In a previous post, I drew attention to Thomas Blom Hansen's fascination with violence and his bizarre beliefs about sovereignty. In this post I examine a recent interview in which this nutjob seeks to explain his deep hatred of Hinduism. It turns out this is based on his belief that India was very nice and democratic till some nasty Hindus started a political party with the aim of constructing a Hindu temple. This is clearly very evil and wrong. Hansen has written a number of books deploring the existence of Hindus in India which, to be frank, is bound to lead to conflict and violence with those who disapprove of that horrible religion.
The following is extracted from 'the Nation'.
Not many academics have studied Hindu nationalism with the intensity of Stanford University anthropologist Thomas Blom Hansen.
No academics study Hindu nationalism, as opposed to Indian politics (which is the product of Hindu nationalism) though some Hindu nationalists are academics as are some Hindus who hate India and want it to crash and burn. But, since lots of money can be made and better outcomes for the country can be achieved by understanding Indian politics, academics who write about India- all being as stupid as shit- are the last people you should consult in this regard.
Among University Departments, the one which has experienced the sharpest decline in prestige is Anthropology. Back in the Seventies, it was said that Prince Charles himself might have chosen to study it at Uni. Indeed, Anthropology was cool during the Cold War when CIA agents needed a cover identity to hang out with head-hunting tribes who might provide an anti-Communist militia. Later, it just became a dumping ground for losers who were too drug addled to do Sociology.
The 63-year-old’s new book, The Law of Force: The Violent Heart of Indian Politics, argues that anger and brutality have become mainstream in public life and politics in India.
Whereas the West killed 1.3 million Muslims in a war of revenge which they lost. Anyway, there's far more anger and brutality on Hansen's doorstep in California.
The 176-page volume delves into what Hansen calls “the emergence of a decidedly non-liberal form democracy,”
There was never any liberal form of democracy in India. The Liberal Party died after securing the Mody-Lees agreement. What there was was dynastic rule.
which explains why police attacks against Muslims and lower-caste men and women go unpunished.
Police attacks go unpunished unless policemen get stabbed or shot by the people they are attacking. This guy has lived in America for many years. He didn't notice that there were plenty of police attacks on all sorts of folk- more particularly of the colored variety.
The Denmark-born scholar, who has written several books on nationalism in India,
the cunt keeps banging on about how Hindus are all secret Hitler worshippers.
told me that “the enjoyment of violence, the pleasures of hatred and vengeful fantasies, and the license to kill”
That's the stuff gets this cunt hard. But why does he have to come to India to find it? Much more of that shite exists on his doorstep. Hinduism is peaceful. America isn't. Islam isn't. So why zoom in on India?
are factors that contemporary India shares with Germany before World War II.
There you have it! Everything is about Hitler. These guys stroke themselves off while drooling over Nazi atrocities. There are plenty of White Supremacists in America. Why does this cunt not study them?
In his book, Hansen lays out the dangers of the rise Hindu nationalism,
It rose at the same time as Indian nationalism because Indian nationalism is Hindu nationalism.
explicitly comparing today’s adherents to the Nazis,
because that's what gets those cunts hard
who allowed their vigilantes and storm troopers to terrorize Jews, communists, and anyone else opposed to their agenda.
the Danes did okay under Hitler. Who knows? They may turn against their Muslim immigrants.
ULLEKH N.P.: Why did you write this book?
Because if you keep writing books about shit you know nothing about, people will understand that you are an Anthropologist.
THOMAS BLOM HANSEN: It was in some ways a reflection on decades of work in India.
Decades over which he learnt nothing and forgot nothing being content to simply repeat himself endlessly.
It was prompted by my experiences during a longer stay in 2017–18 where I was able to see up close the effects of decades of the BJP [the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s ruling party]
which had helped overthrow Indira Gandhi's dictatorship
and other forces whipping up violent sentiments and making bigoted hate speech completely mainstream and acceptable.
Like Khalistanis, Naxals, Islamists, Ambedkarites, the DMK, and those whipping up hatred of the RSS.
UNP: When you met an activist of the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent body of the BJP] in July 1989 in Pune, did it occur to you that this militant right-wing Hindu organization will over the next few decades become the most formidable electoral entity in the country through its political arm, the BJP?
But the RSS was considered crucial in bringing out the anti-Indira vote in 1977. What had given Congress a shot in the arm was Khalistani hatred of Hindus. Rajiv presided over a massacre of Sikhs in Delhi just as his grandfather had presided over a pogrom of Muslims when he took power. It seems that Hindus like those who 'teach a lesson' to those who kill them. But the West's 'War on Terror' was popular with Whites who were delighted to see bearded Muslims being Gitmoed or blown up by drones.
TBH: When I started my work, the BJP was taking its first steps into large-scale mass politics
This cunt doesn't get that the RSS and Jan Sangh had been prime movers in the Nav Nirman and Sampoorna Kranti mass agitations. Whatever fucking 'work' the cunt was doing, it did not involve learning anything about Indian politics.
with the Ayodhya campaign to “liberate the birthplace of Lord Ram” [a mythological Hindu king]. Most of the BJP activists at that time were not particularly adept at doing this kind of mass politics and campaigning,
Nonsense! People like Modi had cut their teeth on Nav Nirman and the anti-Emergency underground movement. The VHP had done Ekatyata Yatras in the early Eighties which honed the techniques later used in the Rath Yatra. This cunt is totally ignorant of Indian politics.
and they were frankly surprised by their sudden success, becoming the second-largest party in the country.
With 102 out of 345 seats, Jan Sangh was the biggest single constituent of the 1977 Janata Coalition which is why the RSS's Nanaji Deshmukh was offered the Deputy Prime Ministership. Janata fell apart on 'dual membership' of the RSS. Ultimately, the Janata Parivar had to take second place to the Sangh Parivar because it couldn't produce a Prime Minister who wouldn't be immediately stabbed in the back by his own adherents.
What many of them did learn was that if they harnessed the resentment of Muslims in the right way, it could become their most powerful political resource.
But Congress had always been the party which slaughtered Muslims or Sikhs or Commies if they fucked with Hindus. In the Indian hierarchy, Congress was 'Brahmin'. The Jan Sangh was 'Bania'- trader caste.
It was very foolish of UPA I and its presstitutes and darbari intellectuals to build up Modi as the Hindu Hitler because, by doing so, Congress gave up its traditional role as the muscular arm of high caste Hindu society. Worse, it began to be seen as anti-Hindu.
But it was when Modi, in 2014, decided to take over Congress’s agenda of economic reforms
which were Chandrashekhar's agenda before they were Rao's and which Vajpayee had been carrying forward.
This cretin is entirely ignorant of Indian politics and society.
as well as many of the welfare policies that had been crafted that many felt that now BJP was finally a moderate party of vikas/development and not just cultural/religious concerns.
That is what it had always been because that is what Hindus want.
This paid off and the lack of an effective opposition
No. What was lacking was a credible alternative Prime Ministerial candidate because Rahul was shit and Manmohan had been cut off at the knees.
allowed Modi to establish himself as the all-dominant force in Indian politics,
he is still the only guy who is willing and able to do the top job. Gehlot bottled out.
something that emboldened the BJP to return to its true anti-Muslim and bigoted colors after the re-election of Modi and BJP in 2019 with an even bigger majority.
This is mere projection on the part of an ignorant racist. The fact is, if Hindus want ethnic cleansing they just go ahead and do it same as Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists etc. But Muslims simply don't matter enough for killing them to be a priority. In any case, they are sober and hard working and make very tasty biryani.
UNP: Hindu Nationalists fashion themselves as unifiers of all Hindus irrespective of caste.
No Hindu Nationalists want to unify all Indians whereas Hindu Swamys fashion themselves as unifiers of all, irrespective of nationality.
But why is it that we now see a marked rise in reported crimes against not only the minority Muslims but against lower castes?
Muslims and backward castes commit crimes against Dalits. But Dalits and Adivasis can revenge themselves on Muslims with support from the wider community. That is the equation we see.
Is the RSS upper caste at its core?
How would this fucker know?
TBH: The short answer is yes, but it is also true that the RSS has over many years incorporated many members of marginalized communities. However, these figures never rise significantly in the ranks of the RSS, but only in the violent outfits affiliated with the RSS or in electoral politics where BJP needs lower-caste faces in their campaigns. Like how Trumpism in the US made hate speech mainstream, Modi’s India has made hate speech and violent caste prejudice more respectable.
This is nothing but hate speech of an ignorant sort. Stanford University has made racism by Nordic nutters respectable. But, the fact is America's War on Terror killed 1.3 million Muslims and displaced tens of millions more. Hindu India has done nothing similar. Indeed, ethnic cleansing is confined to the Kashmir Valley where Hindus are the target.
UNP: You say in your book that today the Indian Constitution would not find favor in the two houses of Indian Parliament, where there are deep reservations among BJP members and allies about several elements of the Constitution.
Coz they want Modi to be the Fuhrer- right?
Why is it that their aspirations are often opposed to that text of democratic principles, citizens’ rights, and equality before law?
The BJP opposes dynasticism. The Indian Constitution did not envisage any such thing, yet that is what we have had.
TBH: First of all, the RSS was never part of the nationalist movement
No. The RSS developed out of the Anushilan movement and 'garam dal' of Pal, Bal, and Lal. Indeed, Hegdewar was first a member of Hardikar's Congress Seva Dal before he set up the 'non-political' RSS just in case the Seva Dal was banned.
This type of Hindu Nationalism had been rising from the 1880s onward. Ambedkar was against the nationalist movement because he believed he could get a better deal for his people from the Brits. Motilal and Jawaharlal were late to the party. But, being from the Hindi belt, their ire against the Brits was real enough. Their own family had to flee Delhi after 1857 even though they had become English speaking vakils to John Company
that culminated in independence
Independence came whether or not there was much of a nationalist movement. The culmination of Gandhi-Nehru politics was Partition.
and the 1950 adoption of what at the time was one of the most ambitious and inclusive democratic constitutions in the world.
Burma's Constitution which came out earlier was more Socialist. India's Constitution gives the center plenty of emergency powers. It could become a dictatorship at the drop of a hat and then the Constitution could be amended every which way.
Quite the contrary, the RSS was consistently skeptical of democracy.
Everybody was skeptical of it. Frank Anthony summarized the mood of the Constituent Assembly when he said 'if we have to have a Dictator, let it be Nehru'.
Its second leader praised the policies of Nazism;
Govind Vallabh Pant, as President of Congress, described Gandhi as the Fuhrer and Il Duce of India. Bose went the extra mile and allied with Hitler and Tojo. He was to the Left of Nehru.
a former RSS man killed Gandhi;
which is why Congress slaughtered Brahmins in Pune.
and at its founding in 1925, RSS adopted a uniform that was a carbon copy of that used by the colonial police forces.
Nope. It was a copy of the Congress Seva Dal uniform. Hegdewar was a Congress man like his pal Hardikar who had set up the Seva Dal a couple of years previously. Nehru joined it. The RSS was a provincial and 'apolitical' copy of the main Hindu organization.
In addition, the RSS is itself an avowedly nondemocratic institution.
Congress is wholly dynastic- just like the DMK and various Samajwadi and other outfits. Mamta has anointed her nephew as her successor.
It’s a self-appointed hierarchy of command without any representation of the views of its foot soldiers.
But it isn't dynastic is it?
It cherishes this military-style model of authority and discipline.
Only the military enjoys prestige in India precisely because it is disciplined. When there is an earthquake or other such disaster, the Army and the RSS turn up and do useful work. Other outfits may turn up but they are useless. Kumarappa was a chartered accountant. He refused to pay Gandhi's acolytes for their supposed relief work in Bihar because those nutters were useless. That was back in the Thirties.
UNP: How ironic then is Mr. Modi praying before a copy of the Constitution of India in Parliament after he won the 2019 elections?
It is entirely appropriate for the Head of Government to show veneration to the Constitution. It is ironic that these cunts use this gesture as a stick to beat the ruling party with.
We may as well say 'isn't it ironic that Hansen writes long books about India but yet can never bring himself to say 'I fucking hate darkies. My wife is Sri Lankan. Believe me, I know whereof I speak.'
TBH: Very, but then Modi has emerged as quite the savvy politician who does what it takes to win.
But, he had already won! He could do what he liked for four years and only start courting popularity in his fifth year.
UNP: What do you think about the politics of the ruling party that often makes reverential statements about both Gandhi and BR Ambedkar, the key architect of the Indian Constitution?
The same as what we think of this cunt who can't get to moan about how fucking horrible brown peeps are.
TBH: It is a purely cynical calculation.
This cynic calculates that brown peeps won't call him on his racism or hold him to account for the crimes committed during the terroristic 'war on terror' if he keeps pretending he is against Hitlerism whereas the fact is he gets his rocks off by picturing Nazi torture dungeons.
The RSS began praising Gandhi in the 1970s
Nope. Deendayal Upadhyay's 'Integral Humanism'- the official ideology of the Jan Sangh- was Gandhian in terms of its emphasis on sarvodaya and swadeshi. The plain fact is that the trading castes were socially conservative and were more scared of 'Western' materialism and sexual license than of the puritanical types of Indian Socialism.
when they were riding on the back of a Gandhi-inspired movement that almost toppled the government.
Bhave was a Gandhian. He backed the Emergency. JP, Lohia, Kripalani etc. were Socialists. They turned against the Dynasty. The Jan Sangh allied with them rather than with Swatantra Party which favored free markets. After Rajaji's death, Swatantra members tended to join Charan Singh's Lok Dal. Ultimately, it was the Green Revolution which opened up a political space for economic liberalization. Only once enough voters had some actual money in their pockets does any enthusiasm for markets develop. But the first casualty of this, because of scale economies, could be the small trader.
In the 1980s, the BJP manifesto was devoted to “Gandhian socialism,”
Deendayal's ideology- but he died in 1968.
the flavor of political opposition of the day.
and the previous decade and the decade before that.
In the 1990s and 2000s after millions of brave Dalit activists finally succeeded in highlighting the seminal role of Ambedkar,
but they only succeeded in doing this because Congress 'Harijans' like Jagjivan Ram had vacated a political space they had dominated since the Thirties. Kanshi Ram and his protege Mayawati filled this vacuum. The original Ambedkarite 'Republican' parties had split innumerable times and so it was in Punjab and UP that the reputation of Ambedkar revived. Mayawati, in particular, showed that Ambedkar, already a Boddhisattva, could be turned into a popular Hindu God.
India’s foremost liberal and republican thinker, in the founding of the republic and its democracy, the BJP began to celebrate Ambedkar as a true Indian hero.
He had two Econ PhDs from top Western Universities, was a qualified barrister, and had opposed both Gandhi and Nehru. More importantly, he actually wanted to get rid of the caste system- which is what Religion requires.
The irony is almost comical in its display of bad faith: How can a
White racist get to shit on brown peeps without dragging Hitler into the matter?
Hindu supremacist organization embrace a Dalit man whose critique of Hinduism and the caste system is yet to be surpassed in its rigor, depth, and wisdom?
Mayawati turned that Boddhisattva into an incarnation of Vishnu receiving Hindu worship in a monumental religious complex funded by the UP tax-payer. But the RSS always had a soft spot for Ambedkar because he didn't convert to Islam or Christianity. Moreover, he insured that Muslim Dalits were stripped of affirmative action. (Christian Dalits had been excluded from such benefits by the Brits in 1935 itself).
Ambedkar and Mandal did think they could ally with the League but Mandal- who was Jinnah's Law Minister just as Ambedkar was Nehru's- had to come running back to India. Congress did have a 'Brahmin-Muslim-Harijan' strategy and some Harijans did well out of it, but the rise of 'Backward Castes' pushed them out into the cold. The Commies kept trying to use them as canon fodder so they were useless. The RSS, on the other hand, is a reliable ladder. Look at the media-savvy Jignesh Mevani's plight. His joining Congress was a feather in Rahul's cap. But Mevani was starved off resources for his election campaign and had to resort once again to crowd-funding. He kept his seat with a much reduced margin. But, since the BJP swept the polls, he will have little impact in his own state. Meanwhile, other lawyers with similar backgrounds are getting their first Ministerial portfolio in the BJP.
UNP: What are the things contemporary India has in common with pre-WWII Germany or Italy in regards to public violence, which, you state in your book, has entered the center stage of Indian public life?
West Bengal does have a lot of violence because of the legacy of Communist rule. Fascism and Nazism were a response to a clear and present Red Menace. Other States have their own criminalized politicians and vendettas. Punjab, obviously, has its own difficult history. Kashmir Valley will always remain on the boil. What about Assam? Will there be a repeat of Nellie? Who knows? But for the great mass of BJP ruled states, violence is falling, governance is improving. That's what Hindus want and where they are the overwhelming majority, that's what they get.
TBH: The short answer is the enjoyment of violence,
or this guy jizzing copiously as he contemplates it
the pleasures of hatred and vengeful fantasies, and the license to kill—by which I mean the unmistakable message from all levels of government and police powers that if you, as a Hindu, kill a Muslim, you will not really be punished.
Unless you are. But this is also true of Muslims who kill non-Muslims in non-Muslim areas.
That was what happened to Jews in Europe; they became fair game.
Because Jews come from Asia. Northern Europeans, like this cunt, are very fucking racist.
UNP: How justified is this aggression—what you call “forceful anger” against historical humiliation of Hindus? Such sentiments were in full display in a progressive state like Kerala where Hindutva elements and political opportunists managed to invalidate a court verdict that lifted a ban on young women of menstruating age entering a temple.
But Hindu women of that age didn't want to make the tedious pilgrimage there. Only some atheistic women turned up on orders from the Communist party.
The plain fact is that Hindu women wanted their husbands and brothers and sons to go on that pilgrimage so as to detox. They didn't want them to be fucking prossies.
Are you surprised that such mobilizations over “traditions” have a polarizing effect even in parts of India that were seemingly unaffected by such trends?
They had no polarizing effect. The thing was an invented 'wedge' issue which back fired. The Communist party in Kerala is now taking a much more pragmatic line. Let us see if they can woo the Muslim League into an alliance. If so, why shouldn't Communism seek to make a comeback across the country as the only genuine 'secular'- as opposed to dynastic- party?
TBH: Not at all. Some of the so-called progressive states in India ruled by the left for decades like Kerala and West Bengal were very effective in countering the Hindu right as a political force at the level of street politics.
Through violence.
However, none of these movements ever seriously tackled caste attitudes or communal attitudes as they persisted in private, familial, and community spaces and practices.
Fuck off! What they didn't 'seriously tackle' was low productivity which is why you have 'caste attitudes'.
Here, in the private sphere or the community of castes and communities, all kinds of unreconstructed notions of Hindu superiority and purity persisted, even flourished.
So what? All that matters is productivity which is how a Nation pays for Public Goods and higher and more secure material standards of well being.
You mention one example about temple entry in Kerala; another would be the abysmal social and educational situation of Muslims in West Bengal after three decades of communist rule. What does that tell you?
That Muslims start working to support themselves from a young age. The fact that they don't get indoctrinated in worthless shite is also the reason they will rise as the buddhijivi bhadralok continues to decline.
That the left was unwilling to confront certain social and cultural prejudices among its own supporters and its leadership.
The Left was unwilling to stop being a stupid bunch of geriatric thugs. Then its heads were kicked in and it crawled off into a corner to die.
UNP: Do you see competitive communalism [the use of religious extremism to garner votes or influence] emerging from minorities in response to Hindu majoritarianism?
Some minorities think Hinduism is very evil. Infidels must be killed if they won't convert.
TBH: Much less than one would expect. One does not have to spend much time with Muslim communities to understand the resentment and the fear in this overpoliced community. I think it is a miracle that Muslim radicalism has so few takers in India.
Why? India is like its neighbors. Minorities are either cowed or are getting their heads kicked in.
Indian Muslims understand that the radical gesture is simply going to backfire, and they exercise enormous restraint in their response to what can only be called a regime of low-intensity but constant harassment and terror in much of the country.
The difference between India and its Islamic neighbors is that there is no duty, not even any reputational reward, for Hindus to proselytize or forcibly convert.
UNP: Will the Indian middle classes, which now view police excesses as those that happen to others, continue to be safe under a government that is becoming increasingly intolerant of any dissent?
Tax payers want the police to fuck up criminals.
TBH: Well, my guess is that BJP/RSS will not need to go all authoritarian with secret police excesses as we have seen elsewhere. Mobilizing the conformism, the complacent clannishness, and the fear of religious and social minorities is likely to keep them in power. The caste system hardwired a certain suspicion of other communities and an embrace of “our way of life” into each community. The BJP/RSS is harnessing that culture of suspicion through its campaigns against nonconformists. I don’t think they need the midnight knock to keep people in line.
So, there isn't actually any fucking Nazism here. Under Congress, there was the Emergency and plenty of midnight knocks on the door.
UNP: Are there any parallels between the Modi government in India, Bolsonaro government in Brazil, Erdogan in Turkey, and Putin in Russia?
No. The army has never had any role in Indian politics.
TBH: Yes, they are all mobilizing aggressive nationalism in order to protect a putative injured majority.
Erdogan and Putin are conducting military operations so as to control the territory of neighboring countries. Bolonaro appears to have the backing of the military which used to hold power. Erdogan is an Islamist, not a Nationalist. Bolsonaro is an anti-Leftist backed by Evangelicals.
That was also true of Trump.
Who speaks bitterly of the centuries of British colonial rule- right?
Injured by what, you may ask? By the relative loss of self-evident cultural and political dominance of a male-dominated white,
fair enough
or Hindu upper caste,
Modi isn't upper caste
or Anatolian culture
Anatolian culture? Erdogan isn't a pan-Turanian. He is Islamist and soft on the Ikhwan.
and the increased visibility of women, people of color,
coz upper caste Hindus like me are actually blonde- right?
and ethnic, sexual, and social minorities in public life, education, and in the economy. All of the right-wing populisms in the world can be understood
by stupid and lazy people
as backlashes against periods of reform and social mobility that deepened democracies.
Getting rid of corrupt dynastic rule deepens democracy and increases social mobility
But there are important differences: In the US and Brazil, populism rides on protest votes against what is perceived as a liberal establishment.
No. Demographic change is important in the US. In Brazil, massive corruption and Lula being barred from standing put Bolsonaro in power. Neither country is at all similar to India which more closely resembles its neighbors.
That can easily fall apart as we saw with Trump. In India, Russia, and Turkey, right-wing populisms are grounded in extensive and deeply rooted political parties and local organizations. That makes them far more durable—and more dangerous.
Only to people who hate India or Russia or Turkey. What is durable is good for a country. Racists from other countries may not like it, but sensible foreigners are cool with stable and durable political arrangements which permit trade to burgeon.
UNP: How do you see the rise of these right-wing forces in a global context? Is this a cyclical phenomenon?
Left-wing forces disappeared because they made poor people poorer without really enriching anybody.
TBH: After World War II, there was a popular description of fascism as a reaction to the world-shattering events of the Great Depression that began with the financial crash in 1929.
Fuck off! Fascism rose in Italy before the Great Depression. The threat of Communist revolution was the driver.
The explanation was that the economic losses and deprivations caused by the crisis made people embrace figures like Hitler and Mussolini that promised order and blamed the Jews for the economic crisis.
Weimar kept up a pretense of democracy so as to continue to borrow. Once 'extend and pretend' was off the table, Germans gravitated to the General Staff's maximal program of conquest to stave off national bankruptcy.
That type of explanation was also mobilized in 2016
by cretins
to explain Trump’s appeal among blue-collar workers in the US that had been hurt by transformations of the American economy. However, it turned out that Trump voters were slightly better off than Democratic voters. They were also almost completely white. It became clear, quite soon, that racism and misogyny were at the heart of Trumpism, as they are undeniable parts of Bolsonaro’s platform and rhetoric. In India, the wealthier and more upper-caste you are, the more likely you are a BJP supporter.
Nonsense! Delhi is affluent. It votes for Kejriwal though, no doubt, Modi is the PM everybody wants. My own people- who aren't poor and are upper caste- vote Congress or ADMK. The South has an incentive to resist the BJP because of the threat of seat redistribution in 2026. Karnataka remains unpredictable.
It does not mean that there aren’t poor people supporting Modi, or Erdogan, but their core constituencies are in fact the very middle classes that are usually hailed as the bedrock of democracy.
The plain fact is both Modi and Erdogan and Rishi and Biden and every other elected leader is supported by the classes that are the bedrock of democracy. if this isn't the case, there is no fucking democracy though there may be a Dynasty, or Oligarchy, which periodically arranges more or less corrupt or pointless elections.
Hansen clearly knows nothing about the politics of any democratic country. He represents the utter bankruptcy of Anthropology as an academic discipline. Defund that shite now!
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