Traditional Indian political theory was based on the 'mandala'. The kingdom is surrounded by hostile Kings. But those Kings are themselves encircled by those hostile to them. The enemy of your enemy is your friend. Equally, there may be a common commitment to a 'balance of power' simply because even if you can ally with others to devour a portion of your neighbor, the same thing might happen to you and your allies, if those who encircle you can ally with each other. What is true of Kingdoms is true of Kings. Those who surround them are scheming to usurp the throne. But the potential usurpers too may be devoured by the larger number of the less privileged who surround them. The King keeps his enemies close because his only true friends are the enemies of his enemies currently darting hungry looks at 'the inner circle'.
After the killing of Rajiv, Indian politics at the center appeared 'mandala' based. The blue-blooded VP Singh had tried to establish his supremacy by granting reservations to the 'backward castes' as the Mandal commission required. The BJP was supposed to be using the Ram Mandir (Temple for Lord Ram) issue to neutralize 'Mandal' and get Hindu vote consolidation across castes. But, in an era of coalition governments, weak Prime Ministers could hope to stay in power by the deft use of 'mandala' politics- i.e. appointing enemies to Cabinet seats in the hope that their mutual suspicion and hatred would cancel out their mutual desire to get rid of the tosser in the top job.
Vajpayee, finally gaining power, adopted a Nehruvian version of mandala theory whereby virtuous behaviour (e.g. Panchseel) would cause a 'Nash equilibrium' balance of power to move away from suspicion and mutual hatred to benevolence and niceness and everybody quoting poetry to each other. Since Vajpayee was somewhat senile, his advisor Brajesh Mishra ran things and a false confidence was created that India was 'shining'. The trouble was that the BJP wasn't actually very much better at governance than other parties. Moreover, as in Gujarat under Keshubhai, it was factionalized and caste ridden and filled with endless intrigue.
Modi was put in as CM of Gujarat- though he'd never contested elections or held public office- at the age of 51. Most people thought this reckless of him. He should have been content to be Deputy CM. Moreover he should have kept on the Home Minister and provided himself with various other such alibis for poor performance.
With hindsight, we might say that Modi's political theory was to reject Mandala theory as well as Mandal or Mandir politics. His insight was to see that only governance- last mile delivery- matters. He was the new CEO appointing his own team and keeping a laser like focus on governance and grass-roots booth management. This was the message he kept hammering home. The CM does not have any magical or supernatural powers. If bad shit happens it is because of bad governance and bad attitudes and bad ideas having currency amongst the population. He, as CM, wanted to work with everybody to improve governance. He didn't care about intrigue and playing one rival off against another. He wasn't even particularly interested in elections. He made a virtue of the fact that he'd never stood for elections, even as a student before becoming CM. He said he'd reward Panchayats which elected Pradhans unanimously with extra money. This was modern Management theory kicking out Mandala theory. It was a spectacular success. Congress, despite Ahmed Patel's warnings, turned Modi into a National and international figure by painting him as anti-Muslim. But India wasn't killing Muslims. The West- in its horrific 'war on terror'- was doing so with vim and vigour. American soldiers- including female soldiers- were inflicting sexual torture on Arab prisoners. The West promised Democracy and Human Rights and a prosperous future but what they created was corruption and a complete breakdown of Society. The anger of Muslims at this outcome can't be deflected by pretending that Modi was a monster because he didn't kill Muslims. Blair and Bush and then Obama and Cameron and Sarkozy killed Muslims. Finally, Iran and the Taliban and Putin and Xi emerged victorious from a stupid, corrupt, war of revenge.
The Western Academy hasn't officially changed its view of Modi. But there are some straws in the wind suggesting that some of the fanaticism has abated. But this is only because utter fatuity, and a craven currying of favour with Oil Sheikhs, has replaced it.
The following is a summary of a talk given by a young Indian origin Associate Professor at Georgetown, Qatar. The venue was Kings College London
The political theory of Narendra Modi: Provisional notes on Hindutva and democracy in contemporary India. Uday Chandra - 14 May 2021Few, if any, would regard Narendra Modi as a political theorist.
His supporters see him as a man of relentless action, including the crafting of new words, acronyms, and slogans that circulate online and offline.
Everybody sees him as an active and intelligent man who has outstanding communication skills.
His critics, too, view him as a man committed to praxis over theoria.
Pragmatism is itself a political and philosophical theory. There's a little place called the US of A which went in for that philosophy big time.
Nonetheless, a close study of Modi's speeches at critical junctures - his post-election victory speeches in 2014 and 2019 as well as justifications for demonetization, GST, the end of Article 370, COVID-19 lockdowns, and the recent farm laws - reveals four surprising insights.
Which weren't surprising at all for those who had been following his career as CM of Gujarat.
Firstly, Modi's speeches, taken together, reveal a distinct conception of democracy as a socio-political ideal that is hierarchical and egalitarian at the same time.
Everyone has such a conception. We understand that a 'chai-wallah' can become Prime Minister and that the latter job is more prestigious than the former.
Such a conception departs from conventional models of "polyarchy"
there are no such models. Dahl said America was actually a Polyarchy. Americans ignored him. Sad.
or pluralistic,
India rejected pluralism. It is more unitary than the US.
even agonistic,
Indian political discourse is agonistic. Communists are allowed to say that Religion is shit and the Religious are allowed to say that Marx ate his own faeces.
forms of democracy as a type of regime.
India's regime is of a type NATO can't change. That's what matters.
Secondly, with respect to Hindutva, a concept coined by V.D. Savarkar
Chandranath Basu coined it in 1890 when Savarkar was 7 years old. Tilak had used the term.
to describe a new political religion that seeks to incorporate all members of an imagined Indian polity as "political Hindus,"
The context was Protestants in Southern Ireland demonstrating willingness to stay on in what would almost certainly be a Catholic Republic. Ascendancy Protestants suddenly started learning Gaelic and scoffing at the Sassenach. After the treaty of Lausanne, it was obvious that when Empires end, either language or religion would decide where national boundaries would lie. If Indian Muslims were prepared to concede a sort of cultural affinity with Hindus, Partition could be avoided.
Modi has vernacularized this quirky concept vis-a-vis the twin, hitherto antagonistic, languages of Mandal and Mandir.
No. He steered clear of both because his message had to do with Governance. The PM is merely the CEO of a Company which is paid to provide certain goods and services. If you aren't getting your entitlement, please text me on my cellphone. My people will get back to you with a solution within a couple of days. Otherwise you will kick us out of office and choose a different supplier.
Thirdly, no prime minister, not even Jawaharlal Nehru or Indira Gandhi, has spoken more to persuade Indians that the state ought to remain the sole arbiter on all economic matters,
This is nonsense. Nehru spoke about this as did Indira. Both presided over a massive increase in the economic power of the State. But, under Narasimha Rao, more and more of such power had to be given up. Modi continued the trend. He abolished the Planning Commission.
and that a market economy does not (and should not) imply a market society composed of amoral individuals transacting with each other.
Mrs. Thatcher, on the other hand, demanded that babies should be sold off to the highest bidder- even if that bidder happens to be a cannibal.
Fourthly, if Modi is to be believed, the unity of India cannot rest on the flimsy old premises of sarva-dharma-sambhava secularism or federalism with a unitary bias.
There is no evidence whatsoever for this view. India's unity rests on its Army kicking ass. But there has to be reform even in military matters. The Agnipath scheme is an example.
Instead, national unity, indeed the nation itself, can be secured only by the permanent subjugation of the Muslim Other within national borders,
This was done along with plenty of ethnic cleansing by Nehru.
especially in Kashmir,
Nehru jailed his pal Sheikh Abdullah
and the strategic containment and downgrading of India's Muslim-majority neighbors in South Asia.
Bangladesh is such a country. Is this clown pretending that India needs to 'contain' or 'downgrade' it? As for Pakistan, it was Indira who took its pants down and forced it to stop committing genocide in East Bengal.
Pakistan can't contain its own shittiness. That is what is downgrading the fuck out of it. Bangladesh now has sixty percent higher per capita income than its erstwhile oppressor.
Modi as a politician, I suggest, may have limited electoral appeal to a third or so of Indian voters.
Why suggest any such thing unless you are paid to do by the BJP?
But, if surveys conducted by CSDS during the ongoing pandemic, his political appeal goes beyond elections and voters,
Modi has reached out to kids with his 'Exam warrior' book & live interactions with students. But kids soon grown up to become voters. Thus he is still only focusing his political appeal on Indian voters. He does court elements of the Diaspora but only because they have influence back home.
and if we go by Modi's justifications for major policy decisions such as demonetization
which yielded a political bonanza and safeguarded his administration from any future anti-corruption agitation.
and the forced return of migrant workers to their rural homes,
there was no 'forced return'. This cretin lives in a fantasy world. An unauthorized return did take place. It was wholly voluntary.
they resonate with roughly double of those who may vote for the BJP.
What this cretin means is that Modi has much higher approval than his Party. But many Indians live in States where the BJP has a negligible political presence.
The implications of Modi the theorist for both Hindutva and democracy in India are worth pondering in ways that challenge our conceptions of both.
People like Prashant Kishore understood that Modi had made Indian politics about 'last mile delivery'. Pondering how to choose the things politicians can deliver such that voters reward them is a lucrative business. Kishore hasn't just made money and a name for himself. He has fundamentally changed how many political parties operate. Meanwhile only the stupidest and craziest young people become Professors of shite subjects.
To be fair, Uday vc teaches in Qatar which is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey. He wrote the following article in al Jazeera.
On August 5, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for a Hindu temple in the northern city of Ayodhya. This fulfilled the orders of India’s Supreme Court, which last November awarded a victory to those who have long been campaigning to build a temple there, in place of a Mughal-era mosque that was demolished by a right-wing Hindu mob in 1992. The speculation that the mosque was built on the ruins of an ancient temple marking the mythological birthplace of the epic hero Ram remains unproven.
What was proven was that the temple deity- which has legal personality- had continuous possession because Hindu ritual worship at that place had ben continuous. By contrast, no Muslim worship had occurred there since the late Nineteen Forties. In Islamic law, it was not a mosque because it was not being used for Islamic worship.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the temple was set on that particular date to commemorate the altering of the country’s constitution to justify a shift from indirect to direct colonialism in the disputed Muslim-majority region of Jammu and Kashmir exactly a year ago.
It was a 2016 decision of the Supreme Court which upheld the view that J&K had 'no shred' of sovereignty. The State has frequently been under direct rule. Muslims in the Valley ethnically cleansed Hindus not so long ago.
The temple construction in Ayodhya, just like the constitutional amendment that revoked the Indian-administered Kashmir’s limited autonomy,
The Bench had already said there was no autonomy of any type.
is a calculated move by the Modi government to consolidate the new majoritarian polity in India.
But that majoritarianism triumphed in 1947. Nehru presided over the ethnic cleansing of Muslims, the forcible incorporation of two Muslim ruled Princely States, and military intervention in Kashmir to prevent it from being overrun by Pakistan. Muslims lost reserved seats in Parliament and cow protection was made a Directive Principle of the Constitution.
Today, we are witnessing the final stages of the project to remake India into a Hindu nation,
which happened once and for all in 1947. First Buddhist Burma went its own way and then the Muslim majority areas did so- where they could.
but little is being said about the fabulous falsehoods and cunning sleights of hand that this ambitious project was built upon.
This guy is telling lies to get paid a little money.
Colonial origins
The word “Hindu” is a Persianate derivative of “Sindhu”, Sanskrit for the Indus River.
And India is a Greek derivative. The word 'Arab', however is more recent and probably refers to the desert. In the Quran Sharif it is written- الأعراب أشدّ كفرًا و نفاقًا. Here Arab is translated as desert dwelling Bedouins who 'were the worst in disbelief and hypocrisy'.
Only during India’s colonial encounter in the 19th century did “Hindu” become an ascriptive label for a wide range of practices and ideas across South Asia that do not fall within the three world religions labelled “Islam”, “Christianity”, and “Buddhism”.
Not according to Islamic or Buddhist or Christian scholars. Hinduism was considered to be Brahmanism and the Vedas were known to be the scripture of the vast majority of Indian people.
Why is this cretin pretending Hinduism isn't a world religion? People from Qatar can see for themselves, in Birmingham or Boston or Bali that the opposite is the case.
But this term defined by negation did not mean much to those located within a mosaic of Indic ritual and philosophical traditions that lacked a holy book based on divine revelation.
The Vedas are just such a Holy Scripture.
Scholars have attributed the invention of “Hinduism” as much to men from dominant castes who sought to reform and remake a colonised society as to colonial missionaries.
Islamic scholars did not such thing. Their own people would have laughed at them. Al Biruni wrote a book about India in the early eleventh century. The following is a quote-
‘The belief of educated and uneducated people differs in every nation; for the former strive to conceive abstract ideas and to define general principles, while the latter do not pass beyond the apprehension of the senses and are content with derived rules, without caring for details, especially in questions of religion and law, regarding which opinions and interests are divided.
With regard to God, the Hindus believe that he is one, eternal, without beginning and end, acting by free will, almighty, all-wise, living, giving life, ruling, and preserving; one who is unique in his sovereignty, beyond all likeness and unlikeness, and neither resembling anything nor having anything resemble him. In order to illustrate this, we shall produce some extracts from the _Hindu literature, lest the reader should think that our account is nothing but hearsay.
In the book of Patanjali the pupil asks: “Who is the worshipped one, by the worship of whom blessing is obtained?” The master says: “It is he who, being eternal and unique, does not for his part stand in need of any human action for which he might give as a recompense either a blissful repose, which is hoped and longed for, or a troubled existence, which is feared and dreaded. He is unattainable to thought, being sublime beyond all unlikeness which is abhorrent and all likeness which is sympathetic. By his essence he knows from all eternity.
These 19th-century reformers sought to go back to ancient texts such as the Vedas or the Upanishads
which they had learnt from boyhood because they were part of the curriculum for Hindu priests or those descended from such.
to propose a de-ritualised, quasi-monotheistic creed for a modern India.
Monist, not monotheistic. This cretin can't grasp the distinction.
Such a move mimicked the textualist methods of the Protestant Reformation,
which mimicked the textualist methods of the Catholics who mimicked those of the Hellenized Jews
and the then fashionable European efforts to appropriate ancient Sanskrit spiritual texts to construct an “Aryan” race identity.
Because most European languages are related to Persian and North Indian languages.
The reformers were answering British criticisms of Indic polytheisms as “beastly” and “superstitious”.
Not to mention Muslim criticisms of a similar sort.
They enthusiastically embraced the colonial view of Muslims being wholly separate from Hindus, ignoring the accommodations and intermixing over centuries that had produced shared ritual, intellectual, sartorial, culinary, and musical traditions between the two groups.
But it was Muslims in Pakistan who went the extra mile in ethnically cleansing Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists. The question is whether Shias are safe or whether they will go the way of the Ahmadiyas.
As the reforming Hindu men worked to draw sharp lines between “Hindus” and “Muslims”,
which Islam had already drawn
the newly emerging print media became their accomplice.
Whereas print languished in the Muslim world. That's why Iranians ended up reading Farsi works edited by Hindu Kayasthas and published in Bombay or Calcutta.
The adoption of the Nagri script by reformist groups such as the Arya Samaj contrasted with the shared orality of a public sphere defined by the Hindustani language.
India adopted Hindi in Nagari script as its official language after Independence.
Devanagari, the divine Nagri as it became known, also started to be used alongside Urdu and English in the new world of print technology, helping reformists in their efforts to create a distinct Hindu identity.
Nonsense! Bengali kept its own script as did Gujarat. Devanagari was adopted for Hindi, Marathi & Nepali. But differences of script did not undermine a common Hindu identity.
Then, as it is now, the chief obstacle to transforming India into a Hindu nation was the caste system
actually this was the chief obstacle to the conversion of India.
which divided society into strict hierarchical groups.
No. Wealth and power did so. Caste was notional and confined to a ritual context. Judaism makes a distinction between Cohens, Levites and the rest. In Shia Islam, the distinction between Sayyads and others continues to have salience.
To accommodate the lower orders of society, the conservatism of the Brahmins, the traditional priestly class who sit atop the rigid caste hierarchy, had to be diluted.
This was generally done by Brahmins.
But to de-brahminise Hinduism would have dissolved the abstract new polity of the reformers’ imagination into a melange of lived traditions across the localities and regions of India.
But Brahmins recognize that Hinduism subsists even if all the Brahmins are killed off by Kshatriyas or Hunas or whatever.
From the colonial to the post-colonial
A century ago, the arrival of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on the political scene provided a solution to the reformers’ dilemma.
Gandhi was brought into the political scene by Bhai Parmanand of the Arya Samaj who got him to embrace celibacy. It was an Arya Samaji Mahatma who transferred that title to Gandhi while promoting himself to 'Swamy'.
Gandhi claimed that his religion as much as that of most “Hindus” was Sanatan Dharma, the perennial faith, not the new-fangled textual abstractions put forward by the reformers.
He never said a word against the Arya or Brahmo Samaj. This cretin is making this shit up.
Caste, he argued, was a necessary evil in the subcontinental life. It could neither be wished away nor reformed out of existence.
Gandhi said a lot of silly and contradictory things at various points in his career. So what?
A hierarchical society, suggested Gandhi, could learn to be humane and to avoid excesses.
Qatar's society is hierarchical but it will never be humane. The question is whether its rulers will stick around to experience the 'excesses' the vast majority of its residents will inflict on them once America abandons it. I know there are plenty of disgruntled Pakistanis in that kingdom who are just itching to turn the tables on their masters.
Vertical hierarchies could be held together by horizontal alliances between those of similar rank, whether at the top or the bottom.
Unless the cry 'Islam is in danger' was raised. Then all hell broke lose and the minority had to either run away or accept second class status.
Hindu and Muslim elites could be tied together by common interests of peace and prosperity
provided Terrorist nutjobs could be curbed. But it is Qatar which should fear an Islamic revolution. Indeed, so should Pakistan. Even the Taliban are afraid of being swept away by a more fanatical bunch of Islamists.
just as the Hindu and Muslim masses were held together by shared solidarities of class and occupation.
No. They were held together by good governance. That is what matters.
The Gandhian solution to the problem was largely embraced by the anti-colonial movement in India led by the Congress party. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who led the campaign for a separate state of Pakistan, had also endorsed the Gandhian solution in British India, but he was prescient to realise that its appeal would wane steadily with modernisation once the fortunes of Indian Muslims were placed at the mercy of a consolidated Hindu majority.
Nonsense! Jinnah wanted reserved seats and a weak center. But the non-Muslims of East Punjab and West Bengal, not to mention Assam, didn't want Muslim oppression. So, there was Partition.
The principal critics of the Gandhian solution – anti-caste thinkers such as Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
who supported the Brits and who hoped to do a deal with the Muslim League- as his pal, JN Mandal did in fact do. But Mandal had to run away from Pakistan. Ambedkar couldn't get elected and had to settle for becoming the founder of a Buddhist sect.
and theorists of Hindu nationalism such as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
who was foolish enough to get involved in Gandhi's assassination thus destroying his own political chances. But then the man wasn't really a politician.
– preferred a modern and egalitarian solution to the problem faced by the 19th-century reformers. Both Ambedkar and Savarkar sought equality in politics and society, not hierarchy.
There was a big Communist movement in India from the Twenties onward. The question was whether they could carry out a revolution on the Russian or Chinese pattern.
Yet Ambedkar reposed his faith in new constitutional liberalism derived from the French and American constitutions.
No he didn't. He dismissed his contribution to the Indian constitution as 'hack work'. This cretin is just making stuff up.
Savarkar endeavoured, by contrast, to create a new political religion, called Hindutva (Hindu-ness) to unify India along the lines of the Italian Risorgimento.
How the fuck could he do any such thing? The guy was in solitary confinement. Even after he was released, he was confined to a backwater and closely watched. Hinduism as a nationalist religious movement was a product of the Sanyasis and the Anushilan committees and the strenuous work of Lal, Bal and Pal.
In the early decades after independence, the Congress governments balanced the hierarchical accommodationist view proposed by Gandhi with modernism rooted in equal citizenship regardless of caste or faith.
Nonsense! Nehru, a Leftist, had prevailed. Gandhians were welcome to tour the boondocks preaching the virtues of abstinence and charity and the dignity of labor. Meanwhile India would rise through Soviet style 5 year plans.
This was an era in which all were equal citizens of India, even Kashmiris, even if long-standing social hierarchies remained intact.
Nehru jailed his pal Abdullah for secessionist tendencies. At that time Abdullah was seen as a Leftist.
Elite Muslims and Christians featured prominently in public life just as they had done in the colonial era.
Only if they were aligned with the ruling party.
With economic liberalisation and neoliberal globalisation since 1980, the old hierarchies have been shaken up.
Not in the Congress Party. It remains dynastic.
The myriad castes that constitute Indian society have been shattered into infinitesimal fragments,
Nope. They have consolidated themselves through mergers and political activism.
which have given rise to fractalised identities vying for equality at the expense of each other
A fractal is self-similar. A fractalised identity is the same no matter how much you zoom in or zoom out. God only knows what this illiterate fool is getting at.
The centrifugal force in pursuit of equality in public life led to dissensus, not a new national consensus.
Nonsense! Equality can only be pursued at the center and by consensus. People have to agree as to what equality means and then start broadcasting a concrete model of equality from the center to the periphery. That is what India has been doing. That's why its a big deal that a 'chai-wallah' has become Prime Minister or that a school teacher from a forested area has become President of the Republic.
In response, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), particularly under Modi, has revived Savarkar’s vision of Hindutva as a political religion,
Modi was inspired by Ramakrishna and Vivekananda- but then, so was Tolstoy. Being from the RSS he doesn't quote Savarkar who was from a rival organization.
albeit in a distinctly populist vein.
Modi speaks in a pragmatic vein. That is why he is popular.
One’s religious beliefs and practices matter less in Hindutva than an absolute commitment to a Hindu “rashtra” or polity.
Nonsense! Modi does not scandalize people by eating beef or drinking wine. His beliefs and practices are orthodox. But his job is running the country and so he has to speak about practical things.
The fractalised selves of post-liberalisation have been brought together
the cretin means 'fractured' selves
by the centripetal force of electoral rituals,
very true. During elections, you see Muslim Mullahs getting confused and dressing up as Christian nuns. This is because Neo-liberalism smashed their self-hood to smithereens.
digital media, and a new Hindu state,
which came into existence in 1947
all of which offer an insurgent sense of equality.
resurgent? The demand for equality could lead to insurgency- more particularly in Doha. Perhaps this cretin is actually a CIA agent of some sort. By writing stupid nonsense, he can keep his cover as a Professor of a shite subject.
Political Hinduism
Rhetorically, the Hindu rashtra is opposed to discrimination based on caste for political Hindus.
No. Ecumenical Hinduism, i.e. the essence or tattva of Hindu religion, opposes discrimination in religion on the basis of birth, gender, wealth, occupation etc. This is because the essence of a thing is true in all possible worlds including the one where no such 'accidents' obtain.
Modi’s own humble origins and his rise to power are presented as clinching evidence of a new egalitarian modernism.
No. Modi's rise is presented as evidence that if you join the RSS and work hard you can become CM or PM even if your parents were too poor to send you to College.
But, in practice, Hindutva is willing to accommodate the everyday oppressions that define Indian society.
Doha accommodates much more oppression which is why people believe that 6000 migrant workers were killed on World Cup construction projects.
In effect, some are more equal than others.
In Doha, the vast majority are just one step above being outright slaves.
Conservatism is now couched increasingly in the modern semantics of class (“rich” and “poor”) rather than in traditional caste terms.
No. Conservatism is couched, now and previously, in terms of adherence to norms that predate the current era. Some rich people are conservative. Some very poor people are extremely radical.
Those who do not identify as political Hindus – Muslims, Christians, leftists, anti-caste activists – are the new objects of discrimination and exclusion.
No they aren't. They may be the object of polemical counter-attack- but that is a different matter.
In principle, if individuals from these groups embrace Hindutva, they, too, would be considered political Hindus. The lines are, in sum, permeable, and everything is negotiable in the new Hindu polity.
Just as was the case in the old Hindu polity.
At least for now, the Hindu rashtra is a highly personalised regime, almost a cult, in which Modi is the state and countenances no opposition, not even from the judiciary or the central bank.
The Judiciary still has the final say. The Central Bank is not now nor has ever been independent.
Civil society, the media and academia are treated with suspicion because they breed dissent.
In Doha- sure. A couple of years ago some people from the Al-Murra tribe protested at being excluded from the electoral roll. Four of them have been sentenced to life in prison. I suppose, now the World Cup is done and dusted, Qatar will try to rival its big neighbor in terms of the number of people hanged every month.
Through a mix of carrot and stick, the media have been compelled to voice propaganda,
I hope Uday got some nice carrots instead of a stick shoved up his bum-hole to write this anti-Hindu propaganda
and prominent journalists, activists, and academics have been arrested or bullied into silence.
Qatar will soon be killing its own Kashoggis wherever they might be.
The electoral system is now dominated by a single political party committed to Hindutva, namely, the BJP.
Yet many States are ruled by other Parties.
Other parties, including the Congress, have been compelled now to speak the language of Hindutva and acquiesce in the new political religion.
Hate speech against Hindus is not rewarded by Hindus. Uday may get some carrots from Muslims for writing this shite but, frankly, his shite isn't worth a fart.
Oddly enough, we know little about the ritual lives and personal beliefs of Modi or his predecessors.
We know enough. Modi is a Hindu like his Mummy and Daddy. He wanted to join the Ramakrishna Mission but was turned away because, at that time, they were only taking University Graduates. After he retires, he may join some such order.
The new political religion of Hindutva seems to define itself almost entirely by negation vis-a-vis the Muslim (or Christian) Other.
No. Hindutva defines itself as the essence of Hinduism- i.e. the best version of the religion and the one which obtain where no 'accidents' of history had distorted it. In particular, Hindutva opposes any hereditary or heritable distinction amongst its adherents. That is a positive definition. It makes no mention of any other Religion.
Other Indic traditions defined traditionally in opposition to Hinduism – Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism –
this cretin previously said that Hinduism didn't exist till the nineteenth century. Buddhism was a world religion. Hinduism wasn't. Yet now he is saying that two religions which are 2500 years old were defined in opposition to that non-existent Hinduism!
are simply seen as Hindu offshoots.
The founders of those religions were born as 'samskari' Hindu Kshatriyas for whom Hindu Brahmins performed religious rituals. Christianity could be called an offshoot of Judaism because all the apostles as well as St. Paul were born Jews. Islam, however, is considered independent.
The territorial boundaries of the nation are sacralised in Hindu India.
No they are not. They are contested.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Kashmir, where long-standing legal arrangements have been forcibly undone.
No great force was required. Kashmir Valley has seen much worse- indeed, it has done much worse.
These violent rituals of integration
There was no violence.
are meant to build communitas among political Hindus, the true citizens of the new polity.
But Indian troops stopped the invaders at the current LoC three years before Modi was born!
Settler colonialism is now expected to complete this process of national integration.
No it isn't. Don't be silly. I think Jammu will be split off and the Valley will be abandoned to its fate as a spite-slum kept afloat by remittances.
Kashmiri Muslims as colonial subjects stand metonymically for all Indian Muslims.
No they don't. Indian Muslims don't like them because they won't let them buy property and settle amongst them. By driving out their Hindu minority, the Muslims of the Valley put Indian Muslims in a precarious position. The typical response of an Indian Muslim to the film 'Kashmir files' is 'all Kashmiris are haramis. Look at your fucking Nehru dynasty! They are cuckoos in the nest. They want everything and will give nothing.'
The project of subjugating religious minorities is now regarded as a sacred duty in the service of the nation.
It was always regarded as such by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf etc, etc.
By contrast, ethnic minorities in northeast India are encouraged to negotiate the terms of their political assimilation within Hindu India.
No. They have to be appeased because otherwise, as happened in Nellie in 1983, they will start slaughtering Muslims and then, when they run out of Muslims, they will slaughter Hindu Bengalis before, after the Bengalis have run away, slaughtering each other.
In response to activists’ claims about indigenity in these regions bordering China and Myanmar, the BJP now claims that all Indigenous peoples of India are Hindu, and all Hindus are, by definition, indigenous to India.
This was the claim made by Congress in the Nineteen Thirties and received explicit statutory force in the 1955 Marriage Act. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld this doctrine. This does not mean that a Smarta can't accept Sarna religion and worship according to its tenets or vice versa. Hinduism has that type of ecumenical spirit built into its DNA.
Hindutva is, undoubtedly, an abstract political religion, stripped of contextual or historical depth.
No. It is ecumenical Hinduism free of historical distortions and based on pure Monist Spirituality.
This is precisely what the colonial-era reformers and Savarkar had dreamed of: an all-India Hinduism that reins in the problem of caste via the dazzling dream of equal citizenship.
The vast majority of residents of Qatar know that getting equal citizenship there is a 'dazzling dream'. Indeed, even members of the Al Murrah tribe- the majority indigenous tribe of Qatar- can't dream of equal citizenship. They had supported the Sheikh who was overthrown by his son in 1995 and since then their position has deteriorated.
Not only is a Hindu rashtra now a reality, but the Muslim Other has been subjugated within it.
This guy will have his head kicked in if he tries saying this outside any Indian mosque.
The inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, much like the colonisation of Kashmir, has accomplished both tasks in the highly symbolic and theatrical world of Hindutva.
But it was the Supreme Court which awarded the disputed land to the Hindu deity and which ruled that J&K had no shred of sovereignty. Meanwhile, Modi and Yogi and so forth have to concentrate on improving governance if they want to get reelected. The highly symbolic and theatrical world of Doha may be different from India in that respect but Al Jazeera will always be able to find some Hindu cretin to defame his own people in return for a little money.
If India is today a Hindu nation,
it is because Nehru and Gandhi and Ambedkar and so forth made it so in 1947
it is also a tinderbox in which the self is defined by the perpetual hatred of others.
No. If Muslims are a minority and they attack the majority and kill policemen, it is likely they will suffer disproportionate casualties. But that was the case even before Partition.
Whenever India’s youth tire of this majoritarian politics of hate,
they have tired of the stupid lies spouted by anti-national academics who teach worthless shite
they will reflect on the paths not taken to make their country a prosperous, equitable, and decent.
For this to happen, Hinduism must disappear because it was only invented by Colonialists in the Nineteenth Century. Once Hindus admit they don't actually have any religion they will convert to Islam and demand the rule of the Caliphate which... oh dear! Caliphate will kill off all the Kings and Emirs of the peninsula! They will shut down 'Georgetown, Qatar' in the blink of an eye. Will they force Uday to wear burqa or just use him as a donkey? The only equitable and decent course would be to put burqa on him and then use him as a donkey. This is the path to prosperity.
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