We know by now that authoritarian populists have handled the Covid-19 pandemic badly.
We know that Sweden handled it badly. Thus all we can say is some countries handled it badly. Others didn't.
Stuart Hall came up with the term 'authoritarian populism' in Thatcher's England. He couldn't understand that the working class had abandoned the Left because the Left was shit, not because they wanted to kick in the heads of Pakis. By the time Hall became a Professor of Sociology, the subject was considered an utter joke.
Both Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro presided over spiraling death rates, fueled by a disregard for medical science and neglect of public health imperatives.
But Bolsonaro only got elected because Lula was in jail. It is foolish to compare Brazil and the US. They are more dissimilar than stupid Swedes and taciturn Turnips.
But India’s Narendra Modi appeared to buck this trend.
So there was no trend. Either that or Modi is not an authoritarian populist at all. He is merely a milder, more managerial, National version of a Mamta because he can speak Hindi as well as the language of his own State. In other words, he was a beneficiary of the slow suicide, or brain death, of the Indian Left. But, because Mamta, not Modi, was the one who really stuck it to the Commies she is unassailable in her own State. It remains to be seen whether she can challenge Modi at the Center. Few believe she really wants to move to Delhi. Still she may project a good PM candidate or get behind an elder statesman like Naveen Patnaik whose Hindi is superb.
After the first wave of the pandemic dissipated in September 2020, both national and international media echoed the government narrative that India, with Modi at its helm, had vanquished the coronavirus.
Even if this was not the case it was obvious that the Government could not crackdown on the farmer's agitation. This meant there could be no return to lockdowns. What was unanticipated was that the Central Government's other Public Health initiatives would be bungled so badly. It is now obvious that 'subsidiarity' is essential. State and local administrations can tackle the problem, others simply don't have the capacity.
This public image, however, was revealed to be a mirage when a deadly second wave ripped through the country from late March to early June 2021. Millions of lives were lost. And it was a direct consequence of the failure of Modi and his party—the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—to expand medical infrastructure and roll out vaccinations effectively.
No. It was a direct consequence of India being as poor as shit. There was little point handing over expensive medical equipment to clinics which didn't have a reliable electricity connection. The cretin, Nilsen, went on South African TV to accuse Modi of being responsible for COVID megadeaths because...India didn't have infrastructure. But, South Africans knew that India was and is as poor as shit. Essentially Nilsen was saying Modi was responsible for India being an overpopulated shithole.This was funny because Nilsen is almost comically blonde and has a slow witted Norwegian accent. Hopefully, the fucker will die of anger because I keep referring to him as a Swede. On the other hand, he may be flattered by my mention of turnips.
The BJP government, in short, chose to privilege Modi’s appearance as a strongman and heroic protector of the nation.
Every government and every political party choses to privilege its leader's appearance as a strong and capable protector of the nation. Even in Sweden, the Government does not say 'Our leader is shit. Seriously, guys, the dude is an arrant coward and has less intelligence than a fucking turnip.'
Ultimately, this stands as testimony
in the mind of a stupid Swede or turnip
to the morbid workings of authoritarian populism, which has become a global political force since the mid-2010s.
This cretin lives in South Africa. Fuck type of regime does he think obtains there? It is a topic he is wise to remain silent about. Whitey will get short shrift if he criticizes that regime. Blondies get raped a lot in prison.
This is why current developments in India, as well as their ideological lineage, should command attention far beyond the country’s borders.
What would a stupid Swede know about India's ideological lineages? He says the BJP has its roots in the 1920s. The truth is it goes back to the late nineteenth century anti-cow slaughter movement which in turn was linked to the Arya Samaj, the Chitpavan revival, and the radical Sanyasi tradition. This was a parallel development to the founding of the INC. The British recognized that religious issues- e.g. Ganapati puja, anti-cow slaughter, etc- were fundamental to giving Congress a mass base.
If we want to understand these developments, we need to
stop listening to stupid Swedes who know nothing about their own country. They may pretend to know about Indian tribals, but this is a mere fantasy.
appreciate that there is something that sets Narendra Modi and the BJP apart from the wider populist coterie.
Which does not exist. There is no similarity between Trump, Erdogan, Bo Jo, Bolsanaro and Modi.
The unparalleled hegemonic power of the Modi regime is
paralleled by the hegemonic power of every long serving CM. The difference is that Mamta will have you head kicked in if you criticize her. Modi won't because his critics, by reason of their crazy virtue signaling, help consolidate the Hindu vote in his favor.
an expression of something more than simply a mandate gained through electoral victories.
This stupid cunt does not get that the Gandhi dynasty got more than a mandate, it got hereditary entitlement to the Crown! Modi only got in because Rahul refused to step up to the plate. This was understandable. Three people with the surname Gandhi have been assassinated and, each time, Congress has benefited.
For sure, Modi and the BJP won overwhelming majorities in the general elections of 2014 and 2019. But the regime draws sustenance from a much deeper process of Hindu nationalist organizing and mobilizing in Indian society.
Hinduism, like other religions, is getting more organized and better able to deliver services through new technology at a much cheaper price- or, indeed, for free. Moreover, Hindus found they needed to organize to protect themselves against Communist nutters as well as militant Islam.
This movement building has been ongoing for close to one hundred years
Its roots go back to the 1880s when Hindus began to see that no Prince or Viceroy could protect their interests. They would need to organize themselves.
and constitutes the bedrock of Modi’s power today, as well as of his regime’s ability to forge an ethnic democracy in India.
The INC forged India's 'ethnic democracy'. Had Muslims not voted for Partition, Hindu domination might have been diluted.
Most authoritarian populists in power across the world are politicians and at the helm of political parties that have won elections. Modi is more than that: he is also part of the mobilizing and organizing carried out by a reactionary social movement for close to a century. This puts him and his party in a much stronger position than a Trump or a Bolsonaro.
This is the opposite of the truth. Trump captured the Republican party. Bolonaro is sui generis. Modi is merely the successor of Vajpayee. He does not rank high in the RSS because he was loaned out to the BJP a long time ago. One reason for this is because of his active role in resisting Indira's Emergency. By contrast, the RSS were happy with any dynastic leader who made the country stronger and built up the forces of religion. If Rajiv Gandhi had lived, he'd have built the Ram Temple and thus secured the Hindu vote.
In 1992, Hindu nationalist cadres demolished the 15th-century Babri mosque in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
The structure had ceased to be a mosque in 1948. However, a Hindu priest was allowed to visit once a year to perform certain religious rites.
The mosque had allegedly been built on the site of the birthplace of the Hindu deity Lord Rama. The demolition, which was closely orchestrated by leaders of the right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP—the party of Modi—as well as of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS; National Volunteer Organization) and its affiliates, reclaimed this site for India’s Hindu majority. More than two thousand people, most of them Muslims, died in the communal riots that ensued.
The plain fact is that when a minority starts a riot, it ends up taking disproportionate casualties. However Delhi saw no big blood letting because an IPS officer gave shoot to kill orders after one of his constables was stabbed by a Muslim mob. There was no more trouble after that.
This spectacular act of collective violence inaugurated a decade in which the BJP competed with political parties representing lower-caste groups and Dalits. The latter mobilized around demands for caste-based affirmative action.1 The BJP countered with calls for Hindu unity across divisions of caste and class, against the Muslim Other.
The rise of global Islamic terror, vindicated the BJP. If Muslims were crazy enough to attack even America then the notion that they were innocent victims in India was clearly false. The Pak sponsored terror attack on the Indian Parliament confirmed this opinion. The fact is the Hindu majority is just as willing and able as the majority on the other side of the border to kill and ethnically cleanse its alterity. The problem is that Muslims in India are poor and hardworking. It is profitable to exploit their labor. On the other other hand, Manmohan took a hard line with Sven's pals- the Naxals.
By the end of the decade, the BJP was in charge of a coalition government in Delhi. The party reined in some of the more radical ideological tenets of Hindu nationalism, in part to appease its coalition partners. This, however, would change drastically after the BJP suffered consecutive electoral defeats in 2004 and 2009 and Narendra Modi ascended to pole position in the party.
This is foolish. Modi wasn't in pole position. Advani was. But the guy was ninety! Modi was young enough and a good enough Hindi orator to have a chance of winning- but only because Rahul refused to step up to the plate. This meant that Congress had no P.M candidate. Modi was the only guy saying he wanted the job and that he could do it well.
Under Modi’s leadership, authoritarian populism has come to be the core of the BJP’s political project.
But authoritarianism is not popular in India. Modi's approach is transactional. Vote for me and you'll get better governance and more money in your pocket. Also I'll bomb Pakistan if they send too many terrorists across the border.
Party ideology draws a line between true Indians—in short, the Hindu majority—and their antinational enemies within: corrupt elites, dissenters, and, above all, India’s Muslim minority.
This line actually exists. That is why the BJP is successful. Even Rahul is now saying India is a country for Hindus and that he himself is a janeodhari Brahman of Dattatreya gotra. Indira Gandhi fought a court case to get her sons declared Hindu. Sonia ensured that the family's Kashmiri purohit performed her daughter's marriage. Indeed it was suggested that Robert Vadra underwent the sacred thread ceremony. The fact is Nehru's sister Vijaylaxmi wasn't allowed to marry a Muslim though his youngest sister was allowed to marry a Jain. The Mahatma's eldest son, who had converted to Islam, had to be reconverted by the Arya Samaj. The plain fact is that Hindus, for sound historical reasons, draw the line at marrying Muslims save in those professions which are repugnant to orthodox Islam- e.g. Music or Film Acting. This is perfectly sensible because when you see the supposedly Muslim dhrupad singer, of the supposedly Muslim film director, engaging in Hindu ceremonies, then you simply no longer view them as 'other'.
The BJP’s authoritarian populism hinges, in large part, on Modi’s unique persona.
Nonsense! If it hadn't been Modi, it would have been Vaghela. Come to think of it, Pramod Mahajan was once considered the rising star.
Having emerged from humble social origins, the muscular helmsman is seen to be a genuine man of the people—far more so than previous generations of BJP leaders.
This is foolish. Farmers don't see a poor guy who works for a living in a town as a 'man of the people' because city-folk aint people. On the other hand, they understand that a guy who rises in his trade will buy land and might actually be very successful in farming. Indeed, most people in the cities are just one or two generations away from agricultural employment, at least for part of the year.
The Modi regime is therefore more than an electoral mandate.
That is all it is. The RSS will dump Modi if voters turn against him. The big question is whether Yogiji will win UP next year. If so, there is a clear line of succession. However, the BJP must placate Mamta. She has 'Shakti' of an extraordinary type. Also the BJP must become the 'States Rights' party. Subsidiarity is the only way forward- as COVID has shown.
It is the manifestation of a sociopolitical movement that has worked patiently and persistently over a century-long period to change Indian society.
Communism was that movement. When I was born, most people thought it would prevail in one shape or another. But it turned to shit because its creed was pure fantasy.
As a result, it is far more embedded in India’s social and political fabric than other authoritarian populists are in their respective countries, whether in the global South or the global North.
Nonsense! India, as Rahul admits, is a Hindu country. Different parties may compete for Muslim vote-banks but they all have to put Hindus first. The Communist C.M of Kerala, like some Bishops there, was constantly banging on about 'love jihad' while his Ministers enthusiastically participated in Hindu religious ceremonies.
This movement has burrowed its way through India’s civil society
There was no need for 'burrowing' after the Commies slit their own ideological throats.
and, under Modi’s premiership, seized hold of the state.
Like the ANC in South Africa- right? However, it may be safer for this blonde dude to keep quiet about wot dem kaffirs are gettin' up to.
It is currently using its accumulated power to redefine the grammar of Indian democracy in majoritarian and authoritarian ways.
In the opinion of a Swede or a Turnip.
And there is no better resource for understanding this perilous moment than Christophe Jaffrelot’s new book, Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy (2021).
If you are a turnip- sure? Why not? However to understand India- indeed, to change it- you need to hire Prashant Kishore.
THE MODI REGIME DRAWS SUSTENANCE FROM A DEEP PROCESS OF HINDU NATIONALIST ORGANIZING AND MOBILIZING IN INDIAN SOCIETY.
Why does this nutter think it sinister that 'organizing' and 'mobilizing' gives sustenance to the organizer or the mobilizer? In Kerala, the Communists are good at organizing and mobilizing- i.e. beating the shit out of their enemies. In West Bengal, Mamta's goons beat Commies with such vim and vigor that they now, like Congress, don't have a single legislative seat.
Sonia, like Rajiv, had a good equation with Mamta. It appears that Rahul has broken up that friendship with the result that Congress will sink yet lower as successful CMs- like Gehlot or, previously, Amarinder, are undermined by Rahul's coterie.
When I say that the Modi regime is a movement, not a mandate, I do so in a literal sense.
But a literally mendacious sense. When a P.M gets re-elected, he has a stronger mandate to rule the country even if he is not backed by any type of movement. Thus Manmohan, in UPA 2, had a strong mandate but Rahul's chums cut him off at the knees and so Congress went down to defeat and ignominy.
The BJP is best understood as one particular node in the network of organizations that makes up the Hindu nationalist movement.
But Indians have always understood this. That's why 'dual membership' (of the RSS) broke the Janata Government.
This reactionary sociopolitical movement was founded in the 1920s to advance what Jaffrelot conceives of as a distinctively Indian form of ethnic nationalism.
The RSS was founded in the 20's in imitation of the Congress Seva Dal. However, the Mahasabha- with the participation of Motilal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi- predated it by a decade. However the roots of this movement go back to the the Anushilan Sabhas and the Arya Samaj and the Hindu revivalism of Bal, Pal and Lal. Aurobindo and Vivekananda and Bharati and even- for a brief period- Tagore were involved.
An organized Hindu nationalism, in other words, predated the party.
The Mahasabha was a party but there was dual membership with Congress. Essentially, when Congress was banned, the Mahasabha was the 'over-ground' Hindu organization because the Liberals had shat the bed. The Jan Sangh was founded after Independence. The Mahasabha element faded after the death of Shyam Prasad Mookherjee. Some went over to the Swarajists who were too casteist in their thinking to be entirely palatable to the rising generation. So the Jan Sangh was a RSS vehicle though, no doubt, Vajpayee pretended otherwise. But the death of Deendayal- the guy was so retarded he fell off a train!- made this unnecessary. What was important, however, was that the Jan Sangh demonstrate loyalty to the Indo-Soviet treaty. Vajpayee handled that adroitly as Foreign Minister and so his party became a legitimate successor to the Janata Morcha. However, this was not inevitable. Jyoti Basu could have become PM and thus created a Leftist legatee for Janata which, till Sonia reasserted dynastic rights, would have had a field day and emerged as the National alternative to the 'neo-liberal' dynastic Congress.
From the outset, Hindu nationalism had to work against the grain of the intense differentiation of Hinduism as a religion, which is characterized by a multiplicity of currents and the absence of a core religious doctrine.
No. All it had to do was combat untouchability. Other than that caste and creed didn't matter because they were deemed as 'samskars' (defeasible 'accidents') rather than part of the essence (tattva) of Indic religion.
Hindutva (Hinduness) was defined in ethnic and territorial terms: the Hindus were a unified race of people, and India should be a Hindu Rashtra—a Hindu nation. Hindu nationalism, as Anustup Basu has put it, is a modern political monotheism.
No. It may be wholly agnostic- indeed, both Savarkar and Advani were considered to be 'nastik'. It is enough to say that divisions between Hindus are 'accidents' of History- that too an inglorious History of being conquered and humiliated- for Hindutva to prevail. However, this type of Nationalism triumphed everywhere after the end of the First World War and the collapse of the great multi-ethnic Empires. Pakistan was created because Muslims in India saw that the Treaty of Lausanne had enforced ethnic relocation on the basis of religion, not language. Greek speaking Muslims came to Turkey while Turkish speaking Christians went to Greece.
In this ideological universe, Muslims are a menacing Other
Whereas in Sweden, Muslims are a menacing other because they are killing people. This may be one reason that the Sweden Democrats have gained so much ground and have become an acceptable coalition partner for the Christian Democrats and the Moderates. By contrast, in India, it was the INC which was the muscular arm of Hinduism. More Muslims were killed or ethnically cleansed under Nehru than ever before or since. Under Indira and Rajiv, Sikhs too got it in the neck. Had Rajiv not been killed, he would be ruling the country or else pulling the strings which caused any alternative coalition to collapse so he could resume the Prime Minister-ship. In this scenario, Rahul would have developed properly- perhaps taking a stint at C.M of UP or, at least, having held Cabinet rank.
—an external threat to the civilizational and cultural unity of the Hindu nation.
Hindus got short shrift in Pakistan and Bangladesh and the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley. This is a fact of life not a 'threat' of some ideological kind.
As Jaffrelot notes, the overriding concern of the founders of the Hindu nationalist movement was “to organize the vulnerable majority that was the Hindus, against the Muslims.”
Jaffrelot was wrong. The main aim of the Hindu nationalist movement was to get the Brits out of India and the MENA region. That's why they attracted support from Pan-Islamists like Maulana Azad. It is also why they could have a modus vivendi with Moscow. Stalin got on well with Radhakrishnan. He very sensibly advised the Indian Commies to cooperate with the Government on Land Reform rather than try Telengana type Maoist tactics.
I vividly recall the manner that Hindu diplomats- or rather their wives- were coddled in Moscow by 'friends' who would take them to Churches and Tolstoy museums and so forth. Even Chief Justice Krishna Iyer, who had lost his beloved wife, was influenced by Soviet 'Parapsychology'- i.e. mystical shite which those backward Hindus might believe in.
From its early beginnings to the present day, this movement has developed as a “matrix of a homogenous Hindu nation.”
Rubbish! Hindu movements were more factionalized and crazy than even the Commies. Vajpayee, Advani and other Sanghis had to work overtime to assure Hindus from outside the cow-belt that cow protection and Hindi language and so forth wouldn't be imposed on them. Indeed, Vajpayee was pleased when people, like Subramaniyam Swamy, accused him of secretly eating meat and drinking Vodka. Advani- a 'casteless Sindhi'- was even more reassuring.
The key vehicle for this organizing and mobilizing has been the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which now consists of some 50,000 branches and five to six million members across the country.
It was set up in imitation of the Congress Seva Dal- which played a big role in the Sikh pogrom of 1984. What happened to that organization? Every political party had a grass roots organization of this type. Why did the others become so corrupt and criminalized? Why is it that the RSS still has a good reputation? If you say 'my son is with the Youth Congress', people assume he is a pimp or an extortionist. But a young volunteer with the RSS is likely to be training for a proper job which won't involve bribe money.
The RSS is the hub for a sprawling network of specialized affiliates that organize particular groups and sectors in Indian society—for instance, farmers and workers, Dalits and Adivasis, and youth, women, and students.
In other words, it provides a useful service on a purely voluntary basis. Thus good people, who may have no interest in politics, themselves start volunteering and working within the organization. This is organic growth of a benign type.
As political scientist Tariq Thachil has shown, many of these affiliate groups also provide crucial welfare services to poor and disadvantaged communities, who are often grossly neglected by public authorities. This infrastructure refers to itself as the Sangh Parivar—the Family of Organizations.
And this would be praiseworthy if these people weren't Hindus- right?
The main achievement of the Sangh Parivar is its success in “covering the social space,” creating a coherent sense of identity across caste and class lines. This achievement, in turn, has enabled the Hindu nationalist movement, which initially emerged among narrow, upper-caste groups, to build a hegemonic position in India’s civil society.
This cretin thinks that poor people are incapable of patriotism. Yet, when a country becomes stronger and better governed, it is the poorest who benefit proportionately the most, provided the country is ruled by people like themselves.
It is in understanding how the Hindu nationalist movement has extended its sway from civil society to the state that Modi’s India proves particularly useful.
This cretin will not acknowledge that Congress was a Hindu party. Gandhi said so in 1939 and the 1946 elections proved him right. One reason Nehru became P.M was because he had refused to 'appease' Jinnah in any way. Furthermore, people felt he was against 'untouchability' and other superstitious practices. After all, he'd been to boarding school in England.
The Sangh Parivar made its first foray into party politics in the early 1950s.
This is foolish. The Mahasabha- which the founder of the Jan Sangh belonged to- had been fighting elections in the Twenties and Thirties. In Bengal, it had Cabinet Ministers as part of a coalition in the Forties.
However, it was only in the 1990s—starting, that is, with the destruction of the Babri mosque—that the BJP, its parliamentary front organization, became a political force to be reckoned with.
Rubbish! The Jan Sangh and the RSS had played a key role in overthrowing Indira. That is why Vajpayee became Foreign Minister in 1977. JP Narayan has been accused of opening the door to the rise and rise of the RSS.
Jaffrelot details how this project emanated from the western Indian state of Gujarat, which Modi, a lifelong RSS member and activist, governed as chief minister from 2001 to 2014. He presided over a massive anti-Muslim pogrom in the state in 2002 and pushed a political message that polarized religious groups and sidelined caste stratification. In so doing, Modi established himself as “Hindu Hriday Samrat”—a king of Hindu hearts.
This is misleading. Modi had come to power in Gujarat with the backing of a Hindu hardliner whom he, very adroitly, ditched and left in the political wilderness. This was only possible because the post- Godhra riots were viewed in North Block as a Pakistani ploy to harm Indian logistic capacity which would then allow them to make a move in the Rann of Kutch. That is why George Fernandes, the Defense Minister, himself turned up to lead the military suppression of the riots. The Home Minister also sent in a top cop to shift out the corrupt SHOs and break the nexus between the police and the landsharks and the bootleggers. Shah Rukh Khan's 'Raees' depicts the corrupt manner in which terrorists and police men and bootleggers were ruining Gujarat in the Nineties. Since Delhi helped Modi stamp out this nexus, he was able to take credit for ending the cycle of politically instrumentalized rioting which began in 1969. However, his big innovation was to insist that Cabinets should function as a results oriented team. Instead of 'keeping your enemies close', you should just appoint able people and support them in what they do. Modi also did a mutually beneficial deal with the farmers and put his foot down when industrialists demanded free land. This meant that Gujarat gained balanced industrial and industrial growth. Life became visibly better and safer. In Delhi, the Chief Minister herself said that her own daughter could not go about safely at night. Meanwhile, on the same TV program, we could see girls in Ahmedabad and Surat riding scooters and going to movies at eleven o'clock at night!
Coupled with Modi’s image as a business-friendly man of development,
but he was less friendly than Comrade Buddha or Manmohan or Chandrababu Naidu
this formula transcended the narrow social base of the BJP’s electorate, which had consisted mostly of upper-caste and urban middle-class groups. In a poor country like India, this demographic cannot yield electoral majorities.
Yet, thanks to the Patels- an agricultural community which has excelled in industry and higher education- the BJP already ruled Gujarat. Congress had to poach Vaghela- an RSS man- to keep itself relevant there.
Modi’s achievement in Gujarat, Jaffrelot shows, was to win over the lower castes and lower social classes to the BJP.
This had already happened. The Patels are 'mimetic targets'. Moreover, they back things which succeed on merit. Why is that I- a Smarta Advaitin- am now worshipping in a Swami Narayan Temple? It is because their Temples are superb and well managed. But this is because the Patels built and maintained them (at least in my neck of the woods). Obviously, from a theological point of view, being a Patel doesn't mean you are better than other people. But if your work-product is better people will imitate you.
Jaffrelot’s book excels in laying bare how Modi’s rise to power involved extending this strategy to the national level.
The Gujarat model was not extended. The BJP rose or fell in other States by using the same tools as everybody else. What was different about 2014 was that Modi's campaigners used new technology which was scalable. But others could have done so too. Still, the fact remains, the BJP works differently in Bihar and differently in portions of UP and so on and so forth. A French academic may get away with telling lies about this because, after all, the man is a foreigner. He must have been listening to JNU jhollawallahs who- we all know- are as ignorant as shit.
The BJP’s messaging in the campaign for the elections in 2014 coupled promises of market-driven development and social mobility with religious polarization.
Actually, its messaging focused on only one thing. It treated the Prime Ministership as a job like any other. It projected Modi as the only man who was saying 'I want the job. I am qualified for the job. In my opinion the job entails giving everybody my mobile number so that if my administration fails to deliver in a time bound manner, you can text your complaint to me. I will ensure that all texts are answered and grievances redressed within the stipulated time frame'.
Meanwhile Rahul was refusing to say if he'd take the top job or whom he'd permit to take the top job. Mulayam was saying 'give me the job because my voters in UP preferred my son to me. So make me the PM so I will once again be senior to him'.
Since Modi was the only candidate, Modi won.
Propelled by massive corporate funding,
Congress had bags of money. But it wouldn't spend that money. God alone knows what happened to it.
the party’s bid for national power fused high-tech communication strategies and new volunteers who served as vote mobilizers with the Sangh Parivar’s organizational capacity to reach out to the electorate.
The BJP had better booth management because senior people, like Amit Shah, had done that type of work himself. However, regional parties could quickly catch up or out do the BJP in this respect. Congress and the Left could not because they were gerontocratic.
The result was a landslide victory. With 31 percent of the votes and 282 seats in India’s parliament, the BJP won an absolute majority. The playing field in the subsequent general election in 2019, Jaffrelot argues, was so skewed in favor of the governing party that it “marks a transition in India toward electoral authoritarianism.” A campaign fueled by Hindu nationalism and Modi’s image as protector of the nation clearly appealed to the electorate. The BJP won more than 37 percent of the vote and 303 parliamentary seats.
These aren't landslides. Rajiv won 414 seats. That's a fucking landslide.
It is doubtful if Modi would have won had Congress not been so utterly shit. Still, it was Modi's attack on a Pakistani terror camp which pushed him over the top.
WILL THERE BE A RECKONING FOR A LEADER, A PARTY, AND A MOVEMENT THAT ARE, IN FACT, PRESIDING OVER DEEPENING IMMISERATION?
In the opinion of a Swede or Turnip- sure.
With this powerful mandate, Modi’s BJP has proceeded to reshape India’s secular political order into an authoritarian ethnic democracy. “In this new political system,” Jaffrelot writes, “the majoritarian community is assumed to be one and the same as the nation, thereby relegating minorities to second-class citizens.”
This happened in 1947. There was also plenty of ethnic cleansing of Muslims back then. Obviously, Turnips or Swedes, like Frogs, may not have noticed.
During Modi’s first term, this was most evident in how a wide array of vigilante groups with various affiliations to the Sangh Parivar enforced Hindu nationalist dictates through moral policing and violent attacks on dissenters and Muslims. Often working in tandem with police and benefiting from state protection, these groups created what Jaffrelot calls a “de facto Hindu Rashtra.”
You should hear what the Hindu Rashtra calls Jaffrelot.
With Modi’s second term, the making of an ethnic democracy has only advanced further.
Actually it reached an acme with Nehru's first term. Subsequently, some Muslims were able to get some affirmative action and Urdu's status did get upgraded to some small extent.
Hindu nationalist dictates are now being codified into law.
They were put into the Constitution by people like Ambedkar. Did you know that Dalit Muslims had some affirmative action after 1937? Ambedkar and Co. took that away from them. Later Sikhs, and later still Buddhist Dalits, got this benefit.
This began with the abrogation of Kashmir’s special constitutional status
This happened by a Supreme Court decision in 2016 which declared that Kashmir had 'no shred of sovereignty'. The Court was right. The reason Delhi preferred to pretend otherwise was so that laws in J&K could be more draconian and legal remedies more parsimonious than in the rest of the Union.
—a longstanding aim of the Hindu nationalist movement—in August 2019 and continued with the country’s Supreme Court allocating to Hindu groups the land where the Babri mosque stood.
But the Bench is self-selecting. It is wholly independent of the Executive. Incidentally, it was the Bench which instituted the Nationality Registry in Assam and which opened detention centers there. That happened under Manmohan.
Later the same year, the Modi government introduced anti-Muslim citizenship legislation.
But that legislation merely confirmed existing law. Non-Hindus fleeing Islamic Republics were deemed refugees and offered citizenship. Muslims were not- even if they were escaping persecution. One reason for this was that India could not protect Tasleema Nasreen from Indian Muslims. I think she ran away to Sweden and then ran away from Sweden coz there are too many crazy Muslims there. Also the place is very very boring.
More recently, BJP-governed states have passed legislation against interfaith marriages in a bid to curb so-called love jihad—an imaginary Islamophobic construct in which Muslim men allegedly marry Hindu women to convert them to Islam.
But the first senior politician- Achutanandan, Chief Minister of Kerala- to mention 'love jihad' back in 2010 belonged to the Communist Party. It is only now, in 2021, that the current CM is denying that it exists in the context of a cat-fight with a Catholic Bishop who insists otherwise.
This Hindu nationalist statecraft is progressively pushing India from a de facto to a de jure Hindu Rashtra, or, as Jaffrelot puts it, “official Hindu Raj.”
Jaffrelot, in the view of the Hindu Rashtra, is an 'official, de facto and de jure, twatty twatted twat'.
If there is one factor that has enabled the Hindu nationalist movement to extend its hegemony from civil society to the state, it’s undoubtedly the consolidation of the Hindu vote across caste and class lines.
No. It is the fact that Rahul was a gun-shy moon calf. Anybody at all can take a tough line with Naxals and ISIS type nutters and Pak sponsored terrorists. Indeed, had Rahul supported Manmohan in 2011, he could have pushed through needful reforms such that Rahul could have enjoyed two terms in office on the basis of rising affluence.
In 2019, 44 percent of all Hindu voters supported Modi, up from 36 percent in 2014 and 22 and 25 percent in the 2009 and 2004 elections, respectively.
Because Rahul just kept getting stupider and stupider. He is now saying that true Hindus should be against Hindutvadis. Fuck does this mean? He still won't take over the Presidency of the Congress Party. Thus Congress doesn't have a PM candidate and isn't playing nice with Mamta or other opposition stalwarts. True, in Maharashtra, it has tied up with the Shiv Sena. But that means its 'Secular' image has gone down the toilet. Rahul can now only get elected from Kerala. But in Kerala, Congress is against temple entry for women at Sabarimala while in Delhi it holds the opposite position.
To be clear, the BJP’s core constituency is still made up of India’s upper castes—61 percent of whom voted for Modi in 2019—and the upper middle classes and the rich—44 percent of whom cast their ballot for the BJP the same year. But the party’s massive parliamentary majority was made possible by an expansion of support among “plebeian voters”—lower-caste groups, Dalits, and the poor.
The uncomfortable truth is that Dalits, for good reason, are anti-Muslim and vice versa. The Naxals too have disappointed the Dalits because they want to establish themselves amongst the OBCs.
Among lower-caste groups, the BJP increased its vote from 23 and 22 percent in 2004 and 2009 to 34 and 44 percent in 2019. The party’s share of the Dalit vote increased from 13 and 12 percent in 2004 and 2009 to 24 and 34 percent in 2014 and 2019.
The problem faced by Dalits was that Brahmins were a bad ally while Muslims preferred to tie up with the dominant Backward Caste. Let us see whether the new Dalit CM of Punjab can inaugurate a post-Mayawati future for Dalits as the lead partner in a coalition of 'have nots' across caste boundaries. It is notable that Gehlot is pandering to poorer Brahmins as is Mamta. The increased efficiency of cash transfers through the Aadhar card means that caste vote-banks will have decreased salience. However, 'Tardean mimetic' effects will still give dominant groups- e.g. Jats, Marathas, Patels etc- outsize influence. The farm agitation has shown that they have to be pampered.
It is interesting that Nilsen is against James Ferguson who quite correctly identified cash transfers as the way forward for polities like South Africa and India which have vast disguised unemployment or a sclerotic, over regulated, formal sector. Cretin that he is, Nilsen is still standing out for a better ideology for the Left. He hasn't noticed that such an ideology would have to be more cognitively challenging than Quantum Physics whereas the only people who teach Sociology and Anthropology and so forth are as stupid as shit.
Whereas the party has increased its vote share across all classes, the largest increase has been among poor Indians—from 16 percent in 2009 to 24 percent in 2014, and finally 36 percent in 2019.
In other words, the 'pro-poor' Left Liberals have shat the bed. Yet, implementation of MNREGA did help Manmohan get a second term. Had he been allowed to push through needful reform, then he could have doubled down on buying votes for Congress. That is the only way forward- even in Biden's America. Fuck Build Back Better. Just send us a check from the Treasury.
Real political power, however, is concentrated in the hands of upper-caste groups, who are overrepresented in Modi’s government, among BJP members of parliament, in BJP governments at the state level, and in the party apparatus itself.
However, it was the Communists in West Bengal who most egregiously excluded the non-bhadralok.
Jaffrelot reads this development as “the revenge of the upper-caste elite”—a revenge that has deflected the challenge from lower-caste and Dalit parties and their agendas of recognition through affirmative action.
The revenge of Indian elites consists in getting the fuck out of India- or at least off shoring one's assets after plundering the Nationalized Banks and LIC etc. We sympathize with Nirav Modi who says he will top himself if forced back to the shit-hole where he got rich.
The unification of the Hindu vote,
which was evident in 1946 just like the unification of the Muslim vote behind Jinnah
Jaffrelot argues, has enabled this elite to regain political power.
Fuck off! I know the Indian elite. Under the dynasty, they always knew whom to call. Rajiv, it must be said, understood how things worked. His Mum's P.A was fucking over an industrialist who had grabbed some land from a relative of that P.A. Since the fellow was pukka Dosco, Rajiv helped him out. Very generously, he did not prosecute that P.A for killing his Mummy. Say what you like, Rajiv was a gentleman- though poorer Sikhs in Delhi may not have thought so.
Notably, this has happened in a context where 10 percent of the country’s population—a proportion that is overwhelmingly upper caste—holds 77 percent of all wealth and 55 percent of all income.
So the upper class is also upper caste. What a shocker! How is that the lower down in the hierarchy earn less than those at the top? Surely, in any well run enterprise, the guy who cleans the toilets earns at least ten times more than the CEO?
In this context, what is it exactly that Modi’s BJP has offered subaltern castes and India’s poor to gain their allegiance?
Good governance. Electronic transfers of Cash. Toilets. A brighter future.
Jaffrelot suggests that, on the one hand, Modi’s promises of development appeal to aspirations of social mobility.
As opposed to what? The aspiration to become a rent boy and starve quietly to death?
On the other hand, inclusion in a purportedly unified Hindu majority community under Modi’s leadership offers a sense of dignity often denied to those on the lower rungs of India’s caste system.
It is true that Libtards used to routinely insult anyone visibly of the Hindu faith in this manner. Then, quite suddenly, we discovered the cow worshippers were getting richer than us. Also, if we managed to get a teaching gig in Amrika and started gassing on about how evil Hinduism is, the sons and daughters of these guys would walk out of our lectures and thus gain credentials in useful subjects. Quite suddenly, they had enough money to get the ear of the Administration. Hindu-bashing was no longer a safe- if not very lucrative- line of business. Let some idiot Swedes or farcically ignorant Frogs get on with that thankless job. After all, their countries have already outstripped India in Islamophobia. These cretins are 'fighting Fascism' in a far off land, while their own countries fall off a cliff of Racism and ethno-fascism.
What Jaffrelot’s analysis touches on here are the deeply complex dynamics of India’s political economy as a middle-income country and emerging power in the global South. In material terms, the growth process that has propelled India to this status has obviously been uneven and unequal. And material inequality seems to be deeply intertwined with a “structure of feeling”—an emerging pattern of emotions in society—where aspirations and anxieties interlock in politically consequential ways.
This is not analysis. It is bullshit. Every country in the region has a political economy of the same type. The underlying dynamics are not complex at all. However, leaders are required to break concurrency deadlocks. Modi was the only leader on offer in 2014 and 2019. But this was because Rahul is a fucking moon-calf.
Another way of thinking about this is that Modi’s authoritarian populism
Modi has authority because he is popular. But he is not an authoritarian for the simple reason that he can't put lots of people- e.g. the farmers' leaders- in jail. Indira Gandhi could do so. But then she realized that Sanjay's chums might arrange a nice little accident for her so that they could get a 'sympathy vote' and then entrench themselves in power.
ultimately rests on what W. E. B. Du Bois referred to as “a public and psychological wage” in his masterpiece Black Reconstruction in America.
Du Bois was wrong. Whites ran away from 'integrated' neighborhoods for the same reason that better off Blacks ran away from them. The 'talented tenth' that Du Bois wrote for was able to leverage affirmative action to get the fuck away from their less talented brethren who, however, did know how to have a good time.
Du Bois, of course, was trying to explain why poor white workers in the US South aligned with white elites, rather than in a united struggle against exploitation alongside poor Black workers.
As a Black man myself, I would like to point out that Whitey is terrified of our ginormous dongs. Mine is not even physically measurable but metaphysically it is bigger than the Universe.
His answer was that whiteness offered the experience of a higher social status than what Black people were afforded.
But Blacks got bigger dongs. Fuck social status. Sexual status is what counts. Anyway, having to lug around a ginormous dong means you can't really get very much done. That's my reason for being as poor as shit- even if my g.f. tells you different.
This, Du Bois argued, worked as compensation for material poverty.
White peeps told Du Bois he was being silly. Getting lots of money is what compensates for material poverty whose chief cause is spending all your cash on booze and broads and blow.
In India today, the authoritarian populism of Modi’s BJP and the wider Hindu nationalist movement is arguably sustained by similar majoritarian psychological wages—what we might call the wages of Hinduness.
Gandhi tried to convince us that these wages involved bending over for any foreign dick while quietly starving to death and muttering 'Ahimsa! Ahimsa!' That's one reason Gandhi got shot and his progeny never got to hold any elected office.
Gandhi himself, of course, did well out of wages from industrialists who profited when foreign cloth was boycotted or burnt up. But, after Independence, he was simply a nuisance. The other Gandhians got the message and quietly fucked off to the countryside to engage in Bhoodhan or other such bogus schemes. However, they made a mistake in backing J.P and thus challenging Indira. When she returned to power, Buta Singh put the fear of God into those nutters by calling them CIA agents and cutting off their funding.
Still, Mahesh Yogi and Rajneesh and so forth made out like gangbusters on their 'wages of Hinduness'. I should mention that Lala Hardayal, having taken a vow of celibacy, kept absentmindedly marrying Swiss and Swedish belles till finally making peace with the Brits and settling down to lecture on Hindu philosophy.
The big question, of course, is whether this will hold up against the absence of actual prosperity for those on the margins of India’s growth process. Will there be a reckoning for a leader, a party, and a movement that are, in fact, presiding over deepening immiseration?
This cretin doesn't know that 'immesirizing growth' is Jagdish Bhagwati's theory. The terms of trade move against those who expand productive capacity faster than the demand for the final product. What is true of commodities is true of babies. The proletariat immiserizes itself by having too many babies or by letting in immigrants. Sad.
Whatever the answer to that question may be, it is quite evident that it will take much more than a simple BJP defeat at the polls to reverse the tide of Hindu nationalism.
Because that tide has been swelling since the time of Shivaji.
Progressive political forces have a long road ahead to counter the ethnic democracy that is currently being put in place in Modi’s India.
Whatever a Swede or Turnip or Frog considers to be 'progressive political forces', the fact is, those forces appear to be disappearing rapidly in the land of their own origin. These silly pedants may think they are fooling the folks back home by pretending to know stuff about far away lands, but this is only because they are as stupid as shit.
How long will the University of Pretoria continue to employ this brainless blonde? Let him show his courage by denouncing the ANC. I'm sure it will make very rapid progress in kicking his head in.
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