The following is extracted from 'WorkersLiberty.org'
DR: What is your general assessment of the recent events in Leicester?
DA: What happened in Leicester was seen as a clash between Hindus and Muslims.
Though a Christian was one of those arrested. There has been a recent influx of people from former Portuguese possessions in India who were entitled to settle in the UK by reason of their gaining Portuguese passports. There was tension between them and poorer Muslims in the neighbourhoods where they settled.
The media analysis very much focused on the idea that there is some kind of ancient hatred between Hindus and Muslims,
Christians, Buddhists and Sikhs- as well as Hindus- have had to flee Pakistan to India.
relating to the relationship between India and Pakistan, that was now spilling over here in Britain. In this narrative, the British white majority and the British state are seen as innocent, not knowing how to deal with these competing communalisms. That was one view.
It was accurate enough. One may add that Jews were pissed off because some Leftist nutter on the Council demand they condemn Israel. Christians and Sikhs tended to line up with the Hindus. The bigger picture is that Starmer has given up on Hindus- they will vote for Rishi- and also there is some feeling against Keith Vaz's 'stooges'. Will Labour be able to consolidate the Muslim vote? Perhaps. The vast majority of British Muslims are like Sadiq Khan. They want good governance, not crazy identity politics.
The more critical analyses highlighted how the events were largely a result of mobilisation by the Hindu right, in Leicester and other parts of the world. The current government in India is a far-right, Hindu nationalist government.
Mahatma Gandhi, in 1939, said Congress was a Hindu party. In the 1946 elections, Hindus voted for Congress and Muslims voted overwhelmingly for the League. Both Congress and the League did ethnic cleansing and adopted religion based scripts for the common lingua franca. India appeared a bit more 'Socialist' but was actually Dynastic. Pakistan came under the control of an Army inspired by Ataturk. The Left in both countries turned to shit. By the time Anand got to the UK the same was true of the British Left. Corbyn's brief reign was its last hurrah. What was the result? The collapse of the 'Red Wall' and the reign of Old Etonians or Old Wykehamists or- sooner or later- just a big fat sack of gold.
The idea, then, is that it is having an impact here, because the Indian-Hindu diaspora -
of which Anand is a part
and remember, Indian and Hindu are not the same -
very true. Anand remains Hindu though he may no longer be Indian
is taking pride from India's rise as a power under this Hindu-nationalist government.
As opposed to an Islamic fundamentalist government- right? The plain fact is that there are plenty of Gujaratis in Leicester. Modi is Gujarati. They like him. That's it. That's the end of the story.
It is an assertion of Islamophobic Hindu nationalism
Britain was part of a war on terror which killed 1.3 million Muslims and displaced tens of millions more. Since 2015, teachers in British schools have a duty to report kids who they think might become terrorists. Strangely, the kids in question tend to have names like Abdul rather than Andrew. I wonder why that is.
from an organised Hindu right leading to bullying of, and discrimination against, Muslims in Leicester.
Very true. Muslims are very easy to bully. I suggest Prof. Anand try it sometime. He won't get his head kicked in. After that, I suggest he track down some Yardies and tell them they are all a bunch of batty boys. They will cry and cry.
In the cruder versions of that analysis, any evidence of violence by Muslims against Hindus, or attacks on Hindu property, are seen simply as a reaction to this rising international Islamophobic Hindu nationalism; Muslims are all innocent.
That was the premise of the War on Terror. Muslims, being very innocent, would just hand over all their oil wealth and then agree to have gender reassignment surgery so as to become Catholic Nuns such as those pictured in the Sound of Music.
A third view, which was very prevalent on social media largely because it was dominated by an Indian Twitterati inside India itself, was that the episode shows Muslims as belligerent and violent, as uniformly fundamentalist and extremist, and Hindus as victims who are no longer willing to suffer in silence.
This was Mahatma Gandhi's view. He said ' "There is no doubt in my mind that in the majority of quarrels the Hindus come out second best. But my own experience confirms the opinion that the Mussalman as a rule is a bully, and the Hindu as a rule is a coward. I have noticed this in railway trains, on public roads, and in the quarrels which I had the privilege of settling. Need the Hindu blame the Mussalman for his cowardice? Where there are cowards, there will always be bullies. They say that in Saharanpur the Mussalmans looted houses, broke open safes and, in one case, a Hindu woman's modesty was outraged. Whose fault was this? Mussalmans can offer no defence for the execrable conduct, it is true. But I, as a Hindu, am more ashamed of Hindu cowardice than I am angry at the Mussalman bullying. Why did not the owners of the houses looted die in the attempt to defend their possessions? Where were the relatives of the outraged sister at the time of the outrage? Have they no account to render of themselves? My non-violence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected. Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice." That was one hundred years ago.
What was common to all three narratives was the idea of action/reaction, and then looking at who is to blame.
This is also the law operates. How very queer!
Of course, there have been scholars who have challenged what these narratives leave out; for instance, one of my colleagues here at the University of Westminster, Dr. Nitasha Kaul, wrote an excellent piece, looking at the dynamics of competing communalist chauvinisms. She has also asked: where are the women in this?
In Manipur they are arranging for the gang-rape of the ethnicity they are at war with.
Because all the images of both the clashes and the supposed inter-community collaboration were of men only. So she refers to the misogyny in some of it, rightly.
Why were women not getting raped? That's misogyny right there! Also, why were Kauls- i.e. Kashmiri Pandits- not being ethnically cleansed from the area? Is it because local Mirpuri men are having queer relationships with Kaul men? That is MISOGYNY! Stop it now!
I personally followed the social media commentary on Leicester quite closely. The response on the UK left was essentially about British society not realising the lethality of Hindu nationalism.
Because Hindu grooming gangs are forcibly converting British girls as part of Love 'dharam yuddh'. Why has Britain not joined a 'War on Hindu Terror'? Is it because of Rishi Sunak? I tell you, Tory government must be overthrown if this country is to take its rightful place as part of a 'coalition of the willing' which bombs the shit out of New Delhi. Anand probably has relatives in India. Why is NATO not killing them?
Certainly some Hindus were attacking some Muslims. But there was sometimes an ignoring of similar images of Hindu temples being desecrated, and of slogans and rhetoric from Muslims that said, essentially, if the police weren't protecting the Hindus, Muslims will show them their place. That is about promoting an image of Muslims as the strong community, and Hindus as weak and needing the protection of cops. That in many ways mirrors the Hindu chauvinist language about victims finding their strength and refusing to suffer in silence.
Thankfully, Britain is a White, Christian, country- which is the only reason us darkies moved here in the first place. They may be amused by the spectacle of wogs of varying descriptions battering each others' brains out- as opposed to bumming each other as Queer Theory prescribes- but, sooner or later, they will kick out any political party or ideology which obsesses over the antics of immigrants. Making Britain better for ethnically British, Christian, people is what those of us of non-European heritage actually want. Our parents or grandparents moved here because the country was becoming better for its own indigenous working class. They were happy to contribute to this and were rewarded by being given equal opportunities for their kids who were born on British soil. Some have risen all the way to the top of the 'greasy pole'. So what? Rishi's job is to make Brexit work for British people. No doubt, some Hindus will now vote Tory though their parents and grandparents voted Labour. But if Rishi screws up, we will turn to Starmer- who seems a decent enough bloke.
In my own work I have looked primarily at Hindu nationalism; I'm the author of a book called Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear.
Help! My dick is shrinking! Muslims are stealing one inch of my dick size and adding it to their already overlarge penises! Only Narendra Modi can protect me from further dick shrinkage!
But I come across similar nationalist and chauvinist themes in many different communities. One of these themes is, “we are peaceful but don’t take us for being weak; we are strong, and if you provoke us, we'll show you your place.”
Fuck. That's what the Taliban has done to us. They never attacked us. They were busy herding their sheep or ploughing their fields. We ought not to have got into a pissing match with them.
Often the language and discourse are around asserting who is more masculine.
Not around me. People are afraid I'll whip out my dick and start demanding to know who has stolen three inches from it.
So yes, in Leicester there was an element of Islamophobic Hindu chauvinism against Muslims,
who aren't Kaffir-phobic at all
but there is also an element of conflict between competing, masculinist chauvinism on both sides.
For Anand, everything is about dicks. Some assholes are size queens.
The immediate reaction within both communities is usually to claim that any provocative agitation is being done by people from outside the immediate community. There might be some people coming in from outside, but there is also a growing chauvinism within communities, in the context of a growing “communalisation”. I'm using an Indian-English term here, “communalisation”, which is not a positive term. Communalisation is the mobilisation of community for political purposes, often against another community.
Sadly, this was a feature of Labour party politics. I forget when the Tories started to target me with postal propaganda of that type. I think it was post Brexit. But by then people like Fiyaz Mughal OBE were condemning Corbyn's crazy anti-Semitic fan club.
Following on from that point about how much of what happened in Leicester was stirred up by “outside” agitation versus how much was the result of agitation by forces already well-rooted in communities... how well organised is the Hindu right as a political element in diaspora communities in Britain, in your view?
I don't know for sure.
I do. The thing isn't really a big secret. Some newer immigrants do have strong RSS and other connections but that tends to fade quite quickly. This is a nation of shopkeepers. Being business-like involves liking anybody with whom you can do business.
There is a definite mobilisation of Hindu nationalists in Britain.
Not really. Look a bit closer and you see that there are some notionally 'caste based' networks (in which you can have nominal membership regardless of birth, by reason of common economic interests) which facilitate portfolio diversification and arbitrage between local real estate and other markets. This is the sort of stuff economists and Accountants- even very queer ones- understand. Anand, however, prefers to focus on dicks.
That's partly in response to what's happening in India, but it has also happened over a longer period. But in Britain, it could be missed or even partly excused as “community self-organisation”, because of the British version of multiculturalism.
There is no such thing. Culture is about becoming a toff. Rishi passed exams and went to expensive schools and is now as posh as fucking fuck- but it is his wife's billions which we envy. Still, sadly for Anand, the typical British preference is for 'rough trade'.
That form of multiculturalism is very much about specific minorities having “community leaders”.
Guys who can deliver Visas and Council Houses and Planning Permission etc.
And those leaders are almost always men, often with centre-right or right-wing politics, even if, for various reasons, some are associated with the Labour Party. They want to control their communities. The British state has seemed to operate by using community leaders to maintain peace but also to discipline communities. You see this across all communities; I would see a body like the Muslim Council of Britain in this context. All these so-called “community leaders”... who elects them?
They only remain 'community leaders' if they can raise money or control votes for their political patrons. Otherwise, those cunts have to actually disgorge some money for Charity or go sit in the Lords as a token darkie at whom everybody is laughing at coz he ran his business into the ground and is now merely a puppet of some crook in Kiev or Guangdong.
I come from India, and I never elected anyone to be my “community leader” in Britain.
Because you came relatively recently. If you have been brought in by a particular community leader- e.g. a guy who arranged for you to appear 'Khalistani' and thus entitled to refugee status- you would know who to vote for well enough. Otherwise, your legs would be broken.
The only people who have a right to even claim to represent me are the ones I vote for, in local and national government. Yet, as minorities, we are meant to have “community leaders”! Why?
Fuck off! Plenty of us have been here since the Nineteen Forties. Nobody ever said any such thing to me back in the Seventies or Eighties. They assumed I was a Trotskyite nutcase who was too stupid to understand that Mrs. Thatcher wasn't actually an expert on Dialectical Materialism. Admittedly, I was drunk off my head throughout that period.
The Hindu nationalist project in Britain is
make Britain great again. Either Brexit means we go down the tubes or else we become a great entrepreneurial power with centers of excellence in every district. We want to defeat Baumol cost-disease by increasing exports of high value adding services. Anand is too stupid to understand this stuff. He is queer for the wrong dick.
not the exact same as their project in India.
Nope. That's what we want in India too. Watch how Hindu investors my age salivate at the prospect of getting Muslim girls into big factory dormitories. They also want Muslim boys as their sales and transport employees. Why? Muslims have lower alcoholism. Also, the theory is they will be less able to steal your customers. That isn't true but 'dis-integration' in supply chains yields external economies and so if you have a diversified portfolio you gain rent as 'ethnic monopoly' is broken. Believe me, peeps in Leicester know why that is a good thing. Many come from a little place called Uganda, you know.
They want to make India into a Hindu nation,
That's what it became in 1947. The problem is that it turned into a Socialist shithole run by an incompetent dynasty.
to stop it being secular.
Dynasty must rule in saecula saeculorum.
It is a fascist project in India,
Mrs Gandhi was called a fascist by her husband for dismissing an elected Communist government. Her first daughter-in-law was from an actual Italian Fascist family. By 1975, Indira imposed Fascist rule of a dynastic type. Modi got his start fighting that Fascist regime.
aspiring to state capture.
Congress captured most of it in 1937. Govind Vallabh Pant, Premier of UP, said 'Italy has its Il Duce, Germany has its Fuhrer. We have Mahatma Gandhi'. The problem was that Congress had already given up on the Maha-crackpot's schemed. Nehru was the Dictator in waiting. Everybody knew it except nutters like Kripalani and Lohia. During the First Amendment debate, Frank Anthony summed up the mood of the house by saying 'if we must have a Dictator, let it be Nehru'.
It does not have the same aspirations here in the UK. They don't want to make Britain into Hindu nation. They want to ensure they have their rightful place in Britain, as they see it, and that Britain has good relations with a Hindu-nationalist India.
The Tories want to have good relations with all big and growing economies. BoJo posing with a bull-dozer sums up Tory policy. Incidentally, his first stop on his last India trip was to Gujarat where the dairy farmers were pushing back against the trade deal BoJo wanted. But Modi too is only interested in good economic relations with Europe. Indeed, almost everybody except Anand is only concerned with money- not dick sizes. Seriously, I might have a tiny todger but I get as much pleasure from jizzing as anybody else. On the other hand, I feel gravely embarrassed when my g.f refuses to share her chips with me and I'm too broke to buy a portion for myself. Obviously, when I say g.f, I mean the bag lady who sits outside the local McDonald. Still, she reminds me of my first love- Joan Robinson- so its not like I'm a loser or something.
They aim to assert themselves visibly against Muslims, who are seen as the main enemies.
Fuck off! Muslims from our area are our main friends. This is because they speak our language, cook our food, and are less boring then our own relatives. Also, sharab never tastes better than when drinking with one for whom it is haram. Similarly, kebab tastes better if you are sharing it with a Jain or Vaishnav vegetarian. The queer stuff we leave to Vikram Seth.
But in India, and in the course of my work I've spent time with and interviewed far-right, nationalist activists, they're very clear that Christians, secularists, and communists are also primary enemies.
No. The primary enemy is the now utterly useless RaGa. Once Congress gets rid of the moon-calf, we will get a better menu of choice. There's a lot of talent trapped in what was once our National Party. The plain fact is, if Vijayan sets of endogenous, high value adding, growth in Kerala we will all be quoting Vivekananda's claim that Socialism is the essence of Sanatan Dharma. Indeed, the factory worker is the true 'Kshatriya' warrior-sage.
Christians are always welcome unless they turn into virtue signaling cunts. But only Muslims can complete the 'Hindutva' vision by adopting a 'Wataniya' creed. Don't forget, it was only after 'Hijrat' that some Hindustani Muslims adopted the Pan-Islamic notion that resistance to an Islamic invader is haram. Prior to that the view was that if you were born in India it was dar-ur-islam, unless Muslims were actively persecuted. But Pakistan also adopted this view because of Afghan claims over its territory. Now China is brokering peace in the MENA, these theological issues are losing salience. It is obvious that rich Muslim countries aren't going to grant equal rights to all Muslims. Indeed, they may build synagogues for Jewish merchants, but- like China- they will have the equivalent of a hukou system- i.e. indigenous folks get far superior entitlements.
Here in the UK, Christians are not seen as enemies, secularists are not particularly seen as enemies, even liberals and leftists are not seen as primary enemies. They're explicit that Muslims are the main enemies.
Fuck off! RSS Patel dude is doing good business with Jamaati Memon dude. They don't like the hooligan element who- let's face it- are about as Islamic as Andrew Tate.
Part of what is behind the mobilisation here is, of course, Hindu chauvinism.
Due to dick shrinkage- right?
But another part is, I would say, a misplaced pride in India asserting itself, and Indian-Hindus not having to feel that they are inferiors within a white nation.
Because NaMo will force Muslims to hand back the three inches they have stolen from my cock. True, that will only leave me with three inches but it's better than nothing.
Something I've found quite disturbingly strong in leftist circles in Britain is the idea that
ever decreasing leftist circles aren't what you see when you pull the flush
“we don't know anything about India, we should not intervene.”
But everybody knows more about India than Anand. What to do? Delhi University is like that only.
This is unhelpful; the left in Britain should talk about these issues.
Very true. If you know nothing about a subject you should talk about it. Why stop there? Why not say Leftist circles should prove the Reimann hypothesis? Jeremy Corbyn must tell us why the Mochizuki proof of the abc theorem is flawed.
But it sometimes then switches to an analysis which portrays everything in terms of assertive, lethal Hindus versus victimised, innocent Muslims, with ignorant white bystanders, which is equally unhelpful.
Because you stupid Whites are not mentioning what is truly important- DICK SHRINKAGE! Muslims have stolen three inches from my cock!
This approach, which assumes Muslims can only be victims and never victimisers, in fact implies that Muslims have no agency.
Which was the premise of the War on Terror- i.e. find some nice Muslim shepherds or farmers and then drone strike the fuck out of them. Them guys got no agency. They won't fight back. We'll get all their lovely, lovely, oil.
So whilst presenting itself as anti-racist and anti-Islamophobic, in a sense it is Islamophilic in a way that is deeply patronising to Muslims and erasing of the plurality of Muslims.
Muslims don't give a shit about patronizing cunts. They object to being killed and their natural resources confiscated. This is because Islam is a very fanatical religion. Ukrainians, being Christians, would allow any invader to grab their land and kill their people.
The dominant stereotype of Muslims amongst the Hindu right is that Muslims are extremist-terrorists who need to be kept in their place in order to restrain their violence.
So, Anand confesses that Hindus have no problems with Muslims per se. The fact is everybody hates terrorists and thinks they need to be 'kept in their place'- preferably a very far away place like Guantanamo. The question is whether Muslims can live with 'infidels'. The answer as far as British Muslims is concerned is- 'Yes! That's why they moved here just as East European Jews moved here because they knew the Brits are a Law-minded people. There are always some lunatics on the fringe but then there were crazy American pastors like David Koresh. Anybody can do crazy. Not everybody can be Mayor of London like Sadiq Khan. Instead of Rishi, the PM could easily have been Sajid Javid. This is the reality of 'Asians' in Britain. The were well treated and given a chance to contribute. They are British first, last and at all times because Britain is a truly good country with great people.
And the dominant representation of Hindus amongst Muslim chauvinists is as weak, effeminate people who deserve to be ruled.
but not sodomized. Islam is against that sort of thing.
There's also a religious critique; Hindus have too many gods and goddesses, it's not a proper religion, and so on. On the left I think we have to acknowledge these competing stereotypes and chauvinisms.
Why? The Tories don't bother with this sort of stupidity. Why should the Left not focus on how to raise up every district in the country on the basis of 'Tiebout sorting' such that external economies of scope and scale arise in 'Marshallian industrial districts' concentrating on different high value adding activities?
Marxism is an economic theory. It doesn't give a shit about how many gods you have or who you think is stealing three inches from your dick size.
In Britain, the visible mobilisation of a communal-chauvinist Muslim right wing has an equally long history, going back to the Rushdie affair, and so a focus solely on Hindu right is neither factually correct nor politically useful.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a game-changer. The Rushdie thing was a red herring. Salman should have said 'Rajiv is targeting me through his stooge Shahabuddin because I am speaking out on Kashmir. BTW Ayatollahs gave my book on Pakistan a prize. I have also written an anti-American book. Fuck you CIA agents who are doing the work of Rajiv Gandhi whose mother I dared criticize.' Had Rushdie done this, the Pak Embassy would have got ten thousand Mirpuris to come down from Bradford to burn the Indian flag in Aldwych. Rajiv would have got scared and un-banned 'Satanic Verses'. Some Iranian Professor would have written a book about 'majazi' and 'malamati' tropes in Rushdie's anti-Orientalist masterpiece.
I think one can argue that there's been a history of left-wing accommodation with communal chauvinism within some Muslim communities, from the time of the Rushdie affair and since.
Fuck off. Venal Labor apparatchiks sucked up to whomever would give them a few votes or a bucket of lager to wash down their biryani.
Partially that's linked to a view held by some on the left of Islamism globally as a progressive force, because of its opposition to imperialism. That led some on the left to see “Muslim” as a kind of globally subaltern, necessarily progressive, identity, with almost any form of Islamic politics seen as embodying resistance to the existing hegemony.
Blair, Straw & Goldsmith thought invading Iraq was a good idea. It's not that nobody on the Left opposed this. It's just that the Left was and is brain dead.
I recall a debate in sixth form back in 1977. The question was 'is the gollywog racist'. A smart young Jew who belonged to the Hampstead Young Communist League was wiping the floor with the retarded Anglos. I intervened to mock him for not knowing the difference between Kantorovich and a hole in the ground- probably because the hole in the ground was his girl friend. He made fun of me by pronouncing Kantorovich in a Peter Sellers accent. He won. Why? The British Left had given up on Mathematical Economics. It had retreated to the nursery to condemn the gollywog and accuse the Teddy bear of misogyny.
My point still stands. The Left once had a substantive vision. Kantorovich shows how to model the thing and derive shadow prices. Obviously, fiscal policy is a constraint. But there is a mixed strategy such that responses to market shocks yield robustness. Furthermore, if you can do 'tax based incomes policy' a la Layard &c, then do it in a decentralized way so you get Tiebout sorting. All these ideas were available to all by the mid Seventies. The Left chose to go back to the nursery and fall asleep for fifty years. Nutters like Anand and Priyamvada were imported from India to keep up the pretense that the Left, if nothing else, had dedicated itself to providing breast feeding and providing cheches for retarded darkies.
But it's also about the fact that Muslims have experienced significant oppression and discrimination in Britain.
Especially on the cotton plantations were they were forced to labor under the lash
Some on the left therefore perhaps feel that to explicitly challenge or oppose dominant ideologies and politics within Muslim communities would somehow make one complicit in that oppression.
More particularly because it was imaginary.
This is not an illegitimate consideration, in a context in which the organised socialist left in Britain is majority-white, without any base or meaningful implantation in Muslim communities.
Why are Whites in Britain so goddam White? Couldn't they at least have a red bum and green cauliflower ears? Is that too much to ask?
Can you say something about whether, and if so how, you think a majority-white left can challenge communalism and chauvinism within communities it also wants to defend against racism?
The left may have believed in a vanguard role for the proletariat or university students or junior ranks in the Army or drug addicts or pedophiles but the plain fact is that the Left's leaders led it into a fucking hole in the ground which wasn't really its girlfriend. It was actually a cesspit.
If the Left can't lead itself to power fuck can it do for anybody else?
You raise a very important point. In fact, it's not only a blind spot of the white left in the UK. The Indian left also has similar kinds of issues.
Which is why, save in the shape of Vijayan's CPM, it has disappeared or survives on handouts from the likes of Soros.
The right has made the assertion that the left has made accommodations with all kinds of regressive practices amongst minorities. And they're not entirely wrong about that.
The right does not make assertions. It tweets mean things suggesting you don't got no dick.
That often manifested in an approach towards minorities where a left, based in majority communities, says “we, the majority, can be progressive, we can be feminist, we can be pro-LGBT, but the poor religious minorities aren't ready for that, we have to let them take their time...” So there's this teleological idea that not all communities are “ready” for progress.
Then, it turns out- as in Scotland- that nobody was 'ready' for that stupid shite. Seriously, kids oughtn't be allowed to have gender reassignment surgery every other day.
I think the left also has to ask itself why it doesn't have a substantial base in minority communities.
It doesn't have a substantial base anywhere save shite University departments selling bogus degrees to cretins or foreigners with more money than sense.
Is it because of an adherence to a reductionist class politics which downplays struggles around so-called “identity politics” as secondary, or expressive of “false consciousness”? We know that doesn't work. The rise of the Priti Patels, the Bravermans, the Sunaks should be a wake-up call. If the left doesn't get its intersectionality sorted it will continue to be marginalised.
The opposite is the case. Intersectionality is the idea that I should get more affirmative action than an ordinary black person because I am not just black but also disabled, obese, gay, transgender, and an imaginary refugee who has been sodomized by Mrs Thatcher while the Pope stood by laughing maniacally. Anyone who bothers with intersectionality doesn't need a 'wake-up call'. They need a fucking brain transplant.
On the question of Islam as an identity primarily of resistance, we have to look at it in different contexts. For many African Americans, people whose ancestors were enslaved in the past by white Christians,
none were. Enslavement was done by Africans or Arabs. Slaves were sold to Europeans for trans-shipment across the Atlantic
Islam was seen by some as an escape from an oppressive Christian hegemony. For someone like Muhammad Ali, Islam was a religion of liberation.
He was originally a member of a sect which thought White people were literally Devils.
But now think of it from the point of view of someone from a majority-Muslim country. Can Islam be a liberation from oppression for all there, when the oppressors are themselves Muslims?
Sure. You accuse the rulers of 'munafiqat' and failing to discharge the farz-e-kifaya of Jihad. The thing has been happening all over the place for 200 years.
With something like the Islamic Revolution in Iran, we can see how a movement that appears liberatory can be the opposite when it comes to power.
Very true. I recall Iranian lesbians expressing delight that the Ayatolloahs had taken power. They put on mini-skirts and stiletto heels to go back to Teheran to open Wicca shops and perform the Vagina dialogues.
I would argue that you can also see this in the Russian Revolution. I find it quite pathetic how the left can hold onto an abstract idea of “revolution” without looking at the actual content. The Iranian Revolution was seen as being against the US. To an extent Iran has used the language of anti-imperialism. But we have to recognise Iran itself as a quasi-imperialist power, and internally colonialist towards the Baloch and the Kurds.
Why not mention Khuzistan? That's what Indian Lefties in the pay of Saddam used to do.
With the protests in Iran now, there are parts of the left that are still almost silent, and even some saying we still need to support Iran because it opposes the US and Israel, which indicates other problems that some on the left have.
When will these cretins understand that it doesn't matter who or what they support? They are utterly useless.
So why can't the left recognise that different nations, different parts of the world, have been victims of imperialism, but have also practised imperialism?
Please Teacher, is the answer 'Muslims stole three inches from the Left's dick size? Surely, that is the reason Left is refusing to recognize anything and is just sitting in a corner weeping quietly?'
Look at Erdogan and Turkey; Turkey has been a victim of certain kinds of western imperialism and chauvinism, but has also itself practised fascistic chauvinism. We have to acknowledge the complexity.
Why? Will our dicks become bigger if we do?
People can be both victims and victimisers. We shouldn't need an ideal victim to support.
The Left has been the victim of had its fucking head kicked in electorally. It isn't an ideal victim because it refused to recognize that some of the people Hitler gassed were themselves guilty of expressing homophobic sentiments to those of their sons who refused to study STEM subjects. Still, if we can organize some support- perhaps from Kurdish goats which have experienced sexual abuse- for the Left, then maybe my dick will become a little bigger.
Muslims have been oppressed and victimsed, and they have also been oppressors. Muslims have been victims of racism, they have also practised racism. Why not recognise that Muslim experience has been diverse and varied in different times and places, rather than needing to see “Muslim” as a pure, victimised identity?
Equally we may say that the Left has sometimes been sucking off hobos and at other times it has itself been the hobo it sucked off. Why not recognize that the Leftist experience has been varied and diverse even though, in the main, only sucking off hobos was involved?
On the left, there is criticism of Saudi Arabia, criticism of UAE, even Qatar to an extent, but largely because they're seen as stooges of the west. Even that takes away agency from non-white people, saying that they can't be oppressors in their own right, they're only being “made” to do it as proxies of the US or Europe.
We must not take away agency from the Left by refusing to see that it can itself be the hobo it sucks off. Lack of agency- especially travel agencies or employment agencies or estate agencies- amongst the Left is causing it to become homeless.
So I do think we need a lot of thinking around imperialism and anti-imperialism within the left, that debate is not over.
It was shit and caused everybody involved to become stupid and worthless. Why isn't the debate over? Is it because this cunt gets paid by being part of a worthless pseudo-academic availability cascade?
Another aspect I've noticed, including amongst comrades and friends of mine who are looking at rising Hindu nationalism, is to compare India with Israel only, to compare the oppression of Kashmiris with the oppression of Palestinians. And they're right to make that comparison. But why not also compare India with Turkey? I think it does reveal a blind spot of the left, around this view of Muslims as victims and only ever victims. Muslims themselves who speak out against their own oppression by Islamic regimes or by certain elements within their religion or culture are then sometimes seen as sell-outs. I think this is a very patronising, fetishising attitude.
Fetishizing? Ooooooh, kinky! Does it involve masturbating into Mummy's shoe?
A historical reference point I always like to invoke in these discussions is the Jewish community in the East End of London in the late 19th and early 20th century.
A nice Gujarati MP voted for Immigration restrictions against them.
There was a clear oppression and racism against the community. The community itself was also very visibly a site of struggle. You would see it if you went to the East End on a Saturday morning: you would see some Jews filing into the synagogues, and then other Jews – socialists and anarchists – conducting radical political agitation, and some even waving ham sandwiches at the ones going into the synagogue, probably their own neighbours, mocking and deriding them for wasting their time with religious superstition.
Fuck that. What would you see is Jews working hard, saving money, and rising up in every lawful profession- and one or two unlawful ones.
I think the majority-white left now has trouble thinking about minority communities as sites of struggle.
White families were sites of hard work, loving affection, pious worship, and a willingness to sacrifice life and limb for the defense of the country. It was because Whites were a 'model majority' than minorities wanted to come and live among them.
And I think this leads to exactly the kind of fetishisation you're talking about, where an entire community is flattened out and made to fit into essentialised categories.
But any cretin can do that! Cretinous talk doesn't change anything.
So how do you think the left, especially a left not immediately connected with minority communities, can engage with minority communities and oppressed communities as sites of struggle?
The answer is, it must paint its buttocks red, stick a radish up its arse and prance around till minority communities ask it what its fucking major malfunction is. Then it can say 'I want to get engaged to your site of struggle.' It then gets its head kicked in. Sad.
How can we amplify critical voices those communities, who might be organising against oppressive or reactionary trends within the dominant political and religious ideologies of those communities, without giving succour to racists who want to oppose the rights of the community as a whole?
That's a dilemma. I have no easy answer to that. But maybe, and I'm thinking aloud now, it's about starting from the understanding that we're all complicated, that all communities contain pluralities and contradictions. We acknowledge the political plurality in the majority community... a right, a centre, a left, a far left, a far right. We acknowledge struggle. So let's give the same agency and humanity to other communities. We start with that assumption.
In which case, you have to admit that your arbitrary stipulations regarding the Right have the same epistemic value, they are only as informative, as my stipulation that the Left sucks off hobos even if it is itself that hobo.
We have to recognise that in any particular minority committee there will be plurality of voices. The left's position should be to give a platform to the plurality of voices from minority communities,
In other words, a cacophonous Left must become more cacophonous yet by dragging the Zulu Nazi and the Jewish Pope onto their platform.
including those who are our comrades and those who might not be, but who are being victimised because of the broader context of racism or Islamophobia or whatever bigotry is taking place.
These guys are plenty bigoted against almost everybody
For me, the left ought to be about freedom and human rights. We need to reclaim this language from liberalism. We also need to acknowledge that we can have an “issue-based” solidarity with broad layers within a community, for example where we're opposing Islamophobia, whilst also having a more direct “ideology-based” solidarity with comrades who we're organising with to advance a certain politics.
But the solidarity of the solipsist is worthless. This guy lives in a fantasy world.
Sometimes this comes up in debate around the likes of Rishi Sunak and the question of “good” or “model” ethnic minorities. But we do have to ask questions around this. Of course, Sunak being Prime Minister is not a victory for anti-racism as we know it.
Yes it is. The guy is dark skinned. Shit like that matters- or it used to.
I can take that for granted. But I would ask that question of the left broadly here, including the Labour Party, why hasn't it been as better in terms of more diverse representation?
Diverse representation of a shitty point of view is still shitty representation.
We can't simply talk about how these ethnic minority figures are “tokens”, they are much more than that. So there has to be questioning on all sides.
There is no point questioning a corpse.
What the left shouldn't do is take the George Galloway-type approach.
Unless it wants to get a bit of Iranian money for itself.
I was on a platform with him at an event in Parliament on Kashmir. It was clear that he and the organisers assumed everyone in the audience was Muslim, including me, maybe because I'm brown. There was a dog-whistle politics from him. So I made sure to say in my speech, “okay, if we're going to talk about azadi, freedom, what about the fact that it's mostly men here? What about azadi for LGBT people? What about queer Muslims?”
It occurs to me that Galloway had provided Azad for the delectation of those queer Muslims. Sadly, the boy wasn't 'chikna' enough for them.
Was that culturally insensitive? No.
It came across as a bit needy.
It's about saying that, while a community or a people can struggle for freedom, there are also internal struggles for freedom within that community. Should we abandon those struggles and say, “that's not our business, that's their culture”, or should we raise our voices? We can't have one standard for ourselves and one standard for others. If we're doing that, then we're not left.
When was the last time the Left delivered anything to any oppressed group? Grunwick? That was in the late Seventies. Come to think of it, it failed as Scargil failed.
You mentioned earlier the work of your colleague Nitasha Kaul and the necessity to bring a feminist critique into the discussion of what happened in Leicester. Could you say more on the gendered elements of Hindu nationalist politics?
Let's go back to talking about dicks.
In looking at Hindu chauvinism, both in general and in its conflict with other chauvinisms, there is a lot of masculinist and even phallic imagery – who is bigger, who is stronger. In an Indian context, whilst Muslim chauvinism can be lethal, it is essentially defensive in terms of its relationship to the state, because Hindu chauvinism can control the state, which it is doing now.
Unless Muslims are the majority as in the Vale of Kashmir.
So we can't drawn an equivalence. But there are similarities. All of these communal chauvinisms which have the effect of demonising others have a shared theme of protecting our community and communal honour from the inimical community. And communal honour is almost always about “our” women under threat from “their” men.
Which is totally unfair to queer folk. Why not defend their assholes from the ginormous dicks of the other community.
In an Indian context, that's rampant. I've coined the term “porno-nationalism” in my book to refer to Hindutva; it's a sexually violent, pornographic nationalism where there's a view of Muslim masculinity as rapacious and dangerous, and a fantasy of a new Hindu masculinity which is going to rape Muslim women as revenge.
Is it just me, or does anybody else think this guy spent his days at Delhi U dreaming of circumcised cock?
Occasionally it can present itself as pro-women - critiques of Muslims as patriarchal, of Muslim women as especially oppressed – but in a way that is also demonising of the other.
I would like to help liberate burqa clad women. Sadly, they are very strong and will beat me up if I try.
It's everywhere; wherever a minority is demonised, it's about “them” endangering or taking “our” women. So it's always a fear of the dangerous, masculinist other, with the communal identity being a defence against that. There is a gendering of the other as violent-masculinist, with women as victims, and “our” men in turn needing to rise up to protect “our” victimised women. So I would argue that we can't have any decent analysis of these forms of religious or ethnic chauvinist politics that doesn't take account of the fact that it is very much about patriarchy and gendered control over a community.
Whereas what it should be about is protecting queer assholes from the vast and voracious vaginas of.... fuck... I've been watching to much Japanese tentacle porn.
Because it poses the question... if “their” men pose a threat to “our” women, what should I, as a man, do?
There is a story about Duncan Grant- a conscientious objector during the Great War- who was asked what if he do if he saw a German soldier coming towards a British woman to rape her. He said he'd get between them.
I should protect “our” women. But what if “our” women are not interested in being protected? What then? Then the women become the problem. This is common to all forms of chauvinist politics. Going back to Leicester, we can't ignore this gendered aspect. We can't not question masculinity. We can't not question the large-scale absence of women from the picture.
When I was young, boys got into punch-ups after last orders. By the Nineties, it was young girls who were glassing each other at all hours. Asian origin women can become cricket hooligans and spend their time knifing each other.
To end on a practical note, you've stressed the importance of the left acknowledging and engaging with the diversity of opinion within minority communities.
But we may have to import more Anands and Priyamvadas so as to keep acknowledging stupid shite
Could you say more on what, practically, in terms of our organising, you think the left should do – both domestically, in terms of confronting Islamophobia and confronting inter-communal chauvinism, and in India itself, in terms of supporting struggles for human rights?
Paint its buttocks red and stick a radish up its arse. At the very least apply for a grant from Soros to do an initial feasibility study.
Domestically, we can't be selective. All forms of racism and chauvinism are wrong.
As is farting in a crowded lift and then pointing at a little old lady and holding your nose.
Start with that. Speak out against racism and chauvinism, organise against it, mobilise against it. Platform a range of voices, not just the existing sanctioned authorities.
Come to think of it, a Left which focuses on condemning flatulence might actually be electable. Everybody thinks their shit don't stink.
In terms of what's happening in India, be aware of what's happening. That's important. Fascism is not a European phenomenon alone – or, if it was before, no longer.
Ataturk's Corporatist state was similar to Mussolini's Italy from about the same time. Japan was a full fledged member of the Axis. Lebanon's Falanges party was formed in 1936.
So be aware, provide platforms for speakers from India who are organising against fascism, work in solidarity.
Worship the Gandhi dynasty. Fascism is never dynastic- right?
The key critique of the British left in an Indian context will be that it's the old imperialists telling us what to do. So ask the progressive left in India: “how can we help? How can we be in solidarity?” That humility will go some way.
Till they reply 'send money' and you reply 'we don't have any' and they say 'then go fuck yourself' and you feel humiliated rather than humble.
But the left will have more credibility in its interventions if it is not selective. Yes, talk about India, talk about Israel... but also talk about Kurdish issues, talk about Iran, talk about China. Why not stop being selective, why not stop being hypocritical? Why not be genuinely international?
Very true. Start by saying 'we are opposed to farting in crowded lifts no matter who does it or where it is done. We will scream and scream till everybody agrees to stop this evil practice. WAAAANH! WAAANH!
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