Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee has published a new book titled 'Nehru and the Spirit of India'. Briefly put, it is vacuous shite. This is a typical sentence.
‘The idea of liberty needs to be reconciled with the presence of contradictions.
Nonsense! No idea needs to be reconciled with any other. Liberty merely means a set of defeasible Hohfeldian immunities and obligations. That is its 'extension'. People may contradict themselves when they speak but this does not matter at all unless they are giving evidence under oath or engaging in some other protocol bound type of judgment or evaluation. But such contradiction only means 'incompossibility'- i.e. there is no state of the world in which prima facie contradictory statements can be simultaneously true.
'No idea or truth-claim can justify the sacrifice of human lives.
Sez who? This is an arbitrary claim. Every truth claim or idea can justify the sacrifice of anything whatsoever. It is simply a fact that men who have expounded the idea of liberty have not merely sacrificed their own lives fighting for it, they have permitted their own sons, the sons of many many people, to risk everything to secure Liberty. If you are not prepared to sacrifice your own life, a stronger person could always make you give up your 'truth-claim' or 'idea' about anything at all.
It would mean the barbarism of truth.
The truth is cruel. It involves propositions like 'Manash is a cretin. Vivek is fat, flatulent and has the IQ of a retarded penguin.' We may not like it, but recognizing such truths can save us from making fools of ourselves- unless, of course, we hope to get paid for doing so.
Ethics provokes us to think of freedom without violence.'
No it doesn't. Ethics provokes us to think about how we could have a better ethos- i.e. be better people. Unless you have just got out of prison and are using your newfound freedom to bash in the heads of other people, Ethics ought not to be provoking you to think of stupid shit. The truth is, violence is costly. Kids may do it for free but then they get a bit older and find out about utility bills and alimony and suddenly they are demanding to be paid top dollar for wet work.
Nehru did not sit on horseback with sword in hand,
he wasn't a soldier. He did wear khaki knickers as a member of the Congress Seva Dal set up by Dr. Hardikar. Dr. Hegdewar, who founded the RSS, was also a founding member.
and rush towards the windmills of history thinking they were giants he had to exterminate.
Nehru, like a lot of stupid White peeps- e.g. Orwell or EM Forster- didn't get that Westminster didn't want to make laws for India. They wanted it to have responsible, representative, Government- i,e. guys who would pass laws, raise taxes, and make a budget and stick to it. This is what they got in the Provinces by 1937. The could have also got it at the Federal level- but the League and the Princes weren't enthused.
The fact is, India had been pushing against an open door since 1922. The problem was the INC insisted on going through first and then locking the door behind them. That's why the Brits had to act unilaterally in transferring more and more power to Indians.
He did not hallucinate from the desire to rid the world of all its ills and create a gigantic prison in the name of paradise’
He was an Edwardian gentleman the accident of whose color kept him out of the trenches. He did not have the military power to do very much. Still, he did preside over the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and a crack down on Commies and did put his pal Sheikh Abdullah in jail.
Writing for the Wire, Aditya Mukherjee comments
The sharp shift and progress between Nehru’s position in the Autobiography,
a charming tome. Nehru says he started an agitation to have more than one birthday every year! He also likens Congress meetings to wedding parties- an extravagance excusable by the very boring workaday lives the participants had to live for the rest of the year.
Indeed, Nehru appeared obsessed with how boring and insipid everything in India was- including the Theosophical creed his daddy adopted and in which he was tutored. The English in India were bored out of their skulls save when gossiping about who was likely to get which promotion, while the Indians in India who were obsessed with who got which Government job or contract. Even the animals in India were bored which is why they had taken to reading Kipling or F.W Champion and had begun to behave in the manner that those two Sahibs had found worthy of comment.
The reason Nehru's autobiography engages our sympathy is because he showed himself as a bored, rather bookish, dilettante who took to anti-moderate politics so as to stave off ennui. Also, his Daddy happened to be in that line of work. Meanwhile people like Lala Hardayal and MN Roy- who were three or four years older than him- were living very exciting lives. Chatto- Sarojini Naidu's brother- was immortalized by Somerset Maugham as a sentimental revolutionary who falls into a honey trap laid by a British Secret Agent. Bagha Jatin- the Indian Bruce Lee- and Rash Behari Ghosh- the desi Scarlett Pimpernell- were leading even more exciting lives in India itself, while Amba Prasad Sufi and Ajith Singh were giving the Brits a headache in Mesopotamia and Iran.
So long as Motilal Nehru- whom his son described as a vivacious extrovert and epicure- was alive, Nehru had some Oedipal object in life. His 'satyagraha' was against Daddy and for the toothless old crone that was the Mahatma. Then Motilal died and Nehru was crushed not just by boredom but the prison cell of futility that was Gandhian politics. The big industrialists who had financed Gandhi had gotten very rich off the boycott of British textiles. They did their own deal with Manchester and left Congress in the lurch. Then the Mahatma became obsessed with a side issue- viz. the Harijan problem- while the younger generation of Cambridge graduates- not to mention those educated in America-sneered at Congress as bourgeois and reactionary- which Nehru admits it was. Boredom had led him into an unmeaning sort of gesture politics but it was his own futility which had him fulmine against the English.
Nehru writes- 'G. Lowes Dickinson
the homosexual brother of the Schlegel sisters in 'Howards End'. He knew nothing of India.
is reported by E. M. Forster, in his recent life of him, to have once said about India : “ And why can’t the races meet? Simply because the Indians bore the English.
Anything that didn't involve buggery, bored Forster and Dickinson
That is the simple adamantine fact.” It is possible that most Englishmen feel that way and it is not surprising.
A.O Hume, who founded the INC, wasn't bored by India. He wanted to raise agricultural productivity- which, he believed, involved protecting the cow. Tegart, who prevailed over the Revolutionaries, paid a condign tribute to the gallant Bagha Jatin. He wasn't bored by him at all. Nehru himself could be perfectly charming though he and his ilk would turn Kipling's India into a boring shithole.
To quote Forster again (from another book), every Englishman in India feels and behaves, and rightly, as if he was a member of an army of occupation,
while every Indian who had returned from England as a barrister, behaved as if the Brits ought to hand over all power to them even though those shysters knew nothing about how to feed or defend the country
and it is quite impossible for natural and unrestrained relations between the two races to grow under these circumstances.
Homosexual marriage was banned back then. Still, EM Forster managed to have unrestrained relations with some coolie or the other.
On the other hand, people like George Arundel and Phillip Spratt had no problem marrying South Indian ladies and playing their part in the Freedom struggle. Unlike Nehru, they didn't gas on about 'Aryan features'.
The Englishman and the Indian are always posing to each other and naturally they feel uncomfortable in each other’s company. Each bores the other and is glad to get away from him to breathe freely and move naturally again.
Alan Dulles thought the twelve year old Vijaylaxmi was as well informed as a Vassar girl. Jawaharlal, he found 'stiff'. Sadly, it wasn't the right sort of stiffness and so no buggery occurred and thus Nehru's boredom brooked no remission.
Usually the Englishman meets the same set of Indians, those connected with the official world, and he seldom reaches really interesting people, and if he reached them he would not easily draw them out.
Nehru forgets that Englishmen could meet Princes and Prelates and Poets and Philosophers and Shikharis and Mahouts and Dervishes and Yogis.
But, business magnates- like G.D Birla- too, were interesting interlocutors. Gandhi himself had a sense of humor and said some witty things. It was only under Nehru that bovine bureaucrats and catty Congress-wallahs turned India into a deeply boring shithole unable to feed or defend itself.
The British regime in India has pushed up into prominence, even socially, the official class, both British and Indian, and this class is most singularly dull and narrow-minded.
It would become duller and more bigoted. New Delhi, for diplomats, was a punishment posting. It wasn't just that the food blew your arse off, it was that everybody was competing to be a bigger bore than Nehru, Gandhi or Tagore.
Even a bright young Englishman on coming out to India will soon relapse into a kind of intellectual and cultural torpor and will get cut off from all live ideas and movements.
Bright young Indians growing up in Nehru's New Delhi, ran the fuck away never to return unless, like Subramaniam Swamy, they were fucked in the head.
Nehru's autobiography sends the clear message that he was a dilettante. The inter-war period was a deeply boring period and people of Nehru's sort- i.e. lawyer-politicians doomed to compete for yet more boring public offices- differed only in skin tone.
Still, the one thing Nehru's autobiography revealed which was worth noting was that he found the bombastic Bengali insufferable. Their world-historical role was to clamor for India to be conquered by aliens more rapacious yet.
On the other hand, it is quite untrue that Nehru, in 1934, was a Stalinist. Manash is wrong when he speaks of the Autobiography of showing any such tendency.
written in the 1930s (again from prison) under the deep influence of what Professor Bipan Chandra called ‘Stalin-Marxism,’ where he talked of class war and the inevitability of the need to use force
Class conflict is not class war. Tenants want lower rents or the chance to get title to land on favorable terms. They don't want to kill landowners because they themselves want to be landowners. Workers want higher wages. They don't want to run the factories themselves after they have slaughtered the bosses.
Force is needed to suppress crime and repel invaders. By the time Nehru's book came out, people were familiar with Communist literature. What Nehru was supplying was a slightly wooly minded Left Liberalism such as that of FDR. He himself pleads guilty to the charge of being a 'bourgeois reformist' and thus anathema even to the likes of M.N Roy. What is remarkable about the Autobiography is that it is anti Fascist before it was fashionable to be so. Also, Nehru thought the Labor party was shit. He was ahead of the curve.
The negative aspect of Nehru's Autobiography is that it paints a vivid picture of the utter uselessness and bourgeoise nature of the Congress party. It was not motivated by patriotism but by the desire for profit or personal advancement. Nehru himself, at the age of 30, was little more than an overgrown schoolboy in awe of his Daddy. Then, he meets Baba Ramchandra, an itinerant reciter of the Tulsi Ramayana who had earlier been an indentured laborer in Fiji. He had come in contact with Dr. Pranjivan Mehta's son-in-law, Manilal Doctor, and agitated against the indenture system which is why he had to return to India. He set up as a Sadhu (he was a Brahmin by birth) and married a lady from the Chamar caste. Ramachandra organized the peasants to oppose the illegal exactions of the (mostly Muslim) Taluqdars in some districts of Oudh. It was Ramachandra who gets Nehru interested in the agricultural question and the problems of the peasantry. What is remarkable is that Nehru shows no knowledge of the book on Agricultural Reform published more than 40 years ago by A.O Hume, the founder of the INC. Hume wanted to scrap the Permanent Settlement. Congress wanted to extend the Permanent Settlement to the newly settled areas. Nehru and Gandhi broke with Ramachandra citing his 'appealing to religious sentiments'. Nehru describes him as 'unreliable' and 'irresponsible'. Yet, as Nehru himself says, security of tenure, which the Government later granted, was no panacea. Still, Ramachandra should not have encouraged peasants to grab the taluqdar's land or redistribute hoarded grain. This because many peasants were Hindu. Worse still, they believed in God. Religion is very evil and reactionary. Taluqdars are spreading this opium of the masses. Thus if peasants grab the property of Taluqdars they will become opium addicts! Chee, chee! This is not nice behavior at all. Lownes Dickinson would consider it very vulgar. Mahatmaji may call off some satyagraha or other and thus scolding the British incessantly- which is the vital need of the moment- may diminish as people lose interest and go to Cinema instead.
Nehru himself, in the Autobiography, is remarkably candid about the failure of the UP 'no rent' campaign (it wasn't called that but, to Nehru's mind, that was what it was). This is one reason the Left thought he'd break with Congress after it formed a Ministry in UP and did sweet fuck all for the peasants. Yet it was the peasants of Rae Bareli who kept the Dynasty in power from generation to generation though the Nehrus themselves were and are townsfolk. But others of their own class despise them for their stupidity and bigotry against those of their own ancestral religion.
and the far more nuanced and complex position taken in Discovery, amply illustrates that.
Congress had held power in certain provinces and, moreover, the Second World War had greatly changed the role of Government. Nehru's position in 'Discovery' is that the Indian National Bourgeoisie would import capital goods from America financed by Wall Street loans. The Brits would be disintermediated. India would support the KMT in China and help other colonies transition from European control to participation in an American led world order.
Sadly, after Independence, Nehru listened to Mountbatten and Blackett and thus India remained dependent on Britain though it was always happy to bite the American hand which fed it with PL480 wheat.
For Gandhiji, his deep conviction on non-violence did not emerge from the fact that it was a brilliant tactic to fight the British, which of course it was, but from his philosophical position that nobody could make the claim of having arrived at ‘transcendental truth’ or absolute truth.
No. Gandhi believed in karma. Don't do violence or have sex and you get reborn on a nice planet where there are no dirty pictures or sexy shenanigans of any sort. You can live there peacefully muttering 'Ahimsa, Ahimsa' for ten gazillion years.
His belief in the possibility of multiple truths and multiple paths to the seeking of truth would not allow for violence against anyone.
Which is why he tried to recruit soldiers for the King Emperor. Armies are well known for refusing to do violence to anyone- right?
The Enlightenment project emerging from Europe often faltered on this ground
No. The Enlightenment project thought that it was a very good thing for civilized White people to wipe out or enslave colored savages- even the Chinese who were acknowledged to be superior in certain civilizational respects.
where the notion of possessing the ultimate truth justified mass killings by revolutionary movements (in the name of democracy and the people)
Romanticism, not Enlightenment, was associated with 'revolutionary movements'. Professors of history at JNU are as ignorant as shit.
thus negating a critical aspect of democracy, every human being’s right to differ.
This is not a critical aspect of democracy at all. The majority is welcome to kill, incarcerate, or chase away those who differ in some manner the majority finds obnoxious or repugnant. An Emperor or enlightened despot may be more tolerant. Thus England was jailing homosexuals at a time when Ottoman Turkey was tolerant of them.
Attention must be drawn here to Tadd Fernée
currently a 'guest-lecturer' in Bulgaria! Why draw attention to an imbecile?
work, Enlightenment and Violence: Modernity and Nation Making, where he compares the European Enlightenment project with the Indian, Turkish and Iranian efforts at transition to modernity,
which involved 'catch-up growth' of a Listian type. Turkey and Iran did go through an anti-clerical phase but anti-clericalism isn't a sufficient or necessary condition for Enlightenment thinking. Scotland and England have Established Churches. This does not mean they didn't have Enlightenment thinking.
with a focus on the Indian National Movement under Gandhiji’s leadership with its ‘Ethic of Reconciliation as Mass Movement’ as well as the ‘Nehruvian effort after independence’ at drawing on this heritage, towards an ‘Ethic of Reconciliation in Nation-Making’. His conclusion is that the Indian experiment at transition to modernity without violence remained much truer to the Enlightenment objectives.
But Gandhi & Nehru and so forth were British barristers! The INC took over an administrative and juristic and military machinery created by the Brits. But this was the 'Common Law' tradition and had nothing to do with 'Enlightenment' psilosophers.
Nehru’s Discovery was to see in the history of Indian civilisation the ability to live with difference, accommodate, adjust, synthesise, change and move on.
This is a characteristic of all civilizations or types of barbarism. What made India different was its indifference to foreign conquest because its own leaders tended to be utterly shit.
Nehru emphasises the notion of alternate truths or multiple truths in Indian tradition from ancient times onwards through the medieval period.
Indian lawyers knew that anything said by a witness under oath was likely to be a lie. It often happened that the chief prosecution witness was a person paid by them to stand up and say 'at twelve past four in the afternoon, I was answering a call of nature behind a bush when I observed the accused hack off the head of the victim. He said loudly and clearly- 'My name is Ram Mohan, son of Ratan Lal, of Lalkhimpur Village, Gandmast tehsil. My motive for hacking off the head of the victim is personal rivalry.'
Nehru was not a fool. He did not say 'there are alternative truths'. Hinduism like other Religions says there is only one Truth. Points of view differ. Doctrines (matam) may differ greatly, but praxis (Vigyan) is likely to converge to what is most efficient or convenient.
He also notes how for Gandhiji even religion was a ‘search after truth through nonviolent means.’
because searching for truth down the necks of people you have decapitated aint actually very religious- or hygienic.
Gandhiji was not taking the position that God is truth,
He said Truth is God- which means you can't get at the truth without reaching God.
and therefore, even atheist could search for truth.
I can search for the cake I ate yesterday. This does not mean I will find it.
Nehru quotes Gandhiji, ‘A man may not believe in God and still call himself a Hindu.
But Gandhi said that you can't be a Hindu unless you believe in karma- i.e. rebirth
Hinduism (for him) is a relentless pursuit after truth…. Truth is God. Denial of God we have known. Denial of truth we have not known.’
We have all known denial of truth- more especially by people who fart in a crowded lift and then hold their nose and point at us accusingly.
In a speech delivered in 1966, Paz says:
‘It is remarkable that Nehru, in spite of his mainly being a political leader, did not fall into the temptation of suppressing the contradictions of history by brute force….
Nehru did suppress Communist uprisings with brute force. But he didn't have a lot of brute force at his command when it came to protecting Muslims in Delhi. Their population plummeted from one third to just five percent when he took power. He passed an ordinance preventing them coming back to reclaim their property.
[It] is unique in our world of fanatical Manicheans (those who see things only in black and white) and hangmen masked as philosophers of history.
No it isn't. Few Harrovian Prime Ministers were 'fanatical Manichaeans' though, it is true, Stanley Baldwin took great pleasure in burning down rival public schools. Many an Old Etonian was strung up with piano wire during his unhappy reign.
He did not pretend to embody either the supreme good or the absolute truth
because he wasn't Mansoor al Hallaj. The guy was a barrister not a Mystic Baba.
but human liberty: man and his contradictions…. He was faithful to his contradictions and for this very reason he neither killed others nor mutilated himself.’
People who are not faithful to their contradictions are constantly chopping off their own legs.
Again, he says very profoundly and with a deep understanding of Nehru:
‘In contrast to the majority of the political leaders of this century.
guys like Stanley Baldwin and Harold McMillan and Lal Bahadur Shastri
Nehru did not believe that he had the key to history in his hands.
Asquith was constantly running into the Cabinet Room claiming to have the key to history in his hands. Haldane would say 'that's your dick, Asquith. Put it away. Nobody wants to see it.'
Because of this he did not stain his country nor the world with blood.
Whereas Mexican Presidents keep doing so- right?
For the same reason, he neither offers us prefabricated solutions to the conflicts between industry and poetry, science and spiritual needs, technology and private life.
Unlike Harold Wilson who was constantly accosting De Gaulle in the Gents and offering him prefabricated solutions to the conflict between technology and private life.
He thought modern society could find an answer to these antagonisms by itself. The alternative was spiritual and physical death.’
Everybody dies. There is no fucking alternative to it.
To return to the issue of how Nehru understood history, particularly Indian history. Bhattacharjee, particularly in a chapter titled History and the ‘Roots of the Present’,
spoiler alert- the present has its roots in the past which is the subject Historians are supposed to study.
and also elsewhere, outlines very ably Nehru’s very complex and sophisticated approach to history and historiography
he was an Edwardian gentleman who didn't mind glimpsing into World History in a genteel but strictly amateur manner.
– both colonial and nationalist historiography. It is truly amazing that Nehru writing his Discovery of India from prison in the 1940s in the middle of an extremely active political life could anticipate by several decades what celebrated scholars of history and social sciences were to argue later.
There are no 'celebrated scholars of history and social science'. There are some tenured hacks and some untenured nutjobs.
For example, Nehru critiques the colonial periodisation (adopted later by the communalists in India) of Ancient, Medieval and Modern Indian history as Hindu, Muslim and British period as being superficial, focusing only on the top, the ruler’s religion and not ‘the essential changes in the political, economic and cultural development of the Indian people’ which witnessed a lot of continuity as well as change, significant breaks and equally significant synthesis occurring over time.
This is a fair point. We should speak of an 'Early Shitty Indian Period' which turned into a 'Medieval Indian Shitty Period' which was followed by 'Modern Indian Shitty Period.
He rejects the notion of the ‘the laws of history’ not applying to India, ‘the absence of history’ in India, or it being a changeless society, characterised in academic discourse as ‘the Asiatic Mode of Production’.
There never was an academic discourse on that Marxist term. After the Bolshevik Revolution some party hacks- not scholars by any means- tried to write about it but Stalin, sensibly enough, banned the nuisance. Kruschev did lift the ban but by then the thing was a joke. Why not speak of a 'Niggers-with-giant-dongs Mode of Production'?
Scholars like Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Bipan Chandra and B.D. Chattopadhyay have in later years written extensively on this theme taking forward Nehru’s position.
But Nehru wrote well. His books sold well. Thapar & Co were boring turds. They were supposed to prove there had been no Ram temple in Ayodhya. Then, it turned out, they didn't know shit about history.
The lessons that Nehru draws from Indian history in imagining India’s future as a modern democratic country based on enlightenment values, ‘the Idea of India’, are extremely significant.
They are useless. Nehru thought stuff like 'Panchsheel' would bind Asia together. He was wrong. First the Chinese invaded and then Sukarno sided with Pakistan in 1965.
He begins with the Indus Valley Civilisation which he calls a predominantly a secular civilisation where the religious, though present, did not dominate.
Unless it did. We have no way of knowing. One might as well say the Indus Valley Civilization was run by an LGBTQXYZ collective.
He highlights the dialogical tradition from ancient times where difference was accepted and even welcomed.
You can't have a dialogue unless people are saying different things.
He highlights the questioning spirit even in the creation hymn of the Rig Veda, the openness and reasoning in the Upanishads, the absence of a monopoly in Truth in the Epics, Buddha talking of ‘many thousands of other truths’ apart from his own teachings, the privileging of argument and debate in the tradition of learning in ancient Benaras, and so on.
This was a coded way of saying 'Muslims are bloodthirsty fanatics. Even an Oxford graduate, like Mohammad Ali Jauhar lectured me on why I and Gandhi must convert to Islam. Seriously, them Mozzies be kray kray. My sister eloped with one but Gandhi got her to see sense. The fact is the 'National Muslims' were all useless. By 1934, they'd even given up joint electorates as an article of faith.'
This tradition of openness and debate, Nehru argues, was carried on in exemplary manner by emperor Akbar and others.
Akbar was cool because he forced Muslims to do sajda to the throne and created his own religion before repenting his folly.
Nehru also highlights the attempts at mitigating religious, caste and cultural difference by the Bhakti/Sufi traditions and talks of Kabir, Guru Nanak and Amir Khusrau in that context.
They failed. Get over it.
He points out the intermixing of cultures and the creation of a composite culture in music, language, literature and poetry and talks of the unique phenomenon of Amir Khusrau composing songs in the 13th/14th century in a dialect of Hindi which were sung for over 600 years ‘till today’ without a change of words, by millions of people across religious and caste divides!
Sandwiches are being eaten by billions of people across religious and caste divides. This proves that the Earl of Sandwich had an amazing capacity to create 'synthesis'.
The amazing capacity of the Indian civilization to create a synthesis is noted by Nehru, when he says that since the Aryans came from C. Asia, there came the Iranians, Greeks, Parthians, Bactrians, Scythians, Huns, Turks (pre-Islam), early Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and later Muslims, ‘they came, made a difference, and were absorbed’. (Discovery, p.69)
Into a shithole. The smart aspect of British rule is that they got the fuck out once the thing became an unprofitable nuisance. Soon they were followed by the smarter sort of Indian which is how come Britain has a Hindu Prime Minister.
In a beautiful imagery capturing the inclusive, synthesising process in Indian history, Nehru described India to be ‘like some ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously.’ (Discovery, p. 51)
This is also true of Britain and America and Australia. New Zealand and Madagascar may have been much more recently settled.
Scholars like Irfan Habib and Romila Thapar have validated much of what Nehru drew from Ancient to Medieval history, from Ashoka to Akbar.
So, a well-read Edwardian gentleman whiling away empty hours in a jail cell was a better historian than these 'scholars' who can only 'validate' his impressionistic scribblings.
Amartya Sen notably in his major works the Idea of Justice (London, 2009) and The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (London, 2005) focuses on alternate routes to modernity apart from the European ‘enlightenment’ experience and draws from the Indian example.
No he doesn't. The man is a cretin. He has no 'Idea of Justice'. He thinks the word 'Niti' means Justice. it doesn't. It means 'Policy'. A Neta (political leader) decides political questions- i.e. issues of policy. Justice is only concerned with what is justiciable.
The European enlightenment was not a 'route to modernity'. Trans-Oceanic trade and commerce was what mattered. Even there, it was maritime competition which is what drove technological innovation and thus progress in STEM subjects.
India is not an example of 'modernity'. No country can be called a democracy where there is a hereditary dynasty whose autocracy is only tempered by assassination (as in the case of Indira and Rajiv) or outright imbecility (as in the case of Rahul).
He draws conclusions similar to that of Nehru from Indian history from the ancient past though the medieval period. He too focuses on Ashoka and Akbar, talks of the dialogical tradition, the questioning spirit, the openness to reason and rationality, the ability to live with difference and move towards a synthesis in the ancient and medieval past in India. I have above already referred to Tadd Fernée’s important work in this regard.
He doesn't explain why his people had to run away from East Bengal. Pakistan inherits as much from Akbar and Ashoka as India does. Yet, currently, it is a slightly shittier shithole. Why is that? One answer is the one Nehru supplies. Mozzies be kray kray. Hindus are hypocrites and lack cohesion but they prefer King Log to King Stork.
Bhattacharjee does very well early on in the book taking on the celebrated editor of The New Left Review, Perry Anderson who using, what Bhattacharjee aptly calls, ‘British high-school rhetoric’, ridicules Nehru’s Discovery of India, in a series of articles published in the London Review of Books (2012) later put together by a Left wing publisher in India as Indian Ideology (New Delhi, 2012) Anderson unlike Nehru adopts the colonial/communal periodisation of Indian history dividing it on religious lines, Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim, seeing ‘no political or cultural connexion between’ them.
To be fair, Anderson was relying on books by Indian academics- i.e. shitheads. The 'political or cultural connection' was obvious. Brahmins like Nehru served in the administrations of whoever was running India.
Bhattacharjee notes how Anderson sees the ‘Idea of India as essentially European, not a local invention’ and how he does a ‘bulldozer-critique of Indian nationalism, Gandhi and Nehru’.
Anderson's own United Kingdom may split apart. Scotland retains its own judicial system and could become independent. America too has 'dual sovereignty' and it is possible that some States may leave the Federation. India has a unitary Constitution though, no doubt, there is separatism where Hindus are not the majority. Still, Rahul may prevail and perhaps Punjab and Tamil Nadu and Nagaland will secede under his aegis.
I take this opportunity to reproduce briefly my own critique of Anderson which I made elsewhere : ‘Anderson… rubbished Indian nationalism and the Indian nation state, demonising every nationalist icon that emerged in India on the secular platform of the Indian National Congress (INC), from Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Azad to Jawaharlal Nehru, using essentially the tools of analysis perfected by the colonial Indian state!
Nonsense! The Indian colonial state promoted and passed power to these guys if they won elections and weren't too naughty. But the 'tools of analysis' used then were pretty much still the tools of analysis used now by New Delhi or any State Capital. If the farmer's are demanding a particular MSP, calculations have to be made about how vote-banks will be affected. On the other hand, you have to look at the cost to the exchequer and the need to maintain public order.
Marxism is clearly no guarantee against being infected by the colonial/Eurocentric outlook.
Marxism is an Eurocentric, Colonial, enterprise.
Using the colonial paradigm to see Indian history and society as one where Indian society was and could only be mobilised on the basis of ‘primordial identities’ of religion and caste and not around ‘modern’, ‘western’ notions of class and nation,
but class is, at least notionally, class while 'nation' is 'qaum'. This is Jinnah's two nation theory which prevailed on the subcontinent just as it prevailed in Ireland.
Anderson, like the British officials, denied any legitimacy to the category of nation and the national movement in India,
No. British officials accommodated 'national' demands- e.g. separation of Burma from India or Sindh from Bombay Presidency. The INC was itself the creation of a British civil servant.
describing the chief vehicle of Indian nationalism at that time the Indian national Congress as a caste Hindu party.
Gandhi said so in 1939. His argument was that since Hindus are non-violent, the Brits must hand over control of the Army to the INC otherwise Muslims and Punjabis and maybe Gurkhas would conquer the place and loot everything and rape everybody.
He again, following the colonial paradigm, ends up privileging narrow caste and religious identities even when they were articulated in communal or casteist, divisive, separatist and often fundamentalist and even fascist ways.
Bose, like Sonia's daddy, was an actual Fascist. There was an Indian Nazi Party in Bengal presided over by the husband of Savitri Devi.
‘It is not surprising therefore that Anderson should reiterate the Muslim League argument, promoted avidly by the colonial state, that since Hindus are in a majority in India, universal franchise would deliver power to the Hindus represented by the Indian National Congress. (An argument used by the colonial state to deny the elective principle to the Indians, as demanded by the Congress.)
But they gave universal franchise to the Ceylonese. Why? Ceylon had sensible leaders. There was little communal violence though some Indian origin Muslims had run amok in 1917.
The fact is 'the colonial state' answered to Westminster which did not want to pass laws for a distant shithole whose economic importance was declining. They just wanted some sensible darkies to hold portfolios and not run around creating a nuisance. But this was an impossible outcome. Indians were as stupid as shit, unless they were getting rich by paying nutters to run around like headless chickens.
Anderson therefore applauds ‘the British (who) realised the dangers of this in India and … granted separate electorates as a limited safeguard for Muslim minorities.’
What was the result? Crazy jihadis didn't keep knifing British officials. Some crazy Hindu college students may have wanted to do so but their Mummies would beat the shit out of them.
Anderson would have been well advised to heed the warning of the British Marxist W.C. Smith in his pioneering work Modern Islam in India, 1946, that while choosing categories of analysis for India (or other non-Western societies) it is important to try them out on Western societies as well.
No. Marxism is an economic theory. Either the substructure determines the superstructure or Marxism is a shit economic theory.
When analyzing any particular subject, you must use the categories you already know and understand. You can't use categories you don't understand. If your education is Western, use Western categories. Don't use Eastern categories because you don't know them and will inevitably babble nonsense.
Using the logic Anderson applies for India, it would appear that in Britain universal franchise has meant the Protestant majority rules over the Catholic minority
This is false. Universal franchise only obtained after Catholics got what they wanted in the areas where they were the majority. Thus, the Anglican Church in Ireland was disestablished in 1869. Welsh disestablishment came in 1914.
and other smaller groups such as the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, people of African origin, etc., and therefore a separate electorate must be introduced for non-Protestant minority groups. A prescription Anderson surely does not recommend.
This is foolish. We know that English Protestants kicked Catholic ass. They finally let Jews and Dissenters and Catholics into Parliament because they represented no threat to the ass-kicking Anglicans. Also, as Macaulay said, non-Anglicans were smart and useful. It would be foolish not to hire them just because they belonged to the wrong sect.
When I was a teenager, there was a good chance that Britain might decide to forcibly 'repatriate' us coloreds. But we proved useful and, under Thatcher, started voting Tory. Currently, it is Indian origin politicians like Priti and Suella who represent the Enoch Powell brand of politics. Rishi is a bit 'wet'. We blame his wife, who is South Indian and as rich as fuck.
Different standards are used for India based on a colonial notion about the colonial “child” people if not the “barbarians” who could only be mobilised around primordial identities of religion, caste, tribe, etc., and not around, notions of nation and class.
No. We make a distinction between nations which are shit at fighting, and thus which are ruled by foreigners, and nations which kick ass. The latter may not be particularly tolerant but, other things being equal, nobody messes with them.
The pernicious concept of separate electorates introduced by the British
The Brits introduced electorates. The Muslims insisted on separate electorates for the same reason they insisted on Partition. Infidels are evil. They will go to Hell. We don't want them ruling us. Still, if hijrat (emigration) is not convenient then one can proselytize till the tide turns and the infidels are given a choice between death or conversion.
divided Indian society irreparably
India was divided into lots of Princedoms and a large British ruled segment. Only the latter got electorates though some Princes did follow suit.
at the very initial stages of modern electoral politics. Inherent in it was the two (or more) nation theory.
What was inherent was that Muslims have an obligation to leave a 'dar ul harb' and emigrate to a Muslim ruled land. Sadly the hijrat to Afghanistan failed because that nation was very poor and could not absorb migrants..
Under this system, people of a particular religion would vote for and elect a member of only their religion.
This helped Hindu and Sikh minorities.
The candidates would have to appeal only to their co-religionists and not to the whole society as they would have had to if they were representing a common constituency, even if the seat was reserved for a particular religious community.
India has reserved seats for Dalit Hindus and Dalit Sikhs but not Dalit Christians or Dalit Muslims.
It is for this reason that the Congress opposed separate electorates for Muslims and other minorities and later for the ‘Untouchables’, with Gandhiji virtually staking his life against it.
No. He was staking the lives of Dalits in villages. They would have been massacred if Ambedkar hadn't bent the knee.
It was not because, as Perry Anderson would have us believe, that the Congress, including its tallest leaders like Gandhi and Nehru, essentially represented the upper caste Hindus and refused to accommodate the Muslims and the untouchables.’
The Muslims weren't accommodated at all. Punjab and Bengal were partitioned. Hindus did not want to live under Muslim majority rule. They voted with their feet and in Punjab and Delhi they expelled Muslims to take over their property. Initially some Hindu East Bengalis did the same in West Bengal but those who came later were probably lower caste and nobody gave a shit about them- as the Marichjhapi massacre would later show.
Dalits proved useful and if they have kept their quota it is because they are actually better than their high caste rivals. Look at Malikarjun Kharge. Then look at 'janeodhari' Rahul.
I have taken the liberty of this longish digression to discuss Anderson as it leads me to raising some questions regarding Bhattacharjee’s own understanding of Indian nationalism and communalism and his treatment of Nehru on the ‘minorities’ question.
Let me first state at some length the positions taken by Bhattacharjee before I comment on them.
1) ‘…Identity politics breaks the norm of (majoritarian) consensus.’ (p.88)
This is nonsense. For 'majoritarianism' to exist there must be an identity class corresponding to that majority.
2) He appreciatively quotes the rather colonial interpretation of Shabnam Tejani: ‘In the two decades before 1947…communalism was the term that stood in for the politics of religious minorities, especially that of the Muslim minority’ (p.89)
Because 'qaum', meaning community, is a Muslim term. The Hindu would say 'Samaj'. There was a distinction between 'wataniya' and 'Islam pasand'- i.e Nationalists and Muslim Internationalists. 'Qaumi' politics was a way to bridge the gap.
3) ‘Political rights demanded by minorities is dubbed communal from two anxieties, one being the liberal anxiety against identity-based claims, which often fuses surreptitiously with a majoritarian reluctance to share power…. Mainstream nationalists during the anticolonial movement seemed to believe that if a minority asserts a political identity, it can only be to the detriment of the nation.’ (p.89) This line gets repeated in the text hopefully by error and not to emphasise the point!
No. The problem faced by politicians who took control of municipalities under dyarchy was that Muslims would make crazy demands- e.g. a small statue of Ganesh which had always existed in a school must be removed because an important Muslim leader lived on the same road- and the politicians would have to concede or else face a riot to suppress which the Army might have to be called in.
It should be remembered that Ahmadiyas, who were in the forefront of Muslim separatist politics, themselves faced a threat which however did not materialize till Bhutto took power. Hindus- like JN Mandal- who had been foolish enough to ally with the League had to run away within a much shorter span of time.
4) ‘The important question to ask is: Why did the leaders of the Congress, the Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha and others allow the precipitation of political differences to endanger the lives of millions? Because in politics, let it be said as harshly as possible, the lives of ordinary people do not matter.’ (p.90)
Ordinary people do matter because ordinary people beat extraordinary people to death or chase them away unless they know they will be slaughtered in an asymmetric manner. Politics is about distracting ordinary people so they are content to revel in their own swinishness rather than actively persecute those better or nicer than themselves.
After about 1917, Imperialism was a game not worth the candle. By 1921, India was pushing against an open door. But the INC insisted it and it alone should go through it and then shut and lock the door after it had done so. But this meant the Burmese and the Muslim majority areas would go their own way. This was cool with Gandhi and Nehru and Rajaji because they came from Hindu majority areas. Jinnah and Liaquat, you may say, lost property. But they were able to help select 'Mujahir's gain more than the lost thanks to the rich properties left behind by Sikhs and Hindus. Congress too looked after its own while the nation as a whole became unable to feed or defend itself.
5) For ‘liberal secularists … identity politics is narrowly communal by definition and design.
But 'liberal secularism' is itself an identity. It involves all sorts of silly shibboleths just like a religion.
This unthinking position
is attractive to those incapable of thought
leads to a poor and narrow understanding of how a minority is expected to respond to a political crisis that affects the community.
Having a poor and narrow understanding is a sine qua non for being a Professor of a non-STEM subject.
To pigeonhole the response of a minority community against abrasive majoritarianism, where it must maintain a language perceived (and judged) as either communal or national, is to erect a communal/national binary. It has an anti-minoritarian streak (since the late 1920s) that can be termed secular majoritarianism.’
Muslims are right to demand that non-Muslim refugees, fleeing Islamic persecution, must be denied citizenship. Also Prime Minister should not visit Temple. It is idolatry! Doesn't matter if Rahul Baba is doing so. He is Italian tourist.
Bhattacharjee grossly misreads the ideology and the actual history of Indian national movement when he sees the nationalists as seeing only minority identity politics as ‘communal’, emerging ‘surreptitiously’ from a ‘majoritarian reluctance to share power.’
Nationalists are against any identity class other than their own. However, they are also against other Nationalists who tell them they are stupid and probably have tiny genitalia.
Nehru as early as 1930s is severely critical of majoritarian identity politics,
Because the Hindu Mahasabha was a rival of his own Party.
Hindu communalism, now often wrongly called Hindu Nationalism.
So, it is wrong to call Modi a Hindu Nationalist. Good to know.
In his autobiography written in early 1930s, he said, majority communalism easily ‘masquerades under a nationalist cloak’.
Just as the Nehru's dynasticism masqueraded under a nationalist cloak even if it was represented by a nice Italian lady whose daddy was a Fascist.
‘Hindu nationalism’, he said, is ‘but another name for communalism’, a phenomenon which he said represented ‘the betrayal of the freedom struggle, denial of every vestige of nationalism, suppressive of every manly instinct in the Hindus.’
His manly instincts involved sulking in a jail cell. But this was a type of manliness his women-folk could emulate.
The current masculine, aggressive, alpha-male nationalism
which only Indira Gandhi could pull off
that is being paraded around by the Hindutva forces was squarely characterised by Nehru and the Indian national movement as ‘anti-national.’
Only an Italian lady should rule India- right?
He said in 1933 ‘I still hold that the activities of Hindu communal organisations, including the Mahasabha, have been communal, anti-national and reactionary’.
Whereas the INC turned into a dynastic autocracy.
Nehru had in fact anticipated that fascism in India would take the form of majority communalism.
But he didn't anticipate that India would be ruled by an Italian lady whose daddy was an actual Italian Fascist.
He said, ‘it must always be remembered that the whole mentality of the R.S.S. is a fascist mentality.
It was so Fascist that it resisted his daughter's experiment with Fascism.
Therefore, their activities have to be closely watched.’
Nehru didn't closely watch the activities of Communist China. Sad.
Majority communalism, Nehru argued, ‘could disguise itself as nationalism’ and was in fact ‘the Indian version of fascism … deserving of the severest condemnation.’
Govind Vallabh Pant described Gandhi, in 1938, as the 'Fuhrer and Il Duce of India'. But it was Nehru who was, as Frank Anthony put it, the Dictator the Indian bourgeoisie needed to hold Communism at bay. But Indian Communism, as Stalin had recognized, was shit.
Nehru was empathetic to the minority condition and their fears when he said, ‘Honest communalism is fear…. To some extent this fear is justified, or is at least understandable, in a minority community. We see this fear overshadowing the communal sky in India as a whole so far as Muslims are concerned; we see it as an equally potent force in the Punjab and Sind so far as the Hindus are concerned, and in the Punjab, the Sikhs.’ But this did not lead him to be soft towards, leave alone support, minority communalism which he thought was anti-national just like majority communalism was.
Nehru had no coercive power. He could do nothing to avert Partition or ethnic cleansing on either side of the border. He was also shit at defending the country from China. Before he died, he freed Sheikh Abdullah to do a deal with Ayub Khan- i.e. hand over Kashmir without a fight. Shastri was made of sterner stuff. But it was his daughter who kicked ass.
More importantly, he believed that certainly the answer to majority communalism could not be minority communalism. He said famously and very wisely, again in the 1930s ‘One communalism does not end the other, each feeds on the other and both fatten.’
He was proved wrong. After 1947, there was ethnic cleansing on both sides of the border. There was no 'minority communalism' though it may have resurfaced in West Bengal.
Minority ‘identity politics’ does not break ‘the norm of (majoritarian) consensus’ as Bhattacharjee argues it encourages the growth of majoritarian identity politics.
Not unless it becomes a nuisance. We don't have a problem if a particular linguistic group want to protect and foster their own language.
Indeed, softness towards minority communalism made the growth of majority communalism much easier. In fact the Left/ ‘liberal secularists’ that Bhattacharjee is so critical of for condemning minority identity politics, instead of being equally critical of minority communalism, as they were of majority communalism, at times exhibited certain softness towards it making it a major plank of the majority communalists in extending their influence and painting the secularists as ‘pseudo-secularists’ or ‘appeasers’ of minority communalism.
These guys may irritate us but they have no political power. True, from time to time, virtue-signalling or 'wokeness' provokes a backlash. But the thing doesn't greatly matter. The SNP is losing votes not because it is anti-TERF but because it is shit and its leaders may have embezzled money.
The tallest leaders of the Indian national movement led by Gandhiji and Nehru put their lives at stake to protect minority rights,
No they didn't. They put their lives at stake by talking bollocks without adequate police protection. Minority rights were not being protected in Delhi when Gandhi was shot. Muslims were running the fuck away.
enable the religious minorities to have equal citizenship rights in the Indian republic but refused to do so by pandering to minority identity politics as it would stand against the whole republican idea of citizenship. It is an absolute canard to describe the Indian nationalist position as ‘secular majoritarianism’ with ‘an anti-minoritarian streak (since the late 1920s)’ as Bhattacharjee does.
No it isn't. Maulana Azad says that in 1937 Hindus where chosen to be Premiers of Bihar and Bombay even though a Muslim, in the one case, and a Parsi, in the other, had a stronger claim. The plain fact is that Congress Ministries were pro-Hindu. That's why Jinnah was successful in mobilizing support for the Pakistan demand.
The national movement was correct in erecting a ‘secular/national’ binary. Communal politics by definition broke up the ‘nation’ in a multi-religious country. That is why the colonial state constantly encouraged and supported communalism of all varieties and it is a historical fact that the communal forces who did politics of religious identity, whether they be of minority or majority, allied with the colonial state and saw the Congress, which spoke of a nation where religion would not determine politics, as the chief enemy.
But it was post-colonial states which did ethnic cleansing and which removed quotas for minorities.
Empowering politics based on religion was the colonial project
No. Colonial politics empowered a politics based on what rich guys back home wanted. The Brits didn't give a fuck about Moooooslims or Hindoooos or votaries of Budhoooo or Vodooooo. Post-colonial politics may have been about religions or indigenous dynasties of various sorts.
and could not be that of the nationalists and ought not be that of such a fine scholar of Nehru as Bhattacharjee.
The guy isn't an actual scholar. He is a 'political science scholar'- i.e. a cretin.
Overwhelming sections of the minorities in India have fortunately gone with the republican idea of citizenship, as the massive anti-CAA protests, waving the Indian constitution and portraits of Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh, showed.
There were opposing the grant of citizenship to non-Muslim fleeing Islamic persecution. Ambedkar's pal, JN Mandal, was allowed to flee to India and become an Indian Citizen. Bhagat Singh would have had no objection to Sikhs from West Punjab being allowed to settle in India. Nehru brought in a Law preventing Muslims who had fled in panic returning to take back their property. Why? Their houses and property were needed by the refugees. Gandhi, of course, would have insisted that anyone entering India rape and kill lots of Indians as a condition for permanent settlement.
There are sections in India which are whipping up minority religious sentiments and politics based on that which is hugely welcomed (and some say even funded) by the majority communalists as it provides them just the cannon fodder they need. Let us see the danger these forces represent rather than provide an intellectual justification for them.
The danger facing people named Mukherjee is that they will be killed or chased away from their ancestral homes by a very peaceful community. As for 'intellectual justification'- those who are as stupid as shit can provide no such thing.
Bhattacharjee does grave injustice when he groups ‘the Congress, the Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha’ together and accuses them of ‘allow(ing) the precipitation of political differences to endanger the lives of millions?
If so, Gandhi committed a grave injustice when he told Bihari Congress workers he knew which of them had killed innocent Muslims.
Because in politics, let it be said as harshly as possible, the lives of ordinary people do not matter.’
In which case, politics does not matter to ordinary people. Either politicians provide voters a service or they don't get to be politicians. True, that service may be deceptive or based on fantasy. Still, if the expectation is that some benefit will be received, ordinary people will tolerate- rather than kill and eat- politicians.
How similar he sounds to Perry Anderson who does not hold the colonial state or the Muslim League or RSS responsible for the partition of the country, but it was the Indian National Congress ‘whose “persistent … claim to speak for the whole country…precipitated the crisis and made partition inevitable.’
This is true enough. Had Gandhi not taken over the Khilafat-Congress combine, there would have been gradual devolution of power under the pretence of a Federal Dominion. Various Princes and Barristocrats would have taken turns holding various portfolios. Sooner or later, there would have been a transfer of surplus labor from Agriculture to Manufacturing Industry. The littoral states would have grown more rapidly but places like Kanpur, too, would have thrived. India would have had Visvesvarayya type (or Malaysian type) 5 year plans from the mid Thirties onward and would have emerged from the Second World War with an extensive military-industrial complex.
All this assumes that the Brits wouldn't do utterly stupid shit but, the fact is, Brits didn't do utterly stupid shit if they were paid a little money and enough pi-jaw was spoken.
The demonisation of the chief vehicle of the anti-imperialist movement
which was so anti-imperialist it asked Mountbatten to stay on as Governor General. Indeed, Nehru depended on Mountbatten till the day of his death. After Nehru died, neither the Brits nor the Indians had any use for that belted Earl.
does not end there, Anderson adds that not only was the Congress responsible for partition, it ‘acted in a way that ensured it would take the cruellest form, with the worst human consequences’!
But most Hindus didn't suffer at all. We were secretly rather pleased that the verbose Bengali and the belligerent Punjabi would play little role in the new country. Then we discovered that UP can't rule itself, let alone provide leadership to the rest of the country.
How similar to our current dispensation who hold Gandhi and Nehru responsible for partition and not the hate ideology their ancestors spread that led to the murder of the Mahatma.
Which hate ideology led to non-Muslims having to flee Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan?
The saving grace is that Bhattacharjee includes the Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha among his list of villains along with Congress for whom ‘the lives of ordinary people do not matter’.
The lives of ordinary people- even brown people- mattered to the Brits. That is why the ethnic cleansing started in earnest only after they threw in the towel. Also, Britain's Prime Minister is a guy named Rishi, not Richard. The plain fact is that Imperialism protects minorities. Nationalism does not. But a great nation- like Britain or America- can protect immigrants regardless of their creed or color, or- in my case- incessant flatulence.
Gandhiji and Nehru must be turning in their graves at this description of their life long effort.
They were cremated.
Let me remind Bhattacharjee of his own quote from Paz, Nehru ‘did not stain his country nor the world with blood.’
More remarkably, he did not fudge his trousers. That's what's important. Only by hammering home the message that Rahul Baba is now fully potty trained can we defeat the hate ideology of the Sangh Parivar and ensure that the Dynasty is restored to power.
Perhaps a closer look at history and historians of Modern India
provided those Historians are White Oxbridge graduates- sure.
could have saved Bhattacharjee from such conclusions. For a starter, Bipan Chandra’s classic Rise and Growth of Communalism in Modern India
There is no such book. Chandra- a Marxist deported from McCarthy-era America- wrote 'Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in Modern India'. His book on Communalism was more modestly titled a Primer. He was a chamcha of the UPA.
and his seminal articles on Gandhi, Nehru and the Indian National Movement in Writings of Bipan Chandra: The Making of Modern India: From Marx to Gandhi need to be added to both Anderson and Bhattacharjee’s reading list.
Fuck off! Who made Modern India? The answer is, it was the Brits. Gandhi and Nehru and Jinnah enabled parts of the sub-continent to retreat a little from modernity. Sadly, people voted with their feet and the general love of cool shiny stuff brought about Globalization and Neo-Liberalism and other such totes Fascist phenomena.
Scroll.in has the following interview with Manash
Can you tell us how the ‘spirit of India’ correlates with Nehru’s ideas?
Nehru was an Indian politician. He claimed that his ideas for its future was in consonance with some specific qualities of that particular country.
This is the obvious, indeed, the only possible answer. Manash can't give it.
Even though I did not specify this, I elaborated the themes which I consider to be part of the spirit of India: namely, the spirit of modernity
which is not specific to India and thus can't be part of its spirit. One could speak of 'the Spirit of the Age'. This is the Hegelian Geist.
that questions everything, including one’s own ideas and beliefs, the secular spirit of accepting refugees and treating minorities without discrimination,
which India does not have. India is not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol and does not have a national refugee protection framework. Moreover, Nehru prevented Indian Muslims who had crossed the border in panic from returning to claim their property. Non-Muslim refugees have always been accepted and granted citizenship.
the spirit of a people who were shaped by cultural encounters with other religions throughout history,
Many nationalities have such cultural encounters. What is special about India is that it has originated great world religions of an irenic sort.
and the spirit that feels the need to discard and retain certain aspects of the past.
everybody has that spirit. Even I may someday get rid of my porn stash left over from the Seventies.
Nehru’s ideas are well in tune with this spirit of India.
But not the spirit of Pakistan or the guys who want to turn his ancestral home into an ISIS stronghold. But, come to think of it, Delhi too was once a stronghold of Islam. Under Nehru, its Muslim population dropped to 5 %. It is now about 13%. But, in 1946, it was 33%.
Nehru understood and valued this spirit.
The Brits understood it better. That is why India could feed and defend itself and do force projection into the MENA and even China under their rule.
Nehru was a proponent of scientific progress and in that sense he was a modernist.
But it was the Brits and some European missionaries and such like who got that 'scientific progress' off the ground.
Octavio Paz described him as a man who “belonged to a double anti tradition”.
Paz was a diplomat. He was being diplomatic. Nehru belonged to a 'Niyogi' Brahmin tradition with a Persianate substrate to its determined Anglicism.
You describe him as one who “emerges as a man of double modernity”.
But modernity is univocal.
How do you understand the figure of modernity from this?
This is a good question. Modernity creates paradoxes.
No it doesn't. Stupid shitheads pretend to find paradoxes wherever they look.
Even in earlier times, people had cross-cultural tendencies, but they largely belonged to one cultural tradition.
Not the Nehrus. They were Hindu Pundits who spoke and wrote in Persian. But their wives- e.g. Kamala- knew only Hindi. Her culture was different from that of Nehru's sisters- which is why they didn't get on.
Modernity fixes the frame of reference, which is the modern West and ideas that produced the Enlightenment.
No. The 'ancien regime' outlasted Enlightenment and only ended when Romanticism had triumphed.
The idea of belonging (to a particular culture) takes on a new form as modernity interrupts that relationship.
No it doesn't. A Greek or an Egyptian or a Indian remains Greek or Egyptian or Indian whether or not there is any modernity around for them to embrace.
We begin to critically negotiate with our own cultural tradition.
We stop doing so when our own cultural tradition refuses to buy us a pint. We then tell it to fuck off.
This is where a lot of intellectual debate in the postcolonial world takes place.
There are no 'intellectuals' in the postcolonial world. There are worthless shitheads who suck up to the powers that be, or might be, by writing worthless shite.
To be or not to be western becomes a political predicament.
You can't be western if you've got no fucking money and can't get a visa. Sad.
The (ethically necessary) critical gaze towards tradition is often accused of having a western bias.
That's still better than being accused of fucking little boys in the ass. The big problem with tradition is that it tends to cash out as little else.
Cultural politics gets divided among those who challenge culture using western ideas and norms,
Rahul must get gender reassignment surgery to show solidarity with the trans community.
and those who argue in favour of cultural exclusivity, and even superiority.
If they are Ayatollahs, don't argue back.
Colonialism evidently complicates this debate with modernity. Nehru had the privilege to make his choices, and he made them in favour of western modernity. But he valued the richness and openness of India’s cultural history.
But those riches had been opened up and explored by nice White writers.
He lived the paradox of modernity.
There is no paradox. If you are living in modern times, you are living some type of modern life. What is unfair is that people who died in ancient times are not permitted to do so.
A minority, Nehru felt, has the political tendency to create divisions.
After the partition of Ireland, this was fucking obvious. The Protestants of Ulster were a minority. Apparently, this may no longer be the case. Perhaps there will be Irish re-unification if Brexit remains the disaster that it currently appears to be.
What was his fear premised upon?
Ireland.
Do you think this fear finds an echo in contemporary Indian politics and society?
Tamils- fearing seat redistribution after 2026- are starting to talk about it. That's why Stalin is backing Rahul who says India is like the EU. Tamil Nadu is welcome to leave.
What to make of secularism in the context of citizenship today?
Scare Muslims into voting for you by telling them that Modi will eat their babies. That's secularism.
Like any liberal, Nehru had a deep antipathy towards religious sentiments and towards communities demanding rights based on those sentiments, as well as a religious sense of difference.
Few Indian liberals shared this antipathy. Nehru was orienting himself towards the Comintern. The Bolsheviks were slaughtering priests and burning down mosques.
Partition heightened Nehru’s fears of a minority asking for political rights. He saw it as a tendency towards disunity. This liberal fear can also get entwined with a larger majoritarian discomfort about minorities.
Not if those minorities concentrate on making money and securing residency some place still ruled by Whitey.
Secularism is about equality before the law and discouragement of using religion in politics.
No. The Law is about equality before the law. If there is no equality, custom or the strong right arm decides matters.
Anti-Clericalism may discourage 'religion in politics'. But Secularism need not be anti-Clerical.
But equality as a principle has to deal with social and economic inequality in society where disadvantaged communities may need special rights.
No. Principles don't have to deal with anything at all. They may or may not regulate particular types of conduct.
A disadvantaged community may need help to avail of or access certain justiciable rights and entitlements. That is a question of policy, not principle.
Equality is not a principle only meant for the individual citizen.
Principles are meant to regulate conduct. Individuals or collectives of various descriptions are welcome to pick and choose the principles which they wish to guide them.
This does not mean communities (including minorities) can always be allowed to act as they please, but live in accordance with the broader secular identity of the nation-state.
This is nonsense. People and groups of people find they have to live in accordance with the laws and norms enforced by the State or broader community within which they live. If they don't, they may be killed or punished.
A Nation-State may claim any sort of Identity but that Identity claim does not matter. It is not the case that India changed when Indira amended the constitution to ascribe 'Socialism' and 'Secularism' to her dynastic tyranny. What mattered was whether Indira and her son could kill other Indians with impunity or whether they themselves would be killed. Assassination tempers Autocracy.
All communities must be open to internal change.
Unless they are kicking ass and taking names.
Religious sanctions are not sacrosanct.
That is precisely what they are. The word means 'most sacred'. Manash, cretin that he is, thinks it means 'most secular'- i.e. meaningless.
If the Pontiff declares you a heretic and consigns you to the auto da fe, though you may escape that bonfire on Earth, Religion holds that you will burn for all eternity in Hell-fire. That's Papal Infallibility, dude.
Most of our problems regarding the borders were a result of the imbalance that colonialism had managed to create between the centre and the periphery.
The Brits stopped Gurkhas and Afridis from invading. They created a strong center and a strong enough periphery. Nehru talked bollocks. That didn't deter the Chinese. Even the Pakistanis were getting ready to take a bite out of India when, sadly, the old tosser died and Shastri took over.
In the context of Kashmir and Assam, how would you relate this imbalance?
Center was very strong. That's why it expelled Pundits from the Valley and let in lots of Bangladeshis into Assam.
The colonial rulers joined and divided regions according to their administrative needs.
Curzon did divide Bengal. The Hindus were too stupid to understand this was a good thing and had it reversed. Forty years later they were clamoring for it. West Bengal currently votes for Didi. Will the Hindus there continue to vote for her nephew or will they run away from Muslim majority districts? Let us see.
This fuelled a lot of fissures between communities in the northeast, a region that suffered ethnic differentiation vis-à-vis mainstream India.
Whereas in Myanmar, all them guys get on so well with each other- thinks nobody at all.
The Indian state did not manage to sort out the problems created by the colonial state in a judicious manner.
Hindus should get rid of non-Hindu majority areas and concentrate on talking bollocks to each other till they have to run away from their ancestral homes because of 'demographic replacement'.
Ethnic strife based on issues of ownership of land, political power and cultural dominance tore the region apart.
In Assam, the local people faced and feared marginalisation due to the growing influx of refugees from East Pakistan, and later, Bangladesh. It gave rise to entrenched xenophobia. Kashmiris got divided as a people after the exodus of the Pandits in 1990.
Why did the Pandits leave? Muslims were killing them. Why are they not returning? Muslims kill those who do. This wasn't 'xenophobia'. Pandits are autochthones.
The state is responsible for a lot of ills it creates, and then tries to justify with violence. But communities must also reflect on their own parochialism and intolerance.
What I am reflecting on is the parochialism and intolerance of Scroll.in and the cretins it interviews.
To quote from your book, “Tradition is not history”.
Yes it is, even if invented. Everything that happened or has happened or will happen becomes part of History.
And yet both are equally connected with the roots of the present. What problems in regard with tradition does Nehru posit his views on
For Nehru, tradition is not a static idea, but something that keeps changing over time.
It is a 'ship of Theseus' or 'Kripkean rigid-designator'. Nothing wrong with that. Nehru was at Cambridge when Russell was popularizing Frege's ideas. Still, British Hegelianism was strong at that time. We may say there was a 'dialectical' element to the thinking of Edwardians of the period. Haldane is the shining example.
This change is connected to changing sensibilities. So what is considered “traditional” may not correspond to the change that it has undergone in history.
No. That's what it does correspond to.
Tradition is often argued in terms of continuity, which may not be true about many practices and beliefs.
In which case we speak of the artificial creation of a tradition- e.g. the rites of Freemasonry. English Law has the notion of 'artificial reason' based on 'legal fictions'- e.g. Coke's notion that the Common Law derives from Greek speaking Druids.
History is not simply a recounting of the past, but a perspective. Therefore, Nehru understands what is considered traditional may be put under scrutiny by history.
No. The scrutiny is done by Historians or Philologists or Jurists or other such people with relevant expertise. As a barrister, practicing in India, Nehru knew that plenty of 'customary laws' and 'traditions' were constantly being 'scrutinized' in this manner unless stare decisis applied.
Yes, both tradition and history are part of our past and present. Their relationship is however, not contiguous, but dynamic.
We think of Nehru as a bombastic buffoon. But he never wrote anything quite so vacuous. The relationship between contiguous things is dynamic- i.e. changes over time. Non-contiguous things in separate 'light-cones' may have had a shared history in the remote past but there can be no dynamic relationship between them now or in the future- unless there is a 'big crunch'.
Nehru believes that India retains an ‘astonishing inclusive capacity’
it didn't. The Brits left because the climate is diabolical. Every Viceroy was greeted warmly by India's astonishingly inclusive, and invasive, germs and viruses. One reason Mountbatten was in a hurry to leave was because he feared a recurrence of amoebic dysentery.
despite ‘caste and exclusiveness’ because of the harmonious synthesis of cultural encounters.
Between men. Everybody was careful to lock up their zenanas.
This spirit of inclusiveness that India embodied for long is now torn apart by divisionary forces.
Only Italian or half Italian people should be Prime Minister. Modi is very divisionary because he isn't even from Malta, which is quite close to Italy. Why can't the fellow just have gender reassignment surgery and pretend to be a lady from Argentina? Then he could marry Rahul and govern the country while the moon-calf takes long walks.
Is there hope that this spirit will not be shredded?
This is not the first time that India’s inclusivity is under strain. We have had Hindu-Muslim riots during the anticolonial period, and finally, the bloodbath of Partition. The declaration of Pakistan is responsible for the violence of Partition. You may question those who accepted the idea of Pakistan as a solution to the Hindu-Muslim question, but there is no doubt that those who demanded Pakistan and worked towards it are chiefly responsible for the unspeakable horror that both Hindus and Muslims went through.
Manash isn't blaming the Brits. How shocking!
It jeopardised the future, giving the Hindu-right – having its own version of a nation based on religion – a space to exploit people’s sentiments, especially of Hindu refugees who suffered.
In Bengal, it was the Commies who exploited the fuck out of the refugees. Then they killed them at Marichjhapi.
Apart from the rhetoric of secularism – I have called it “secular majoritarianism” – no mainstream party in India worked towards healing the trauma of Partition.
For most of Hindu India, there was no fucking trauma.
Gandhi was the last man to have worked towards genuine rapprochement.
His work was useless.
His untimely death was meant to politically end that gesture.
An empty gesture. Still, Congress took its revenge on innocent Maharashtrian Brahmins. Say what you like, they kicked ass.
The Congress indulged in tokenism towards minorities. There is no point in harping on the spirit of inclusiveness without making concrete political gestures of friendship and trust.
There is even less point in making gestures of any sort- unless they involve dropping your trousers, exposing your buttocks, and farting loudly.
It is true that right now communal relations are being systematically damaged.
By people who tell the Muslims that Modi will eat their babies.
Hope is a survivor’s word.
No. It is just a word. Doomed people may use it all they like.
How those who survive the mental and physical violence of our times alone will determine if we can – and if we have – hope.
Nope. Any one is welcome to hope for any possible or impossible outcome.
People survived the trauma of Partition,
Millions didn't.
like people survive history.
Nobody survives history. Everybody dies.
The whole point is to address the wound, actively and honestly.
Fuck off! If you have a wound, you don't want a shithead like Manash to address it. You want a nurse to clean and dress it properly.
Like Ambedkar had said, it is not enough to simply claim survival in history, but to produce the quality worthy of survival.
Ambedkar lacked that quality. He died. But so did everybody else.
It is a deep and difficult question.
No it isn't. There is no quality which allows a human being to live forever. Everybody dies. Even Manash type stupidity will be extinguished sooner or later.
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