America could be said to have 'founding fathers'. Why? It had a sui generis Revolution and the leaders of that Revolution devised a Constitution and created a Republic of a kind unexampled in the annals of History.
India was an Empire- at least notionally- till a British company took it over and turned it into a viable center for force projection. By the end of the Nineteenth century, Indian troops, for the first time in History, were able to alter the balance of power in Africa, China and even Europe. The British Raj could be said to have founding fathers, but those dudes were in a hurry to get back to England and forget all about any half-breed bastards they might have left behind. However, certain Indian Princes and comprador capitalists and, later on, the sons (like Mahatma Gandhi) or nephews (like Nehru) or proteges (like Savarkar) of Dewans or those talent-spotted by Princes (like Ambedkar), after qualifying as barristers in London, could set up as agitators or revolutionaries or political nuisances of one type or another back home. Since India did become a Republic with a verbose Constitution, we might speak of India as having had 'founding fathers' though the truth is the Brits took over and improved a pre-existing administration which Indians, more by luck than cunning, failed to utterly turn to shit.
This at any rate is the common sense view. But it isn't particularly flattering to us Indians. Thus, Shruti Kapila- a Prof of shite at Oxford- has published a new book titled 'Violent Fraternity' in which, after quoting, the fraudster, Freud, she claims
Kapila, for some bizarre reason, pretends that Indians are homicidal maniacs. If they get intimate they instinctively try to kill each other. Yet, foreign visitors, for thousands of years, had remarked the peaceful nature of the Indian people. It simply isn't the case that when they get friendly or develop neighborly feelings, they immediately start to run amok slicing and dicing each other. True, the people of the Punjab have a somewhat different reputation and there was violence between Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs at the time of the creation of Pakistan and, later on, between Sikhs and Hindus during the Khalistan agitation. But this had to do with the creation of separate, religion based, States. However, such agitations could be nipped in the bud simply by killing or incarcerating enough of the agitators concerned. The underlying problem had nothing to do with intimacy. It had to do with the lack of 'the smack of firm government'- i.e. killing or locking up nutters.
The Brits had got the Indians to play nice regardless of caste or creed. True, a farmer who had a good harvest and thus enough money to hire a lawyer might still go ahead and kill a couple of his rivals in the District. But after the lawyers had bled him dry once or twice, the hayseed decided that homicide just wasn't worth it. The same was true of the Mullah who declared a jihad or an Upper Caste swine who decided to set fire to the huts of some Dalits.
There is no 'historical conundrum'. Indian history had always seen Rebellions against Emperors. The Mutiny was a particularly unsuccessful one. It showed that Princes and Mullahs and 'Pandy' mutineers were shit at fighting. A professional Army and a professional Civil Service and a professional Justice system could crush vaingloriously nutters and effectively deal with nuisances. On the other hand, the Brits came to see that representative local government was essential for economic development. The Indian National Congress was created by White ICS men- Hume, Wedderburn, Cotton- who, foolishly, thought that India could develop a political class similar to that which, they fondly imagined, obtained in an idealized Home Counties.
Intimacy does not incite hatred and violence though, obviously, Kapila's domestic arrangements may be very different from our own. Reliable and effective punishment for violent behavior and sanctions against those who encourage hate crimes are, ceteris paribus, enough to create a broadly peaceful society. However ceteris does not remain paribus forever. Changes in technology alter the geopolitical fitness landscape in a manner which sometimes favors even the Nationalism of nutty nations. But unrestrained nuttiness can undo such Nations when technology changes once again. If Hinduism continues to consolidate itself, such a fate may not overtake India. This is because the individual nuttiness of Hindus cancels out in aggregate- at least when Hindus start getting massacred by crazy jihadis.
Kapila appears to share Savarkar's rosy view of Hindu-Muslim amity under Maratha domination. She thinks that the Mutiny reflected the 'fraternity' of the natives uniting against the foreigner. The truth is quite different. Some regiments of the East India Company were badly managed. They rebelled and killed such Europeans as they could lay their hands on. But the loyal regiments, with Sikh help, were more than capable of crushing the Mutineers as well as the Jihadis who took over leadership. Thus 'Ghaddar' (as Muslim Princes- e.g. the Pataudis called the Mutiny) became a byword for the anarchy that threatened the Doab if the British retreated. In this context, there was a Hindu consolidation such that, ninety years later, power passed seamlessly from the Brits to the majority community. The Muslim majority areas achieved a similar consolidation and created Pakistan. In Punjab, the intervention of 'jathas' armed by some Sikh princes complicated the situation and this led to a higher death toll. But, by 1918, the Indian Princes had conceded that the age of Empire was over. War was no longer the sport of Kings. Imperial cousins- the Tzar and the King Emperor and the Kaiser and so forth- could no longer engage in 'violent fraternity'. Intimate relations between Queen Victoria's descendants could no longer give rise to jealousy and military rivalry and finally boil over into a world wide conflagration.
By 1920, it was obvious that the British Empire was bound to turn into a Commonwealth or else get restricted to the 'White' dominions which however would be wholly independent. The Indians did create a 'Congress-Khilafat' combine under the leadership of Gandhi. But Gandhi lost his nerve. His policy of non-violence (i.e. raising money in order to create a public nuisance) was predicated on Britain upholding Pax Britannica. Thus he unilaterally surrendered just at the moment that Ireland and Egypt and Afghanistan secured Independence. Later, the Americans refused to finance the Raj and so the handing over of power in India, unlike Indonesia or Vietnam, was completely peaceful.
This is a story all Indians know though we don't talk about it because it casts our Independence struggle in an unheroic light. Kapila, however, pretends that Indians were homicidal maniacs and thus the fact that they didn't all just knife each other after the British Umpire left was because of Indian 'political thought'. This is crazy. Indian political thought was utter shit. That's why, after Independence, it was civil servants and technocrats of various descriptions who decided policy. True, from time to time, some smaller or greater nuisance was created by nutters like J.P. who finally discovered that Vinobha Bhave's Bhoodan scheme, to which he'd devoted a decade of his life, was utterly and totally bogus. But this type of indigenous stupidity didn't affect policy save in so far as it gave it an excuse to become somewhat shittier. But India's addled eggheads were perfectly capable of fucking up the country if left to their own devices.
Kapila writes
One reason the younger generation of educated Indians- Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Hardayal etc- initially embraced violent struggle was because anarchists in Europe had made a cult of assassination. The Hapsburg Empress was killed by some nutter. Other fools went and killed Alexander II. There probably was some money available from foreign powers to finance this type of craziness. However, the first world war, triggered by the assassination of an Archduke, put paid to the notion that 'Autocracy could be tempered by Assassination'. Empires couldn't pay for themselves or protect themselves. There was no alternative to Nationalism. Gandhi, it is true, thought Indian Nationalism could be based on Hindu-Muslim unity whereas what the Treaty of Lausanne had shown was that Religion trumps Language in determining Nationality. Greek speaking Muslims went to Turkey and Turkish speaking Christians went to Greece. Bal, Lal, Pal and Hardayal eventually saw the writing on the wall. So did Savarkar. Gandhi failed- which was fine because he is considered a religious figure- i.e. his followers' reward is in the after-life. Ambedkar, more stupidly yet, believed in a Dalit-Muslim alliance. That was fine because Ambedkar became first a Boddhisattva and is now a Hindu god worshipped in massive sacred complexes constructed by Mayawati in U.P.
Kapila speaks of 'the intimacy of enmity'. However, no Muslim suggested that inter-Muslim intimacy would lead to enmity, nor did Ambedkar think that if Mahars and Jatavs and Namasudras became intimate then this would cause 'violent fraternity'. True, where they predominated, Hindus would kill and chase away non-Hindus who tried to fuck them over and the same was true of other religions. But this had become obvious by 1917. Hindus in Bihar kept attacking Muslims till they gave up cow slaughter while Gandhi was engaged in some bogus activism in Champaran aimed at European planters.
Kapila says 'new orders are preceded by violence'. But that violence was the first world war. This was historical functionalism, which Kapila rejects, in its purest form. Imperialism could just about hang on where opposition to it was divided or where the fear of anarchy was greater than resentment of foreign domination. After the second war, Europe was bankrupt. True the Dutch, very foolishly, tried to reconquer Indonesia and the French similarly blundered in Vietnam and Algeria but it was obvious that colonies were a money pit.
Could India have become independent without two world wars? Parts of it- sure. But there were already large parts of it which were semi-independent. But the equivalent of a Piedmont or Prussia was lacking in India because, by and large, the Aristocracy was shit. Unification and Independence for the Nation as a whole could come from no Indian Prince. Why? Violent fraternity. These guys had spent thousands of years killing their Uncles or cousins or whatever. But, after 1857, even the stupidest Indian Prince wised up though no doubt some Ranis and Begums continued to jealously poison their step-sons or nephews or whatever. What to do? Women are like that only.
Kapila, like Facile Devji, holds bizarre beliefs regarding texts which most Indians find clear, and crap, enough.
The problem here is that Indians- like Nehru- thought Gandhi's political thought was shit. However, it was shit of a convenient type. The truth is these guys weren't conspiring to assassinate anyone so they might as well pretend this was for a religious or spiritual reason. True, some credulous fools were initially taken by Gandhi's crackpot schemes- khaddar, nai talim, etc. However when Congress Ministries took office in 1937, they discovered that such schemes were money pits and not fit for purpose. They were quickly abandoned. Thus, there was no 'political thought' here whatsoever. Gandhi presented himself as a great tactician. But every agitation he led ended disastrously. However, going quietly to jail from time to time was good for building esprit de corps and winning the respect of the rural masses. Everybody knows that life in jail is wonderful. What stops people from killing their Uncles so as to get to jail is the chastening realization that the Magistrate may refuse to find them guilty. They'd have to go back to work as an object of derision for their neighbors who would mercilessly point out that it isn't enough to chop Mamaji's head off with a sickle. You must also sodomize his eye sockets. Otherwise everybody will think you are just a big girl's blouse.
It is quite true that Shyamji Krishna Varma, Vivekananda, Dadhabhai Naoroji and other such essentially pre-War figures had developed some hodge-podge of 'political thought'. Nehru, in an amateurish fashion, could be said to have continued that tradition. He was after all and Edwardian gentleman with a startling resemblance to Alistair Sim- the headmistress of St. Trinians. However, Iqbal had no political thought as opposed to crazy prejudices- e.g. against Qadianis. Maulana Azad did have some political thought- at least initially. His writing on 'hizbullah' was in the Pan-Islamic vein of Afghani. However, he was not acceptable as an 'Imam-ul-Hind' and thus had to be content with being Gandhi's main Muslim 'show-boy' (to use Jinnah's phrase). His 'political thought' was that India could be a loose federation where Muslim states would continually ethnically cleanse non-Muslims but Hindu states would not retaliate. He was laughed at. People firmly believed that this great Pirzada was secretly addicted to Scotch Whiskey. Still, Gandhi got his wife to cook lamb chops for him. That counts for something- right?
Some claim that Iqbal did have a 'political thought'. But even they concede, that thought was in accordance with Punjabi logic- i.e. utterly foolish- and involved describing Lenin as half-Muslim because, like Sarmad, he said 'there is no God'. Lala Hardayal, whom Bhai Parmanand converted to celibacy at about the same time as he converted Gandhi to it, did not get that being celibate means NOT incessantly marrying Swiss or Swedish damsels. Hardayal graduated from St. Stephens, Delhi, before getting his M.A from Lahore. In other words, he too was a Punjabi and thus, though academically very brilliant, as stupid as shit. He made his peace with the Brits and became a philosophy lecturer. His writings are worthless. Like Chatto, Hardayal was part of the Indo-German conspiracy but unlike Chatto and M.N Roy he didn't complete the hegira to Moscow and thus faded out of all remembrance. Roy, who was stupid, did have some 'political thought' but it was as vacuous as that of Deendayal Upadhyaya- a man so stupid he fell off a train and died.
Vallabhai Patel- unlike his elder brother- had no political thoughts whatsoever. He projected himself as a conservative which was fine. The Bose brothers did have some political thoughts of a wholly mischievous type and that did leave a mark on Bengali politics- which however has always been pure horseshit. Still, I suppose one could say the RSS looks to Bengali type Hindutva because the Chitpavan variety isn't paying off. The fact is the older generation of Bengalis did know navya-nyaya and wrote cogently about Hinduism. Chitpavans however were hated as ignorant upstarts by other Deccani Brahmins.
Was there 'political thought' in India? Sure. There were professors of Political Science and Economics and Philosophy and so forth. The Tatas funded Sociological research. Naoroji, Ranade, Gokhale and the Servants of India had established a tradition of solid statistical and ideographic research which was complementary to that of the bureaucracy and legislature. But it was not nomothetic or based on a comprehensive economic or sociological theory. It was piecemeal and pragmatic- i.e. as boring as shit. Smart kids preferred to dream Marxist dreams. Sadly, if they tried their hand at 'class war' they discovered that, as a class, they were shit at fighting. Violent fraternity was off the table. The safer bet was to get some sort of bogus degree and try for tenure in the Western academy on the basis of intellectual affirmative action. It is very important that Universities like Oxford have a few brown Professors who are obviously as stupid as shit. This is so that students can witness a type of imbecility at first hand which they can then use to explain away the poverty of the turd world.
Kapila's thesis is that Indian imbeciles like Gandhi, Savarkar, Iqbal etc. made some great ideological innovation. There was an 'Indian Age' whose great thinkers shaped the post War world.
What 'ideological innovation' did independent India represent? The answer is that it provided the world with a unique form of democratic dynasticism. Nehru's daughter became PM within a couple of years of his death. She lost power for a couple of years before returning to power with the clear understanding that her son would take over. Sadly, that son died so the other son took over when she was shot. Then he was blown up but his son couldn't take over because he was too young. Still his wife led the party and put in a colorless but loyal Sikh as Regent. Then something unexpected happened. Her son refused to step up to the plate probably because he had noticed that three Congress politicians with the surname Gandhi had been killed and, each time, the Party prospered- i.e. corrupt sycophants got yet richer.
Since the dynasty believes it is entitled to Muslim votes, it pretends that its rival is Islamophobic. Sadly, after the Mumbai terrorist attack, most Indians- like most people around the globe- have become wary of Islam. Thus there has been 'Hindu consolidation' and so the BJP has become the default National party of what is after all a Hindu Nation. It is interesting that the 'concept of fraternity' did not apply to Sonia and her sister-in-law Maneka. That's why Varun is with the BJP- though he does not appear to be thriving there- while his Rahul remains the roi faineant of the Congress Party.
All of this is like a boring version of 'Dynasty' or some other such soap opera. Kapila thinks it represents some profound ideological innovation. For Heaven's sake, why? Indian politics is marked by a complete absence of political thought. Everything is tactical. Nothing is normative. Factionalism within political parties paves the way for hypertrophying dynasticism of a type wholly divorced from any sort of ideological or normative consideration. Indian politics is purely ergodic and game theoretical. The village barber can calculate 'Shapley values' and thus evaluate coalition robustness better than a mathematician. The Kautilya of our Republic is an idiot savant. Still, a smart guy from a small town with decent quantitative skills can become the Kingmaker of Indian politics. Who knows what Prashant Kishore will pull off next? Meanwhile, Oxford is stuck with the cretin Kapila. How much lower can she sink? Will her next book be titled 'Sodomitical Sorority?' and devote itself to the manner in which the intimacy between sisters-in-law in an Indian Joint family leads to violence and enmity and strap-ons and sodomy? I hope not. But it is a forlorn hope. Sooner or later some Lacanian will write that shite and then it will be turned into a porn video featuring the gorgeous, pouting, P.Chidambaram in a blonde wig and stiletto heels. As a Hindu, I feel obliged to condemn this obscene and distasteful genre. However, if accidentally exposed to it, I take comfort in the thought that a sip of ganga-jal, or cow urine, can rid me of the consequent spiritual pollution. Jai Hind. Jai Bhim. Jai me.
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