What accounts of growing Indian illiberalism miss: The grounds for bigotry were laid before 2014
The growth of a Hindu-Indian diaspora,
For liberal-minded observers of Indian society,
he means mindless virtue signaling libtards.
the recent celebration of 75 years of independence has been an occasion – if one was needed – for outpourings of lament.
vomit is the mot juste.
In print and online media – television has largely become impervious to serious debate
as has academia
– in India and around the world, a variety of writers have movingly chronicled the illiberalism and the assiduously nurtured bigotry of the past eight years as personal grief.
We didn't believe them. They were merely play acting.
In these writings, the years since 2014 have been set off against earlier histories
lies aren't histories
of multiple bonds between Hindus and Muslims,
like what? Jinnah and Nehru taking turns bumming the Mahatma?
traditions of syncretism in music, philosophy, food and cinema,
but syncretism doesn't mean ethnic cleansing is off the table. Ask the Sikhs.
constitutional guarantees of equality in all respects
which were wholly meaningless
and a “natural” acceptance of diversity in various forms.
including a natural acceptance of ethnic cleansing.
Yet, in all this stock-taking – frequently powerful and moving
for the bowels- maybe
– there is something missing.
Intelligence- that is what is missing.
What are the changed social and cultural realities that confront the formal and wished for indicators of a decent national life – the Constitution,
Srivastava lives in England which does not have a written Constitution
laws, the judiciary, poetry, fiction, cinema, for example?
why lump poetry and fiction with the law and the judiciary? The latter are economic and represent 'mechanism design'. The former are wholly imagnative.
What of the people themselves? What circumstances make them what they are?
Economic circumstances. That's not stuff an anthropologist has much of a grip upon.
Thinking about this is not easy
It is easy enough for an economist.
as we are not led to any straightforward answers to the predicaments of the present.
Yes we are so long as we don't consult stupid anthro-fucking-apologists.
However, to not address it leads us to an even more difficult – if not absurd – perspective: that as soon as the 2014 general election results were declared, a substantial section of the Indian population suddenly changed from what it was to its complete antithesis. That one day, many Indians believed in Hindu-Muslim unity and the next, they either began to promote or, at the very least, tolerate bigotry.
Yet it is precisely this absurdity which this cretin has sought to address. Why not ask why British men started having vaginas instead of penises after Mrs. Thatcher became Prime Minister?
To avoid this absurdist line of analysis, a follow-up question must be asked:
It is 'are you by any chance an anthropologist? If so- fuck off.'
what changes can be identified in conditions of Indian life over the past few decades that may have prepared the grounds for shift in attitudes?
Islamic terrorism. The thing was a global nuisance. There was no point appeasing the unappeasable. It was a question of kill or be killed.
What are the possible histories of such easy movements from moments of apparent tolerance and liberalism to their opposite?
Had Rahul stepped up to the plate Congress would have cobbled together a coalition in 2014. Then, like Rajiv, Rahul would have fallen because of a corruption scandal.
This will avoid the untenable point of view that “that’s the way we are, just an irredeemably illiberal people at heart”.
It is not illiberal to want terrorists to be killed before they get around to slitting your throat.
Thankfully, however, the cultural history of this part of the world shows no evidence of an inclination for violence and bigotry that is in excess of that in other parts of the planet.
Very true. I recall the anti-Sikh riots in London and Washington in 1984. Delhi wasn't exceptional at all.
A more useful avenue might be to think of some of the recent changes in Indian society that might be the grounds for the normalisation of intolerance and hate.
Sikhs in America were attacked after 9/11. Recently, when COVID began Asian Americans were attacked. A lot of them have bought guns and learned how to use them. They are a sensible people.
These might be the grounds for the political harvest whose blighted wheat sheafs surround us.
Why the fuck would a farmer bother to sheaf together blighted stems?
One of the most significant contexts for the current institutionalisation of majoritarian politics in India relates to the maturing of the Indian diaspora in the west.
This is nonsense. The Indian diaspora did have some role in the Independence struggle. Khalistan did receive diaspora support. But diaspora politicians- Bobby Jindal, Kamala Harris, Priti Patel, Rishi Sunak etc.- have zero influence in India.
By the early 2000s, Indians of Hindu background had become well enmeshed in the “multicultural” politics of their adopted homelands.
In Britain, Indians of Hindu background were well enmeshed in mainstream politics by the Seventies. In America, the first Indian origin Congressman was elected in 1957.
This involved their ability to translate Indian culture in terms of a Hindu religious identity.
But 'Hindu religious identity' encodes Indian culture. The two are indistinguishable.
Diversity of religious belief is a significant aspect of the idea of “tolerance” that underlies discourses of western multiculturalism.
But nobody in the West- aside from a couple of academics- gives a fuck about that discourse. Politicians would buy votes from darkies by playing up to their absurd shibboleths.
In Christian-majority countries, the idea of non-western identity is primarily understood in religious terms.
Coz American racists believed Dr. Martin Luther King belonged to the jiggaboo religion- right? When I put on a crucifix, English people mistake me for Boris Johnson. That's why I sport a star of David and a yarmulke.
An Arab Marxist or an Indian Humanist would be unrecognisable categories.
Very true. Indian humanists are frequently mistaken for public urinals.
It is this understanding of multiculturalism that Indian Hindus have engaged with in terms of constructing their diasporic identities.
Coz they didn't want to be incessantly pissed on by Whites who mistook them for public urinals.
Temples in the United Kingdom are
either Hare Krishna or else created by a particular caste- e.g. Patels who provided us the superb Neasden Swaminarayan temple.
both signs of the success of British multi-culturalism
Nope. Neasden reflects the success of the mainly East African Gujerati Hindus who settled in North London. They are an excellent people.
as well as Indian identity. As this community prospered, their success translated sub-continental beliefs about Hindus and Hinduism on a “world” stage.
If by 'world' you mean Neasden or New Jersey- sure.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2014 success, its electoral strategies leading up to it and since then, has built upon a religious nationalism that is “global” in nature.
because irreligious anti-nationalism is totes parochial- right?
Indian nationalism in its current phases is as much western as Indian.
just as the West is as much Eastern as it is Western and cats are as much dogs as dogs are cats.
The heritage politics foregrounded through overseas Indian populations and their dealing with their host societies led to significant spinoffs in India
name one. You'd have to go back to the Ghaddar movement to find any such thing.
that have also aided the current majoritarian moment.
Very true. When Advani called on Modi to help his Rath yatra, he did so in the belief that Modi was a prosperous orthodontist from Miami.
One of these relates to the rise of New Religious Movements that particularly appealed to rising new middle-classes.
Nineteenth Century or early Twentieth Century religious movements are not new. Ambedkarities may be said to belong to a new religious movement. It is certainly true that Punjabi Ravidasis etc. in England rediscovered Ambedkar but they were already rising through hard work and enterprise. Buddhism, of course, is flourishing in the West.
In keeping with the new visibility of Hinduism in the west,
The Hare Krishnas did make Hinduism visible in the West but that was 50 years ago. Then came Rajneesh. But he wasn't particularly Hindu.
a rapidly growing population of white-collar professionals in India was particularly ready for spiritual guides who spoke the languages of “global” success: management jargon, self-improvement and the capacity to marry spirituality with consumerism.
Consumerism is wicked. Srivastava wears khadi and lives simply in a grass hut. Fuck knows which Guru turned his brains to shit.
In both explicit and implicit ways, Indian new religious movements have been handy allies of majoritarianism through effectively inventing a “modern” Hinduism that is promoted as a necessary part of being Indian:
Nonsense! A necessary part of being Indian is actually living in India. That has nothing to do with religion. The Brahma Kumaris would as gladly enroll my White neighbor as they would enroll President Murmu.
a Hinduism for global Indians that makes them both Indian as well as Global.
This is silly. A Hindu who spends a lot of time jetting around the world is Global as well as Indian if he is based in India or plans to return there soon.
Just as importantly, new religious movement gurus frequently invoke a history of “wrongs” against Hinduism and leave unaddressed uncomfortable aspects such as caste.
Srivastava would prefer them to dilate upon the horrible massacres of Muslims which Hindu invaders perpetrated upon Saudi Arabia.
The dramatic change in living patterns forms the third possible aspect through which that which seems to have come upon us suddenly in 2014
only because Rahul was gun-shy.
might have been in the making for some time.
Or may have always been there from the get go. It is plausible to say that Nehru's generation was defeatist. Indira's generation a little less so and so on.
Since the mid-1980s, gated communities have become a significant form of residential accommodation. This has also meant the consolidation of mono-religious ghettoes.
But medieval towns all over the world had this feature! The very word 'ghetto' is medieval and refers to segregation of Jews. But there were also Huguenot areas and, later on, Quaker housing estates and so forth. In America, the thing may have been novel. But it may also have been a reaction to the repeal of Jim Crow type laws though, of course, there was plenty of informal discrimination in any case.
In most parts of India, gated communities tend to largely contain Hindu populations.
Because the population is largely Hindu. Also Hindus tend to be quicker to leave Muslim areas because they don't like being raped or knifed every so often.
The reasons for this are both economic as well as – if anecdotal and media accounts are to be believed – deliberate barriers to entry for Muslims.
and even more deliberate attempts to kill them before they can kill you
While, there may never have been traditional neighbourhoods characterised by complete inter-mixing between communities, the nature of India’s gated communities has substantially diminished whatever intermingling there might have existed in more open localities.
Only in the sense that the persistence of horses significantly diminish our chance of meeting a unicorn.
It is not at all unremarkable to come across children from Hindu families who may live in gated communities and attend private schools and who have never interacted with anyone but their co-religionists.
But it would be remarkable to come across a SOAS professor who wasn't a drooling imbecile.
This too undergirds the new normality of majoritarianism, producing the Indian-Hindu equation.
What produced the partition riots? There is nothing new about a majoritarianism which triumphed in 1937 when some Muslims withdrew their kids from schools in Congress ruled provinces because they were forced to sing 'Vande Mataram'.
The Indian fascination for the heroic leader
As opposed to what? The American fascination with the leader who shit himself any time Putin or Xi or the Ayatollah shouts at him?
derives as much from the legacies of the anti-colonial movement as from the belief that only a person of superhuman powers can deal with the nature of our problems.
Very true. People thought Rajiv Gandhi flew around the country without using an air-craft.
However, at different times in our post-colonial history, we have been attracted to different types of charismatic personalities and not all of them have promoted sectarian religious interests.
Though this is precisely what JP and Lohia and Kripalani are accused of doing. It was they who brought the RSS into mainstream politics.
What is particular to this moment is the conjunction of factors that have made religious sectarianism the norm.
There is only one fucking factor- viz. Rahul is as stupid as shit.
The apparent guarantors of a decent national life – the Constitution and its instruments, for example –
never guaranteed shit. Which fantasy world has this cretin been inhabiting all these years?
may not provide the answers to questions about “where do we go from here?”
They are not designed to. The answer is that Kejriwal and Prashant Kishore's new party and other successful regional outfits will cobble together a good rival Prime Ministerial candidate by the end of the decade. True, Hindu-bashing is off the agenda though Rahul & Co are welcome to keep at it from the political wilderness outside Parliament.
As we have discovered, constitutional guarantees are easily bent according to political will.
No. Constitutional remedies are ineffective if resources are unavailable or enforcement is difficult.
Political strategies are, in turn, based on an understanding of broad cultural and social circumstances. Just as politicians do, we should also come to grips with them.
By refusing to listen to Anthropologists or other such useless nitwits.
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