularly to the result of an election. The nutters who invaded Capitol Hill are being prosecuted. Kaur may say 'Don't prosecute them! They are dissenting. That is the beating heart of democracy. You must encourage all sorts of nutjobs to invade the Legislature at all hours of the day and night.'
Why will no one listen to Copenhagen Kaur? Is it because she knows shit about Capitalism and less than shit about Liberal Democracy? But, surely, her equal ignorance of India, though it may be strategically feigned, should secure her some compassion or- 'intellectual affirmative action'? What's that? Cretins like her are only welcome in the Western Academy if they confine themselves to saying 'The country I come from is a real shithole. It's not my fault I am as stupid as shit. Believe me, back home I was considered a genius! Just gimme tenure already as a charity case. I promise not to masturbate in public. Thank you kindly. Der er et yndigt land! I think your cheese is lovely- not insipid and flavorless at all.'
a practice that involves criticism, disagreement and even expressions of disobedience. This contradiction has created a rupture and a new kind of Indian dissident through the logic of the brand: the anti-national, the one who corrodes the brand value of the nation by exposing the negatives, the communal violence, caste atrocities and poverty otherwise buried beneath the propaganda.
This is exactly the class that Manmohan targeted. Edwin Lim, of the World Bank, had come to India after he helped put China on its path to Wealth. But when he and Montek and so forth tried to do the same in India, all sorts of brain-dead 'activists' got very rich off foreign NGO's by preventing India developing. The thing was blatant. Canada and Australia would pay nutters to prevent India from using indigenous resources as an alternative to expensive imports. The thing was scandalous! Moreover, Manmohan and Montek, as Sikhs, knew these guys were also funding Khalistani nutters who posed an existential threat to the safety of Sikhs even within Punjab.
Copenhagen Kaur may be safe to spout this woke shite. But lots of other Sikhs still have family in Delhi and other places in India.
In the spectacular catalogue of Brand India, one unusual image stands out. It’s an advertisement that sells India to global investors but barely mentions the country.
So what? Ad agencies employ 'creatives' who are as stupid as shit. It is not unusual for an Ad which does not mention the product or the Company to slip past the vigilance of the Account Executive. Still, no great harm is done because who looks at Advertisements- unless big boobs are on display?
It captures a key transformative moment in the making of the 21st-century nation and its nationalism from the embers of globalisation.
This cretin thinks that 'transformative' moments can be identified just by looking at some advertisements. All those guys who get PhDs in Econ and who spend decades working their way up the Bureaucracy are stupid and ignorant. They should have gone to Copenhagen and looked at old magazines and the advertisements they contain.
Look at the image frame. Designed in early 2004, the advertisement reproduces an old drawing titled ‘Columbus Discovers America, 1492’ with a bold new caption: ‘The last time we held so much promise, Columbus discovered America.’ It features an artistic portrayal of the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the shores of the New World. Columbus and his crew appear overjoyed and exhausted, thankful for having found the land of promise after a long and arduous journey. Text accompanying the image reads: When Columbus set sail to find the rich spices of our land, destiny had other plans. Instead of finding us, he discovered America. Years later, modern-day explorers have got our incredible land back on their maps. Because today we are among the globe’s fastest growing economies … And opportunities are endless. For global corporate captains, investors, marketers, exporters and tourists, the weather today is just perfect to sail for our beautiful shores. Our country is shining, and you’ve never had a better time to shine brighter.
At the bottom appear the national flag and the official emblem of the India Shining campaign.
So what? Pratap Suthan is still around. I think he left Grey Worldwide a year or two ago. India Shining's 20 million dollar budget wasn't exactly what Accountant's call 'material'. It was a drop in the bucket, but that bucket was that of the senile Vajpayee who could only be succeeded by Advani who, at 77, was 3 years younger.
This campaign and its poetic invitation to ‘sail for our beautiful shores’ was designed to
earn Pratap Suthan's employers a little money. Maybe the campaign won some foreign prize. Who cares? It symbolized the senility of the Vajpayee-Advani jugalbandhi. Thankfully, Sonia gave Manmohan a chance to show how things should be done. Sadly, Rahul's refusal to step up to the plate meant that Manmohan had to appear like a cadaverous old Mummy. Still, he showed the way India could kick the Left in the goolies and really fuck over the NGOs and woke activists simply by fabricating cases till genuine ones could be made. His mistake was to go after imaginary 'Hindu terrorists' because 80 per cent of the population is Hindu and knows the thing does not exist- though it may be a good thing if it did.
draw the attention of a powerful consumer group – global investors and policymakers – to India. It was witty and effective in the speculative arena of finance capital where postcolonial nations turned emerging markets competed for foreign investments.
Says a woman who knows shit about emerging markets and why some have attracted a lot of fdi while others, like India, haven't.
The sales pitch was direct: Indian commodity is once again available in the global marketplace.
Which only exists in Copenhagen Kaur's shitty little brain. It is comforting to think of her eating Danish cheese while looking at some old advertisements and saying to herself 'Aha! I now understand more than old Sardarjis like Manmohan or Montek who were so stupid as to do PhD in Cambridge and work for decades at the highest level of the Government of India! George W Bush, who had a Harvard MBA, showed great respect to Manmohan Singh. This shows Harvard MBAs are useless! Everybody should just come to Copenhagen and eat some cheese and look at advertisements in old magazines. Haan ji haan! Chashme buddoor!'
The visual sign of India’s ongoing commodification into an investment destination was the presence of Columbus.
Very true! Presence of Columbus is visual sign of whatever you say Kaur Ji. Now just settle down to looking at advertisements in old magazines while eating cheese. There's a good little Kaur.
Here, Columbus served to rekindle the old desire for a legendary India that had once moved Europeans to undertake a dangerous expedition across the ocean. India Shining promised investors that they could succeed where Columbus and other Europeans of the ‘age of discovery’ had failed. They could tap into India’s great resources and wealth. India might have eluded Columbus, but it was now inviting capital to return to the great prize.
Why does Kaur break off her narrative there? Why does she not say that 'Global Investors' would spread small-pox and thus wipe out the indigenous population of India? The native religions of India, like Sikhism, would be wiped out. Indians would be confined to Reservations where they would open Casinos. Manmohan Singh himself would be forced to join a 'Village People' tribute band. Hai! Hai! It brings tears to the eyes to think of elderly Sardarjis being forced to flounce around on stage singing 'It's fun to stay in the YMCA'! Yet, such is the logic of Globalized Neo Liberal Capitalism, that no other outcome can be envisaged.
Kaur, sated on Danish cheese and the ads in old magazines, thinks once again of Manmohan who, according to her essay, is responsible for all Ind's ills. She pictures him shaking his booty dressed up as a Red Indian. 'Hai! Teri sadgi mein bhi qayamat ki ada hoti hai', she whispers to herself. Even in thy simplicity there is the coquetry of the Apocalypse. Manmohan is now twerking and twisting and thrusting his buttocks in her face. With a lascivious grin he licks his index finger and massages his nipple. Kaur surrenders to logic of Neo-Liberalism. Yes, she says, Yes, Yes.
And so we must leave Copenhagen Kaur to her demon lover. I said we must leave Cophenhagen Kaur. Why you are not leaving? Kindly stop imagining what happened next. The thing is too indecent. Just stop it already. Have you no shame! Besharam! Behaya! For this only is it we were sending you College? Go take cold shower. Play with something other than yourself. Next door Nani has been asking for carom partner for long time. I don't care if she grabs at your crotch. You have to learn facts of life sometime. Pagari sambhal Jatta! Leave your guli-danda alone. Copenhagen Kaurs can shame and defame Manmohan to their heart's content but so long as you don't play with yourself in like manner, you will not be condemned to flouncing around in your old age, dressed up as a Red Indian, singing 'It's fun to stay in the YMCA'.
Mind it kindly. Aiyayo. Subhramaniyam Swamy- this means you. Stop it with the twerking. Show some decency, I say! Manmohan Ji is a two time Prime Minister. You are not on his level. Don't raise your lungi to show disco! You may be an Iyer but you are not Krishna Iyer M.A, Nariyalpaneewallah from film 'Agneepath'. Leave that sort of thing to Mani Shankar. He is a Leftist after Copenhagen Kaur's own heart.
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