Monday 9 October 2023

Muzaffar Ali's Habermas

 Habermas is a deeply silly man. He thought that there was such a thing as a 'public sphere' defined as the "realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens'. It appears, Habermas had not noticed that 'public opinion' existed in Jim Crow America and apartheid South Africa and even under Hitler who was rounding up and killing millions of people. India in the inter-war period definitely had 'public opinion' even though the country was divided by religion and caste and so forth. 

The plain fact is, since the time of Pericles, eligibility and accountability (dikomasia & euthnoi)  criteria arise such that admittance and retention of public 'voice' is regulated. That's why 'exit' or the threat of exit is often more effective. If public debate becomes stupid and boring, the public runs away. What is left is a private activity of a useless type. 

Thus, contra Habermas, there is no country where 'access to the public sphere' is guaranteed to all citizens. Crazy hate mongers may not be locked up but they may have to content themselves with muttering darkly to nutjobs like themselves. 

A young professor, Muzaffar Ali, has published a short book titled- ‘India, Habermas and the Normative Structure of Public Sphere’ which 'invites the reader to consider the possibility of imagining a normative Indian public sphere that is embedded in the Indian context—in a native and not nativist sense—to get past the derivative language of philosophical and political discourses prevalent within Indian academia.;

Speaking generally, Indian academia is shit. If its language were not derivative, it would be reduced to imitating the cries of various animals. India, of course, has many languages and plenty of TV channels. But there appears to be increasing socio-economic divergence between states which have undergone demographic transition and those which remain mired in Malthusian poverty. There may be a fairly cohesive 'public opinion' on matters such as the Pakistani or the terrorist threat but even there some, on the basis of religion, may have a different view.

 Professor Ali's book' proposes that the dynamic cooperative space between Indian political theory and contemporary Indian philosophy

there is no contemporary Indian philosophy. There may be Indians employed as Philosophy professors but they are stupid and useless. As for 'political theory'- the Left shat the bed long ago. What we have is either Prashant Kishore type praxis or paranoid raving.

'is effectively suited to theorize the native idea of the Indian public sphere.

the native idea is that our particular sub-caste should get more government jobs and seats in medical college or IIT. 

 It underlines the normative need for a natively theorized Indian public sphere

That has been done by Islamic and Hindutva and Casteist parties of a dynastic type. Does Professor Ali want yet more of this sort of thing? 

 to further the multilayered democratization of public spheres within diverse communities that constitute Indian society.'

Yet more reservations and quotas and illiterate PhD students. But this is happening and will continue to happen anyway. 

Scroll has published the following excerpt from Professor Ali's book

Ambedkar’s politics

like J.N Mandal's politics 

is an example of the lower caste’s articulation of caste in the public sphere

to demand reservations and advance the careers of those doing the articulation. Ambedkar was fortunate because he became Law Minister in a Hindu country and thus was safe. J.N Mandal backed Pakistan and was Jinnah's Law Minister. But he and many of his people had to run away to India where Mandal could not re-start his political career. Ambedkar too crashed and burned. Without the Brits, he lacked powerful patrons. Thus he had to settle for becoming a Boddhisattva and thus an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. Muslims in India don't have that option. What happened to those who 'articulated caste' in Pakistan? They got short shrift. In India, however, they are a vote bank. It seems they are now demanding that Hindus give up their sacred texts. Good luck to them. 

which unsettles the boundaries

Ambedkar was helpful to the British which is why they promoted him. After he quit the Cabinet, he found no place for himself in Indian politics.  

and strives to “recover a space for the language of caste in the colonial public sphere.”

The Brits used Ambedkar & Co against Congress. But, thanks to Herr Hitler, they had to run away. Sad.  

As an example of such power-oriented and indirect language of caste being employed by the upper castes and a direct language of caste-as-caste being employed by the lower castes, the Gandhi-Ambedkar debate on caste becomes significant.

No it doesn't. India chose to go down the path of Nehru, not the Mahacrackpot. Ambedkar faded into the background while people like Jagjivan Ram rose and rose.  

Ambedkar and Gandhi, as Arundhati Roy

who wrote a book showing that Syrian Christians practiced untouchability and carried out atrocities against Dalits 

tells us, were not merely involved in a theoretical debate on the issue of caste. Rather

they were having Gay sex? Why should they not have done so? Are you homophobic?  

both as (public) interlocutors represented very separate interest groups, and their battle unfolded in the heart of India’s national movement.”

It was wholly irrelevant. The Rajah-Moonje pact mattered. Indeed, Rajah still matters in Tamil Nadu politics. The Justice Party had introduced affirmative action in 1921 but Dalits were not given a quota. Congress succeeded in enticing Dalits away from the Justice Party which, in any case, was too aristocratic and had mishandled finance during the Great Depression.  

Their public debate, as Suhas Palshikar reminds us, became more pronounced on the question of untouchability and the abolition of caste.

Ambedkar wanted Hindus to give up their religion. Hindus didn't want him to convert to Islam but were otherwise not greatly bothered. Buddhism was a prestigious Aryan religion which had spread untouchability all the way to Japan. The Hindus hoped Ambedkar would use his influence to get the Dalits to give up liquor and meat-eating (Buddhist Japan had previously banned the killing of four legged animals).  

Let us go into the debate considering (rather imagining) Gandhi (an upper caste Hindu) and Ambedkar (a lower caste Hindu) as two participants within the colonial Indian public sphere to deliberate on the issue of casteism and its annihilation or removal.

This was a debate between a guy who considered himself to be a Sadhu-Mahatma and a younger guy who would decide he was a Boddhisattva.  


The debate starts with Ambedkar’s long text in 1936 titled Annihilation of Caste,

which was crazy shit. The Punjabis had wanted to parade Dr. Ambedkar as a model for Dalits to follow. Get educated and rise up as a lawyer or doctor or engineer or else, like the Dalit millionaires of Kanpur, become an entrepreneur and get rich. Punjab doesn't need to import crazy. No part of India does.  

where his main focus is to find the elementary foundations of caste hierarchies and to suggest revolutionary remedies (if any can be possible) to transcend the caste barriers of Hindu social life.

Hindus should stop being Hindus. Sadly, if they became Muslims they would still treat Dalits as untouchables. Indeed, even educated, progressive, Christians of high caste would not invite Ambedkar into their homes- as he bitterly complained.  

Ambedkar’s two arguments become significant for our purpose. First, he argues that the defenders of casteism claim that it is actually a division of labour (akin to Pandian’s naturalisation of caste discussed above) necessary for day to day functioning of any civilised society.

This is why Pakistan prohibited the migration of Hindu and Christian scavengers during Partition. If they ran away, who would carry the night soil?  

He argues that the caste system is not only a division of labour but also of the labourers who are divided and graded into hierarchical water-tight compartments.

Thus, the thing had nothing to do with any particular religion. Did Ambedkar advocate any sensible economic policies which might permit rapid industrialization and urbanization? No. The fellow wanted to appear a Socialist as well as a Buddhist.  

It goes against the basic logic of classifying labour based on natural aptitudes and instead classifies the labourers based on their heredity and birth.

Not if, as many were back then, you are a Lamarkian or, at the least, believe in epigenetic or mimetic effects.  

Rather than being a division of labour based on choice, it predefines the division on the beliefs of predestination.

Predestination is a dogma in all religions.  

The caste system thus becomes a division which subordinates “man’s natural powers and inclination to the exigencies of social rules.”

So does the economic and political and social system. Ambedkar didn't have any actual argument. He could have said 'India should follow such and such fiscal and monetary policy and industrialize in such and such manner'. But he never actually used his PhDs in fiscal and monetary policy. He preferred to babble nonsense. No doubt, a lot of politicians were babbling nonsense in the Thirties but Ambedkar's nonsense became more, not less, hysterical and paranoid in the Fifties.  

But where do the social rules come from?

Hysteresis effects on the one hand and ergodic Economic forces on the other. Ambedkar was too stupid or lazy to say so.  

And what other social divisions apart from the birth-based division of labour do these rules enforce?

At the time, they prevented men engaged in a debate from sucking each other off. Sad.  

Ambedkar’s response to these questions unravels the second argument he makes regarding caste.

an argument which unravels is a shit argument  

The congenital

not to mention genital 

division of labourers into water-tight compartments gives rise to an entire hierarchical set-up which strictly prohibits inter-marriage and inter-dining between the castes.

It may do or it may not. The fact is the purification ritual is no big deal. In a hot country everybody bathes a couple of times a day. What Ambedkar should have said was that Tardean mimetics and wasteful status competition between sub-castes was causing irrational economic behaviour which was holding the country back. Gandhi and Nehru and so forth had helped their own communities by 'crossing the black water' and gaining, not losing, prestige by doing so. They became 'mimetic targets'. Ambedkar quotes Gabriel Tarde but got hold of the wrong end of the stick.  

Ambedkar thinks that the mere removal of the prohibition of intermarriage and inter-dining is akin to treating the symptom of a disease, rather than its source.

Hindus should stop being Hindu. Also they should hand over the government to Ambedkar because he was super cool.  

If the real source of the disease of casteism needs to be removed, then the religious sanctity for casteism has to be overthrown from the Hindu’s minds conditioned by religious teachings. For Hindus, casteism is a teaching of shastras, and a way out is to free the minds of Hindus from the sanctity of the shastras. One needs to destroy the authority of the Shastras and Vedas to disinvest caste of its religious and divine basis.

Why stop there? Why not suggest that Hindus, after having given up Hinduism, also slit their own throats?  

Gandhi as the upper caste interlocutor in this debate wrote a series of responses in 1936 in Harijan. He considers Ambedkar as a challenge to Hinduism and a representative of a very small minority.

True enough. Ambedkar was actually being stupider and crazier than Gandhi. Quite an achiement! 

Gandhi argues that casteism has nothing to do with religion and that religion does not articulate itself through the interpretations of scriptures (shastras) but through the experiences of its seers and saints.

Religion, like Justice, or Politics, or Pedagogy, is a service industry. Either it creates benefits in excess of its cost or it withers on the vine. In India, Religion flourishes iff religious families flourish on the basis of endogamy and enterprise.  The two are linked by 'risk pooling' and network effects. More orthodox religions are 'costly signals' which support better 'separating equilibria' provided there is increased enterprise. 

The custom of casteism in the form of hierarchy and untouchability has origins different from the institutions of varna and ashrama in Hinduism. He reduces the meaning of varna to a duty-based division of labour where the Brahman and the scavenger are equal before God for fulfilling and continuing their particular duties of ancestral calling. Varna in no way warrants untouchability.

But pathogen avoidance does. Untouchability only began to disappear when village grannies saw that allopathic medicine worked well. Thus, the germ theory (which was denied by Dr. Pranjivan and his maha-crackpot pal) was true. Gandhi's Mum had told him that if a Dalit boy touched him he should pass on the contagion to a Muslim so as not to bring it home with him. Why did Ambedkar not understand the 'pathogen-avoidance' aspect of untouchability? The truth is, indigenous people probably used it to keep pastoralists (who have higher exposure to pathogens) at a distance and the latter, on establishing hegemony, kept it up as an elite practice. 


To invoke Pandian,

is to invoke a useless cretin.  

one can easily figure out how easily Gandhi as an upper caste is hedging on casteism by indirectly focusing on work and ancestry.

If Congress hadn't shown it was courting the 'Harijans', the Mahasabha would have outflanked it. Ambedkar and Mandal were foolish enough to think they could ally with the Muslims who, predictably, pumped and dumped them.  

Further, Ambedkar’s arguments have nothing to do with getting equal benefits in the eyes of God, but rather getting equality and dignity in the social milieu between a human and a human.

Which depends on money. Get rich and you have plenty of dignity. It is the starving guys who call you a nigger who look foolish.  

In 1937, Ambedkar responds with a lengthy reply to Gandhi. He argues that the question is not about the validity or invalidity of interpretations of shastras. The question ideally is about the people being told that casteism is a religious duty enshrined in the shastras.

In which case all that matters is the validity or invalidity of interpretations of shastras 

The saints either do not attack casteism or when they do, it is considered outside the institutional fold to be admissible only to them and not the masses.

The same is true of Mahatmas and Boddhisattvas who were equally stupid and incapable of reasoning. 

There can be no solution to the social problem of casteism and untouchability by following what Gandhi says. Keeping varnavyastha intact while seeking solutions for caste hierarchy is futile. It keeps the labels of four castes (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra) alive and as long as the labels continue, caste hierarchy and untouchability are bound to continue.

Ambedkar should have known that Japan had untouchability but no Brahmins while Bali had Brahmins but no untouchability. He truly was a great Indian politician- i.e. as stupid as shit. 

To quote Ambedkar;

If the Mahatma believes as he does in everyone following his or her ancestral calling,

Gandhi clearly didn't believe any such thing because he wasn't doing the job his Daddy and Grandaddy did. The ruler of Rajkot would have made him Dewan if that is what he wanted. 

then most certainly he is advocating the Caste System

Did Ambedkar really not know about serfdom and hereditary Guild membership and so forth?  

and that in calling it the Varna System he is not only guilty of terminological inexactitude, but he is causing confusion worse confounded.

It is Ambedkar who is confused. Gandhi was merely saying that people were welcome to identify with a particular Varna just as they might identify with a particular Gotra while getting whatever job they could.  

The terminological in-exactitude and confusion are symptomatic of talking about caste through a language which appears non-casteist but remains one at the core.

English is casteist to the core. Professor Ali should switch to Chinese or Arabic.  

From the above public debate between Gandhi and Ambedkar, (which is only a small fragment from the colonial public sphere of India), one figures the public positions that Ambedkar and Gandhi take vis-à-vis the issue of caste.

Maybe that sentence makes sense in Arabic.  

Aakash Singh Rathore argues that the starkly opposing and irreconcilable positions of Gandhi and Ambedkar stem from their worldview of “emancipation from what” and “emancipation into what” regarding the problem of untouchability.

Rathore is as stupid as shit. Ambedkar merely wanted Hindus to give up their Religion and hand all power to him. Gandhi merely wanted everybody to stop having sex and then quietly starve to death while muttering 'Ahimsa! Ahimsa!' They didn't give a fuck about emancipating anybody and lost salience the moment the Americans pulled the financial plug on the Empire racket and the Brits packed their bags and returned to Blighty.  Gandhi was shot by a Hindu while Dalits, more modestly, refused to vote for Ambedkar. His widow- being a Brahmin- could not inherit his mantle. Indeed, she was greatly disliked by the Mahars because of her caste.


What Rathore misses is that the irreconcilable positions are not merely theoretical arms chair positions taken for the sake of formulating a normative imagined community. The positions taken are theoritico-practical, with the practical part being public (with implications) and weighing more on the scale of formulating a response to the questions of “emancipation from what and emancipation into what?”

This is meaningless gibberish. Back in the Thirties, Whitey was ruling and ruling. Two darkies- Gandhi and Ambedkar- understood very well that emancipation meant Whitey fucking off. The problem was that they suspected that darkies would be shit at running things or, if not shit, then nobody would bother to listen to them because they were both useless shitheads. Ambedkar had two Econ PhDs. He never even pretended to understand Indian econ. He just went on repeating that Hindus should stop being Hindu while hoping for an alliance with the Muslims who, sadly, pumped and dumped his pal Mandal.  

Gandhi’s arguments take a favourable perspective of the religious sources of casteism by differentiating between varna and casteism. As a critical traditionalist, he is critical of the practice of caste, but at the same time not ready to admit Shastras as its source.

Because it wasn't its source. Buddhism may have created an untouchable class in India and Japan but, as in Bali, Brahminism has no need for untouchability. Indeed, there are some Indian Brahmin castes- e.g. Kauls- who eat meat and thus have no strong prejudice against Dalits. 

Caste for him is a custom originating in the society itself and has nothing to do with the Hindu religion per se. Ambedkar on the other hand is clear in his argument that the origin of casteism is religion and the Hindu shastras extend sanctity to its perpetuation.

Buddhism- maybe. Ambedkar pretended that Brahmins went one up on the Buddhists by becoming wholly vegetarian but he forgot that Jainism was stronger in places where this happened. It is the Shraman religions which are against animal sacrifice and thus against the consumption of meat and alcohol. To be fair, Ambedkar borrowed this stupid argument from Ayothee Dasan who got it from Olcott. Sadly, Sinhala Buddhists showed vim and vigor in killing off or chasing away Tamils of all descriptions. 

Ankur Barua argues that Gandhi distinguishes between an “ideal system of four mutually cooperating varṇas,” and regards the caste hierarchy and untouchability “as latter-day excrescences, Ambedkar consistently refused to draw such a distinction.”

Because he was against Hinduism. Why can't Hindus just give up their religion and then slit their own throats? The Muslims would be grateful if they did so. Gandhi's plan was less extreme. Hindus should give up sex and die out as a community.  

Their positions from the perspective of the Hindu religious worldview are antagonistic to each other as far as the existence and removal of casteism is concerned.

No shit, Sherlock! 

Gandhi argues akin to Pandian’s upper caste;

The Professor's English is poor. To be fair, he doesn't really expect anyone to read his shite 

ready to treat caste as a naturalised custom rather than a religious creed. Ambedkar speaks of caste-as-caste hitting at its source and structure.

Then he converted to Buddhism which exported untouchability to Japan. 

But the burden of caste is too much to allow a free-flowing rational debate as envisaged in the bourgeoisie or the religious public sphere of Habermas.

There had been such a debate already. Maharashtrian Brahmins read 'Harbhat Pendse' and decided that irrational status competition was holding India back. Some saw the 'germ theory' and Western allopathic medicine as the way to get rid of social taboos whose origin was clearly in primitive 'pathogen avoidance'.  Sadly, at the time, some Doctors didn't believe in the germ theory and homeopathy and all sorts of other stupid shite flourished. Still, as far as Bengal and Bombay and several other parts of India were concerned, the rational, scientific, path forward was already as clear as crystal by the turn of the century.


Both Gandhi and Ambedkar are arguing as burdened individuals; burdened by their respective positions in the caste system.

No they were burdened by gigantic egos of a Messianic type.  

While Gandhi is freely invoking the religious resource to prove his point and offer reasons, the same religious resource restricts Ambedkar from subscribing to it and seeking an emancipatory path within.

Gandhi was merely saying 'lets be nice to Dalits' while Ambedkar was saying that it would be nice if the Hindus stopped being Hindus. Also they should slit their own throats. The problem was that Muslim rule was worse for Dalits as his pal Mandal soon found out. Still, if the Brits hadn't fucked off, maybe Ambedkar would have retained salience in Indian politics to his dying day. 

The result is a debate which is continuing, with no public opinion (in the Habermasian sense) in sight.

Because Habermasian public opinion has never existed. The man is a fool. He may live to see a far right party take power in Germany. 

The translation proviso of Habermas, necessary for formulating public opinion to be taken over by the strong public sphere for consideration does not apply here.

Yes it does. It is the law which does the 'translation'.  

Who is going to choose the religious articulation to be considered for translation, as envisaged by Habermas?

The Bench. 

Which articulation is worthy of translation? The Gandhian one, or the Ambedkarian one?

Neither. Both were ignorant shitheads. However, there is plenty of case law and legislation for the Bench to draw on. Public opinion may favour certain judgments- e.g. Ayodhya- or be against others which put a limit on reservations. But opinions are only opinions. Like moods, they change or are abandoned and thus don't matter very much. 

Since the translation has to be a mutual exercise,

Nonsense! When you translate from English to Hindi you are not also translating from Hindi to English.  

will Gandhi (or Gandhians) accede to translating Ambedkar’s view and vice versa?

If I translate Goethe, will Goethe translate me? No. Don't be stupid.  

The questions are endless, and the Habermasian perspective of religion within the public sphere does not provide intellectual resources to tackle with the exception of the Indian public sphere.

Fuck does that sentence mean? Does this stupid Professor bother to read over what he dashes off?  

To quote Ambedkar, “caste has made public opinion impossible. A Hindu’s public is his caste. His responsibility is only to his caste. His loyalty is restricted only to his caste.”

I suppose this is true of Ambedkar. He could have contributed to Indian Economics. He didn't because he was obsessed with his own caste. The Hindus should kindly give up their religion because this would make Ambedkar feel better about himself. Then he married a Brahmin Doctor in the hope that she would manage his diabetes. Having failed in politics, he decided to become a Boddhisattva. Mayawati built big big temples for him where he receives Hindu worship as a minor and irascible incarnation of Vishnu.  Still, at least he never spent time in jail nor was beaten or shot. 

Ambedkar is firmly grounded in his belief that the burden of caste is too much to be shunned while crossing the threshold of the public sphere for rational discourse.

Ambedkar's English was good. He had no firmly grounded belief in ungrammatical nonsense.  

Maybe for Ambedkar, a propertied bourgeoisie can turn into home while entering the Habermasian coffee house or salon.

How can a group of human beings 'turn into home' while going into a place where refreshments are offered? Does Professor Ali really not know anybody with a working knowledge of English who could help him express himself better?  

But for a Hindu,

there was a Hindu 'propertied bourgeoisie' back then. Indeed, there were Dalit millionaires in Kanpur. 

caste becomes the frame to perceive and engage with things in both the private as well as the public sphere.

For Ambedkar- sure. But there were plenty of other Dalits who used their education to some good purpose or who rose through enterprise or sporting skill or some other type of talent. 

A casteist cannot become a home and a home cannot be a casteist:

Because people can't turn into huts or houses or buildings of any type.  

one can only be either of the two and that essentially is the source of irreconcilability between Gandhi and Ambedkar.

Muslims and Jews got homelands in the sub-continent and in the Middle East at about the same time. Jews do distinguish between Cohains, Levites and the hoi polloi. Muslims in Pakistan have a complicated caste-system. In England, a few years ago, a cook belonging to the Arain caste sued his employer for caste-discrimination. He lost his case because the employer turned out to be Arain himself.  

At a broader theoretical level, this irreconcilability can be extended to the notion of the Habermasian public sphere.

Which doesn't exist. The fact is there are eligibility and accountability criteria in the public sphere. A rabid nutcase gets excluded on the basis that he is babbling mischievous, mendacious, shite. 

Religion as a hyper-dominant resource within the Indian situation makes any free-flowing critical-rational debate between the powerful and powerless, majority and minority, upper caste and lower caste almost impossible.

Pakistan- maybe. India, no.  

For it is the religion that shapes and determines these binaries within the Indian situation.

Islam caused its partition.  Hindus, Christians and Buddhists have had to run away from Pakistan and Bangladesh. No doubt, this dude is against C.A.A which grants such people citizenship.

Under such circumstances, the Western notion of the agnostic reason

America is deeply Christian. In Habermas's Germany, the tax man takes money from you and give it to whichever Sect you happen to belong to.  

is hardly available as a resource for the participants of the Indian public sphere.

Where? In Tamil Nadu 'rationalist' parties have been ruling the roost for more than fifty years. The Chief Minister's name is Stalin. Kerala is ruled by the Communist party. Granted Lefties are shit at reasoning but they are atheists when they are not agnostic. 

The agnostic reason presupposes as well draws the boundary for the resourcefulness of religion in the Habermasian framework.

Presumably that should be 'as well as'. What does 'resourcefulness of religion' mean? Perhaps, 'religion as a resource'. But even so, this is a meaningless sentence. 

The resourcefulness of religion is too hard to be tamed by the agnostic reason in our societies.

Why is this man's English so abysmal? Also, why write a book in a language you are shit at? 

We may need an alternative mode of communication,

I suggest this gentleman use only belches and farts to communicate 

apart from the one anchored in agnostic reason, that can shoulder the native conception of the Indian public sphere.

For this nutter, everything is a burden which must be shouldered. If so why add an anchor to that burden? Is it because Habermas may scold you if you don't?  

Let us see if the alternative mode of communication and debate can be anchored in rationality at all, or in an alternative framework of debate!

Farting and belching should be anchored in rationality so that it can be shouldered after which people will turn into homes and those homes will be an alternative framework of a debate which, sadly, ends in sharting. 

This dude is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune. It may be that his students are from even more disadvantaged backgrounds than his own. Yet, precisely because his English is so poor, he can't help them in any way. Indeed, he is harming them as well as any cause which he espouses. Still, I suppose the Ambedkarites might think they have gained a valuable ally in the shape of a Muslim scholar. Now all they need is a Homosexual and a Hijra to complete their rainbow alliance which will help topple Hindutva and return the now openly Brahminical dynasty to power. 

Incidentally, this guy is an editor of a book titled, with refreshing honesty, 'The Imbecile’s Guide to Public Philosophy'. I suppose what they meant to say was 'Public philosophy for Dummies'- i.e. a guide for ordinary people with little education but some passing interest in the subject.  'Imbecile's Guide' means a complete moron has written this guide-book. Don't buy it. Zizek, it is true, has some notion that the revolutionary is an imbecile and imbecility actually means not needing a crutch or walking stick. But Zizek is stupid and ignorant. Imbecile meant so weak and feeble as not to even be able to use a stick or a crutch. But, in modern English the meaning is 'a stupid person'. Now, one may say 'we need a stupid person to guide us in Left Hegelianism because only a stupid person would not see the thing is obvious nonsense. Moreover, spouting Left Hegelian bullshit has a magical effect. It will bring about a big Revolution which will cause the proletariat to starve to death. This means evil Capitalist bastards won't be able to exploit the working class. They will have to be content with robots. True, they may say they are happier than ever but, secretly, they will be very sad because evil Capitalist bastards love stealing the tears of the workers and peasants. 

I suppose people who live in wealthy countries find Zizek's antics amusing. It is sad that illiterate Indian imbeciles think they need to advertise their stupidity more particularly in parts of the country where the Left gave up the ghost decades ago. Even if all these shitty imbeciles unite all they will gain is a banquet of coprophagy while politics remains a battle between anti-caste Hindutva and casteist Dynasticism. 



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