Violence is costly and risky to inflict. At the individual level, there is a greater element of 'Knightian uncertainty'. You may trip and fall while trying to knife your victim and end up being paralyzed. At the macro level, things ought to be more predictable. However, Generals may get their calculations wrong as Putin appears to be finding out. The problem with violence is that you never know who might intervene or what other exigency may supervene. This does not mean that the maximum uncertainty principle applies save in the sense that it is often equally probable, in the case of initiatory rather than retaliatory violence, that violence leads to a worse outcome than might otherwise have obtained. One thing, however, is certain. Because of retaliation risk, violence is more likely to gain a better outcome if its is targeted and serves a signalling function. This is because you may attract some fighters to your side if retaliation is imminent.
Consider the case of the suicide bomber who decides he can't be arsed to go down to the Church to blow up kaffirs. He just pulls the cord while watching TV on the couch. The bomb doesn't go off. His Mummy beats him when he complains to her about the crap suicide-bombs some people are selling on Craig's List. Then his Daddy comes home and beats him. His brothers and Uncles phone to say they will be stopping by later that evening to beat him. The would-be suicide bomber does not gain the protection of the local Al Qaeda franchise because he failed to properly identify and target kuffar. There's no heavenly reward for killing your mummy and daddy. Nor will anyone intervene if they beat you with vim and vigor.
The judicious use of violence, or the threat of violence, is often crucial to the success of an individual, a family, a community or a nation. Ultimately, violence is a learned skill with a technological and organizational component. It has featured hugely asymmetric kill rates since the bronze age. This has also meant that peace keeping activity could take up a declining proportion of income. Sadly, bad choices and poor reasoning can reverse this outcome.
Is this what Sen is getting at? when he writes-
Central to leading a human life, therefore, are the responsibilities of choice and reasoning.
Central to leading a successful gangsta, or terrorist, life is the responsibility of choice and reasoning. However, if you are a mystic meditating in a cave and are kept alive by offerings from local villagers you don't have any responsibilities nor do you need to make a lot choices or do a lot of reasoning. But then lots of people with Trust Funds do okay even if they make some bad choices and are shit at reasoning.
In contrast, violence is promoted by the cultivation of a sense of inevitability about some allegedly unique—often belligerent—identity that we are supposed to have
How is that sense cultivated? Kids get into fights. By the time they are about 10 they have a pretty good idea as to where they fit into a pecking order. That's good enough for getting a group of males to do specialization and division of labor for any offensive or defensive purpose.
and which apparently makes extensive demands on us (sometimes of a most disagreeable kind).
Sen kept getting into fights with Ken Arrow. This was very disagreeable for John Rawls because of all the red hot anal makeup sex this entailed.
The imposition of an allegedly unique identity is often a crucial component of the “martial art” of fomenting sectarian confrontation.
There is no such martial art. However there are stupid shitheads, like Sen, who foment hate because they don't understand whatever it is they are supposed to profess.
The fact is an act of violence creates two unique identities- the one who inflicted it and the one upon whom it was inflicted. Stupid or evil people may say 'everybody is guilty' or 'the person who did the raping and killing has another identity as a disabled gay cat impersonator on a planet far far away.' but such cunts we will always have with us- unless, obviously, somebody carelessly kicks their heads in.
Unfortunately, many well-intentioned attempts to stop such violence are also handicapped by the perceived absence of choice about our identities,
very true. We can choose not to be well-intentioned but ineffectual shitheads. The police could choose to stop violence by arresting thugs instead of attending a seminar on their multiple identities and the capability approach.
and this can seriously damage our ability to defeat violence.
As can doing any other type of stupid shit.
Amartya Sen believes that Violence can be caused by 'the presumption that people can be uniquely categorized based on religion or culture.'
This seems strange. What great harm is done when people are treated as falling under the religious laws of their ancestors unless they have expressed a different intention? Am I harmed if I drop dead and am cremated with Hindu rites rather than buried in a Jewish cemetery? It is useful to categorize people. No violence necessarily results.
It is certainly true that violence is not blind to the nature of its intended victim. If she is stronger and quicker to kill than receive an injury- no violence occurs. Equally, if any injury to her would be quickly avenged, she may be viewed as belonging to a protected class. Thus violence requires the identification of a victim it is safe to kill. So long as it is plausible to believe no vengeance might follow- e.g. you kill a person who is unlikely to be a friend or under the protection of your Mob boss or Police Chief- then it doesn't matter if violence is inflicted on someone who didn't really qualify for it. At worst it is collateral damage. At best, it was providential because that fellow might sooner or later have fallen into the qualifying class.
If all people are uniquely categorized as belonging to the same protected class from the point of view of the dominant religion, culture, ideology or State apparatus and if violence against any person is swiftly and surely avenged, then it is likely that unlawful violence will decline. The cost of policing violence will decline. There is a virtuous circle.
On the other hand, if people have ambiguous or multiple identities, vengeance may be evaded by special pleading. This could increase violence. Consider the defense of 'provocation'. Where this is associated with multiple identity- e.g. both 'citizen' and 'member of such and such group'- then vengeance upon violent offenders ceases to be swift and certain. But this may also mean that people don't wait for 'provocation'. They get their knife in before the other can pull out the gun they may have concealed upon their person.
Liberals may want to go easy on members of a disadvantaged class. But this may cause more violence by them against the privileged class which leads to a backlash whereby the latter acts first and then refuses to accept punishment. If genuine privilege exists, Liberals are baffled in their attempt to reward thugs. They retreat from the public sphere weeping their little eyes out. They take to writing stupid books or giving crazy lectures with titles like 'Identity and Violence'. They look around for someone to blame and settle on some other type of Liberal who, they argue, wasn't Liberal enough. This causes them to conjure up the specter of naughty beliefs which corrupt society such that thugs keep getting killed merely because they wanted to rape and kill members of the privileged class- e.g. people with jobs.
The result is doctrines like the following-
The implicit belief in the overarching power of a singular classification can make the world thoroughly inflammable.
If so, nobody should have a unique Social Security number. Indeed having a legal name and a date of birth and an address should be forbidden by law. Hitler used people's names to target them for genocide. Also, we should ban language because it tends to uniquely identify people. Thus if people say, the guy who shat on your doorstep is the elderly fat bastard who lives at number 27 then I may be uniquely identified and become the victim of violence.
A uniquely divisive view goes not only against the old-fashioned belief that all human beings are much the same
which is why you should have no objection to anyone else sleeping with your wife or swapping your beautiful baby for an elderly cretin like me.
but also against the less discussed but much more plausible understanding that we are diversely different.
Either we are different according to a common standard or we are the same by diverse standards. Thus I am taller than Sen according to all standard measures of height which aren't really diverse in their methodology at all. But there are an infinite number of very diverse metrics whereby we are both the same height. There are also an infinite number of methods of measurement by which Sen is taller than the Statue of Liberty. They are crazy and useless measures but they are plenty diverse.
The world is frequently taken to be a collection of religions (or of “civilizations” or “cultures”), ignoring the other identities that people have and value, involving class, gender, profession, language, science, morals, and politics
Some religions make a hard and fast distinction between those who are within the fold and those who are outside it. They don't accept that you can both belong to their religion as well as affirm some other creed. Hindusim is not one such religion. One can be a Hindu while participating in Shia festivals or going to a Church. As for Buddhism and Jainism- most Hindus would eagerly embrace an opportunity to gain darshan of a preceptor from those religions.
Hindus may unconsciously absorb the notion that their own Religion is more tolerant than Religions like Christianity and Islam.
Tagore, who founded the school where Sen studied for ten years, warned Hindus that Islam and Christianity were not like Indian origin religions. He wrote-' There are two religions in earth, which have distinct enmity against all other religions. These two are Christianity and Islam. They are not just satisfied with observing their own religions but are determined to destroy all other religions. That’s why the only way to make peace with them is to embrace their religions.' Tagore may have been surprised to see that Christianity, in the West, has greatly changed. It has befriended Judaism and is quite happy to dilly dally with Zen Buddhism and Hindu Yoga and ancient Mayan crystal skulls. Maybe this is because the working class in Western countries gained an affluence and security of an enviable type.
Tagore could scarcely be blamed for failing to predict that Western Christianity would renounce Imperialism and aggressive proselytism. He himself could be accused of chauvinism as the following quote shows- 'When two-three different religions claim that only their own religions are true and all other religions are false, their religions are only ways to Heaven, conflicts cannot be avoided. Thus, fundamentalism tries to abolish all other religions. This is called Bolshevism in religion. Only the path shown by Hinduism can relieve the world form this meanness.” (Tagore, ‘Aatmaparichapa’ in his book `Parichaya’)
India and Indonesia already had an Islam which was at ease with other faiths. However, in India, for political reasons, essentially secular politicians fell out with each other over the spoils of office. Ethnic cleansing was about grabbing land and looting and raping and so forth. It is what one would expect in an overpopulated land.
Amartya Sen is old enough to remember the partition violence. However, it should be remembered that Communist violence killed far more people in Asia than did Religious violence. Indeed, Communists spent a lot of time killing other Communists. The Naxalites in Bengal are an example. They killed and were killed by the CPI (M).
Communism is an ideology which, in some of its more extreme forms, holds that it is necessary to liquidate 'class enemies'. Millions have been killed because of their socio-economic status. Indeed, any 'plural' classification can justify violence. There are crazy misogynists who rant about the right to rape and kill women. There may be feminists who, with more reason, want to see such men hanged by the neck. People have been killed for supporting the wrong football club or liking one type of music rather than another. Having 'multiple identities' won't help you if you are wearing the wrong t-shirt and are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This unique divisiveness is much more confrontational than the universe of plural and diverse classifications that shape the world in which we actually live.
This was certainly Tagore's view of Islam and Christianity. He noticed that Hindus simply don't kill each other for religious reasons. Christians, in some parts of the world, kill each other because they belong to different sects. Some Muslims kill each other for similar reasons. Hindus don't. But Hindus will retaliate against violence. But this is true of any community which doesn't want to go extinct.
The reductionism of high theory can make a major contribution, often inadvertently, to the violence of low politics.
Not if everybody thinks 'high theory' is stupid shite elderly pedants pull out of their asses.
Also, global attempts to overcome such violence are often handicapped by a similar conceptual disarray, with the acceptance—explicitly or by implication—of a unique identity forestalling many of the obvious avenues of resistance.
Which 'obvious avenue of resistance' are thus foreclosed? Global attempts to overcome violence must uniquely identify those instigating or planning or carrying out violence. This requires more and more fine-grained classification. It might also involve better and better facial and voice identification technology. The fact is people have a unique identity based on their having one and only one body. Finding out what that body has been getting up to enables us to target the violent and safeguard the innocent.
Conceptual disarray involves believing that a terrorist is also not a terrorist. This may be convenient politically- there were people who admired Hitler because he killed Jews but who felt it safer to say that Hitler never hurt a fly once that fucker ate a bullet.
As a consequence, religion-based violence might end up being challenged not through the strengthening of civil society (obvious as that course is),
No it isn't. Civil Society, koinōnía politikḗ, may be wholly religious. The Church may or may not be separate from the State and yet thoroughly permeate every non-State Institution. Religious people may run the Schools and the Hospitals and the Trade Unions and the Chambers of Commerce. Communists and Homosexuals and others disliked by the Religious may find it impossible to get a job or find a house to rent. There may be beaten by thugs and the police may stand by as idle spectators. They may be spat at and insulted by 'respectable' people and denied service in restaurants. All of these things have actually happened in 'Liberal' Societies and not so long ago either.
but through the deployment of different religious leaders of apparently “moderate” persuasion who are charged with vanquishing the extremists in an intrareligious battle, possibly through suitably redefining the demands of the religion involved.
What's wrong with that? It makes sense to use religion to curb the actions of those are seeking to instrumentalize it for a wicked purpose. Perhaps Sen thinks that if only Muslims could start seeing themselves as having a Homosexual identity as practitioners of reflexology in a Galaxy far far away then there would be no more Al Qaeda or ISIS or whatever. The problem here is that it is perfectly possible to be a gay reflexologist while also deciding to kill the kuffar whose Governments, it may be, supported the regime which killed their beloved parents or other relatives.
When interpersonal relations are seen in singular intergroup terms, as “amity” or “dialogue” among civilizations or religious ethnicities,
no harm whatsoever is done. If the Hindus and the Jews or the Mormons and the Muslims or the Buddhists and the Rastafarians get together to share food and listen to each other's priests then 'amity' and 'dialogue' are promoted. That's a good thing.
paying no attention to other groups to which the same persons also belong (involving economic, social, political, or other cultural connections), then much of importance in human life is altogether lost,
Why? Hindus and Jews differ in their customs and beliefs. Hearing a Rabbi speak will help Hindus feel affection and respect for Judaism. The Rabbi and the Pundit may discover they share a passion for darts. Their wives may bond over a common ambition to go in for stand up comedy. But, for these relationships to go forward it is good to have 'amity' and 'dialogue'. It is a place to start from. Sen wants to rule it out for a priori reasons. But those reasons are crazy.
and individuals are put into little boxes.
Sen prefers to dice up the individual and put the pieces into lots of little boxes. Sadly, people refuse to be diced up. They believe they have a single unique identity linked firmly to their single, unique, body.
Lord Voldemort, it will be remembered, cut his soul up into pieces and put them into little boxes called horcruxes. You had to destroy all the little boxes to kill that wizard. Sen is suggesting that if everybody had lots of horcruxes- or identities- then they would gain an immunity to violence. Sadly, people are not wizards. If their body is harmed they are harmed. If their head is cut off, they die. Having lots of imaginary horcruxes, or multiple identities, won't save you. This is because Magic isn't a real thing. Nor is Sen's psilosophy.
The appalling effects of the miniaturization of people is the subject matter of this book.
So 'Identity and Violence' is not about either Identity of Violence. It is about some stupid shit which exists only in Sen's imagination- viz. some supposed 'miniaturization'. Sen is a small man. Perhaps he had fantasies of growing up to be tall and well built. Then some evil philosopher 'miniaturized' him. He was put into a box- that of an economist. He then created another box for himself- that of a philosopher. That's why nobody beat the shit out of him. He very generously shared his wisdom with the rest of us. To avoid getting blown up by jihadis, you need to establish a separate identity. If you are an economist establish a second identity as a philosopher. If you are a philosopher pretend to be a cat. That will confuse the fuck out of Al-Qaeda. They'd be going 'Oy! Kuffar! I will cut off your head!' and you'd be all like 'You must mean the philosopher who has the same name as me. He's totes kuffar. Chop his head off by all means.' The problem is the terrorist might not believe you are a cat. So long as you are human you could be a kaffir. Why pass up an opportunity to rid the earth of vermin?
Why did Sen write such a foolish book? Consider the following-
Rather, we have to draw on the understanding that the force of a bellicose identity can be challenged by the power of competing identities.
This is true only if the 'competing identity' can kick the ass of the 'bellicose identity'. Violence becomes very quiet and sweet if it can see that it will be very badly fucked up by Peace and Tranquility.
These can, of course, include the broad commonality of our shared humanity,
If Humanity has a big army able to get anywhere quickly and fuck up the violent peeps there- sure.
but also many other identities that everyone simultaneously has. This leads to other ways of classifying people, which can restrain the exploitation of a specifically aggressive use of one particular categorization. A Hutu laborer from Kigali may be pressured to see himself only as a Hutu and incited to kill Tutsis,
Not if the 'competing identity' of law-abiding Rwandan can call in the Police who beat and lock up those doing the 'pressuring'.
and yet he is not only a Hutu, but also a Kigalian, a Rwandan, an African, a laborer, and a human being.
Which is cool if there were an African Army or a Worker's Army or an army of Humanity which could quickly reach the spot and beat and lock up the hate mongers. That was what was lacking. Either you got with the program and did your share of killing or you might be next in line.
Along with the recognition of the plurality of our identities and their diverse implications, there is a critically important need to see the role of choice in determining the cogency and relevance of particular identities which are inescapably diverse
But wholly irrelevant. Either there is a 'competing identity' which can beat the shit out of 'bellicose identity' or that's what prevails. Only violence can end violence. The Tutsis defeated the Hutu extremists on the field of battle. The genocide had weakened the Hutus. Killing harmless civilians does not make you better at killing guys who are shooting at you. On the contrary, your people become more inclined to run away.
Ascription is a signal. If someone refers to you in a laudatory manner, chances are they want to do business with you. The reverse is the case if they say mean things about you. As with other types of signalling, using ascription incorrectly can get you into trouble. It's not a good idea to refer to big dudes with roid rage as fairies or cock-suckers.
Sen notes that
quite often ascription goes with denigration, which is used to incite violence against the vilified person.
Yes. The Allies used rude words to describe Hitler's goons. However, this was not what led to violence against them.
“The Jew is a man,” Jean-Paul Sartre argued in Portrait of the Anti-Semite, “whom other men look upon as a Jew; … it is the antiSemite who makes the Jew.”
Sartre was wrong. The devotion to God and family and morality shown by generation after generation of Jews over thousands of years is what made them Jews. However, it is also true that many Jews- starting with the very first Christians- willingly and ardently converted to Christianity and had been accepted as Christians for hundreds of years. Others became ardent Atheists or Communists- but retained a Jewish identity in tribute to the high morality and social consciousness of their ancestors.
Charged attributions can incorporate two distinct but interrelated distortions: misdescription of people belonging to a targeted category, and an insistence that the misdescribed characteristics are the only relevant features of the targeted person’s identity.
Sen does a lot of 'charged attribution' himself. The misdescriptions he indulges in do not however have any tangible effect. Why? We dismiss him as a virtue signaling fool. He and his family have not suffered at the hands of Hindus. They have at the hands of Muslims. But it is only Hindus he whines about.
Now he is talking about Jews as if we don't all know that the guys who most want to kill Jews today are Muslims.
In opposing external imposition, a person can
show he's a nice guy. That could work. Otherwise there has to be an incentive or threat point for the other to desist from escalation.
both try to resist the ascription of particular characteristics and point to other identities a person has, much as Shylock attempted to do in Shakespeare’s brilliantly cluttered story: “Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?”
This is foolish. Shylock was clamoring to collect a pound of flesh in a manner which would have killed his enemy. Suddenly he remembers that he too has flesh which he doesn't want harmed.
Reminding people that you too have eyes reminds them of the rule 'an eye for an eye'. However, taking the eye of someone who is trying to do that to you is better yet. If you can't prevail in physical battle- one way out is conversion. The other guy might not want to kill one of his own Faith.
The assertion of human commonality has been a part of resistance to degrading attributions in different cultures at different points in time. In the Indian epic Mahabharata, dating from around two thousand years ago, Bharadvaja, an argumentative interlocutor, responds to the defense of the caste system by Bhrigu (a pillar of the establishment) by asking: “We all seem to be affected by desire, anger, fear, sorrow, worry, hunger, and labor; how do we have caste differences then?”
Bharadvaja was a Brahmin Sage as was Bhrigu. The answer to his question was that God created the World. At first only Brahmins existed. Then some declined in morality and lower castes came into existence. All this happened very long ago. Thus the message is 'be like the primordial Brahmins regardless of which caste you were born into or whatever follies or addictions your own course of life has led you into. Return to the path of the pure and spiritual beings who were your first ancestors. There is no such thing as 'common humanity'. God created Brahmins but some of them degenerated. Reverse that degeneration. Return to God. Even wild beasts and demons can do so.'
A theist would say God himself, by a gratuitous gift of grace, gives the soul the power to exercise this type of redemptive choice. A strict Monist may have some semantic quibble with this doctrine but would consider it sound enough.
Why invoke God, the Creator, rather than base 'resistance to degrading attributes' on 'human commonality'? The answer is that either 'human commonality' has already abolished such degrading attributes (which only exist in the minds of humans) in which case there is no need for 'resistance', or else that some purpose is served by those 'degrading attributes'. Thus, when I am termed an ignorant, malicious, lazy, sack of shit, a good purpose is served. I become humble- if only for a moment. I may seek to redeem myself by curtailing my literary activity. I might start taking more exercise and thus become less fat. I'm kidding. People like me are secretly delighted when our ignorance and stupidity are exposed. We think, 'Aha! I'm being taken notice of! The tide is turning in my favor! First they call you names. Then they attack your ideas. Finally they say that everybody had already accepted your thesis long ago.' Hopefully, God will grant me oblivion long before any such thing happens. All the good people who ever could be born on this planet would already have died and gone to Heaven. Once that happens, who cares if Earth is inherited by the Socioproctologists?
The foundations of degradation include not only descriptive misrepresentation, but also the illusion of a singular identity that others must attribute to the person to be demeaned.
This is not the case. One is demeaned by one particular trait not irrelevant ones. Thus kids mocked me for shitting myself in Swahili class even though, as I vehemently pointed out, I had not also pissed myself. How come nobody gave me credit for urinary continence? Why did everybody just focus on the fact that I'd taken a dump in my pants? Anyway, that's why I gave up teaching.
“There used to be a me,” Peter Sellers, the English actor, said in a famous interview, “but I had it surgically removed.”
This was on the Muppet Show. This was funny as well as self-deprecating but not 'demeaning' because Sellers was a nice guy- not a malignant tumor of a soul- who'd lost weight, had some plastic surgery and got a tan, so as to be a Hollywood super-star. Sure, he'd lost a bit of his English roots but we were proud our lad dun gud.
That removal is challenging enough,
Sellers was joking. But the characters he was playing were going in a Zen like direction. That was very hip back then.
but no less radical is the surgical implantation of a “real me” by others who are determined to make us different from what we think we are.
Violence is not about surgical implantation. It is about beating and killing. Dead you is the real you the bad guys want.
Organized attribution can prepare the ground for persecution and burial.
Why bother? You don't have to give a dog a bad name to hang him. The thing is a waste of resources.
Furthermore, even if in particular circumstances people have difficulty in convincing others to acknowledge the relevance of identities other than what is marshaled for the purpose of denigration (along with descriptive distortions of the ascribed identity), that is not reason enough to ignore those other identities when circumstances are different.
Reason has nothing to do with talking bollocks.
This applies, for example, to Jewish people in Israel today, rather than in Germany in the 1930s. It would be a long-run victory of Nazism if the barbarities of the 1930s eliminated forever a Jewish person’s freedom and ability to invoke any identity other than his or her Jewishness.
But it would be a defeat for Judaism. Why do what is pleasing to Hitler?
Similarly, the role of reasoned choice needs emphasis in resisting the ascription of singular identities and the recruitment of foot soldiers in the bloody campaign to terrorize targeted victims.
No it doesn't. The thing does not work at all. Foot soldiers have a choice. Either stay out of the conflict and risk being killed. Or join up till it is safer or more profitable to go AWOL. Why make a fool of yourself saying to Ukrainian people, 'you needn't be for or against Putin. You can choose to have multiple identities as Dental Technicians in Singapore and disabled Gay hypnotherapists living on a planet far far away.'
Economics may be described as the science of choice under scarcity. It isn't a magic wand to create multiple identities in Imaginationland.
Campaigns to switch perceived self-identities have been responsible for many atrocities in the world,
Taking a shit is part of a campaign to switch one's perceived self-identity as being full of shit. This has indeed led to many atrocities in the world. Breathing in an out is part of a campaign to switch perceived self-identities from being that of a suffocating person to one who is receiving adequate oxygen.
making old friends into new enemies
Shitting on them has the same effect
and odious sectarians into suddenly powerful political leaders.
or odious Professors of shite subjects into suddenly influential public intellectuals.
The need to recognize the role of reasoning and choice in identity-based thinking is thus
equal to the need to recognize the role of respiration and defecation
both exacting and extremely important.
Fuck off! People need to breathe and eat and defecate. They don't need to recognize the role of reasoning or emoting or breathing or eating or defecating.
If choices do exist and yet it is assumed that they are not there, the use of reasoning may well be replaced by uncritical acceptance of conformist behavior, no matter how rejectable it may be.
Whereas succumbing to magical thinking and saying we can have multiple identities may cause us to talk Sen-tentious bollocks.
Typically, such conformism tends to have conservative implications, and works in the direction of shielding old customs and practices from intelligent scrutiny.
That's a good thing. If it works, don't fix it. Pedants are incapable of intelligent scrutiny. Sen is such a conformist he is still babbling about Adam Smith!
Indeed, traditional inequalities, such as unequal treatment of women in sexist societies (and even violence against them), or discrimination against members of other racial groups, survive by the unquestioning acceptance of received beliefs (including the subservient roles of the traditional underdog).
This is not true. You accept the things you can't change but, at the margin, constantly test what can be changed. This does not mean that there can't be a general saltation event after a tipping point has been reached. This does not involve poor people learning to question why the haven't a pot to piss in. Rather it involves getting indoor plumbing and flicking through brochures for jacuzzis.
Many past practices and assumed identities have crumbled in response to questioning and scrutiny.
No. They resisted questioning and scrutiny which was not associated with a change in technology or the mode of production. But they faded fast enough when peeps got rich.
Traditions can shift even within a particular country and culture. It is perhaps worth recollecting that John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women, published in 1874, was taken by many of his British readers to be the ultimate proof of his eccentricity, and as a matter of fact, interest in the subject was so minimal that this is the only book of Mill’s on which his publisher lost money.
Because he was a boring twat. What got women the vote? The First World War. Productivity can put paid to prejudice. Political philosophy can't pay for itself.
However, the unquestioning acceptance of a social identity may not always have traditionalist implications. It can also involve a radical reorientation in identity which could then be sold as a piece of alleged “discovery” without reasoned choice. This can play an awesome role in the fomenting of violence. My disturbing memories of Hindu-Muslim riots in India in the 1940s, to which I referred earlier, include seeing—with the bewildered eyes of a child—the massive identity shifts that followed divisive politics.
Why was there ethnic cleansing of Hindus from East Bengal but only economic migration of Muslims from West Bengal? Tagore predicted the outcome. Sen, bewildered child that he remains, still doesn't get that the withdrawal of the British made non Muslim minorities vulnerable. A new Social identity was thrust on his people. That's why they ran away from Dacca.
A great many persons’ identities as Indians, as
British subjects protected by the Crown
subcontinentals, as Asians, or as members of the human race, seemed to give way— quite suddenly—to sectarian identification with Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh communities.
Because the Muslim League wanted to partition the country. Sen still does not get this.
The carnage that followed had much to do with elementary herd behavior by which people were made to “discover” their newly detected belligerent identities, without subjecting the process to critical examination.
Is Sen saying, Indic religions were and are peaceful. Islam and Christianity endow converts with belligerent identities? That is what Tagore said. The problem here is that West Bengal has been Communist or Secular. It hasn't been Hindu or Hindutva. Whatever 'herd behavior' Hindu Bengalis display- thought it may feature running away, does not involve an identity belligerent to Islam. That is why the Muslim population of West Bengal rose and is rising while the Hindu population of East Bengal fell and may fall yet further.
It should be observed that the Bengalis were considered a people lacking in martial qualities. Herds, after all, have a limited repertoire of behavior. I suppose Sen, like Tagore or Niradh Chaudhri is criticizing his own people though, being an academic, he has to do it in a veiled manner. By his cowardice, Sen makes a powerful statement of how the Hindu buddhijivi, though fascinated by Violence, feels too weak to incorporate it into an rational and integrated identity. It is exiled instead, in schizoid manner to some imaginary rainbow of plurality where the yellow streak might not so stand out. On the other hand, 'critical examination' has little fear of being labeled cowardice. It is smart to get away from shitholes and put yourself under the protection of Anglo Saxons who understand both how to conduct commerce and how to inflict carnage.
That, at any rate is the opinion of this author- one Vivek-most-utterly-shit-Iyer-ever. The true Bengali- in my experience- is a buddhijivi of Vivekandanda's sort. Courage is Spirituality is Family commitment is Patriotic zeal is the indissoluble link between Nara & Narayana or Babu Narendranath & Swami Ramakrishna.
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