Leela Gandhi's grammar of ignorance

Gandhian politics was associated with three mass movements in India over the last decade

1) the Anna Hazare Lok Pal agitation. This was based on a genuine hatred of corruption but its central demand was something everybody knew was stupid- viz. creating an Ombudsman as if this was a magical solution to the underlying problem. Whether you think that agitation failed or succeeded, nobody can doubt that Lok Pals have failed. Instead of needful reform, the country got a 'tamasha'- a piece of theater which was wholly unmeaning. As Ghalib said 'ek tamasha hua, gila na hua'. We probably won't see a Gandhian agitation of this type again. Why? The Government will impose demonetization or some other equally painful and equally worthless panacea. There is no point financing a type of stupidity which will be immediately countered by an equal and opposite piece of stupidity. 

2) anti-CAA agitation. This was based on genuine hatred for Hindus- especially Hindu refugees who had escaped persecution and gained citizenship since 1948- but its central claim was something everybody knew was a lie- viz. that Muslims would be stripped of citizenship and deported. This campaign helped the BJP and the AAP party (because Hindus are the majority) but hurt Congress and the Left (because they were shit)

3) the Farmer's Agitation, being a Tikait family affair, wasn't really Gandhian but some pretended that it had this quality. Its ultimate political effect is not yet clear. If Jat votes bring down Yogi Adityanath, then the thing succeeded from the political point of view though, obviously, its real effect is to prevent an economic and ecological solution to a growing problem. Still, agricultural subsidies have continued to decline, so ultimately this is a problem for the States. The poor can choose to subsidize richer farmers in Punjab etc. But it is unlikely they will do so. Maybe Channi will win in Punjab. Perhaps power shifted to Dalits while the Jats where flexing their muscles in this agitation.

The problem with Gandhian activism is that it fails because it is based on paranoid lies or vacuous fantasies. Still, if the thing is well-financed and the administration does not respond with something more stupid yet, then power does shift and this affects rent extraction and distribution.

Leela Gandhi, a descendant of the maha-crackpot, is an academic who has been writing worthless shit for decades while pretending to teach English at, if not Ivy League, then, at least, Brown University.

Consider the following '

“Unlike the preterit form, which implies an already completed past action, the imperfective aspect renders an apparently concluded (perfected) action unfinished and suddenly infinitive. In this way the imperfectionism at the core of disapparation makes the subject of ethics into a perpetual—restless—work in progress.”

This is nonsense. The preterit form has different implications in different languages and different dialects of those languages. In English, the preterite may but equally may not imply an already completed past action. We can give countless examples, in literary English, of the sort that Leela Gandhi herself is supposed to have studied, illustrating this. More generally, it is not the case that the use of a particular grammatical form determines whether an activity is ongoing or completed. You may say 'I friended him on Facebook a decade ago but it was only since we began skyping during the lockdown that we began to get a bit friendly. Who knows? Maybe we really will have become friends and will still keep in touch even after the lockdown lifts.' 

It is not the case that grammar has any relationship whatsoever with the subject matter of ethics. Disapparation is a word which is meaningful in a Harry Potter Universe. It is foolish to think that there is any 'imperfectionism' as opposed to wizardly magic at its core. No one has ever suggested that ethical actions are not wholly concerned with ongoing processes rather than projects completed long ago. What Leela has written is meaningless or magical nonsense.

A younger scholar of similar shite  has written

In her piece “Utonal Life,” she uses utonal music and the difference between minor and major in musical theory

which is wholly Eurocentric. It does not exist in Indian music. Moreover, utonality simply means an extension of minor tonality and is associated with lower consonance by reason of having a missing 'fundamental'. But this does not matter in the slightest for melodic music- which is what people enjoy. Harmonic effects amplify this but, the plain fact is, symphonic music has been subordinated to cinematography. 

to illustrate the role of minor anti-imperial struggles against dominant globalization.

This is sheer nonsense. China has risen greatly in power. It kicked 'Western Imperialism' in the goolies in Vietnam and South East Asia back in the Sixties. Now Biden is promising it won't overtake the US on his watch. Meanwhile, Leela has been going quietly potty. She thinks 'resistance' can involve farting wistfully or masturbating while gazing vacantly at a bowl of oranges. Why is she so utterly shit? The answer is that she traded on her descent from a maha-crackpot to get tenure in a soft subject which has completely rotted her brains. 


For her, anti-imperialism must be engaged in a form of minor politics built on “myriad subjective, nonconformist, immature, inconsequential, heretical, and minor practices” (65).

like fisting yourself vigorously while gazing vacantly at a bowl of oranges instead of doing the washing up. That's bound to overthrow Patriarchal Neo-Liberalism- right? 

 She thus resists the major’s normative and institutional politics, 

How? By quietly taking her salary as a Professor of some stupid shite at Brown? If that is resistance what is collaboration? 

while refusing to overturn them.

But she endorses an 'imperfectionist' strategy of farting wistfully as subverting the 'major' in Mozart's symphony.

 Instead of a grand utopian project, her minor politics strives to open up new heterotopian cultures that offer alternative ways of being. 

Instead of Netflix & chill, let's get together and fist ourselves vigorously while gazing vacantly at a bowl of oranges so as to overthrow Capitalism by our radical transgression. 

These subversive spaces are not meant to add up to anything or cohere into a collective resistance that would overtake the dominant order. Rather, “its sole interest is to make dissensual coexistence manifest whenever shared life is at risk of monopolization by a major mode” (66, emphasis added ).

So, actually, we needn't really get together to fist ourselves. You can wistfully fart while I gaze vacantly at an imaginary bowl of oranges and nobody needs to know this happened or didn't happen or whatever. 

Gandhi’s minor politics and its anarchist principles of decentralization, horizontality, and spontaneity reiterate much of the anti-imperialist thought advanced in postmodern political theory today.

Because, where there is no Empire, anti-imperialist thought is going to feature not just decentralization but also dementia. 

The following is from an Indian Express interview with Leela in 2015. 

Could you talk a bit about the idea of moral imperfection, which you describe as the ethical form of democracy in The Common Cause?

I wanted to write a global history of democracy, not just as a form of government but also as a style of life or spiritual exercise or sadhana.

There is no such history. The Mahatma didn't stand for election. He was shot when he tried to interfere with the policies of independent India. Vinobha Bhave may have got JP to go in for bhoodhan and maybe that was 'sadhana' but JP saw it was utterly useless. So he tried to topple the administration in Bihar, UP etc. Mrs Gandhi declared Emergency and jailed him and his pals. But she was afraid Sanju's cronies would bump her off so she held elections. JP and Kripalani were foolish enough to anoint Morarji and so the Janata Morcha soon fell apart. After that nobody talked of 'sadhana' except in America, where Trump did Hatha Yoga and achieved Nirvikalpa Samadhi and Britain were BoJo achieved Zen satori.  

What is the ethical disposition of someone who lives or wants to live in a democracy?

 It isn't the ethical disposition which holds 'spiritual exercise' or 'sadhana' to be important. We know this because Indians stopped talking about that shite as Democracy took off in their country. 

Such questions were also on the minds of many figures in the colonial context who were not yet citizen-subjects, and thus lacked clear access to the political sphere.

Fuck off! Those 'figures' had the vote in London.  If they were prepared to spend money lavishly, or talk whatever bollocks was required of them, they could rise in politics. Three Gujjus did get elected to Westminster from London while a Bong got a seat in the House of Lords. Back in India these guys could get elected to Legislatures from the Twenties onwards. After 1937, they could become the Premiers of autonomous Provinces.  

Take the idea of swaraj in M.K. Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj. It implies freedom from colonial government (or home-rule) but also self-rule.

And giving up sex. Why would Gandhi's descendants not accept the one thing the Maha-crank asked of them- viz abstention from sex? These worthless cretins (unless they went into business or did STEM subjects) ought not to exist.  

Gandhi takes the idea a step further. He says self-rule is about conquering the very desire to rule or lord over others.

Why not also conquer the desire to rule over yourself and then go on to conquer your distaste for taking it up the arse or giving beejays to all and sundry? Why stop there? Why not conquer your own continence and simply shit all over the place?  

In this way the heart of swaraj is ahimsa,

but the heart of ahimsa is not having sex.  

or non-harmfulness to those allegedly weaker than us. You have to give up in yourself the desire for hierarchy and imperiousness.

And sex 

We can describe this as an ethics of making oneself imperfect: less rather than more.

No one can't, unless it really is true that you are now shitting yourself and crawling around on all fours making gurgling noises.  

I believe this radical form of democratic ethics arose in the early 20th century as a historical rejoinder to the will to perfectionism at the core of the various pernicious totalitarianisms of the era: imperialism, fascism

which didn't exist till Empires fell apart or greatly declined while Bolshevism was on the rise 

and the hideous coming together of race and caste supremacy in this country.

but that had happened long before. Is Leela really utterly ignorant of History? Of course she is. 

How did nationalism complicate democracy in countries that had freedom movements?
Many anti-colonial thinkers were anxious that anti-colonial nation states would simply indigenise the inherited structures of imperialism.

None were. Loyalists, like Gandhi, may have pretended that Indianization of the administration was evil from the religious point of view but that was merely a pretense. Anti-colonial thinkers wanted to have an Army and a Navy which would kick ass. But the guys in that Army or Navy would belong to the indigenous religion and majority ethnicity. Japan was the model. Gandhi, worthless shithead that he was, merely pretended he was against India developing in the Japanese manner. Tagore, on the other hand, knew he'd lose his agricultural Estates in the East and thus warned that the bhadralok Nationalists were slitting their own throats- or rather that the Muslims would slit their throats for them- by demanding the British Umpire fuck off.  

That said, the best part of the great anti-colonial freedom movements of the 20th century is entirely on par with the French and American revolutions in the global history of democracy. An important marker is the Bandung Conference of 1955, where there was a lot of conversation about how, at the end of empire, it was necessary to make a new commitment to an ethical form of politics, committed to sacrifice, generosity and inclusiveness.

But, by 1962, everybody knew this was bullshit. Incidentally, Sukarno was against us in the '65 War. Fuck is wrong with Leela?  

Scholars argue that this project failed. But we have to salvage the idealism of the age of decolonisation and put it to good use for everybody in our own time and world.

No we don't. Not even Rajaji or Vinobha or Kripalani or any other Gandhian fuckwit ever suggested a return to the spirit of Bandung. Indira signed a defense pact with the Soviets so as to carry on pretending to be 'Non Aligned'. 

I am interested in aspirational histories whose best part is yet to be fulfilled.

No. This woman is interested in stupid nonsense of the sort she herself writes.  

You’ve described how Western ideas of democracy around the turn of the 20th century submitted to the tyranny of perfectionism, a universalising idea of excellence.

Leela has described only some stupid shit inside her own mind. She might as well have written 'Aleister Crowley's sex-magic was an imperfectionist response to Churchill and Lloyd George's determination to lay the foundations of a Welfare State which would make life better for everybody in the country.'  

But doesn’t nationalism, with its desire to project a unified entity, also have its burden of uniformity?

Nationalism wants more uniformity than Imperialism.  

Of course. There is a certain domestic model of democracy that holds out the promise of sovereignty for everyone — everyone can be prince.But this ideal is accompanied by a loathing for those not up to the prescribed standard or model of the perfect citizen subject: male, robust, of certain religion, caste, class, sexuality and so on.

Leela thinks everyone in India and Amrika loathed her because she did not have a penis. Yet Indira Gandhi and Maggie Thatcher and so on were respected.  

During the foundation of welfarism in Britain, for instance, “pauperism” was described as a failure of the citizenly temperament.

No it wasn't. The Elizabethan Poor Laws created a legal notion of a 'pauper' who could be confined in a Work House or else be whipped from the Parish long before there was any talk of 'citizenly' temperaments.  

The idea bears resemblance to the “garibi hatao” project during the Emergency,

This stupid bint does not even know that garibi hatao was a slogan which pre-dated the Emergency! 

which became a movement against the poor themselves.

She means 'civic beautification'- garibon ko hatao 

There’s much to learn from those excluded by nationalist democratic projects, and who responded by refusing normative models of sovereignty.

None of the descendants of the Mahashithead got elected to anything. Leela's Uncle stood against Rajiv Gandhi. He lost his deposit. He contested the 2014 election on an AAP ticket but lost. Can we learn anything from shitheads of this sort? Nope.  

Where do you place a majoritarian democracy in this context?
Even the most majoritarian forms of democracy have recourse to the dissenting and counterpublic form of civil society.

No. Civil Society is what ensures that Democracy yields results favorable to the majority. Where it is weak, a charismatic leader can do stupid shit which fucks up those who voted for him. The lawyers and accountants and civil servants and sciencey guys and so forth represent a countervailing force which aint like a fucking Socratic gadfly at all but is deeply boring but relatively smart and useful.  

Civil society is like a Socratic gadfly to the state. It keeps democracy from closing itself off by asking impractical and irritating “what if” questions.

No it doesn't. The Athenians killed Socrates. Asking impractical and irritating questions may get you a gig on a campus for fucking retards. It won't get you the kind of influence which the Institute of Chartered Accountants possesses.  

What if we were more egalitarian?

And Leela was forced to submit her worthless shite to a panel of custodial staff for their imprimatur.  

What if we did away with that egregious piece of new legislation? These questions re-potentialise politics by reopening it to a seemingly impossible but better future.

They do the same to Physics and Actuarial Science but with equally nugatory results. It really isn't true that Legislatures care greatly if you question the propriety of people wearing hats or caps without first defecating into them.  

Do you think that in India there is a gap between the inner life of democracy that you talk about and the outer, institutional structures that embody it?

Inner life means the hidden thoughts and emotions and beliefs which motivate behavior which otherwise might appear to emanate from an institutional role. Thus, the institutional structure of a democracy may appear perfectly neutral and to pick out no 'uncorrelated asymmetries'- e.g. religion, race, gender, etc- whereas its inner life and actual trajectory are wholly determined by them. In India, there isn't much gap of this sort because the Constitution is lengthy and explicitly differentiates between Indic and non-Indic religions. 

That is the burden of my argument. We tend to think only about institutional politics and not enough about the inner life of democracy.

The reverse is the case. We don't give a shit about 'institutional politics'. We speak of the charisma or even 'karishma' of particular leaders while speculating on how sociological and economic developments will change the kaleidoscope of caste coalition politics. 

The historical figures I’m interested in, such as the English socialist Edward Carpenter, sensed this asymmetry.

He was famous for being Gay. He scarcely features in the history of English socialism.  

He argued that we must realise democracy in ourselves, in our very nature.

While bumming each other vigorously without regard to caste, class or creed. Carpenter, it must be said, was a true Prophet. You can't now travel on the Northern Line without being subjected to sodomy. I recall getting upset when I found out that my cousins in Hampstead hadn't invited me to their son's upanayanam ceremony even though I am the senior-most representative of our common sept.  Then my cousin's wife explained that they hadn't invited me because, since I don't drive, I would be bound to take the Northern line where all are equally compelled to submit to an egalitarian and undiscriminating practice of taking it up the arse. For Religious reasons, the lady- who is Jewish- wished to spare me this indignity. 

In his words, true democracy consists in the spiritual realisation of “the Mass-man, or Demos, in each unit-man.”

by cumming in his rectum.  

This sentiment is ubiquitous in the history of democracy.

No it isn't. The history of democracy is about selling your vote for a material advantage or else using it to vent your spleen. Sex really doesn't matter very much. As for spirituality- the thing doesn't matter at all. 

But let me also underscore the crucial importance in any democracy of decent institutions that guarantee equal legal protection.

Though no such democracy exists. The Law is a cartelized service industry. There is price and service provision discrimination.  

One of our greatest thinkers, B.R. Ambedkar, was after all a man of the law.

He had two PhDs in Economics. 

There is great suffering when minorities of any type are not afforded protection of the law.

The Brits were a minority. They did fine. What matters is whether you have money and killing power. If you do, you can make a profit by providing law as a service industry. 

You’ve spoken about the postcolonial subject in your lectures. But are we the same postcolonials we were in 1947, or even 1960?
Probably not! Scholars of the field have always conceded that there are huge limits to postcolonialism simply as a mode of complaint or anti-Western polemic. I share these concerns, but two things about the field still seem valuable and worth nurturing. First, postcolonialism provides a crucial platform for the democratisation of knowledge,

Like Leela's puerile shite counts as 'knowledge'! The fact is, if Indians waste scarce resources on PoCo PhDs, we will fall further behind Singapore and China and so forth.  

such that we can reclaim

reclaim? When did we have it? When did anybody have it?  

genuinely global and ecumenical traditions of democracy, ethics, love,

cuddles, quantum mechanics, conjuring tricks,  

rationality and enchantment, among others. Second, postcolonialism advances a rich philosophical genealogy of critical thinking about power, sovereignty, politics and ethics, and the relation between these.

This is not true. PoCo is stupid worthless shit. Whitey laughs at illiterate monkeys who crap it out.  

There’s a story here that helps. Legend has it that the Greek cynic-philosopher Diogenes was sunbathing in the agora, or public gathering-place, when the emperor Alexander came up to him and said, “Ask of me any boon you like.” Diogenes replies, “Stand out of my light.” This is a key ethical attitude that the postcolonial inheritance clarifies, at least for me.

How? This is a story about some ancient Greek dude. There were actual Indo-Greek Kingdoms back then. Anyway, the thing is simple enough. A 'gymnosophist' or digambar sadhu doesn't need money or power. That's easy to understand.  Fuck would we need PoCo theorists to clarify this?  

How to know when sovereignty (yours or that of others) is blocking your own true light. And to learn how to defend this light, without fear.

Apparently this involves getting tenure in America and then publishing stupid nonsense. The trouble is Leela's 'true light' is not light at all. It is a smelly fart. No doubt, you could set fire to it. But any illumination achieved would be brief.