After running away from Ashoka University, Aravind Subramaniyam, who is back comfortably ensconced in the USA, writes of 'India's beleaguered Liberals in an Op Ed in the Washington Post.
In India, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, along with two domestic events — a court ruling upholding a state government prohibiting the hijab in high schools, and the release of a controversial movie depicting the ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Kashmir more than three decades ago — has uncorked a frenzied nationalism.
This will be news to Indians. Ukraine doesn't matter to India which, however, has to rely on the Russian Security Council veto. In Karnataka, a female Muslim judge along with two others decided that wearing hijab is not an essential practice of Islam. Since the lady judge didn't wear hijab and since people like Benazir Bhutto or Sheikh Hasina or Begum Khalida Zia- three sub-continental women who held the office of Prime Minister in Islamic countries- did not wear hijab, it would have been very strange if an Indian court made a different decision. The fact is not wearing hijab is a small omission which can be quickly expiated. During the day, all religious people commit some small offences and so when they say their prayers at night, they ask for forgiveness. A 'wajib' offense does not make you an apostate. It merely require 'Tawbah'. Why would anybody in their right mind get worked up about this?
What of the film depicting a factual event- the ethnic cleansing of Hindus from Kashmir? How could it uncork anything now when nobody did anything about it when it happened? Those Hindus were Pandits- i.e. belonged to the caste of the Dynasty. If the Dynasty didn't give a shit about them why should anybody else?
Liberals have been in retreat globally for some time, but these events have conspired to make the predicament of the Indian variety especially dire.
How? What were Indian liberals supposed to do? Demand that Muslim women be forced to wear Hijab? Ban films about suffering Hindus? Invade Russia?
India’s liberals appear unable or unwilling to defend principle in three critical areas: the inviolability of territorial sovereignty, economic engagement with the world, and preventing the state from favoring the majority religion.
The same is true of Indian stamp collectors. The difference is there are more Indian stamp collectors than Indian liberals.
Let us consider each.
Why is this cretin pretending to an American audience that there are hundreds of millions of Liberals in India?
India has not publicly condemned the Russian invasion. In response to international pressure spotlighting India’s awkward alignment with Russia, China and Pakistan — the latter two of which are India’s biggest security threats — influential Indian opinion has morphed into remarkably bipartisan anti-Americanism.
Modi isn't anti-American. The question is whether Biden is willing to pay for India's friendship or if he prefers to threaten it with sanctions. What has bipartisan support is 'strategic autonomy'.
Indian liberals who would denounce the Russian invasion are vulnerable to the charge of guilt-by-association with the historical record of Pax Americana.
No. We don't care if they virtue signal in any manner that makes them a bit of money.
The Indian left has always considered American hegemony as riddled with unilateralism and conveniently selective interventions, ranging from Vietnam to more recent fiascoes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
No. The Indian Left considered America the devil though, no doubt, if you could get tenure on an American campus then go for it coz greenbacks are a currency that is well hard.
The right, however, views it from a more nationalist perspective. Prominent intellectuals and journalists have harked back to a historical pattern of the West, and the United States in particular, acting against India’s interests: in India’s liberations of Goa in 1961 and Bangladesh in 1971 — and, of course, the continued military and financial support for Pakistan despite its own flagrant anti-Americanism.
American foreign policy consists, as Obama said, of doing stupid shit. However anti-Americanism declined in India as America stopped financing it.
On economic policy, the severe sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe on Russia have elicited a surprising response.
What's surprising about wanting cheap oil? We also need coking coal and all sorts of other goodies. On the other hand, Russian military hardware mightn't be all it was cracked up to be.
One would expect the Indian government and businesses to scent opportunity: Responses to the Russian invasion will intensify already existing pressures to shift production out of Russia today and possibly China tomorrow. A democratic India should be, and see itself as, more attractive to the fleeing investors.
India doesn't have the natural resources of the one or the repressive apparatus against labor of the other. There are more attractive destinations for those who require either.
Instead, there is growing concern that India itself might be targeted in the future. The argument is that, if the United States can act against Iran or Venezuela or Russia for geo-strategic reasons, pretexts could be found for freezing Indian assets in the future or raising barriers to Indian goods and services.
India has been sanctioned by the US in the past. History will repeat itself though India can respond in kind. After all, it can make peace with China easily enough and grab the assets of 'anti-national' American NRIs to enrich its own supporters. India too has oligarchs some of whom finance 'Indian Liberalism'. That entire eco-system could disappear overnight.
Talk has therefore begun about indigenizing payments systems to reduce reliance on the dollar-based system, diversifying foreign exchange reserves and negotiating barter agreements.
That's perfectly sensible. The West has just destroyed its own 'exorbitant privilege'. Western central banks can't be trusted anymore. What about oligarchs of various descriptions who like buying expensive real estate so as to have a bolt hole in the West? Western sanctions may put an end to capital flight.
Such costly actions would be in keeping with the government’s inward turn. In the past few years, India has raised tariff barriers, implemented selective industrial policy and stayed out of integration agreements, especially in dynamic Asia. Freer trade and more intensive economic engagement with the world could now become serious casualties of recent developments.
Globalization may well be over. But that also means that Liberalism is over. America will go back to being isolationist. But this will weaken the Federal Government. It won't have the incentive it had, back in the Sixties to strong arm the Southern States into getting rid of Jim Crow. Considering what is happening with SCOTUS and Roe v Wade, the question is whether it is American rather than Indian Liberals who are beleaguered. The difference is American Liberals are numerous and powerful. In India they haven't counted for 80 or 90 years.
The recently released film “The Kashmir Files” has also highlighted the vulnerability of the liberals, this time on domestic social policy. It is undeniable that the Hindu community of Kashmiri Pandits was expelled en masse from their homes in the Kashmir Valley, and that the instigators were militant Muslims, supported and armed by foreign elements, including the Pakistani government.
It is also undeniable that they are currently being targeted and killed.
Perhaps most galling to the religious right was the fact that the Indian government, and public opinion more broadly, turned a blind eye to the tragedy.
Because they were proud of belonging to Indira Gandhi's caste. But the Dynasty didn't give a shit about them. Why should anybody else?
To the religious right, if Hindus can be the victims of cleansing in a country where they are the majority, only an unabashedly muscular Hindu government can protect them. This was also taken as evidence that liberals with their “Muslim appeasement” cannot be trusted.
This also became the view of the British and French and other European governments. There is no more talk of multi-culti. There are anti-hijab laws and extensive programs of surveillance.
Liberals who failed to condemn the ethnic cleansing when it happened have seen their credibility undermined, and are unable to now push back against aggrieved Hindus weaponizing the past to demonize or incite reprisals against the minority community.
To be fair, the minority community doesn't mind doing plenty of incitement.
Finally, there is the ban on hijabs imposed on high schools by a state government
This is false. The Government of Karnataka empowered recognised educational institutions to decide on uniforms for their students. An extremist Islamist party tried to challenge the right of a particular Girls School to ban hijab (and saffron scarves for Hindus). However, in Islam, women are not allowed to veil themselves while in a female space. This is because there is a danger that a man or procuress may use hijab to get up to mischief in such places.
France has banned the hijab. Why is this dude getting his knickers in a twist over Girls Schools in Karnataka?
and recently upheld by a court.
Because the thing was prima facie ridiculous. Islam does not say you must wear hijab in a girl's school. It says you must take it off after entering such a place. Otherwise boys or disreputable procuresses could enter.
In less-charged times, school authorities and religious communities could have pursued pragmatic accommodation on the issue —
but who was responsible for creating this problem? The answer is it was an extremist Islamic party.
and the court ruling upholding the hijab ban might have been more widely contested as questionable intrusion of the state into the realm of personal choice,
How? The School has a superior right to decide uniform policy. In R (Begum) v Denbigh High School, the House of Lords decided that Shabina Begum didn't have the right to wear 'jilbab' to school. She should be content with the traditional British costume of shalwar kameez. The Law lords agreed that it was important to protect the rights of other female students at the school who would not wish to be pressured into adopting a more extreme form of dress.
based on an unwarranted excursion by the judiciary into matters of religious interpretation.
How was it unwarranted? Like Shabina Begum, these crazy girls approached the court. Were the judges supposed to say 'you are wrong in law but we will decide in your favor because some stupid professor who ran away from Ashoka University feels that Indian Liberalism will be less beleaguered as a result?
But, in the current mood of grievance and victimhood, the ruling is viewed as an overdue re-equilibration of the status of different religious groups.
It is merely an affirmation of the law. How this cretin views it doesn't matter.
When the author Pankaj Mishra, the scourge of muscular Indian nationalists, makes common cause with them as he has on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it signals a momentous shift.
Mishra has explained that he fell in love with Soviet publications as a kid. He likes Russia and he likes Communism. So he supports Putin though Putin is not a Communist. Muscular Indian nationalists don't support Russia or China or anyone else. They are only concerned with India.
And that is not just that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is entrenching its monopoly on political power, reflected in its victory in the recent elections in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.
If it had a 'monopoly', then it would rule ever state. But it doesn't does it? So there is no monopoly. There is competition.
It may well be the bells tolling for the demise on many fronts — security, economics and politics — of Indian liberalism.
The Indian Liberal Party was totally moribund by the end of the Nineteenth Thirties. The Indian Constitution describes the country as 'Socialist' not 'Liberal'. There is no fundamental right to property. Jury trial was abolished long ago. Preventive detention and extra judicial killing have enabled the country to deal with secessionist and other threats. It may be that there were some people who identified as Liberals at Cocktail parties but why did Aravind take their word for it? They may also have said he had pretty eyes and that what he really wanted to do was suck their cock. I'm not saying that every Chief Economic Advisor to the Govt. of India got their job by guzzling jizz but, as a Liberal, it would be homophobic of me not to entertain this generous belief.
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