Tariq Thachil's RSS reading-list.

Scroll.in has an article penned by two academics at some American University on 'the rise of Hindutva'. 

Beyond elections, a reading list to understand the rise of Hindutva and the BJP
What turned the BJP and the RSS into social and political behemoths? These books have some answers.

Sadly, no book has the answer. Why? It is because even a child could answer the question by saying

1) It was obvious that Marxism had failed everywhere by the end of the Seventies. This meant Religion was no longer seen as 'the opium of the masses'. 

2) The rise of militant political Islam caused non-Muslims to want to circle their own wagons. The issue of caste-based reservations ('Mandal') needed to be countered by Hindu vote consolidation ('Mandir') 

3) India's fascination with Gandhian gesture politics (spinning wheels & so forth) ended when the Janata Morcha imploded (on the issue of dual membership of the RSS) Later, other evanescent coalitions imploded in the same way till the BJP emerged as the only Janata survivor able to serve as a national alternative to Congress (which retains Gandhian clauses- e.g. the requirement that all Congress members be 'habitual spinners of cotton). In other words, Hindu consolidation would take a non-Gandhian direction. 

The Dynasty could have pre-empted the rise of the BJP by returning Congress to its roots as the muscular Hindu party par excellence but autocracy was tempered by two assassinations. 

Tariq Thachil & Rohan Venkataramakrishnan
May 18, 2026 · 11:30 am

Once described as a North Indian “Hindi belt” party

The RSS is from Maharashtra though it came into politics under a Bengali- Syama Prasad Mukherjee.  

that would find it hard to grow beyond its upper-caste base,

this was also said of Congress before the Great War 

the BJP now draws in votes from every corner of the country and supporters from across castes, communities, and even religions.

The underlying ideology that powers the BJP-Hindutva-and the party’s parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is indisputably the most influential socio-political force in the country – and by dint of India’s sheer scale, one of the most important phenomena in global politics.

It is nationalist and pro-Hindu just as Congress was.  

How did this happen? What turned the BJP and the RSS into social and political behemoths?

Assassinations. However,  incompetence & corruption, too, played a part. However, it was Rahul's reluctance to take the top job, thus risking assassination, which enabled the BJP to win a majority in 2014.   

How did a movement known for polarising rhetoric and the instrumentalisation of violence catapult to power?

It is not known for any such thing. It was Congress which went in for the ethnic cleansing of Muslims & even Sikhs.  

And how should we understand Modi’s individual role within the broader story of Hindu nationalism?

By understanding that he did a great job in Gujarat and promised to do a great job in Delhi. Since he was miles better than any rival, he remains in office. 

Governance is about running a tight shift and focussing on last mile delivery. It isn't about intrigue & virtue signalling. 

India in Transition asked Tariq Thachil, former Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India,

in Pennsylvania- a place where there is zero interest in, or knowledge of, India. 

to put together a reading list of key works for students and scholars to better understand the rise of Hindu nationalism and the BJP.

This is a reading list for those who want to completely misunderstand Indian politics.  

Thachil’s first book, Elite Parties, Poor Voters (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which looked at how elite parties use social services to win mass support through a study of Hindu nationalism, won the 2015 Gregory Luebbert Award for best book in comparative politics, and the 2015 Leon Epstein Award for best book on political parties, from the American Political Science Association.

Did any Indian politician or political analyst read it? No. Why? It was shit.  

Its publisher describes it thus-

Tariq Thachil shows how arguments from studies of wealthy democracies (such as moral values voting) and the global south (such as patronage or ethnic appeals) cannot explain why poor voters in poor countries support parties that represent elite policy interests. 

In 1946, why did poor Muslims vote for the Muslim League even though it could plausibly be called an elite party? The answer is that Muslims don't like kaffirs. But, kaffirs can come to feel the same way about jihadis. 

He instead draws on extensive survey data and fieldwork to document a novel strategy through which elite parties can recruit the poor, while retaining the rich.

How did Mrs Thatcher get working class English people to vote Tory? She promised to make them better off. True, this might mean having to break the back of the Coal Miner's Union. But, since nobody wanted to go back to the three-day week, that was a small price to pay for owning your own home and getting shares in public utilities. 

 He shows how these parties can win over disadvantaged voters by privately providing them with basic social services via grassroots affiliates.

This may have been plausible in 2014. It isn't now. The problem with 'grassroots affiliates' is that they tend to be gangsters. They take kickbacks ('cut-money'). They may also rape you or force your daughter into prostitution. Voters don't like this. They want 'universal provision' and the disintermediation of 'grassroots affiliates'. 

 Such outsourcing permits the party itself to continue to represent the policy interests of their privileged base. 

Also, these elites have turned the Post Office into a paedophile ring. Did you know that the elites are putting something in your coffee which causes you to forget Satanic abuse you undergo every night at the hands of a cabal of billionaires? 

Extends the study of why poor citizens vote against their interests to the non-Western world

Extends paranoid American theories to the rest of the world. 

The first book to provide a theory of social services as an electoral strategy,

In Econ, this is called Director's Law (after Aaron Director) Stigler's  1970 paper 'Director's Law of Public Income Redistribution' is the locus classicus though there had been previous theories of a similar sort. 

It is fucking obvious that political parties compete for votes by promising more and better social services. 

 explaining why parties use social services for electoral purposes, how services win votes, and when this strategy succeeds or fails

Why not explain, instead, why eating your own shit is a bad idea? After all, if there is a person stupid enough not to understand why better social services garner more votes, then that person may currently be eating her own shit and wondering why she feels ill all the time. 

CASI Managing Editor Rohan Venkat spoke to Thachil about the books and papers he chose – from the canonical “insider” study of the RSS’ organisational working, to works that examine the movement’s efforts to broaden support across caste, gender, and geographical boundaries, to a paper that studies Modi’s personal appeal – and asked about his own book as well as non-Indian scholarship that might offer a useful perspective on the success of Hindu nationalism.

Congress, as Gandhi said in 1939, is a Hindu party. It was nationalistic because Hindus wanted to take over the nice offices and mansions which the Brits had built for themselves. We may say 'Gandhi's Congress followed the line of Gokhale. The BJP followed the line of Tilak. Since all Gandhi's policies failed and then all Nehru's policies failed, Hindus have returned to the path of Tilak.  

The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, Walter K Anderson & Shridhar D Damle (Westview Press, 1987)

It was quite well researched but tends to miss the wood for the trees.  Still, it pays tribute to some unsung heroes- e.g. Ganesh Savarkar

'G. D. (alias Babarao) Savarkar, a former revolutionary and the older brother of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, helped the RSS expand into western Maharashtra. He merged his own Tarun Hindu Sabha (Hindu Youth) as well as the Mukteshwar Dal (Liberation Organization), associated with Pachalegoankar Maharaj (a Hindu saint who passed away in 1986), into the RSS. He accompanied Hedgewar on trips to western Maharashtra, introducing him to Hindu nationalists. Some of these contacts (e.g., K. B. Limaye, Vinayak Apte, and Bhaurao Abhyanker) were to become prominent RSS officials in Maharashtra. Pune developed into the center of RSS activities in western Maharashtra.'

Dalme stresses that the Congress ban on dual-membership meant that the RSS would either have to stay with the Mahasabha, whose President its head did not get on with, or else find some other party to join. This difficulty was solved when SP Mookerjee broke with the Mahasabha. 

All of the books I’m going to recommend are to help understand the rise of something that we would call Hindu nationalism.

Which started gathering steam in the 1880s. Incidentally, AO Hume, who founded the Congress party, was a Vedantist who advocated cow-protection. 

Some might call it the Hindu Right, or Hindutva, in terms of the ideology it represents, but all of these are linked to the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the current ruling party in India.

Both these dudes are of Indian origin. Why are they talking about the place as if it was some distant planet?  

That party is the political arm of a family of organisations called the “Sangh Parivar,” linked by this shared ideology of Hindu nationalism or Hinduvta. And the parent organisation within the Sangh Parivar is called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the RSS, which sometimes calls itself the largest NGO or civil society organisation in the world.

Hardikar & Hegdewar were Maharashtrian Medical students in Calcutta before the Great War. They were inspired by the 'Anushilan Samitis' (which gave training in martial arts) set up by Hindu revolutionaries in Bengal. Hardikar set up the Congress Seva Dal as a paramilitary outfit with the help of Nehru. But Congress itself could be banned at any time & so Hegdewar set up the RSS as a 'social', not 'political', organization. Its volunteers did good work and thus it was able to expand. Interestingly, those who became full-time 'pracharaks' chose celibacy. Unlike the Seva Dal, which degenerated into a bunch of sycophantic careerists, sociopathic opportunists & outright thugs, the RSS preserved a good moral ethos as a sort of cross between the Boy Scouts & the Rotarians. 

After Independence, the RSS helped Shyam Prasad Mookerjee (the son of the great Sir Ashutosh) found the Jan Sangh. Once Nehruvian policies failed, the Jan Sangh, like other non-Congress parties, began to rise. The 1967 elections were the turning point. You could travel from Amritsar to Calcutta without setting foot in a Congress ruled state. Then, Indira Gandhi got shot of the senile shitheads of the Syndicate and make her party Dynastic. She was actually less shitty than Morarji Desai, which is why she prevailed. 

I don’t think you can understand the rise of the Hindu Right in India without first fundamentally understanding the RSS.

Which this nutter refuses to do though the thing is blindingly obvious.  

It was the foundational organisation out of which the BJP grew and without which the BJP would not have been able to persist and survive in Indian politics long enough to achieve the success it has today. The resilience of the BJP, and its ability to survive in relative political obscurity for many decades was really predicated on having this “strong organisation” behind it, which is much discussed but not always understood.

No. The Jan Sangh had some good leaders- Vajpayee, Advani, Nanaji Deshmukh- and both Lohia & JP Narayan were prepared to use them so as to take on the Congress Party- more particularly under Indira.  

So, at the beginning of this list, I wanted to recommend a book that really unpacks the workings of the RSS. The great strength of the RSS, that even its critics will accept, is its organisational prowess, the loyalty of its cadres to the cause, and its willingness to do the painstaking work of propagating their ideology person-by-person.

Congress Seva Dal did the same thing but became decadent. By the mid Seventies, if a man said 'my son attends the RSS shaka', you understood that the boy was of good character. If you said 'my son is in the Youth Congress', you understood that he was either a pimp or a thug.  

Anderson and Damle is the classic text and the first major English language academic book to provide a view of the inner workings of the RSS.

Anderson may simply have been naive & ignorant. Damle had an agenda. Consider the following-

' Hedgewar's revolutionary past and the paramilitary nature of the RSS convinced the Central Provinces Home Department that the RSS could develop into a dangerous revolutionary group, and this suspicion continued throughout the pre-independence period. 

More to the point, it might get involved in communal riots. Thus the administration needed to know whom to arrest or extern from the District if a flare-up was expected. But the Khaksars and other such groups were also under surveillance. 

In fact, the RSS remained scrupulously nonpolitical 

Hegdewar himself would resign so as to go to jail as part of a Congress agitation. The problem was that 'freedom fighters' were pushing against an open door. The only question was who would dominate India when the Brits departed. The answer was, he who controls the army controls the country. That is why Gandhi kept demanding the Brits hand over the Army to Congress. 

and it was not until after independence that it began seriously to consider political activities. People who knew the RSS well, such as Dr. Hardikar, the leader of the Hindustan Seva Dal (the youth unit of the Congress) criticized the RSS for its refusal to get politically involved.

He knew there was an undercover cop noting down his speech. He wanted to preserve the RSS's alibi for obvious reasons. 

 V. D. Savarkar, the president of the Hindu Mahasabha after 1937, frequently denounced the RSS for its "purely cultural" orientation.

He was an old-school revolutionary of the pre-War type who thought assassinations were a good idea. 

 In his typically frank manner, Savarkar publicly stated, "The epitaph for the RSS volunteer will be that he was born, he joined the RSS and he died without accomplishing anything.

Unless he volunteered to help flood victims or to build a school etc. 

Brotherhood in Saffron unpacked how the RSS worked organisationally and focused on the day-to-day work of building the organisation and how it ran. Understanding the RSS as an organisation and not just an ideological formation is what Anderson and Damle do brilliantly. And that’s why it remains a landmark book to understand the wider Sangh Parivar.

Not really. We understand that joining the RSS and doing voluntary work gains you respect and trust. This in turn means you can rise in the Co-operative movement or Trade Union movement or that of the Agriculturists etc. RSS lawyers and Doctors tend to do a lot of pro bono work and this raises their prestige. They can get good grooms and brides for their children. However, for many, the attraction of both Gandhian as well as RSS type movements was that caste barriers were broken down. In other words, the burden of maintaining ritual purity was lifted because people felt you were doing something worthwhile for the country as a whole. 

It must also be said, provincial India was as dull as ditch-water. The big cities did have brothels and wine-shops but you either got syphilis or cirrhosis. Even doing voluntary work was better than either dying of boredom or dying of the clap. 

They published a recent follow-up, The RSS: A View to the Inside (Penguin Viking, 2018), but the first is more impactful. There is a tendency with a lot of this scholarship to focus on tall leaders and heads of movements. The contribution of this book was to show that it is the everyday workings of thousands and later tens of thousands of volunteers that is the strength of the RSS.

It is also the strength of the Republican party and the Democratic party and every other party in every democracy under the Sun.  

The book has its critics. Damle, himself, was part of the reason they had access to RSS insider information, since he was an affiliate, and very much someone who is not held at a “full arm’s length” from the movement.

He stresses that the RSS was about being a good and decent person rather than an assassin or a bank robber.  

That relationship permitted insider knowledge that the book draws on. More critical observers of the movement have rightly criticised the book as overly sympathetic, and even celebratory.

Why does Damle not reveal details of the Satanic orgies in which RSS pracharaks bathe in the blood of Muslim virgins?  

But those valid concerns should not obscure the fact that the best parts of the book delineate the day-to-day workings of the organisation in a way we previously had not seen.

Few Indians would need to read a book to grasp how the RSS works.  

The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India, Christophe Jaffrelot (Columbia University Press, 1996)

which ignores the fact that Congress was the embodiment of that movement. 

This is a long, dense book, and one that I don’t suggest you try to read start-to-finish in one sitting. But to this day, it remains the most encyclopedic account of the rise of the Hindu nationalist movement,

which began around the time Hindus started organizing to get rid of foreign invaders whom they described a 'mleccha'. It would be fair to say that the Greek struggle for independence from the Ottoman Turks inspired English speaking Indians like Raja Ram Mohun Roy. The idea was that India had once been as culturally and scientifically rich as ancient Greece but, like that unfortunate country, it had become poor and ignorant because of centuries of Islamic misrule.  

touching on all aspects – electoral, non-electoral, ideological. If you want a reference text to understand this century-old movement, if you want granular details about how the different wings of the movement work with and are sometimes in conflict with each other, this is the benchmark text.

If you have Hindus and hope the Indian nation will disintegrate, this is the book for you.  

Hindutva and Dalits; Perspectives for Understanding Communal Praxis, Edited by Anand Teltumbde (SAGE and Stree-Samya Books, 2005)

Why do Dalits prefer Hindutva- which wants to get rid of casteist thinking- to Islam- which thinks Dalit kaffirs should be killed same as all the other types of kaffir? 

Teltumbde doesn't know.  

One of the key aspects of the rise of Hindu nationalism was its growth in appeal from what was seen as, for many decades, a niche social movement that had a very loyal organisational base, but one whose political support was circumscribed to very particular parts of Indian society – specifically upper-caste Hindus.

Upper-caste Hindus wanted to get rid of various ritual taboos. That's why they joined Nationalist outfits which promoted 'inter-dining'. Also, in the Army, we see the son of a Duke taking orders from the son of a cobbler. If he didn't do so, there would be no fucking Army. India would either be enslaved yet again or it would get rid of casteism- including the dynastic rule of a nice Italian lady's mooncalf of a son.  

The BJP was often dubbed a “Brahmin, Bania” party.

Nehru in his Autobiography said India had become 'Bania-ified' (i.e. merchants had too big a role). His mission was to 're-Brahminize' it. 

The Jan Sangh was dismissed as the 'traders' party'.  

That really started to shift in the 2000s when other social groups – particularly from non-elite and marginalised Hindu communities – began to voice support for Hindu nationalism.

They had supported Congress because it was the muscular arm of Hindu nationalism (even though Gandhi would keep pretending that Hindus were incapable of defending themselves. But that was because he wanted the Brits to hand over the Army to him. Otherwise Muslims & Punjabis (irrespective of creed) would grab all the nice shiny things. ) 

Electorally, the BJP could not be the dominant force it is today without having spread its appeal outside of upper-caste Hindus, who are a small fraction of India’s population.

That could be said of Congress & the Communist parties.  

Those in the movement and the party knew they had to overcome this pigeon-holing. But for a long time, external observers thought the BJP could never have mass appeal.

Only if they had been brainwashed by the Left. 

Teltumbde’s book, an edited volume with work by many scholars, does a great job of raising the question of how the movement expanded. Much of the book was prompted by the participation of some Dalit individuals in Hindutva mobilisations, especially the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat.

Why did Dalits & Tribals kill Muslim usurers or other gangsters? Didn't they know it was their duty to play second fiddle to Muslims so that Islamic rule could be re-established in India?  

Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India, Kalyani Devaki Menon (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010)

A Hindu nun- like Uma Bharati- could become Chief Minister even though she was of 'Backward Caste'. The Hindu right will promote Hindus, regardless of gender or caste, on the basis of merit.  Why? Hindus want Hindus to prosper and gain in strength. 

 It is not intuitively obvious why women might be attracted to a masculinist, sometimes aggressive, often violent movement.

Women don't want to become Chief Minister. What they really want is to be raped and robbed by all and sundry. Indeed, a woman whose breasts are being lopped off by a rapist will become very indignant if some masculinist & aggressive person uses violence against her assailant.  

One of the things I really like about Menon’s book – and several others on this list – is that none of them reach for what I see as lazy arguments about “false consciousness”. It’s not that women are being forced or coerced into participation. There are complex reasons why they find participation in the movement appealing or affirming, and she’s trying to help make sense of that.

It really is very difficult to understand why a woman would rather be Chief Minister rather than a victim of rape.  

Riot Politics: Hindu-Muslim Violence and the Indian State, Ward Berenschot (Columbia University Press, 2011)

Nehru presided over the biggest ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the sub-continent.  

I picked this for two reasons. One, it would be remiss to have a reading list on the rise of Hindu nationalism without at least one text that fundamentally foregrounds violence, because violence has been an integral strategy for the expansion of the movement.

Why did Gandhi go to Champaran in 1917? The answer is that Bihar was consumed by cow-protection riots. Gandhi helped create a distraction so as to preserve the Congress/Muslim League pact negotiated by Jinnah.  

I, myself, have written about how movements like the Rath Yatras of the 1980s and 1990s or the massive amount of violence following the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 were harnessed to consolidate upper-caste support for the BJP at a critical time, when it was trying to move from obscurity to relevance.

It had stopped being 'obscure' in 1977. Nanaji was offered the Deputy Prime-Ministership. Vajpayee got the External Affairs portfolio.  

Violence had a role to play in the gradual expansion of the party’s workings,

Rajiv didn't get re-elected with a huge majority after Sikhs were slaughtered in Delhi. What actually happened was that Sikhs committed suicide because they were so sad that Indira had died.  

and Berenschot documents this process at the very local level in Gujarat, the state where the BJP has enjoyed the most consistent support over a long period of time.

Behenchooth, the famous Indian expert on Dutch politics, has documented the manner in which trillions of Muslims were tickled to death in Amsterdam by Geert Wilders. He also sodomized Uranus with his giant, invisible, cock. 

In particular, he looks at how the ability to produce violence or “riots” is deeply intertwined with everyday politics

 Modi put an end to the periodic riots in Gujarat which started in 1969. 

. He looks at what political scientists called “patronage politics,” where you have to go to politicians as a voter and ask them for help, which they will provide in return for support. This sort of discretionary exchange is what makes politics work.

No. Modi has shown that voters hate that shite. Entitlements must be universal. If they are discretionary then the party machine at the local level will be taken over by thugs who will demand 'cut-money' in between raping and robbing everybody in the vicinity. 

The Greater India Experiment: Hindutva and the Northeast, Arkotong Longkumer (Stanford University Press, 2021)

Places which fear Muslim infiltration will switch from Congress to the BJP. File under 'sad but true'.  

What all these books have in common is that

they don't mention the elephant in the room- viz. fear of demographic replacement by Muslims. This is becoming a factor in European politics.  

The Politics of Vishwas: Political Mobilization in the 2019 National Election, Neelanjan Sircar (Contemporary South Asia, May 2020)

This is a great paper.

It is shit. This is the abstract-

In this article, I develop a model of the politics of vishwas (trust/belief). 

Why bother? Nobody votes for a guy they don't trust or have faith in. 

This is a form of personal politics in which voters prefer to centralize political power in a strong leader, 

No. That is Dictatorship or Autocracy. It can also be called plebiscitary Caesarism- e.g. Hitler as Fuhrer or Mussolini as Il Duce. 

and trust the leader to make good decisions for the polity

in a Democracy, elected representatives are trusted to make good decisions in the public interest. 

 – in contrast to the standard models of democratic accountability and issue-based politics.

Only a trustworthy person is capable of accountability.  Political issues gain salience where there is a divergence of opinion regarding what needs to be done and in what sequence things should be done. 

If people don't trust you, they don't think you can account for your actions or that you will tackle political issues in a proper manner. 

 I argue that two factors lead to the BJP using the politics of vishwas to dominate Indian politics.

The party which wins the election is the one which a plurality of voters considers most trustworthy. 

 First, like much of the world, there is an increasingly strong axis of conflict between those who believe in a unitary (Hindu) national identity for India

which is what it got in 1947

 and those who view India in ‘multicultural’ terms.

Hinduism is the name of a Religion not a culture. 

 This obliges supporters of Hindu nationalism to support political centralization to stymie federalism, 

Which is what the country chose from 1947 onward. What changed was the penalty for secessionism got heavier. 

which would require negotiation across regional, linguistic, caste, and religious identities.

There was no negotiation after partition. Muslims could either shut up or fuck off. 

 Second, the BJP’s control of media and communication with the voter, in tandem with a strong party machinery, give the party structural advantages in mobilizing voters around the messages of Narendra Modi. I find that this change in Indian politics is reflected in voter turnout behavior in India.

Why, then, did BJP lose its majority in 2024? 

One of my bugbears with academic research – and we’ve talked about this before – is that I don’t think we have great work in political science explaining the specific impact of Modi.

You also don't have great work in Physics explaining why you will hurt yourself quite badly if you jump out of a window on the tenth floor of a building.  

... what Sircar talks about in this piece is persuasive. He argues that the biggest shift under the BJP and Modi has been the centralisation of political power.

That happened under Nehru & reached its acme under Indira & Rajiv.  

... Sircar documents how the BJP under Modi is increasingly relying on the trust in a strong leader and the belief in that leader’s ability to do right by his supporters, irrespective of the actual performance record.

Which political party says 'our leader is shit. Don't vote for us.'?  

He distinguishes from a politics of vikas, or development – the meat-and-potatoes politics that we think drives a lot of support – and the “politics of vishwas,” of trust in a leader like Modi.

If you don't trust a guy to deliver development, you won't vote for him.  

It’s not really about tallying performance, but the underlying trust in an individual, communicated by a strong party organisation.

Sadly, that isn't enough. You have to show that every guy from your party who is standing for election is trustworthy and better than his rival.  

Rohan: Two follow-ups. Tell us about your own book, Elite Parties, Poor Voters (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

That book was an attempt to understand what was happening with the BJP. It came out a few months after the 2014 election, which was the first in which the BJP under Modi came to power, and they have remained in power since. My interest was to see how the BJP consolidated support across the central belt of India from Gujarat to Chhattisgarh. I basically argued that it did so by being able to create this unlikely social coalition between its core base, upper-caste Hindus, and disadvantaged and marginalised castes, specifically Dalits and Adivasis.

Who were Hindus & who had strong reasons to hate Muslims. But it was corruption which brought down Congress- more particularly because Rahul refused to step up to the plate.  

The question was “how did they do that?” and the simple answer in the book was that they did it through a division of labor. The BJP at the time remained very much oriented to the interests of its upper-caste core.

Did you know that Modi is actually a British aristocrat named Lord Nicholas Maugham?  

The policies that the upper castes favored at the time was where the party oriented itself, whether on questions of economic liberalisation or caste quotas. And it outsourced the recruitment of Dalits and Adivasi voters to its social movement partners.

i.e. the RSS.

This is why it’s so important to think of the BJP’s rise as embedded within the Hindu nationalist movement, and specifically organisations that style themselves as seva organisation. Seva Bharti, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram – which works for tribal communities specifically – and others. The book detailed that process and how it worked. Part of it was trying to show that, while there’s no question that the current dominance of the BJP owes a lot to the personal popularity of Narendra Modi, a lot of the groundwork to make the BJP even come up to the position to where it could be on the precipice of dominance was long in the making, well before 2014.

In other words, the RSS did the sort of stuff Congress Seva Dal should have been doing. Modi, first in Gujarat and then in Delhi, is doing the stuff a good Prime Minister should be doing. It appears that his cabinet is clean and efficient rather than corrupt and consumed by intrigue. 

Still, Modi can't afford to be complacent. He isn't a Professor of stupid shit in Amerika. He could get the order of the boot in 2029. 

The Economist on Modi vs Mughals

The Economist has a foolish issue titled 'What have the Mughals ever done for us?'

 The answer is- nothing. They lost power 300 years ago. They can't do shit for themselves, let alone anybody else. 

How India’s greatest Muslim empire built its most powerful Hindu party

The BJP was created by the RSS- an anti-British, high-caste, Hindu outfit just like the Congress party. Indeed, Dr. Hardikar- who created the Congress Seva Dal- was an old college chum of Dr. Hegdewar- who founded the RSS a few years later just in case the Seva Dal was banned. 

In speeches to  supporters, to parliament and to the nation, Narendra Modi has repeatedly invoked India’s centuries of slavery.

Because Sonia Gandhi was of Italian origin. Modi was saying that the Dynasty was foreign. Manmohan Singh was a 'prone' Minister who had no power of his own.  The Congress party was just a bunch of sycophants currying favour with the Ruling Family. 

Soon after taking power in 2014, he lamented that “the mentality of 1,200 years of slavery continues to haunt us.

Modi was speaking in Delhi. He was appealing to the indigenous tribes & communities of the region who felt alienated from successive dynasties (including Rajput rulers like Pritviraj, though Modi didn't say so). Modi was from Gujarat but had some how turned himself into a UP-wallah in Benares- where was elected to the Central Parliament- and some sort of Jat or Gujjar in Delhi & Haryana.  

'It is often a challenge for us to hold our heads high when speaking to someone of even slightly elevated stature.”

This was a dig at Manmohan- a Sikh who served a Dynasty which had slaughtered his people in Delhi some twenty years previously. Essentially, Modi was presenting himself as restoring 'subaltern' rule to the Capital City which had been dominated by elites & aristocrats who looked down on the toiling masses. Towards this end, he changed the name of 'Rajpath' (King's Way) to Kartavya path (path of Duty) four years ago. It should be mentioned, Modi is the first 'Backward Caste' Prime Minister. He couldn't afford to go to College. Yet, by merit alone, he had been Gujarat's longest serving and most successful Chief Minister. He now looks set to complete an even longer stint as PM. There has been nothing like him in the annals of Indian politics. 

Consider his 'missed call' strategy in the 2014 election. Originally this was a voter mobilization technique. But then he pivoted and said 'take my mobile number. If you don't get your entitlement- give 'missed call'. My team will get back to you within a couple of days & solve the problem. This was more than 'approachability'. It was 'customer service'. For the first time, India had a leader who thought his job was to ensure 'last mile delivery'.  

The chief target of the grievance is the series of Muslim empires

which had yielded to a Hindu Maratha Empire 

that came before British colonialism.

Fuck that. Nehru had presided over massive ethnic cleaning of Muslims. In Delhi their population share plummeted from 33 percent to 5 percent. Muslims who had fled across the border in panic were not permitted to return. They were stripped of citizenship. Reservations or affirmative action of any kind were denied to them.  Urdu lost its status as Hindi in Devanagari script was made the official language. The BJP can't compete with Congress when it comes to killing Muslims- or Sikhs, for that matter. Thus Modi was playing up the OBC/Dalit/ST angle. That is why he has had a second Dalit President and now, for the first time ever, a lady President from the 'Tribal' Santhal community. Modi understands that 'Mandal' is more important than 'Mandir'- i.e. empowerment of 'Backward' castes & women is the name of the game. True, building the Ram Temple creates a feel good factor but what really matters is India's ongoing social revolution. The poorer OBC woman is now the decisive swing voter. That's why Modi is betting big on reserved seats for women. 

The Mughals were the longest-lasting of those.

They were big for about 200 years. The Sultanate lasted for more than 300 years.  

April 21st marks exactly 500 years since the Battle of Panipat, when Babur, a Central Asian descendant of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan (hence “Mughal”, from “Mongol”), defeated the last sultan of Delhi.

Who was of Afghan descent.  

The empire he established was, at its height, one of the world’s richest and most powerful.

India, like China, benefitted from Mexican silver but, because it was getting cut out of even Indian ocean trade, it was bound to decline.  

Its rulers adopted customs of Indian kingship, married locally and in effect became Indian

like the Sultanate & the Nizamat & so forth 

(unlike the Brits).

There were plenty of Eurasians. Joe Biden has an Indian cousin.  

Their achievements are Indian achievements.

They were Indian aristocrats. Modi isn't an aristocrat at all. Unlike the Dynasty, his ancestor hadn't served first the Mughals & then John Company. They weren't educated. They were oil pressers by profession living in small towns and villages.  

Yet the quincentenary of the empire’s founding will pass without note.

Because they vanished long long ago.  

The Mughals, Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) insists, destroyed temples (which is true) and humiliated Hindus (which is contested). They took everything India had. And what, the ideology asks, did they ever give us in return?

Opportunities to get castrated to serve in the harem as eunuchs?  

Language, for one thing.

We don't speak Chagatai Turk. We do speak English. Why? The whole world speaks English.  

Mr Modi’s speech in 2014 was delivered in Hindi, India’s most spoken tongue. Of the 28 words that made up the original of his quote above, a quarter entered India via Persian,

the Mughals weren't Persian. It was the Sultanate which adopted Persian which in fact was a big lingua franca at one time.  

points out Richard Eaton, a historian of Muslim India. The language of the Mughal court infuses the vocabulary of most northern Indian languages.

Urdu, I suppose is a Turkic/Mongol word. It is the same as the English word 'horde'.  

Indeed, “Hindi” and “Hindu” both come from “Hind”, the Persian name for the river known in English as the Indus (thus “India”). But what, apart from putting the “Hindu” in “Hindu nationalism”, have the Mughals ever done for us?

Nothing. They descended into destitution long ago. Every other day, some newspaper will pick up some beggar & say they are the heir to the Peacock Throone.  

The cuisine known globally as “Indian” is in India called “Mughlai”.

It isn't what Modi eats. He has 'thali' like most Hindus.  The fact is you go to a restaurant to eat stuff you don't cook at home. 

The tandoor, a clay oven from which emerge flaky naans and charred kebabs, came from the Persianate world, as did samosas, sherbets, various desserts and biryani—India’s most-ordered dish on delivery apps for ten years straight.

So what? Pizza too is popular. As for 'Gobi Manchurian', don't get me started.  

The party-pooper wing of the BJP frowns on meat and eggs but even vegetarians enjoy a good tandoori paneer (from the Persian panir, a kind of cottage cheese that probably came via Afghans).

Actually, Indian cuisine owes more to the Portuguese & Spanish who introduced new vegetables, chilis & dishes like ras malai.  

Granted, tandoori anything is irresistible.

So are potato chips & tomato ketchup.  

But what, apart from language and food, have the Mughals ever done for us?

Does this nutter really think Babur invented Persian or the tandoor?  

Four of India’s ten most popular ticketed historical sites for local tourists, and six among foreigners, were built by Mughals.

But, relative to its size & population, Tourism isn't big business in India. The truth is the most visited places are Hindu religious sites.  

The Taj Mahal tops both lists. Every year the prime minister delivers an Independence Day speech from the Red Fort, a Mughal monument in Delhi so central to India’s self-image it features on the back of the most common banknote.

Only because the Brits didn't blow it up. But, truth be told, it's a bit shitty.  

The sitar, made famous by George Harrison,

who he?  

is a product of the Mughal era.

Babur invented sitar. Sadly he tried to turn it into a biryani by cooking it in tandoor.  

The sherwani, worn by grooms Hindu and Muslim, evolved from Mughal court dress.

It bears no resemblance to the angarkha. Seeing British soldiers kick ass convinced Indians that men should not wear colourful frocks. 

“The popular religions of medieval India, Sufism, the Urdu language, and Indo-Saracen art were the common property of the conquerors and the conquered, and tended to blend them together,” wrote Jadunath Sarkar, a revered Indian historian.

This happened during the Sultanate.  

Persian translations of Hindu epics were commissioned by Akbar, a Mughal emperor fascinated by religious practices (a trait Aurangzeb, his great-grandson and a keen demolisher of temples, did not share).

But it was a trait Dara Shikoh, Aurangazeb's elder brother, displayed to a greater degree.  

But what, apart from language, food, architecture, music, art and syncretism

all of which already existed before Babur was chased out of the Ferghana Valley 

have the Mughals ever done for us?

Mughals invented tandoori sitar biryani. If you smoke a lot of ganja, you will find it very tasty.  

They brought the BJP to power.

No. Rahul's yellow streak brought Modi to power. He should have shouldered aside Manmohan, become PM & led his party to victory in 2014.  

In 1990, when the party held just 16% of seats in parliament,

In 1985, it had 0.3 %. After Indira was assassinated, her son won by a landslide- a reward for the killing of lots of Sikhs.  

it launched a national campaign demanding a temple on the ground said to be the birthplace of Lord Ram, the protagonist of the Ramayana.

Rajiv had opened it to Hindu worship. He should have built the Ram Temple himself & probably would have done if he hadn't been killed. Sonia promised to build it in 2002 when Rahul returned to India.  

At that site stood a mosque built during the reign of Babur, the first Mughal emperor. In 1992 a mob demolished the mosque under the gaze of BJP officials, sparking a nationwide conflagration

Muslims acted up & were massacred. Minorities get stomped if they start any rough stuff. File under- sad but true.  

that forged the party’s base,

The RSS & 'Sangh parivar' had forged it long ago.  

eventually propelling it to office.

It had been part of the Janata coalition in 1977. As the other components of that alliance either imploded or became factionalized, Atal Behari Vajpayee emerged as a popular PM. But his was a coalition government & he himself more than a little senile.  

By early 2024, when Mr Modi consecrated the promised temple, his party held 56% of seats.

Thanks to Rahul's utter uselessness. But, under Kharge, Congress was able to make some good pre-poll pacts which is why the BJP no longer has a majority.  

It has spent the past decade renaming Mughal cities, rejecting Mughal cuisine, and writing Mughals out of history books.

Nobody gives a flying fuck. What matters is whether 'Backward castes' & women feel they are getting an increasing share of power. Also, cash transfers. Everybody likes money.  

It is one thing to raze an edifice of brick and mortar. It is harder to eradicate a culture that

disappeared three hundred years ago.  

has over five centuries permeated India’s blood and soil.

Fuck off! India's blood & soil cares only about money- not Mughals or Mauryas or Lord fucking Mountbatten.  

That, then, is the best answer to their question of what the Mughals have ever done for them. They gave political Hinduism its eternal, indispensable villain.

No. Akbar wasn't a fucking jihadi suicide bomber. He was too busy baking sitars in the tandoor to serve up as biryani.  

Fareed Zakaria on Modi

Zakaria comes from an important Congress political family. He was a student of Huntington- indeed he commissioned the famous 'Clash of Civilizations' article from Huntington for 'Foreign Affairs' of which he became the editor at the very young age of 28. Had he remained in Academia, he would, no doubt, be an Ivy League Professor. 

Still, even without a berth in Academia, such was Zakaria's brilliance that, some 20 years ago, people spoke of him as a future Secretary of State- i.e. the Kissinger of the Twenty First Century. Sadly, America thought it could export democracy and 'the new world order' by slaughtering Muslims in remote deserts and mountains. Zakaria did well to keep out of that shit-show.

Turning to India, Zakaria says some odd things- e.g. to Tyler Cowan

If you’re speaking one of the languages (Hindi or Urdu), there’s a way to alternate between both, which a lot of Indian politicians used to do as a way of signaling a broad embrace of both the Hindu and the Muslim communities.

Zakaria did not notice that under Nehru, millions of Muslims were slaughtered or had to leave India. The last thing on their minds was whether they were being addressed in Hindi or Urdu.

 Moreover, Muslim League Mullahs, when addressing the common folk, had to use both the Islamic origin word as well as the ordinary Indic word in their discourse. Thus they might say 'munafiqat yani pakhand' or even 'shab yani raath'. Muhammad Ali Jinnah himself spoke very good Kutchi but had not received much instruction in Farsi and Urdu. This did not matter in the slightest. People understood he wanted Muslims to have a separate state even if it meant that 20 million Muslims in the Hindu majority areas were abandoned to a grisly fate.

Nehru, India’s first prime minister, used to often do that. He would say, “I am delighted to be coming here to your home.” He’d repeat the word home, first in Urdu, then in Hindi, so that in effect, both constituencies were covered.

Home is 'ghar' in both Hindi and Urdu. Nehru didn't say 'nivas'. He'd have looked a fool.  

Modi, by contrast, India’s current prime minister, is a great Hindu nationalist. He takes pains almost never to use an Urdu word when he speaks.

Zakaria, who has interviewed Modi on TV and heard him speak Hindi, clearly thinks that, as a Yalie 'native informant', Whitey will take him at his word, while his own brown brethren don't matter at all.

The fact is Modi  mixes Urdu and English just like everybody else though, as a politician, he does have a perfect command of bureaucratic Hindi. But so do I. So does anyone who ever prepared for the IAS exams. In any case, once he became CM or PM he'd have had good speech writers. Being a good orator, he probably polishes these up by replacing recondite words with the 'mot juste' which, itself, has to do with popular trends. 

He speaks in a kind of highly Sanskritized Hindi that most Indians actually find hard to understand because the everyday language, Bollywood Hindi, is a mixture of Hindi words and Urdu words, so there are Persian and Sanskrit origins.

Modi gained national attention as a spokesperson for the BJP of which he had become a national general secretary in 1998-99. He used the same Urdu terms e.g. 'aham mudda' as everybody else and peppered his discourse with English phrases- e.g. howm instead of 'vote to defeat', there would be 'vote to punish', those who had brought down Vajpayee's government in 1999. 

But for Modi and for people of his ilk in the BJP — his party — it’s very important to “cleanse the language Hindi from foreign influences.” That is why they will speak a very Sanskritized Hindi.

Nonsense! Brahmins like Vajpayee or Murli Manohar may have been expected to do so. But they too understood the need to appeal to the youth. The plain fact is, it was under Nehru that 'Hindization' on the basis of Sanskrit was pushed forward. This was because of a promise that had been made at the time when the Constitution was being drafted that Hindi would be made the national language by 1965. The problem was that nobody knew what was correct Hindi. The joke was that the thing the Government had concocted- and this was Nehru's government, nobody else's- was incomprehensible. Thus when the Radio announcer said 'now listen to the news in Hindi', what actually happened was you heard some Hindi in the news. But the same thing was happening in Pakistan. Words of Arabic and Persian origin were replacing those of indigenous origin. I may mention, in Tamil Nadu, Tamil too was being 'purified'. So what? By the Eighties, nobody gave a toss for those linguistic shibboleths.  

When did Modi begin his rise as a popular icon? I think an interview he gave in December 1998 to Zee TV was the turning point. The big question then was whether the RSS was interfering with the BJP. Were they trying to pull down Vajpayee? Were they adamant on the imposition of a Hindutva agenda even if this meant that the BJP could not lead a coalition? What about losses in Haryana and Delhi? Were they not self-inflicted wounds? 

The truth was that the RSS had its doubts about Vajpayee. They feared that a BJP government would become just as corrupt and complacent as a Congress administration. Could Modi- a hard-core RSS worker from a very modest background- dispel the doubts of the TV audience? Could he withstand a grilling by the urbane and very well-spoken TV anchor? The answer was yes. Modi spoke sensibly with a touch of humour. He said Hindutva 'is an article of faith'- he used that English phrase. Faith can't be imposed. Hindus know this is the teaching of all of their own sects. One can pray to God for the gift of Faith. One can't hire a guy to beat it into you. The RSS wants to revitalize and raise up every branch of national life. But, in politics, this can only be done by establishing 'credibility' through 'transparency' and improving 'coordination'. Modi sometimes supplies the Hindi equivalent of the English words he is using, but sometimes he does not bother to do so. What matters is that he has got his point across. Governance can't be on the basis of slogans or some magical ideology. It is a practical, wholly pragmatic, enterprise. 

Modi tackles the allegation that the BJP was trying to impose Hindu worship by pointing out that a previous PM- I.K Gujral- had the same Hindu prayer at a function. No one batted an eyelid then. It was the height of 'hypocrisy' to raise the matter now so as to pander to vote-bank politics. 

 Modi was able to win over the audience because he could admit that the BJP had made mistakes. It was a case of 'self-out' in Delhi. This raised a laugh. Modi admitted there had been coordination failures. In Haryana, the mood of the people had not been adequately prepared for the idea of prohibition. Modi explains that all parties need to re-establish credibility and improve coordination. True, he uses English words- and this can be a magical substitute for thinking- but he is choosing to fully answer the question as stated. He is candid. He can be quite humorous but one can see he is a serious man. But, he knows the existential threats facing the country can only be overcome by everybody working together. There is no 'top-down' solution. That is why he is speaking in a natural, not an oracular or obscurantist, manner. He is not repeating slogans. He is not ducking questions. He is saying 'I'm an RSS man. We want to revitalize every area of National life. But, Politics must be transparent (he adds the shuddh Hindi word for this) it must be focused on governance which is not a matter of Faith, it is a matter of learning to face new circumstances. In other words, the RSS did not think it had some magical remedy for what ailed India. It understood that governance was the same type of work as is done by any commercial enterprise. The public, too, Modi said, understands this. A true article of faith is not a playing card you can throw down to win the electoral jackpot. What was required was hard work, willingness to learn and adapt, and coordination and the maintenance of credibility through transparent processes. Modi himself, by speaking sensibly and admitting the shortcomings of his party, was contributing to this. 

It is odd that Indian intellectuals decided, against all the evidence, that Modi was a semi-literate Hitler who shouted slogans in shuddh Hindi. Zakaria says Modi is both the 'outsider' and the 'insider'. This is not true as far as Delhi is concerned. People who watched the Zee TV interview understood that Modi, as a general secretary of the ruling party, was an insider. Moreover, he showed he could disagree with senior people like Sushma Swaraj. True, he might be dropped by the High Command or sent back to his own Home State (which is what happened in 2001) but he was an accomplished professional and could choose the degree to which he wanted to be inside or outside the circles of power in Delhi. 

Zakaria repeats the canard that Modi is like Orban or Erdogan. What he does not get that is Modi rose in a professional, cadre based, political party. He is like Clinton- a successful Governor who became a successful President. He isn't like Trump or Orban or Erdogan who were ab ovo sui generis politicians or have become so. Ask the question, what happens if Modi drops dead? The answer is Shah takes over though they may pick a different figure going into a General Election. There are plenty of people of all sorts who have risen from the ranks of the RSS pracharak. Some are senior lawyers or engineers or educationists etc. I have no idea whom they will bring forward but I do know that, they will drop the fellow like a hot potato if he doesn't click with the voters. That is where Dynastic parties fall down. 

Zakaria is unusual in that he is a cheerleader for India- more particularly an India that goes much further down the path of reform. What he doesn't get is that Modi's 'viksit bharat sankalp yatra' is meant to provide a Social minimum or safety net such that factor mobility can improve, female participation can rise, and thus India can tackle existential environmental and other threats without losing its ethos as a Democracy under the Rule of Law. But, for transparent politics, you have to get rid of Dynasticism. For transparent Capital markets, you have to tackle the problem of the Joint Family enterprise where there is great opacity which inevitably give rise to succession battles which can sink the entire conglomerate. 

Zakaria does not mention India's true 'man of Destiny'- Rahul Gandhi- but for whose reluctance to take the job which got his granny and daddy shot- Modi would never have been the PM candidate in 2014. What type of language does Rahul speak? In Hindi, he is staccato when he isn't just shrill. In English, he is vacuous. In both, he is unelectable. That is why only the rustics of Wayanad- who understand neither English nor Hindi- will vote for him. Unless, they too are tired of his antics and switch to voting for Annie Raja, the wife of the Communist Party General Secretary. 

Fareed's latest book 'Age of Revolutions' warns that 'liberalism’s great strength has been freeing people from arbitrary constraints

This is nonsense. Either productivity was rising, which meant 'arbitrary constraints' were already being evaded or eroded, or else liberalism was shit. Consider the overthrow of the Portuguese monarchy in 1910. You had 'Liberal', anti-clerical, Republican administrations for 16 years. There were eight presidents and 45 ministries during that period. But productivity didn't rise. None shed a tear when those useless shitheads were kicked out by the Army. An economist, Salazar, was installed but productivity didn't rise much. It was only after another Revolution in the Seventies that Portugal could securely lodge itself on the path to affluence. 

—but its great weakness has been leaving individuals isolated, to figure out for themselves what makes for a good life. 

Liberalism says what makes for a good life is your rising in productivity and thus opulence. You can't be generous- i.e. liberal- if you are as poor as shit. True, if a bunch of Liberals take over a Malthusian shithole, there will be no 'Tardean mimetic effect' whereby ordinary people have a path to rise into opulence and political correctness by getting richer through higher productivity. But, in this case, sooner or later, either the Army or a peasant jacquerie will kick out those Liberals, or else slit their throats.  

Still, Zakaria is right. A true Liberal should be constantly interfering with people rather than letting them figure out for themselves whether they want some bien pensant Yalie to instruct them in the splendours of sodomy or the glories of gender reassignment surgery. 

This void – the hole in the heart – can all too easily be filled by tribalism, populism, and identity politics.

Only in the sense that the void in your rectum- the asshole in your buttocks- can all to easily be filled with various root vegetables and common household objects. A true Liberal would interfere actively in the lives of the population to prevent them shoving the vacuum cleaner up their arse or else filling their hearts with tribalism.  

Today’s revolutions in technology and culture can even leave people so adrift that they turn against modernity itself.

I live in a part of London where lots of the artists and intellectuals 'turned against modernity itself'. There was William Morris, there were the Pre-Raphaelites, there was G.K Chesterton, there was Yeats- indeed, both M.K Gandhi and Shri Aurobindo once lived down the road from me. So what? We don't care if Liberals ponce around in khadi dhotis or Morris's handloom garments or pretend they are medieval knights and speak to each other in Wardour Street English. All that matters is productivity. Is it rising? If so, well and good. Otherwise there will be tears before bedtime. 

Revolutions don't greatly matter. Wars- total Wars- do. Why? Failure to raise productivity directly gives rise to an existential threat. Stop doing stupid shit. Stop talking bollocks. Engage in Tardean mimetics- i.e. look around and see who has highest productivity in a particular sector and try to imitate them. If you can't, try to find some remunerative activity you have a comparative advantage in and double down on it. Don't listen to guys with PhDs in useless shite. 

Consider the following excerpt from Zakaria's vacuous tome- 

A Multitude of Revolutions

The comedian Robin Williams sometimes talked about politics in his stand-up routines. He would begin by reminding people of the origins of the word. "Politics," he would explain, comes from " 'Poli,' a Latin word meaning many, and 'tics' meaning bloodsucking creatures." He always got a big laugh.

Even in the time of Aristophanes, it was common knowledge that some demagogues, in the pay of tax-farmers, were dangerous parasites of this sort. Thus the guy who stands up in the Agora and makes an impassioned speech about how we have to conquer such and such island because its people are in league with the Persians, may be in the pay of the guy who hopes to get the contract for disposing of the slaves we will gain. Slaves and metics were important because productivity was important. But if you grow wealthy you also have to worry about being invaded. Public policy involved trade-offs between security and opulence. Moreover, where there was a particular 'Pareto improvement' there was still the question as to who would capture those gains. Thus Political Economy has always been about productivity. Without it, you lose any type of freedom unless you are willing to live like the Scythians.  

In fact, alas, the word derives from ancient Greek, from polites, which means citizen and itself comes from polis, meaning city or community.

This was irrelevant. There already were ideas about 'Nations' and 'tribes'. Particular cities may have originally been settled by different tribes or else such tribal identities were subsequently imposed. What mattered was the trade-off between productivity and security.  

Aristotle's Politics, written in the fourth century BC, is a book about the ways to govern communities, and it discusses all the elements of politics that we would find familiar today—the nature of power, types of political systems, causes of revolutions, and so on.

Aristotle had shit for brains. His student, Alexander, was doing the opposite of everything he suggested. 'Homonoia'- i.e. universal norms and laws- is cool if the Stationary Bandit has economies of scope and scale and can become a 'natural' monopolist of coercive power. This is what the US thought it had after Yeltsin got drunk and shat the bed. But, the West frittered away its Hegemonic power by wasting a lot of money killing Muslims in far off places. The problem here is that Muslims believe in God. Moreover, their God will grant them victory eventually. Since Muslims are smart and not continually drunk, the sensible thing is not to piss them off. Why not just transact business with them in a polite manner?  That's what the Chinese do. 

Politics is one of those rare human enterprises that hasn't changed that much over the millennia.

No. It has changed greatly because technology, and thus productivity, has changed greatly. Zakaria is a cretin. He thinks America didn't have a big Army because the Federal Government could not raise money for it. He forgets that the first modern 'total' war was the Civil War. If America didn't have a big army after that, it was because it was so fucking powerful nobody messed with it. Napoleon III's foray into Mexico collapsed of its own accord. At a later point, the Germans and Japs were stupid enough to think they could fuck with America. America actually grew richer swatting them down like flies. But it was raising productivity in all fields, including the field of military conquest (nuclear bombs are labour saving devices) and paying for it through taxation till the Vietnam war hotted up. After that, as Obama said, American foreign policy consisted of doing stupid shit. Still, at least Reagan had the sense to run away from shit-shows like Lebanon. Gorby had become aware of the productivity gap. He was such a fool that he thought the solution was to relinquish Party control of the economy without realizing this would immediately precipitate a 'scissors crisis'- i.e. different sectors would lose the incentive to supply each other unless existing 'shadow prices' equalled or exceeded 'spot prices'. Mathematical economists helped make this clear to the nomenklatura. Kantorovich, hilariously, thought he had found the correct theory of value. He hadn't. He had concentrated the minds of apparatchiks on the fact that the spot market price for Soviet oil was much higher than what it was getting for it from places like Cuba or North Korea. Fuck Communism. Let's all just get very rich and buy super-yachts in the same way the Arab Sheikhs do. 

Its outward forms have shifted, but its core concern remains the same: the struggle for power and what to do with it.

People may struggle for power within their own family or place of work. Political Economy is about raising productivity without endangering internal or external security. Zakaria wasted his time studying stupid shit.  

In 64 BC, Rome's greatest orator, Cicero,

who was Epicurean in Economics and Stoic in Jurisprudence. He understood money. Sadly, he was a bit of a blathershite.  

ran for the office of consul. His younger brother decided to write for him a guide of sorts to winning elections, a set of practical lessons for his sometimes too idealistic sibling.

Nonsense! That brother was considered a bit cracked in the head and prone to the use of cruel and unusual punishments. The 'Commentariolum' may have been written later by some pedagogue as a rhetorical exercise. Cicero and his brother were well educated but the family was clearly on the make. Still, a lawyer may well want to appear idealistic or moral or religious or as possessing good taste. But, if he and his family were worth killing, it is clear that they were part of the power-games of the period. 

Among his suggestions: promise everything to everyone, always be seen in public surrounded by your most passionate supporters, and remind voters of your opponents' sex scandals. More than two thousand years later, political consultants charge hefty fees to dispense the same advice.

This is like saying Doctors charge hefty fees for saying 'you should improve your health'. The truth is we pay for prescriptions only from those with superior domain-expertise or scientific knowledge. 

Despite these constants, in recent centuries, politics has taken on a particular ideological shape that would have been alien to those living in the ancient or medieval world.

Not really. All we can say is that at a certain point, political economy became philosophy while, at some other point, it became theology after which it could become ideology. Yet there were underlying continuities.  

Modern politics around the world has been characterized as a contest between the Left and the Right.

By guys like Zakaria- sure. But we didn't say 'Blair is to the Left of Major' and we don't say 'Starmer is to the Left of Sunak'. We said Blair can be an effective PM as we now say 'Starmer might be able to defeat his enemies in his own party. Sunak is bound to get knifed in the back by a colleague who in turn will soon be knifed in the back by his closest supporter'.  

The simple demarcation of Left and Right has traditionally said a lot about where someone stands, whether in Brazil, the United States, Germany, or India: on the left, a stronger state with more economic regulation and redistribution;

the left is associated with weaker states with more corruption. There can only be redistribution from immobile factors- but that tends to be the elderly or the stupid.  

on the right, a freer market with less governmental intervention.

Not necessarily. If less intervention is needed for productivity gains without which the state will collapse, a sensible politician will take that road no matter what ideological bollocks he spouts.  

This left-right divide had long dominated the political landscape of the world,

In England, my generation considered it meaningless. Why? In the Seventies, the academic Left doubled down on Prices and Incomes Policy, even though Callaghan & Healey knew it didn't work. But, in the US, it was Nixon who had introduced that policy. He truly was the last Keynesian. What Zakaria may not know is that the traditional Right was committed to the Bretton Woods straitjacket and embraced Exchange Controls and so forth whereas the upstart 'Hayekian' neo-Liberals were ready to abandon the traditional 'Corporatist' interest groups to their fate. In the Tory party, the 'Old Etonians' were wets who were wary of 'Big Bang' and deregulation while the 'Old Estonians'- i.e. Jews who remained such no matter where they went to School- were for Thatcher, Tebbit and 'Dagenham man'. Harold McMillan was the voice of the traditional Tory party denouncing the selling of the family silver- i.e. Privatization. 

defining elections, public debates, and policies, even provoking violence and revolution. But these days, this fundamental ideological division has broken down.

It broke down long ago. Essentially, the upper working class in OECD countries was voting against 'redistribution' at the end of the Sixties. By the end of the Seventies, they had turned against the Teamsters and 'Corporate Welfare'- i.e. paying big Companies to featherbed Unionized workers. 

Consider Donald Trump and his run for the presidency in 2016.

He could have been a Ross Perot type fizzle-out had he not monopolized a key issue- viz. immigration. What no one predicted was that the professional politicians were tender little flowers who would weep copiously and shit themselves if he tweeted something mean about them. 

Trump was a departure from the past in so many ways—his bizarre personality,

which suited a real-estate mogul who was also a Reality TV star 

his ignorance of public policy,

Reagan and Dubya were probably just as ignorant. So what?

and his flouting of democratic norms.

No such things exist.  

But perhaps the most significant sense in which Trump was different was ideological.

He was different because he had never taken a Government pay-check.  

For decades, the Republican Party had espoused a set of ideas that could be described as the Reagan formula.

The Republican party had various wings. I suppose Zakaria sees Reagan as in the Goldwater mould. However, the 'Reagan coalition' crucially involved disgruntled white blue-collar workers who felt abandoned by the Democrats. 

Ronald Reagan became an extraordinarily popular Republican by advocating limited government,

just like Carter.  

low taxes, cuts to government spending, a muscular military, and the promotion of democracy abroad. He also ran on a platform that was socially conservative

the key to his successive victories.  

—in favor of banning abortion, for instance—but he often downplayed these parts of the program, particularly once in office. To his many fans, Reagan was a sunny, optimistic figure who celebrated America's free markets, openness to trade, and generous immigration policies and wanted to spread its democratic model to the rest of the world.

'Star Wars' was the idea that Americans didn't need to maintain bases in far off countries so as to protect their Homeland from missiles.   

Trump argued against most elements of the Reagan formula.

NAFTA? 

While he did advocate some of the same policies—low taxes and limits on abortions—he devoted the vast majority of his time and energy to a very different agenda. Trump's hour-long campaign speeches could be boiled down to four lines: The Chinese are taking away your factories. The Mexicans are taking away your jobs. The Muslims are trying to kill you. I will beat them all up and make America great again.

The problem here is that it really was true that Companies had shut down factories on US soil and opened them in China. Mexicans really were competing for various types of jobs- and getting them because they worked harder or were more skilled. Jihadi Muslims did show up to blow up planes or just shoot up random strangers. What is bizarre is why Americans didn't vote for someone who promised to make their country utterly shit.

It was a message of nationalism, chauvinism, protectionism, and isolationism.

No. The message was- Hilary is shit. This is now conventional wisdom but it wasn't at that time.  

Trump broke with many core elements of Republican economic orthodoxy,

no such thing existed. Bush called Reaganomics 'Voodoo', but became his Veep happily enough.  

promising to never cut entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, which reversed decades of Republican fiscal conservatism.

This is one reason the Republicans need Trump. He can tell the budget hawks in Congress to shut the fuck up. If they don't, he will give them a mean nickname and broadcast it on Social Media.  

He denounced George W. Bush's military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq and condemned his geopolitical project of spreading democracy.

Who will stand up for Dubya? No one has heard from him since... when was it- 2006? Perhaps he is being held hostage by the Taliban. 

In fact, Trump savaged nearly every Republican standard-nearer in recent memory, and all the party's living presidents and almost all the living nominees rejected him.

None are worth shit.  

And while genuflecting before the Reagan myth, Trump could not have been more different—an angry, pessimistic figure who warned that America was doomed and promised a return to a mythic past.

Trump was like Reagan in that he got elected. He was unlike him in that he didn't get re-elected because he mishandled COVID. Also Biden might lose his temper and punch that fat fuck on live TV. Still, we can't be sure Biden will win again. 

Trump is not alone as a man of the right in breaking with traditional right-wing ideology. In fact, he's part of a global trend.

Of what? Billionaires getting elected despite having no political experience or solid party affiliations? Where else is this happening?  According to available research, billionaire political participation is well above the global average (which is 11 percent) in Russia, Hong Kong and Singapore where it is about 30 or 35 percent. In America it is about 4 percent. 

It should also be remembered that Trump has changed his party affiliation 5 times since 1987. For Zakaria that makes him a 'man of the right'. For us, it makes Zakaria an over-educated fool. 

Sanjay Srivastava's stupidity

Sanjay Srivastava is British Academy Global Professor at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London. He is also as stupid as shit. He writes in Scroll that

What accounts of growing Indian illiberalism miss: The grounds for bigotry were laid before 2014

That is certainly true. Hatred of Muslims goes back to the time of the first Muslim invasions of India. 

The growth of a Hindu-Indian diaspora, 

like the growth of a Confucian-Chinese diaspora, contributed to Indian Nationalism of a Left-Liberal type. Sun Yat Sen received support from Chinese in Malaysia and so forth. Mahatma Gandhi received support from Indians in South and East Africa. The Ghaddar party was supported by Indians in California and Canada. However, disillusioned with the Dynasty, Sikhs in Canada tended to redirect their support for Khalistan. Similarly, disillusion with Congress and the Left tended to redirect Hindus towards Hindutva politics. One reason for this 'identitarian' trend had to do with racism from the White majority and, in certain places, Christian proselytization. Furthermore, after the rise of Islamic terrorism in America and elsewhere, Hindus wanted to put clear blue water between themselves and the Muslims. 

the globalisation of Hinduism

Tolstoy read Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. That's plenty global. The Hare Krishna movement was visible all over the non-Communist globe by the end of the Seventies. 

 and effects of the rise of gated-communities

since California has the most gated communities, the statistical correlation will be with increased Liberalism or Libertarianism not religious chauvinism. 

 show the post-2014 shift was not overnight.

The only reason there was a change in 2014 was because Rahul hadn't taken over as PM, in 2014, so as to lead his party to victory over Advani- who was twice Rahul's age. The lion of Gujarat would have roared a little but would not have been allowed to go head to head against Rahul whom the voters would have given one chance if only for his father's sake. 

For liberal-minded observers of Indian society,

he means mindless virtue signaling libtards.  

the recent celebration of 75 years of independence has been an occasion – if one was needed – for outpourings of lament.

vomit is the mot juste. 

In print and online media – television has largely become impervious to serious debate

as has academia 

– in India and around the world, a variety of writers have movingly chronicled the illiberalism and the assiduously nurtured bigotry of the past eight years as personal grief.

We didn't believe them. They were merely play acting. 

In these writings, the years since 2014 have been set off against earlier histories

lies aren't histories 

of multiple bonds between Hindus and Muslims,

like what? Jinnah and Nehru taking turns bumming the Mahatma? 

traditions of syncretism in music, philosophy, food and cinema,

but syncretism doesn't mean ethnic cleansing is off the table. Ask the Sikhs.  

constitutional guarantees of equality in all respects

which were wholly meaningless 

and a “natural” acceptance of diversity in various forms.

including a natural acceptance of ethnic cleansing.

Yet, in all this stock-taking – frequently powerful and moving

for the bowels- maybe 

– there is something missing.

Intelligence- that is what is missing. 

What are the changed social and cultural realities that confront the formal and wished for indicators of a decent national life – the Constitution,

Srivastava lives in England which does not have a written Constitution 

 

laws, the judiciary, poetry, fiction, cinema, for example?

why lump poetry and fiction with the law and the judiciary? The latter are economic and represent 'mechanism design'. The former are wholly imagnative.  

What of the people themselves? What circumstances make them what they are?

Economic circumstances. That's not stuff an anthropologist has much of a grip upon. 

Thinking about this is not easy

It is easy enough for an economist.  

as we are not led to any straightforward answers to the predicaments of the present.

Yes we are so long as we don't consult stupid anthro-fucking-apologists.  

However, to not address it leads us to an even more difficult – if not absurd – perspective: that as soon as the 2014 general election results were declared, a substantial section of the Indian population suddenly changed from what it was to its complete antithesis. That one day, many Indians believed in Hindu-Muslim unity and the next, they either began to promote or, at the very least, tolerate bigotry.

Yet it is precisely this absurdity which this cretin has sought to address. Why not ask why British men started having vaginas instead of penises after Mrs. Thatcher became Prime Minister?  

To avoid this absurdist line of analysis, a follow-up question must be asked:

It is 'are you by any chance an anthropologist? If so- fuck off.' 

what changes can be identified in conditions of Indian life over the past few decades that may have prepared the grounds for shift in attitudes?

Islamic terrorism. The thing was a global nuisance. There was no point appeasing the unappeasable. It was a question of kill or be killed.  

What are the possible histories of such easy movements from moments of apparent tolerance and liberalism to their opposite?

Had Rahul stepped up to the plate Congress would have cobbled together a coalition in 2014. Then, like Rajiv, Rahul would have fallen because of a corruption scandal.  

This will avoid the untenable point of view that “that’s the way we are, just an irredeemably illiberal people at heart”.

It is not illiberal to want terrorists to be killed before they get around to slitting your throat.  

Thankfully, however, the cultural history of this part of the world shows no evidence of an inclination for violence and bigotry that is in excess of that in other parts of the planet.

Very true. I recall the anti-Sikh riots in London and Washington in 1984. Delhi wasn't exceptional at all. 

A more useful avenue might be to think of some of the recent changes in Indian society that might be the grounds for the normalisation of intolerance and hate.

Sikhs in America were attacked after 9/11. Recently, when COVID began Asian Americans were attacked. A lot of them have bought guns and learned how to use them. They are a sensible people.  

These might be the grounds for the political harvest whose blighted wheat sheafs surround us.

Why the fuck would a farmer bother to sheaf together blighted stems?  

One of the most significant contexts for the current institutionalisation of majoritarian politics in India relates to the maturing of the Indian diaspora in the west.

This is nonsense. The Indian diaspora did have some role in the Independence struggle. Khalistan did receive diaspora support. But diaspora politicians- Bobby Jindal, Kamala Harris, Priti Patel, Rishi Sunak etc.- have zero influence in India.  

By the early 2000s, Indians of Hindu background had become well enmeshed in the “multicultural” politics of their adopted homelands.

In Britain, Indians of Hindu background were well enmeshed in mainstream politics by the Seventies. In America, the first Indian origin Congressman was elected in 1957.  

This involved their ability to translate Indian culture in terms of a Hindu religious identity.

But 'Hindu religious identity' encodes Indian culture. The two are indistinguishable.  

Diversity of religious belief is a significant aspect of the idea of “tolerance” that underlies discourses of western multiculturalism.

But nobody in the West- aside from a couple of academics- gives a fuck about that discourse. Politicians would buy votes from darkies by playing up to their absurd shibboleths.  

In Christian-majority countries, the idea of non-western identity is primarily understood in religious terms.

Coz American racists believed Dr. Martin Luther King belonged to the jiggaboo religion- right? When I put on a crucifix, English people mistake me for Boris Johnson. That's why I sport a star of David and a yarmulke. 

An Arab Marxist or an Indian Humanist would be unrecognisable categories.

Very true. Indian humanists are frequently mistaken for public urinals.  

It is this understanding of multiculturalism that Indian Hindus have engaged with in terms of constructing their diasporic identities.

Coz they didn't want to be incessantly pissed on by Whites who mistook them for public urinals.  

Temples in the United Kingdom are

either Hare Krishna or else created by a particular caste- e.g. Patels who provided us the superb Neasden Swaminarayan temple.  

both signs of the success of British multi-culturalism

Nope. Neasden reflects the success of the mainly East African Gujerati Hindus who settled in North London. They are an excellent people.  

as well as Indian identity. As this community prospered, their success translated sub-continental beliefs about Hindus and Hinduism on a “world” stage.

If by 'world' you mean Neasden or New Jersey- sure.  

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2014 success, its electoral strategies leading up to it and since then, has built upon a religious nationalism that is “global” in nature.

because irreligious anti-nationalism is totes parochial- right?  

Indian nationalism in its current phases is as much western as Indian.

just as the West is as much Eastern as it is Western and cats are as much dogs as dogs are cats. 

The heritage politics foregrounded through overseas Indian populations and their dealing with their host societies led to significant spinoffs in India

name one. You'd have to go back to the Ghaddar movement to find any such thing.  

that have also aided the current majoritarian moment.

Very true. When Advani called on Modi to help his Rath yatra, he did so in the belief that Modi was a prosperous orthodontist from Miami.  

One of these relates to the rise of New Religious Movements that particularly appealed to rising new middle-classes.

Nineteenth Century or early Twentieth Century religious movements are not new. Ambedkarities may be said to belong to a new religious movement. It is certainly true that Punjabi Ravidasis etc. in England rediscovered Ambedkar but they were already rising through hard work and enterprise. Buddhism, of course, is flourishing in the West.  

In keeping with the new visibility of Hinduism in the west,

The Hare Krishnas did make Hinduism visible in the West but that was 50 years ago. Then came Rajneesh. But he wasn't particularly Hindu.  

a rapidly growing population of white-collar professionals in India was particularly ready for spiritual guides who spoke the languages of “global” success: management jargon, self-improvement and the capacity to marry spirituality with consumerism.

Consumerism is wicked. Srivastava wears khadi and lives simply in a grass hut.  Fuck knows which Guru turned his brains to shit. 

In both explicit and implicit ways, Indian new religious movements have been handy allies of majoritarianism through effectively inventing a “modern” Hinduism that is promoted as a necessary part of being Indian:

 Nonsense! A necessary part of being Indian is actually living in India. That has nothing to do with religion. The Brahma Kumaris would as gladly enroll my White neighbor as they would enroll President Murmu. 

a Hinduism for global Indians that makes them both Indian as well as Global.

This is silly. A Hindu who spends a lot of time jetting around the world is Global as well as Indian if he is based in India or plans to return there soon.  

Just as importantly, new religious movement gurus frequently invoke a history of “wrongs” against Hinduism and leave unaddressed uncomfortable aspects such as caste.

Srivastava would prefer them to dilate upon the horrible massacres of Muslims which Hindu invaders perpetrated upon Saudi Arabia.  

The dramatic change in living patterns forms the third possible aspect through which that which seems to have come upon us suddenly in 2014

only because Rahul was gun-shy.  

might have been in the making for some time.

Or may have always been there from the get go. It is plausible to say that Nehru's generation was defeatist. Indira's generation a little less so and so on.  

Since the mid-1980s, gated communities have become a significant form of residential accommodation. This has also meant the consolidation of mono-religious ghettoes.

But medieval towns all over the world had this feature! The very word 'ghetto' is medieval and refers to segregation of Jews. But there were also Huguenot areas and, later on, Quaker housing estates and so forth. In America, the thing may have been novel. But it may also have been a reaction to the repeal of Jim Crow type laws though, of course, there was plenty of informal discrimination in any case.  

In most parts of India, gated communities tend to largely contain Hindu populations.

Because the population is largely Hindu. Also Hindus tend to be quicker to leave Muslim areas because they don't like being raped or knifed every so often. 

The reasons for this are both economic as well as – if anecdotal and media accounts are to be believed – deliberate barriers to entry for Muslims.

and even more deliberate attempts to kill them before they can kill you 

While, there may never have been traditional neighbourhoods characterised by complete inter-mixing between communities, the nature of India’s gated communities has substantially diminished whatever intermingling there might have existed in more open localities.

Only in the sense that the persistence of horses significantly diminish our chance of meeting a unicorn.  

It is not at all unremarkable to come across children from Hindu families who may live in gated communities and attend private schools and who have never interacted with anyone but their co-religionists.

But it would be remarkable to come across a SOAS professor who wasn't a drooling imbecile.  

This too undergirds the new normality of majoritarianism, producing the Indian-Hindu equation.

What produced the partition riots? There is nothing new about a majoritarianism which triumphed in 1937 when some Muslims withdrew their kids from schools in Congress ruled provinces because they were forced to sing 'Vande Mataram'. 

The Indian fascination for the heroic leader

As opposed to what? The American fascination with the leader who shit himself any time Putin or Xi or the Ayatollah shouts at him?  

derives as much from the legacies of the anti-colonial movement as from the belief that only a person of superhuman powers can deal with the nature of our problems.

Very true. People thought Rajiv Gandhi flew around the country without using an air-craft.  

However, at different times in our post-colonial history, we have been attracted to different types of charismatic personalities and not all of them have promoted sectarian religious interests.

Though this is precisely what JP and Lohia and Kripalani are accused of doing. It was they who brought the RSS into mainstream politics. 

What is particular to this moment is the conjunction of factors that have made religious sectarianism the norm.

There is only one fucking factor- viz. Rahul is as stupid as shit.  

The apparent guarantors of a decent national life – the Constitution and its instruments, for example –

never guaranteed shit. Which fantasy world has this cretin been inhabiting all these years?  

may not provide the answers to questions about “where do we go from here?”

They are not designed to. The answer is that Kejriwal and Prashant Kishore's new party and other successful regional outfits will cobble together a good rival Prime Ministerial candidate by the end of the decade. True, Hindu-bashing is off the agenda though Rahul  & Co are welcome to keep at it from the political wilderness outside Parliament.  

As we have discovered, constitutional guarantees are easily bent according to political will.

No. Constitutional remedies are ineffective if resources are unavailable or enforcement is difficult.  

Political strategies are, in turn, based on an understanding of broad cultural and social circumstances. Just as politicians do, we should also come to grips with them.

By refusing to listen to Anthropologists or other such useless nitwits.