Rahul Sagar on Mama Parmanand

Edmund Burke and Richard Sheridan were Whigs (i.e. they belonged to the party which would later be called the Liberal Party. They attacked the East India Company and sought to impeach Warren Hastings. The Tories (Conservatives) created a Board of Control to oversee the Company but were happy to give it autonomy. During the Nineteenth Century, Liberals tended to support Evangelical proselytization, laws banning obnoxious customary practices (e.g. suttee), Anglicization (i.e. replacing Persian with English or 'mother tongue' Vernacular languages), and- at a later point- increased representation for Indians in legislative councils. The Conservatives tended to support traditional practices & military expansion- e.g. Winston Churchill's father adding Upper Burma to the Empire. 

Some Indian people who had been educated in English and who were interested in social reform, sought the patronage of Liberal British officials and politicians. In Bengal the most prominent of these people set up the 'Brahmo Samaj'. Its two founders- Roy & Tagore- lobbied Westminster to permit unrestricted European immigration to India. They believed that only Europeans could defend Hindus from the Muslims.

In Maharashtra- where the Hindu Marathas had previously dominated- the secret 'Parmanhansa Mandali' (founded in 1848) & it s successor, the  'Prarthana Samaj' (founded in 1867, after a visit by K.C Sen of the Brahmo Samaj) faced a more uphill battle against Hindu orthodoxy. However, those who pursued English education so as to rise in the legal profession or the civil service leant a ready ear to their passionate propaganda for a more rational type of religion free of the dead hand of orthopraxy. We may also mention the movement amongst lower castes led by Mahatma Phule. There was a clear connection between such movements and Evangelical Christianity on the one hand & Benthamite Utilitarianism on the other. 

Prof. Rahul Sagar has published some articles and is publishing a book about a member of the Prarthana Samaj- Mama Parmanand- and some pamphlets he wrote which Sagar thinks are foundational to 'Indian Liberalism'. Since Parmanand was promoted by Sir William Wedderburn (who helped A.O Hume found the Indian National Congress) this is a perfectly sensible proposition to make. Liberal Viceroys like Ripon, with the support of Gladstone as Prime Minister, sought to create representative institutions & to encourage 'devolution' of power to local councils. Sadly, the ICS were not keen on this. Local bodies would be packed with government servants & 'yes men'. The impression they sought to create was that 'men of substance', in India, were traditional and wanted 'the smack of firm government'. A rabble of briefless barristers & half-educated journalists & other malcontents were raising a hue and cry against the Imperial Government for no good reason. These were men of straw. They had no connection with the Indian masses. Their heads were stuffed full of scraps of European history but they had no understanding of India. 

The response of Maharashtrian reformers and nationalists- like Dadhabhai Naoroji- was to make a proper study of Indian economics & to present evidence of a statistical type so as to make the case for reform. Gokhale & the Servants of India Society carried forward this work to good effect. However, it was Tilak & the 'cow protection' movement who were able to achieve 'mass contact' by mobilising Hindu religious sentiment. In other words, Indian Liberalism was rather anaemic when compared to Hindu (or Islamic) nationalism. 

Rahul Sagar writes- 

The untold story & unsung heroes of Indian liberalism
19th century intellectuals such as Parmanand

who was a teacher at Elphinstone who later took service in a princely state till he had to return to Bombay for health reasons. William Wedderburn appointed him Registrar of the High Court & he later held other important offices. His empirical knowledge of local administration in both Princely and Directly ruled states was quite valuable. 

point to a forgotten tradition of liberalism in India,

this is ' Beamtenliberalismus (Bureaucratic or Civil Servants' Liberalism) of the German type. It describes a movement where enlightened, educated civil servants, rather than a commercial bourgeoisie or a democratic parliament, initiated liberal and economic reforms from the top down.  Since it lacks popular support, it is an anaemic creature. 

which measured progress by the well-being of individuals

that is Benthamite Utilitarianism of the type championed by James Mill & his son, John Stuart, both of whom worked for the East India Company.  

For more than a century, Indian liberalism has been mocked as little more than mimicry.

The Indian Liberals were part and parcel of the 'moderate' wing of the INC till 1919 when they formed the "Indian National Liberal Federation" in 1919 under the leadership of  Surendranath Banerjee. Its leading spirits were Tej Bahadur Sapru, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri and M. R. Jayakar. It has been speculated that they played a role in securing the  October 1933 trade agreement between the Bombay Millowners' Association (led by H.P. Mody) and British Lancashire textile interests (led by Sir William Clare Lees). If Sapru had been able to persuade enough of the Princes to join a Federal Government, it may be that the country could have become a de facto dominion. After War was declared and Congress resigned from office in the Provinces where they had formed Ministries, the role of the Liberals diminished. However Rajaji's Swatantra party (which lasted from 1959 to 1974) might be considered its successor. 

The British laughed at the ideals preached by “Jabberjees” at the Indian National Congress. Indians were hardly kinder. Radicals from either end of the political spectrum lambasted “moderates” for their “peculiar servility”. The jibes have only multiplied since 1947 — “kala sahibs”, “Macaulayputras”, the “Lutyens” cabal.

in other words, an Anglicized Ivory Tower elite is mocked for its Ivy League style virtue signalling and its disdain for indigenous religion or idiographic issues of concern to the masses. 

The earliest defences of individuality emerged out of rationalist associations such as the Manav Dharma Sabha,

founded in Surat 

the Paramahansa Mandali,

which had to remain a secret society because of the power of the orthodox in Maharashtra 

and the Prarthana Samaj. 

which played a role in creating 'new Brahmins' freed from the more oppressive features of the caste system- e.g. a young Brahmin teacher posted to a school in a village without any Brahmins would have to cook his own food (since he would lose caste if he accepted cooked food from a non-Brahmin!). It such was the plight of the Brahmin, imagine how bad things were for the Dalit! 

However, reform of religion & social customs can be done by Conservatives (who support the existing distribution of power) as well as Liberals or those without any political views. The question is whether there was an Indian Liberalism which championed the economic interests of the Indian entrepreneur and mercantile bourgeoisie. The answer was there was a 'Listian' (protectionist) type of Economics (Swadesi- i.e. import substitution) but this was better promoted by religious figures. If people could be persuaded to burn foreign cloth, the reason was that such commodities came to be seen as polluting or 'unclean'.

The name-calling is hard to resist — if we study only what was said and done in British India where, as Aurobindo put it, “grave citizens” raised on an “English diet” were prone to toasting and petitioning.

This is a fair point. We may point to Indian administrators in Princely States who sought to curb the power of local notables so as to ensure more money went into the Ruler's treasury. Tanjore Madhava Rao, in Baroda, &  C. V. Rungacharlu in Mysore, stand out as pioneers in this connection. Mysore got a representative assembly in 1881. If Princely states were introducing such reforms, why should the British not do the same thing? The obvious answer was that the administrator in a Princely State had to fear intrigue, false accusations or even assassination by local notables. Few dared try such monkey tricks on a White official. 

But there was more to India than this. By focusing on the grievances raised and compromises made by liberals in British India, we have overlooked what liberals imagined and tried to do in Indian India.

This is the heart of the matter. Could the Liberals have survived without the protection of the Raj? Would they not be swept away by the forces of orthodoxy and a revival of the martial spirit of previously hegemonic races?

In the case of Hinduism, we may say that orthopraxy did change (rather gradually) and that an ecumenical notion of 'Hindutva' was established. Interestingly, a pamphlet by Tanjore Madhava Rao titled 'minor hints' had been reprinted by Gujarat Government & was circulating since 1985. Narendra Modi took a shine to it and wrote the foreword to a new edition of it!

At the core of liberalism is the idea of protecting the individual against external pressure.

Conservatives want the same thing. They fear that Liberalism may create an oppressive bureaucratic/legal regime in the name of 'Progress'. People should be allowed to live as they always have done even if this offends the sensibilities of some intellectuals and busy-bodies. 

Interestingly, Herbert Spencer (whom Shyamji Krishna Varma did so much to popularize that he was known as 'Harbhat Pendse' among young Marathas) was opposed to excessive Government interference in commercial or personal life. Like Dadhabhai, Varma moved in a Left wing direction. Gandhi, though a moderate, like Gokhale, was far from being a Liberal. He believed that the best Government is the one which governs least. 

Liberals in 19th-century Europe were worried about the vast and impersonal forces unleashed by modernity — mass democracy, mass industrialisation, and mass media —

some were. Some weren't. Those who feared universal franchise tended to ally with Conservative forces (e.g. Liberal Unionists in UK) while those who saw it as inevitable moved towards a 'Social Democrat' platform. 

that made it increasingly difficult for individuals to act and think independently.

One big worry, in England, was that Catholic working men would vote as their Priest told them to.  

This was not what troubled Indian liberals. They feared instead the intimate tyranny of the joint family, the panchayat, and the local priest, any of whom could override an individual’s private choices such as what they ate, whom they married or dined with, what occupations they engaged in, and where they travelled.

Sadly, many Provinces had laws against inter-caste marriage. Even in the 1930s. Nehru's younger sister, as a Brahmin, had to pretend to convert to Brahmo religion to marry a non-Brahmin. When Indira married a Zoroastrians, some Parsis joked that she was now a concubine, not a married woman! 

One may say that the need for an elected legislature to fully reform Hindu law gave an impetus to Democracy in India. If a person who broke a caste convention- e.g. Nehru letting his sister and daughter marry non-Brahmins- got elected by a huge margin, it showed that 'best practice' had changed. In Hindu law you may depart from customary observances if 'the best people' in the area have adopted a different practice. Since it is Society itself which decides who is the best to represent the area, there is a 'Tardean mimetic effect'. Previously, the ban of 'crossing the black water' or letting women come out of purdah (both of which personally affected Rajendra Prasad) created a barrier to professional advancement or the upliftment of the family and sub-caste. Clearly, to make progress, the whole of Society had to be mobilised otherwise the 'first movers' would face high penalties and their miserable fate would deter others from following suit.  

This is why the earliest defences of individuality emerged out of rationalist associations such as the Manav Dharma Sabha, the Paramahansa Mandali, and the Prarthana Samaj.

This is foolish. All such reformist groups took inspiration from earlier 'Bhakti' Saints. The argument was that oppressive customs were 'apadh dharma'- i.e. a response to adverse circumstances. There was no need for them because Pax Brittanica had been established. Hindus could return to the pure Vedantic religion.  

Founded in the middle of the 19th century, these organisations challenged a range of social strictures such as bans on intercaste dining and widow remarriage. But they found the going hard. As challenges to custom were met with tearful pleas from family and threats of excommunication from the community, even earnest reformers buckled under pressure. They soon accepted they needed help from the State.

More urgent was the need to get legal sanction for converts to Christianity inheriting ancestral property. Many Missionaries regarded the new reformist movements as a 'Trojan Horse' for the spread of their own Religion. 

But this path was unappealing, as they did not want the colonial State to regulate social norms. The British were not keen to meddle either, especially after 1857. The irony was profound: When Indians quoted Gladstone, Britons quoted Manu.

Manu had been admired in the late eighteenth century. Incidentally, Gladstone was a 'High Church' Anglican who gradually modified his views. It was his championing of the Irish cause which made him a hero to anglicized Indians.  

Happily, liberals in Western India had a card to play. In their part of the country, large numbers of Native States were still in existence.

It was usual for such states to bring in English educated clerks or lawyers to help reform the administration & restore fiscal health. Some such imports could be described as intellectuals with a political ideology. But this was seldom the case. Still, it was in the interest of these people to gain countervailing power against the local notables.  

Though governed erratically, these principalities were headed by Maharajas who could lead by example, and who retained control over religious and educational establishments that could shape the populace.

They themselves had to be careful not to offend the religious sentiments of influential groups. The British took a dim view of Princes who slaughtered Pundits or Moulvis so as to crush such opposition.  

Consequently, for the remainder of the century, liberals in Western India, especially those clustered in the East India Association and the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, devoted their energy to lobbying the rulers of these principalities.

Only if the Brits approved. The plain fact is, if the British Resident (Political Agent) took it into his head that you were up to mischief, you would be externed & perhaps even prosecuted for seditious libel.  

The most influential of these figures was Narayan Mahadev Parmanand (1838–1893), one of the saptarishis of Elphinstone (the informal title given to its esteemed first seven graduates). His closest companions — RG Bhandarkar, MG Ranade, KT Telang, and Karsandas Mulji — are household names but Parmanand stayed out of the limelight because he believed that fame threatened integrity. As a consequence, his fingerprints are everywhere and his name nowhere, despite being a pioneering newspaper editor, naib dewan, and senior civil servant.

We may also mention Bahram Malabari who published Parmanand's work.  

Parmanand’s crowning achievement came at the end of his life when, bedridden with Parkinson’s, he dictated a series of essays that appeared in 1891 as Letters to an Indian Raja. Published under the pseudonym, “A Political Recluse  ”, the essays were the first full-fledged work of political theory in modern India.

There had been earlier pamphlets by Naoroji & even the Chemist PC Ray which attracted some attention in England. However, it was the cow-protection movement, formally launched in 1881, which enabled Congress to achieve 'mass-contact'. Interestingly, A.O Hume, a vegetarian Vedantin (he had previously been a Theosophist), supported cow-protection for agronomic reasons. 

It must be said, Theosophy was a big influence on educated Indians. They might not know the name of Parmanand, but they did know Annie Beasant. Motilal Nehru was a Theosophist and he hired an English Theosophist to tutor his son.  

Instead of merely complaining about what the British had or had not done, they laid out the principles and institutions that would allow the Native States to “go ahead” of British India.

No. The Princely states had been importing people like Parmanand from Directly ruled areas so as to 'catch up'. Baroda & Mysore were doing well. Parmanand himself was seen as a protege of William Wedderburn. Nobody cared about his ideas. What mattered was that if the Brits had downgraded you to third class status (as happened to the small State of which Gandhi's father was the Diwan) then you needed to make some pretence of adopting fashionable reforms. Kipling made fun of this in a poem where he pointed out that the new Prince had built a 'thana' (police station) hoping the Viceroy would take notice, but then had turned it into a 'zenana' (harem) because nobody was interested in his potty little Principality.  

Parmanand chose to address the Maharajas rather than his fellow subjects in British India on the grounds that, in a society where social norms were deeply entrenched and jealously guarded, a ruler could be made liberal by advice, but the people could only be made liberal by law.

This is not Classical Liberalism. It is 'enlightened despotism' in the manner of Fredrick the Great or Catherine the Great. 

The theory Parmanand developed was elegant in design and global in perspective.

It was senile garbage. Nobody gave it a thought. Cow-protection was taking off. Tilak was getting ready to turn the Ganapati festival into a vehicle of mass-mobilization. 

On one side, he argued that Maharajas ought to modernise their households and their administration to make them more orderly and meritocratic (for instance, princes ought to study in public schools, as they did in Germany, and bureaucratic appointments and promotions ought to be by examination, as in China).

Send your kids to Mayo College or some other such British 'Chieftain's College'. The Brits had introduced competitive exams for East India Company appointments in 1853. Mimic them and they might give you a knighthood or other such reward. 

On the other side, he showed how Maharajas could foster a capable civil society that could check and eventually share power (for instance by making education free and compulsory and by breaking down caste barriers that hindered development and citizenship).

AO Hume had done much to raise school attendance in Etawah when he was the Collector there. He had published two newspapers. The result was that Etawah remained loyal during the Mutiny. If people are illiterate and there are no newspapers, they will listen to rumours and may run amok.  

The Maharajas had a good reason to bind their own hands and unbind those of their subjects, Parmanand argued, because otherwise their principalities would become museum pieces. Already, their subjects were beginning to migrate to the metropoles of British India where progress was painfully slow but at least evident.

So, Parmanand was doing British propaganda. Nothing wrong with that. The Brits had promoted him. The reforms he was suggesting weren't mischievous in themselves. The question was, where would the money come from to pay for them? As AO Hume saw, India needed to raise agricultural productivity. Utility is just the reverse side of the coin of productivity. Gassing on about liberalism doesn't magically enable more corn to be grown. Hume was foolish enough to think educated Indians would want total factor productivity to go up and that they would be keen to take a hand in solving collective action problems. Sadly, they just wanted to talk bollocks.  It wasn't till LBJ threatened to cut off PL480 food aid that Lutyens's Delhi stirred itself to permit the Green Revolution. Incidentally, an Indian revolutionary who had taken refuge in Mexico, played a big role in creating hybrid strains which greatly increased the size of the harvest. On returning to India, after Independence, he doesn't seem to have accomplished anything by way of getting the Government to promote such new seed strains. I may mention that the American led 'Etawah project' in the Fifties only succeeded because a new seed strain was introduced. The Indians thought Etawah could be scaled up on the basis of everybody talking more and more virtue signalling bollocks. They were wrong. 

These were not vain hopes. Letters to an Indian Raja was addressed to the Gaekwad of Baroda, who admired Parmanand and enacted many of his proposals.

He had been an ordinary farmer's son when he was suddenly elevated to the throne because the previous ruler was a debauched scoundrel who emptied the treasury and poisoned the British Resident. Since he himself didn't want to be depose and because he preferred having lots of money to being bankrupt. he hired smart people and did sensible things. Could he play a bigger role in Indian politics? Maybe. That is why he hired people like Aurobindo- and later tried to make Ambedkar his Military Secretary. Then, family bereavements and poor health caused him to spend most of his time on his English estate. 

But the text soon obtained a wider audience, ending up on the reading lists of princes across the country. It went on to have a particular impact on the Maharajas of Mysore and Kolhapur, the latter of whom shocked the British by his “extremely radical” adherence to “liberal principles” when, for instance, he expanded the role of the “depressed castes” in the professions (in 1902), introduced free and compulsory primary education (in 1911), supported widow remarriage and intercaste marriage (in 1917), and lifted disabilities imposed on “untouchables” (in 1919).

What radicalised the Prince was the Vedokta Controversy (1899–1901): As a Maratha king and direct descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji, Shahu was denied the right to Vedic religious rituals by orthodox Brahmin priests. The priests claimed Marathas were Shudras entitled only to lesser Puranic rites. 

In the past, a King would simply have slaughtered some such Brahmins and brought in other Brahmins from a different part of India to perform the rituals. Sadly, the Brits would not permit this. Thus, to gain countervailing power against the orthodox element in his kingdom, he went in a radical direction. Since many British officials suspected Maharashtrian Brahmins (Chitpavans, like Tilak, in particular) of conspiring agains them they approved of attempts to lift up the dominant agricultural castes (Kolis etc.) 

Sadly, despite its elegance and reach, Parmanand’s text was eventually forgotten.

It was worthless. AO Hume's brief work on Agricultural reform wasn't worthless. It too was forgotten because Indians are too lazy to want to raise productivity. I may mention, the Agronomic Research Institute Hume proposed was set up once an American millionaire paid for it.  

As the Congress strengthened, it became clear that the days of the Native States were numbered.

Not really. In the interwar period, the Princes thought they would have more freedom to do what they liked. If Gandhi tried to interfere (e.g. Rajkot satyagraha) they could outflank him by lifting up the Dalits and minorities.  

At the same time, the growth of radicalism led the British to be more conciliatory toward the Native States. These developments lessened the incentive the Maharajas had to reform themselves and Letters disappeared from bookshelves.

It wasn't reprinted because nobody would buy it.  

The variant of Indian liberalism that subsequently came to dominate the public sphere was the one that evolved in British India after 1919.

i.e. Sapru running too and fro between the Viceroy & Gandhi. Sadly, Viceroys lost interest in talking to the Maha-crackpot. Lock up Congress-wallahs and threaten to expropriate their property and they soon come to their senses. The Brits had been forced to give independence to Ireland, Egypt & Afghanistan in 1922. Gandhi unilaterally surrendered and subsequently the Brits dictated the pace and scope of constitutional reform. Maybe, if Churchill had defeated Atlee in 1945, his dream of 'Prince-stan' would have been achieved. India might be a loose federation. Different Rajahs & Nawabs would take turns as Governor General of the Dominion. 

It focused not on empowering individuals but on representation based on group membership,

separate electorates? Congress was against that & got rid of them when it came to power.  

which meant that its victory came, as Parmanand feared, at the expense of both individuality and solidarity.

Meaningless jibber-jabber. The Second World War had led the State to greatly expand its control of the Economy. Would this be rolled back? No. The politicians & bureaucrats gained 'rents' though the country as a whole stagnated. In particular, Nehru did not permit the textile industry to grow. Why? He did not want an Indian bourgeoisie of the 'Manchester' type. Worse yet would be what you saw in America where the Bench severely checked the powers of the Executive with backing from the large class of entrepreneurs and industrialists. Galbraith, as Ambassador to India, condemned laissez faire America as creating 'private affluence' amidst 'public squalor'. The Indian President lived in a huge palace with over a thousand servants. The American President had a potty little 'White House' and often drove himself to the air-port to welcome a foreign dignitary. I may mention that Galbraith thought the Punjabi peasant was better off than the Appalachian hillbilly! This encouraged Indian economists like Amartya Sen to claim that African American New Yorkers are worse off than Bangladeshis or Malyalees! Incidentally, India had plenty of food. It didn't need no stinkin' American technology. The only reason so many Bengalis starved to death in 1943 & 1974 was because of neglect by evil economists of capabilities and functionings and the need to consult impartial observers from the planet Pluto. 

And so, when we are puzzled by the condition of Indian liberalism today, which speaks boldly about group rights

as do woke nutters in campuses across the globe 

but quavers over individual merit and a uniform civil code,

for Muslims? Do you really want to be fatwa'd?  

it is worth remembering that there once existed another liberalism in another India, which

was as weak as piss. Still, if you managed to get a Government job or a pat on the back from the British Collector or Political Agent, it was worth doing till something better came along. Shyamji Krishna Varma made money investing in textile mills and thus could retire to England where he could safely indulge in revolutionary activity- e.g. assisting the Savarkar brothers.  

measured progress by the well-being of individuals rather than groups.

Groups are composed of individuals. If an individual's productivity goes up, others in the group can copy him and get richer. That is progress. It doesn't depend on talking bollocks. All that matters is productivity which rises when collective action problems are tackled in an incentive compatible manner. 

 

More senile garbage from Gurcharan Das

 Writing for Scroll, the wholly senile Gurcharan asks-

 What is the future of liberalism in India?

The answer is that Liberalism has no future anywhere. The thing is silly.  

The country’s rapid progress and liberal economy of the past three decades is being undone by its illiberal tilt, democracy slipping.

The silly man hasn't noticed the rise of AAP which now rules both Punjab and Delhi. How is that associated with 'democracy slipping'?  

India is truly a land of ironies.

No. It is an over-populated shithole.  

When I was growing up, India was admired for its robust, liberal democracy

Nonsense! It was known to be an over-populated shithole. Then China took down its pants and made fun of its puny genitals. It was only PL480 food from Uncle Sam which prevented mass starvation.  

but pitied for its socialist, illiberal economy.

Actually, it wasn't considered too Socialist till after this guy graduated from Harvard. Like its neighbors, India moved in a more Socialist direction in the late Sixties and Seventies.  

Today, it is a dynamic, liberal economy

Parts of it are. So what? This had nothing to do with liberalism.  

but its democracy is slipping, turning illiberal.

Because Modi didn't get an absolute majority? Or because the Dynasty has got a second wind?  

This is happening, paradoxically, when India’s stature has risen in the world and it is considered a democratic bulwark against autocratic China.

Fuck off! Even the US isn't a democratic bulwark against China. It will rise and rise. India will learn to accommodate the dragon so as to concentrate on what really matters to the vast majority of its own people- viz. reservations and who gets to rape whom with impunity.  

What does this reversal mean for the country’s future, and, indeed, of liberalism’s future in India?

Meaningless shite means nothing for the future just as it meant nothing in the past. 

I became a liberal in my 30s

i.e. the Seventies when the main economic problem was 'cost-pust' stagflation. What was the Liberal solution? Tax based Prices & Incomes Policy? Fuck off. They had none. I suppose you could say Friedman and Hayek were Neo-Liberal. But Pinochet's Chile was welcome to implement their policies.

because I believed in openness, the rule of law and tolerance for others’ views.

Which is why Das's parents took him away from Pakistan. What I still don't understand is why he and his parents didn't settle in America which will always be safer for Hindus than anywhere Muslims or Sikhs predominate? Perhaps America was too racist at that time. Still, it was rich and thus could afford to provide the rule of law- at least for those with money.

What Das does not understand is that without military or economic power, the people of a place will only have openness if this is imposed on them by a conqueror.  No country gained military or economic power by being open and tolerant. Eighteenth century Britain was far more intolerant than India. Das's family had to flee their ancestral homes when the Brits left,  Suppose they had decided to settle in Sikh dominated Punjab or the Muslim dominated Valley. Then, in the late Eighties or Nineties, they may have had to run for their lives again.

I also learned to be wary of power

because power kept inviting him over for cuppa tea but it would fuck him in the ass instead. After a few years of incessant sodomization Das learned to be wary of such invitations.

– political, religious and economic.

His parents ran the fuck away from Islamic power. 

Liberalism offered an ethically responsible order of human progress without excessive dependence on the state.

Only if it could win wars and kill insurrectionists. No political order offers anything save through not just 'excessive' but exclusive dependence on the State for various public goods. It isn't the case that we should only rely on the State for the provision of ICBMs while leaving cruise missile provision to individual households. 

It did not surprise me to learn that this philosophy had been the reigning ideology of the world for two centuries as

White peeps took over and ruled brown peeps like my and Gurcharan's ancestors. This meant Hindus like us were safe and could prosper even in Muslim or Sikh or Buddhist dominated areas. Sadly, evil Brits refused to let Japan conquer India and thus it was forced to become independent. Nehru, it is true, presided over a vast ethnic cleansing of Muslims but he made up for it by opening his legs to China. Army and Police are very illiberal. But true fault is that of Hindus who for some reason don't want to take it up the ass from all and sundry. 

democracies and free markets had spread around the world and become the only sensible way to organise public life.

Does Das think China is a democracy? Perhaps. He is as stupid as shit. The fact is, the sensible way to organize public life must be different in countries with different traits and previous trajectories.  

Today, it is disheartening to find that this idea is under grave threat around the world.

What fucking idea? That China should be democratic? It is obvious that its system of government suits it and has enabled to catch up with the US economically. It is likely to overtake it. India has fallen greatly behind China and there is zero prospect of this ever changing. Why? We are simply a shittier people- or collection of peoples. Perhaps this has to do with the caste system. Or maybe we are simply stupid.  

I grew up in the “Age of Hope” when Jawaharlal Nehru was our hero and we were all socialists.

Because your parents ran the fuck away from your ancestral home. 

From 1950 to 1990, India offered the most amazing freedom to its people – of life, speech, association, religion and the like – but it refused economic freedom.

Fuck off! People had less freedom than under the Brits. But, to be frank, this was because there was too much freedom under the Brits. What there was too little off was economic development and military preparation.

Das has shit inside his brain. He does not understand that 'economic freedom' is useless. All that matters is productivity. If that goes up- well and good.  

Nehru meant well, wanting India to become a more equal society, but the bureaucracy gave him a terrible regulatory system that would crush individual enterprise for two generations.

No. The plain fact is that both Indian entrepreneurs and Indian bureaucrats and Indian politicians were utterly shit. True, some were slightly better than others and free competition may have let the more productive expand at the expanse of the utterly shit. On the other hand, the utterly shit can spend money to fuck up competition. Indeed, that's what happened. Even under the Brits, Parsi entrepreneurs (who tended to be more tech savvy) were lazy. had low productivity & capacity utilization and virtually no innovation. That's why though Japan started to industrialize later, it soon overtook India.

Freedom fighter and veteran politician C Rajagopalchari called it “licence, permit, inspector Raj”.

Which he had contributed to as Premier of Madras even when the Brits were around. Even the Brits could not stop Indians doing rent extraction.

I became a victim of this system.

No you didn't. You were a beneficiary. You had no business sense but your MNC could make an okay profit on its shitty Indian product line. Thus you could be put in charge. 

I worked for a company that made Vicks Vaporub. There was an outbreak of flu one year and the sales of Vicks soared. We were happy, having done good for the country

you hadn't. People in rich countries don't use that shit. It is is only darkies in India or Mexico to whom you can sell that shite.  

during the epidemic but at the end of the year, a summons arrived from the government, claiming we had broken the law – our production had exceeded the limit authorised in our licence. It was a criminal offence with a potential jail sentence. I appeared for a hearing before a government official who treated me like a criminal. I explained to him that the flu epidemic had resulted in extra demand and we were only doing our duty, keeping store shelves stocked.

You can now see why an MNC might employ a cretin like Das. The fucker genuinely didn't understand he was selling shite to thickos and that this was nothing but a fucking cartel administered by the fucking Government. The man lived in a fantasy land even when he was a corporate stooge.  

But the official pronounced us guilty. In the end, the government quietly dropped the case

Cartels should police themselves. Why should the Government have to pay a senior advocate to argue the case? 

but I felt sickened by this nightmare. I abandoned socialism to become a “classical” liberal and joined Rajagopalchari’s Swatantra Party.

Which joined up with the Jan Sangh and CPM to form the Janata Morcha which promptly abolished the fundamental right to property 

I do not blame Nehru for he did not know any better,

No. He knew that fucking over 'wage good', labor intensive industries would weaken the very industrialists who had financed Congress. Also he wanted to centralize economic power.  

reflecting the spirit of his socialist age. But I do blame Indira Gandhi.

Why? She had to break both the Corporates and the Public Sector Trade Unions. Beating and killing people did the trick. Sadly, autocracy is tempered by assassination. 

By then, Japan, Korea and Taiwan had risen.

They were in the American camp. India wasn't. Had it been so, there would have been a Communist insurgency which might actually have won.  

Instead of emulating their policy of exporting labour intensive manufactures, which turned them into middle-class societies, she did the opposite, tightening controls, and India lost two generations of opportunities for its young.

India could have done what Bangladesh under Ershad did. But, that was the era when Datta Samant was King. What's the point in setting up mills if some Doctor turned Trade Unionist just shuts them down? 

Ironically, she justified her policies in the name of the poor but the number of poor doubled between 1950 and 1985.

Because of population growth. 

India got its economic freedom in 1991

No. There was some liberalization. Smart Indians moved to where there were no Exchange Controls or availed of round-tripping mechanisms of various sorts.

and went on to become the world’s second-fastest growing economy over the next three decades. It grew at an average rate of almost 6% over the next 30 years, lifting 400 million out of poverty as the middle class expanded from 10% to 30% of the population. India had achieved the liberal dream – a true democracy with a free, dynamic economy.

Productivity went up in some places but not in others. Any version of any 'ism' which isn't raising productivity is bad. Its 'opportunity cost' is too high. 

But the past decade has seen the weakening of democracy with the rise of identity politics,

His parents ran away from Muslims eight decades ago. This stupid cunt thinks this is something new those dastardly Hindus have cooked up. 

majoritarianism, Hindutva politics and Islamophobia. Critics are being silenced and the discourse on social media has become extremely polarised.

But Muslims aren't running away from India as they did in Nehru's time.  

The atmosphere of hate has damaged India’s cherished secular ideal of “sarva dharma samabhav”

But Hindus who want to cherish it may have to run away from more and more of their ancestral land because that will make Das feel better about himself.  

– respect for all religions'. There has been no no communal riot on the scale of the Gujarat riots in 2002 or anti-Sikh pogrom in Delhi 1984

there has been no ethnic cleansing on the scale of the Pandits of the Valley. But since they are Hindu, they don't matter.  

but there have been many localised incidents of violence, especially against Muslims.

Why did his parents take him and run away from those nice Muslims? Is anybody actually taken in by this virtue signaling cunt?

Still, we can understand why the guy is a Liberal. Bush and Obama killed 1.3 million Muslims. That was very generous of them.  

Liberals are partly to blame for this.

They should have insisted Hindus evacuate India and fuck off somewhere else.  

Liberalism remains an elite enterprise

This guy confuses idiocy with elite status. There is no liberal 'enterprise' in India. 

and the rise of Hindutva is partly a revolt against the English-speaking elite.

This shithead doesn't get that actual English peeps ruled India. Hindutva dates back to their rule.  

Moreover, hardly any liberal political leader has had a serious dialogue with tradition,

The Indian Liberal Party was founded by Surendranath Banerjee. Some of its prominent leaders were Tej Bahadur Sapru, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri and M. R. Jayakar. They were as thick as thieves with people like Malviya. 

nor sold the ideas of the Constitution.

What is this stupid cunt talking about? The Brits had held plenty of consultations and three fucking Round Table Conferences before passing the 1935 GoI Act from which two thirds of the Constitution was drawn.  The Nehru Report, too, was important and it was only accepted after Congress, which included plenty of traditionalists, had thoroughly discussed the matter. The Princes too had a lot of 'Voice'. Das is simply ignorant. 

Mohandas Gandhi, alas, died too soon.

Gurcharan Das, alas, is still alive.  

He had been able to translate liberal ideas of freedom and equality into the civilisational language of dharma,

Which is why the Muslims voted for Partition.  

capturing the hearts and minds of the people.

What about the people from whom this nutter's parents ran away? 

But many still believe that the Constitution dropped from the heavens one day and is not theirs.

Literally no one does. Even this shithead isn't that stupid.  

My dilemma this Lok Sabha election was that a liberal was neither electable, nor was there hope for a true liberal party – the Swatantra Party had died long ago.

It wasn't Liberal at all. The actual Indian Liberal Party folded before this cunt was born.  

Worse, I had no one to vote for. I could not vote for the authoritarian identity politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was turning our proud democracy into an illiberal one. Nor could I vote for the Congress and the INDIA bloc because I did not trust its populist, statist economics, ever ready to make a false trade-off between growth and equity.

This is silly. A Congress led alliance set the liberalization ball rolling. Manmohan was actually trying to do more off this back in 2012. But it is is easier said than done as the farm protests showed. 

In any case, nobody expected INDIA bloc to form a Government. The question in 2024 was whether India would have a coalition government or if the BJP would get a third term on is own. 

India may have become a fast-growing economy but it did not create enough jobs.

because productivity is low.  

It had failed to create an industrial revolution.

No. Most of its industries have low productivity. 

Manufacturing was only 15% of the gross domestic product and manufactured exports less than 2% of world exports. How else would 45% of the country’s workers, stuck in agriculture, rise to do more productive jobs? It would require tough reforms, and I trusted the BJP, not the Opposition alliance, to execute these reforms.

There is a certain amount the Center can do, provided there isn't too great a backlash, but ultimately this is a matter for the States. 

The results of the election, however, have given me hope.

Delimitation will go through. Reservations may not be renewed in 2030.  

It vindicated the belief of political scientists, Lloyd and Suzanne Rudolph, in the 1980s. They observed that “persistent centrism” is a striking feature of India’s politics.

It persists as a shithole.  

India’s social pluralism draws a limit against extreme ideologies.

No. It's being a shithole means there is a limit to the stupid shit it can do.  

Moreover, Indians are an argumentative and disobedient lot, economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen pointed out,

which is why they obeyed the Brits for a couple of centuries 

and this results in an open, liberal temper.

Fuck off! Sycophantic clerks who learn a bit of English may have a temper, but it isn't liberal.  

In a land of 330 million gods, no god can afford to feel jealous.

Except Allah. Das's people are highly skilled at running away from that God.  

The seed of scepticism was sowed in the famous Nasadiya verse of the Rig Veda, around 1500 Before Common Era, which concluded that human beings may never know the origins of the universe.

Das's daddy said to his wife, 'Let's Nasadiya get our asses outta here before the Muslims turn us into kebabs'. This showed he was a true Liberal  

This temper was nourished in the “neti-neti” style of questioning in the Upanishads.

Das's mummy said to his daddy, 'Move your fat arse, neti-neti, or Muslims will turn us into kebabs! 

In the epistemological debates on pramana, or knowledge,

sources of knowledge e.g. how to run the fuck away from Muslims.  

among competing schools in the Gupta Age, philosophers of all sects concluded that the only true source of knowledge is non-transcendental – perception and inference.

Nope. The orthodox Hindu sects consider Veda the only true, unsublatable, source of knowledge. Christianity and Islam hold exactly the same position with respect to their scripture. It is fucking obvious that both perception and inference don't yield true knowledge. You may see mist on a hill and mistake it for smoke and wrongly infer the trees on that hill are on fire. Gurcharan is as stupid as shit. 

These are and other reasons make me optimistic about liberalism’s future in India. History too tends to be cyclical:

Das will run back to Pakistan? I hope so.  

if we give up on liberalism, our children will return to it.

Just as, if we give up on sex our non-existent kids will fuck like crazy.  

Besides, liberalism is too decent an idea.

The only decent idea this cretin has had concerned not trying to return to the place his parents had fled. He is stupid, but he is Punjabi- i.e. has a survival instinct.  

It is still the most sensible way to organise public life

the sensible way to organize public life is to do mechanism design so as to raise productivity. Genuine Liberalism has no problem with this. Das is not a genuine liberal. He is a senile cretin.  

and it won't be kept down for too long.

Unless it has to run away from Muslims.  

Is Gurcharan Das utterly senile?

 The dilemma of an Indian liberal is easily solved. Emigrate to a place still ruled by White people. Gurcharan Das disagrees. In 'the dilemmas of an Indian liberal' he writes-

For good or for bad, there is a nationalist government in power,

Gurcharan thinks the Indian National Congress is not nationalist. Manmohan was probably a Chinese agent- right?  

and this raises another dilemma.

But the solution of every one of Gurcharan's dilemmas involve his saying 'we should be nice. Naughtiness is totes not nice. Why can't the rest of you brown monkeys just learn to be less naughty for a change?'  

A liberal is against tribalism,

No.  A liberal thinks that indigenous tribes should be allowed to manage their own affairs on their own territory in the manner they think right and proper.  

and nationalism is a form of tribalism.

Nonsense! Some Arabs and Afghans might know which tribe and clan they belong to. Few Europeans or Americans do because tribes disappeared leaving only linguistic communities which were defined as 'nations'. I suppose, the Israeli Jew might know if he is from the tribe of Levi, but this does not affect the degree to which he is an Israeli Nationalist.  

Hence, a liberal is suspicious of the kind of nationalism that arose in 19th-century Europe

No. Liberals supported nationalist leaders like Kossuth or Mazzini. At a later point, Gladstone was even willing to accommodate the Irish nationalism of Parnell. Indeed, the Indian National Congress received support from Liberals like Florence Nightingale. 

when modern states were formed on the basis of identity—of a single religion, or language, or ethnicity—

Liberals welcomed Greece and a unified Italy and Germany into the comity of nations. Is there a single example of Liberals opposing the creating of mono-linguistic or religious states on the Wilsonian pattern? No. There may have been objections re. expediency or financial or military viability. But, Liberals have always supported the right to national self-determination even if nations are defined in terms of religion- e.g. Pakistan and Israel. 

Imperialists, on the other hand, have suggested that multi-ethnic cosmopolitanism is better even if this means that Imperial storm troopers have to massacre civilians in different parts of the Empire from time to time.  

and went on to become instruments of power and violence in the 20th century.

Not really. Gurcharan does not understand that the Kaiser or Hitler or Tojo wanted to grab lots of territory and create a vast Empire which they would rule over. But Communist Commissars too had no objection to conquering territory and subjugating the native population. At any rate, that's what Mao did to Tibet.  

This nationalism proclaimed one’s country was superior, sought an enemy and excluded minorities.

Some Emperors, e.g. the Tzar, fucked over certain minorities- e.g. the Jews- with vim and vigor. Gurcharan probably thinks Abdul the Damned used to kiss and cuddle Armenians.  

It drove European nations to colonise the world;

No it didn't. Certain Kings- like Louis Phillipe or Leopold of Belgium- may have sponsored colonial schemes in Africa and elsewhere. But nation states which went in for this did so through commercial enterprises- e.g. the Dutch or British East India Companies. 

The Norwegians are notoriously nationalistic. After gaining independence from Sweden, which country did they colonize?  

it made Germany and Japan militaristic;

This cretin has never heard of the Junkers or the Samurai.  

it led the Nazis to murder six million Jews in the Holocaust.

Christians have been murdering Jews for thousands of years alleging that they are 'Deicides'.  The Hutus in Rwanda were agriculturists. They had no difficulty carrying out a genocide against Tutsis, who were a more martial caste, using agricultural implements. But the Tutsis then invaded and conquered the country. 

These were the tragedies of this narrow-minded nationalism.

They had nothing whatsoever to do with nationalism. Don't forget Jews were prominent among the nineteenth century and early twentieth century German nationalists.  Indeed, Turkish Jews supported the Young Turks, while in England, there had been a Jewish origin Prime Minister. 

There is a good nationalism, however.

Nationalism can be nice. But it can also be naughty. Please read my next book 'Why it is nice to be nice'. Kindly desist from shoving it up your arse because such behavior is naughty and totally lacking in niceness. Mind it! 

It can help a country to modernise, develop with a sense of urgency, as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration in 1867-68.

The slogan was 'revere the Emperor, expel the barbarian!'. This later became 'enrich the country, strengthen the Army'.  

It can bring diverse and plural peoples to unite to throw out an imperial foreign power, as was the case in India during its freedom struggle in the first half of the 20th century.

The Brits left because America wouldn't pay for them to remain as the Umpire between the squabbling Indian parties.  

Meiji Japan focused on giving excellent education to all Japanese children,

No. It focused on getting rich and strengthening the Army so it could conquer territory. It was able to go on the gold standard after getting reparations from China. Only at that point did Japanese parents begin to eagerly enroll their boys in schools in the hope that they could get into the Army and amount to something.  

instilling a sense of national unity that helped mould the modern Japanese personality.

They didn't bother getting rid of untouchability though.  

India was born in 1947 out of good nationalism without shedding an ounce of blood,

Gurcharan is Sikh. He thinks not a single Sikh shed any blood during partition.  

and it happened in the shadows of Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

Stalin and Mao were Communists, not Nationalists. This man is a cretin.  

That nationalism was Indian, not Hindu or Muslim.

In 1939, Gandhi said the INC was Hindu. The Brits must hand over the army to the INC because otherwise the rapacious Muslims and the Punjabis (regardless of creed) would overrun the country.  

It was the creation of Mahatma Gandhi and his associates.

Gandhi could have presided over a transfer of power in 1924. But he surrendered unilaterally in 1922 because he thought Muslims and Punjabis would beat up the cowardly Hindu and take all their nice shiny things.  

He was able to capture the hearts and minds of ordinary people because he spoke to them through traditional words and symbols.

Viceroy was able to rule over the sub-continent with little effort because hearts and minds of Indians had been captured by stupid nutters.  

He appealed to their imagination with an inclusive, civilisational concept of sadharana dharma, a universal ideal applicable to all human beings—leading to duties such as ahimsa, ‘not hurting another’, or satya, ‘telling the truth’.

Also, if you suddenly remember Whitey is ruling over you, you can form an orderly queue to be hit on the head after which you can spend a year or two sulking in jail. Somebody should tell Gurcharan that Muslims did not buy Gandhi's 'sadharan dharm'. They created a country called Pakistan.  

Unlike the dharma of caste, this dharma of conscience resonated with all Indians.

Jinnah wasn't India. He was a Scottish lady from Aberdeen.  

As a result, an incipient sense of unity began to emerge in the popular consciousness, uniting the multitudinous communities of the subcontinent into one national community.

Gurcharan was born in Lyallpur and spent his first years in Lahore. When he was four years old, his family had to flee for their lives. Since they neglected to tell the boy that Pakistan had been created, he remains convinced that Karachi and Lahore are still part of India.  

Unfortunately, Mahatma Gandhi died soon after Independence.

He was shot. Autocracy is tempered by assassination.  

None of the leaders after him was up to the task of selling the excellent idea of a modern secular republic based on the rule of law.

Gandhi failed to sell it to the Muslims.  

Well-meaning Jawaharlal Nehru was too much of a Western oriented gentleman; he tried but failed to connect with the people as Gandhi had been able to.

Which is why Nehru kept losing elections- right? I believe he moved to Bournemouth in 1950. His landlady would often ask if he was a wog. 'No Madamji' he would reply 'I iz not gollywog. I iz Western oriented gentlemans. Kindly stop sitting on my face.'  

This is why the ordinary person still believes that the Constitution fell from heaven one day, and does not understand or own it.

The Constitution owes something to Nehru's 1928 program and much more to the British 1935 Act. There is also some stupid shite copied from Da Valera's Ireland.  

Tocqueville has taught us that underlying a liberal democracy is a moral consensus which is expressed daily in ‘habits of the heart’,

Tocqueville was describing America. But England had already been like that for a century. Anglo Saxon habits were indeed different from French habits. But, that is still true. 

which is why the great Sanskrit scholar called our Constitution a ‘dharma text’.

Which scholar?  Tocqueville? Gurcharan is senile. The Indian Constitution can't be a 'dharma text' because it can be amended, abrogated, or wholly ignored without any soteriological consequences. 

The political class as a whole has failed not only to create new ‘habits of the heart’ but also a sense of modern national community.

The RSS has done a good job in that sense. The Dynastic INC hasn't. That is why Modi has prevailed over the moon-calf.  

This has led to a Hindu nationalism instead of an Indian nationalism.

Nothing wrong with Hindu nationalism or Buddhist nationalism or Muslim nationalism. That is the liberal view. If you are an Imperialist, you may say 'I wish the House of Windsor still ruled over a united Indian Empire- including Burma and Aden. ' But, Imperialism is antithetical to Liberalism. It is predicated on the notion that the right to national self-determination must be denied to 'lesser breeds without the law'.  

In Milestone 26 in Chapter 5, I tried to answer the question why Hindus, who are 80 per cent of India’s population, felt insecure in their own country.

This nutter hasn't heard about what happened to Hindus in the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley or in Sikh majority areas during the Khalistan insurgency.  

If bad nationalism is about power,

No existing nation state is not evil because it has power. Still, the good news is that Gurcharan will say that a nation state which is too weak to avoid being conquered is very sweet and nice.  

a good nationalism is cherishing one’s country’s natural beauty, the memories of childhood, of a particular time, place and a way of life.

That isn't nationalism. It is nostalgia. You can have it for foreign countries where you were raised or which you visited as a child.  

Bad nationalism is about power, prestige and wanting to dominate others.

Bad people want power and prestige. They want to become boss. Good people want to be beaten and fucked in the ass by all and sundry.  

Bad nationalists are haunted by the belief that the past can be altered.

Gurcharan is a bad nationalist because he says Gandhi unified India. There was no Partition. Pakistan does not exist. His parents didn't have to run for their lives from Lahore.  

They feel the need to holler, and shout slogans to proclaim their country’s greatness,

Gurcharan is merely hollering about his own greatness.  

which often reflects insecurity, low self-esteem and even a feeling of inferiority.

Gurcharan is inferior.  He may have done well enough in the Corporate world, but he has achieved nothing since. The man has shit for brains. 

Good nationalists are quietly confident, comfortable in their skin, aware of their nation’s strengths and weaknesses.

Gurcharan is describing Modi.  

They even wonder why their love has to stop at the border, because they are humans first and citizens of nations afterwards.

Why did Gurcharan's family run away from Lahore? They should have remained there loving it to pieces while mobs hacked away at them.  

Today, the world is witnessing the ill-fated rise of bad nationalisms.

Fuck was it witnessing in 1947?  

They are all driven by a utopian vision of a past when ‘we were great’ before we were beset by irritating immigrants, foreign invaders and minorities.

This cretin just described a utopian India united by Mahatma Gandhi. He thinks that was a great place to be alive. Yet, his own family had to run away from Lahore when he was four years old. 

The result is an unhappy polarisation in society, as in India, caused by the notion of a pure Hindu past that began to decline when Muslims came and began to rule.

Gurcharan thinks Hindus didn't decline when 'Muslims came and began to rule'. Yet he shows no inclination to return to his ancestral home in Pakistan. Why is that?  

It is typical nationalist history, driven by power and distrust of and hatred for the Other.

His family should have trusted their Muslim neighbors in Lahore to keep them safe.  Clearly his mummy and daddy were very wicked and evil.  

The danger of bad nationalism is that it runs the risk of turning militaristic.

So, Indian nationalism is good nationalism because India is not militaristic. No doubt, if Gurcharan had remained in Lahore, Pakistani Army would not have taken over that country.  

There is another form of negative nationalism that leads nations to conspiracy theories and paranoia.

This cretin has a conspiracy theory about how Nehru was 'western oriented' and this caused his Mummy and Daddy to pick him up in their arms and to run for the border in 1947. Had they remained in Lahore, Muslim mobs would have given them lots of hugs and kisses.  

When I was working for a multinational company, I was sometimes its target.

Which was very unfair. MNCs never use over-invoicing and other such tricks to cheat the tax-man of the host country.  

Both Indian and Latin American social scientists used to complain incessantly that their poverty and backwardness were the result of the misdeeds of world capitalism.

The United Fruit Company was very sweet and nice. Why didn't Banana Republics understand this?  

Multinational companies like mine were the villain in their eyes.

They were seen as chumps by smart merchant bankers. Gurcharan was fortunate in that he retired before the Proctor & Gamble/ Bankers Trust derivatives debacle blew up. What was not mentioned at that time was that such transactions can also short change the countries where tax was payable. This has to do with different accounting conventions in different jurisdictions. 

Raul Prebisch, the Argentine economist, had created a ‘dependency theory’, which argued that poor nations would always remain dependent on rich Western nations because of unequal terms of trade.

Bhagwati's 'immeserizing growth is like the Prebisch-Singer thesis. Chichilnisky was originally a Prebisch type economist. However, the fact remains, Argentina did stupid shit and thus failed to move up the value chain. The lesson here is don't do stupid shit. Perhaps Milie can turn things round. I'm kidding. The man is a clown.  

It led to export pessimism and isolationist policies in many countries, including India.

No. Manmohan worked under Prebisch in the mid-Sixties. Previously his name was unknown in India. The sad truth is some of Marshall's best students encouraged India to go down the wrong, Listian, path. But it made money for certain industrialists and politicians. More than money, they enjoyed 'the best of monopoly profits- viz. a quiet life'.  

As a result, many Third World countries failed to participate in global export booms that began in the 1950s and ’60s.

No. They did increase exports but there was capital flight or reckless borrowing or rampant corruption and thugocracy.  

The Asian miracle in the 1980s proved the dependency theory wrong as Asian tigers rose on the basis of the export of manufactured goods.

All it proved was that if you do sensible stuff and work your asses off, you can climb the value chain. But this may involve shooting 'dissidents' or labor organizers etc.  

Another danger of bad nationalism is that it finds someone else to blame for one’s troubles.

Gurcharan is guilty of bad nationalism. Instead of blaming himself, he targets the Hindus of the country his parents had to flee to. They are very nasty. Why they are distrusting Muslims? It is because Nehru was 'western oriented'? Sadharan Dharma says you should trust everybody to sleep naked with your wife. If they also beat and sodomize you, your cup of joy will overflow. Gurcharan will give you a gold star.  

Today, bad nationalism makes us suspicious of trade treaties.

Why be suspicious of a treaty you have no intention of abiding by? Still, Gurcharan has a point. Only a 'bad nationalist' would be suspicious of a treaty offered by Hitler or Putin or Mao.  

It is still not too late for India to benefit from the positive lessons of East Asia’s international trade liberalisation.

Nor is it too late to tell Gurcharan that he is shit for brains. This is because he isn't yet dead.  

Although the world is moving against globalisation, India should reposition its atmanirbhar, or self-reliant, philosophy to mean not just ‘make in India’ but ‘make in India for the world’.

Currently India is not in the world. It exists in a different dimension. Gurcharan is pleading with Modi to relocate India onto the same metaphysical plane as the rest of the world. That way, stuff made in India would be made in this world rather than some other. Sadly, Narendraji is not listening to Gurcharan. He is insisting that Indians should make in India for the planet Venus. This is because of bad nationalism. Had Narendraji just trusted some nice Muslims to beat and sodomize him, he would not be so naughty. 

India needs to shed export pessimism, bring down tariffs, join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP),

hand over Arunachal to China and Kashmir to Pakistan 

participate in global supply chains, and reorient its Production Linked Incentive Scheme (PLI) contracts to incentivise exports.

also it must ensure that all kaffirs gain the opportunity to be beaten and sodomized. 

Only thus will it bring about ‘the great transformation’ to become a middle-class country.

No. It just needs to raise the female participation rate by getting rural girls into giant factory dormitories. It will happen one way or another. Either the thing is done by respectable businessmen or it will be done by ruthless gangsters.  

Exclusivism and isolationism are bad, self-defeating ideas for nations and societies.

Not necessarily. Inclusivism and Globalization can quickly eradicate a nation or a society.  

In my personal life I go further. I feel we all have multiple identities

this nutter has been reading Amartya Sen 

and we ought to resist privileging our national identity.

Why pay tax only to your own country? Why not pay tax to every country under the Sun?  

For example, I am an Indian male, but I am also a Punjabi,

Punjabis can't be male. Thus Gurcharan has a dual identity- like Batman. By day, he is a Punjabi lady. At night, he grows a penis and thus qualifies as an Indian male. He uses his penis to fight crime.  The Joker escaped from Arkham Asylum and was robbing a liquor store. Gurcharan pulled down his chaddi and his penis became so long and strong that it was able to slap the Joker silly. Say what you like, a Harvard education really can make a difference.  

a father of two, a writer, a vegetarian, a lover of Kishori Amonkar’s music, a cheerleader of our liberal reforms, a fan of the Indian cricket team, and so on. I have different identities,

No. He has a single identity to which a number of predicates can be validly applied at certain times and in certain contexts. Thus, Gurcharan is not a lover of Kishori Amonkar's music when CDs of the same are shoved up his bum.  

and I choose a particular one depending on the context.

No. A particular predicate has salience in certain contexts. Thus, when Gurcharan goes to a restaurant, what is salient is that he wants to be served only vegetarian dishes. Though he is Punjabi, he would refuse to eat a Punjabi meat dish.  

While I am proud of my Indian identity,

Being Indian is a predicate of Gurcharan. If he changes his Nationality, that predicate will no longer apply though Gurcharan will remain Gurcharan.  

I don’t feel that I have let the side down if I enjoy Thai green curry or Italian pasta, Bach’s German baroque or Kurosawa’s Japanese films.

You have let the side down if you enjoy such things while shitting on India.  

Our identities also change with time;

No. Identity does not change. Predicates applied to a particular identity change.  

some people even change their religion; others migrate and change their nationality.

These are predicates. Only if they switch bodies would their identity change. On the other hand, Gurcharan may be Batman- playboy by day, masked crime fighter by night.  

The point is that identity is a matter of reasoned choice.

No. Gurcharan can't choose to be Narendra Modi. On the other hand, he can change some predicates which apply to him. For example, he could write something sensible instead of this senile shite.  

Unfortunately, a Hindu nationalist wants to force-fit me into an overarching, rigid religious, nationalistic identity that takes away this choice and impoverishes my plural human spirit.

Hindu nationalists don't give a shit about Gurcharan. He is welcome to fuck off back to Pakistan or Amrika or wherever.  

I think of human beings as diamonds with many faces.

I think of human beings as having just the one face and the one nose and the one mouth.  

Hate begins when we categorise people, choosing one face and ignoring the others.

So does love. Gurcharan hates Hindu nationalists. Why oh why did Mummy and Daddy run away from Lahore? Didn't know that India is full of those beastly Hindus? Moreover those Hindus were very good at killing people who tried to kill them. Knowing this, it was a terrible crime for Mummy and Daddy to choose illiberal India over Pakistan which follows the 'sadharan dharma' of Mahatma Gandhi.  

When we reduce people to one dimension, we encourage a fragmented view of humanity.

But that is what this cretin is doing! Just because it is Hindus that he hates, doesn't mean that he isn't a hate-filled bag of shit.  

Instead, we should celebrate our plural identities.

Thus if some nice jihadi chops Gurcharan in half and we get two Gurcharans for the price one, we should all celebrate. Sadly, the chance of this happening diminished the moment the boy crossed the border. Still, we can live in hope.  

Ravinder Kaur lays another egg.

Some stupid people from India teach worthless shite in foreign Universities. They are obliged to publish ungrammatical nonsense from time to time simply so as to prove that brown monkeys need affirmative action in academia because otherwise they might feed exclusively on their own feces. 

The following is an excerpt published in 'The Despatch' from a book titled “The People of India: New Indian Politics in the 21st Century” edited by Ravinder Kaur and Nayanika Mathur. Its blurb reads ‘The People’ and ‘New India’ are terms that are being invoked freely to both understand and govern India as she enters her 75th year of post-colonial nationhood.

This is false. Nobody is talking about the 'People' though the term 'Janata' does feature in BJP and Kejriwal heads a party called the 'Common Man party'. The fact is, talk of the People faded out in the late Seventies. As for 'New India', it is wholly an invention of the cretinous Copenhagen Kaur who published a book with that title a couple of years ago. Nobody actually uses any such collocation. It sounds too much like 'India Shining'

 Yet, there is little clarity on who these people of India really are, 

Nonsense! People living in India are the people of India. 

what they do, their desires, histories and attachments to India.

Fuck off! There is money to be made and power to be wielded by finding out such things. Ask Prashant Kishore. 

 In this book, some of the most respected scholars of South Asia 

useless, virtually illiterate, tossers

come together to write about a person or a concept that holds particular sway in the politics of contemporary India.

There is no chapter on Modi. These tossers have simply recycled their own vomit. Yengde writes about Ambedkar. Facile Devji writes about Gandhi, the nutter Blom Hansen spews hate against Hinduism and so on and so forth. 

 In doing so, they collectively open up an original understanding of what the politics at the heart of New India are-and how best we might come to analyse them.

No. This is warmed up sick. 

A core feature of the New Indian Politics is how the will of the people is articulated as much via street politics

which was happening a hundred years ago in more acute form 

as the formal political party system.

No. The formal political party system is important. Things like the farmers' protest were not important. It was Kejriwal who gained in Punjab while, unexpectedly, Yogi did well in Jat dominated districts of Western UP. 

These popular protest movements have arisen in the face of a strong centralized state,

Nonsense! The farmers' protest was spearheaded by Tikait's son. Like Daddy's, the thing looked impressive but ended as something of a fiasco. Charan Singh's grandson doesn't seem to have profited by it any more than Charan Singh's son gained by the big farmer's protest forty years ago. The anti CAA protests seem to have harmed Congress and the Left. Kejriwal benefitted in Delhi but so did the BJP. 

The fact is popular protest movement- e.g. that of Anna Hazare- are either inconsequential or benefit an existing or new party. Mamta benefitted by the anti-Nandigram/ Singur protests and is still in power.  But the people of Singur seem disgruntled. 

characteristically in the absence of an effective opposition that would articulate grievances.

There is no effective opposition in some States- e.g Naveen's Orissa, Mamta's Bengal, Stalin's Tamil Nadu. The problem is that there is no plausible rival to Modi at the Center. 

What sets these protests apart is also how they brought new political figures to the centre stage,

Kejriwal founded his party over a decade ago. Since then, which 'new figure' has there been? Kanhaiya is a Congress chamcha. Hardik is with the BJP. Jignesh is unhappy but still with Congress. On the other hand, Owaisi gets a lot of coverage. But he is not associated with any 'protest'.  

and mobilized religious minorities and marginalized people in new coalitions.

What fucking coalitions? Shaheen Bagh led to Congress and the Left being wiped out. Delhi is now a two horse race.  

Equally noteworthy is how the media, forever in search of a single charismatic leader, often described the protests as ‘leaderless’, thereby overlooking the work of collective leadership in running protests.

But if this 'collective leadership' is confined only to the protest at hand then there is no political leadership of it.  

It is on this uncertain turf between the street and the political parties and between the modes of exclusion and inclusion that a diverse people of New India have emerged.

Where were they previously? Hiding in holes in the ground?  

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

No. You are getting more retarded than when you started off.  

Let us return to the farm laws and their repeal to further consider New Indian Politics.

Why bother? We know the outcome. Kejriwal scooped the pot. Few saw that coming.  

That the repeal signalled an unsettling political terrain in Indian politics was evident from the social media trends that gained instant popular traction.

Guys who live in Copenhagen may bother with social media trends. Everybody else just asks the Sardarji who runs the local offie.

If the trend #farmlawsrepealed signalled a plain fact, often a joyous one, then #disappointed captured the state of disenchantment of Modi supporters (dubbed bhakt) as well as the business policy elite who had long made a case for market-friendly ‘deep reforms’ in the farm sector.

This is foolish. A quick google showed that the farm law didn't matter. Procurement patterns were changing. States were welcome to subsidize their own farmers- but then they'd go off the fiscal cliff. Can Kejriwal square the circle by making money off rezoning so as to pay off the farmers? We will have to wait and see. 

The passionate response #disappointed was not just about the failure to implement market reforms by a leader who had crafted his image as someone who ‘means business’ in more ways than one.

But nobody was really disappointed. Congress got wiped out in Punjab. Yogi did well in Western UP. Modi had made the right call. Anyway, the 'people' like a leader who takes risks but who apologizes when they don't pay off.  

It was also a public expression of disillusionment, the breaking of a spell that had bound the followers to a strongman leader who held out the promise of capitalist growth and the attendant civilizational glory.

Bullshit! Modi isn't Manmohan or Montek. He is Mr. Governance but governance isn't about a dash for growth. It is, rather, a slow and steady pursuit of integrity and efficiency. More to the point, Modi looks like a surefire three term PM. Bakhts are satisfied. 

Some tried to repair the broken spell by recuperating the repeal as a political #masterstroke, a kind of cunning move (Chanakya Niti) whose true intent and effect had not yet been revealed.

So what? Anybody can tweet. I used to till I got my 'permanent ban' badge of honor.  

Others rued the ‘street veto’ that had cast a shadow on Indian democracy. This anxiety was especially evident in the primetime television debates where the anchors pitted street protests as a challenge to the ‘might of the ballot’, one that threatened to undermine the power of the parliament.

But that anxiety faded long ago. Why focus on effervescent shite on Social Media generated, more often than not, by diaspora cretins like me?

It indeed isn’t easy to make sense of this strange turn of events.

It's easy enough for the rest of us. The Sikh diaspora sent a lot of money to finance the farmer's protests. Then Kejriwal scooped the pot and they felt silly. A Bania had outwitted the Jat. The fact that the new CM was a drunken clown rubbed salt in the wound.  

After all, the repeal was a dramatic about-turn the followers of Modi had least expected, and that too a reversal staged in the full glare of global publicity.

Not really. What mattered was UP. The BJP had shat the bed in Punjab and deserved to lose there. But without Yogi as CM in UP there is no line of succession. Sooner or later, Modi becomes a lame duck- like Nitish.  

It seemed to have upset all that had come to be regarded as politics-as-usual in a post-2014 New India.

Nonsense! Procurement will keep shifting to Eastern UP, Madhya Pradesh, etc. Punjab will be left to grapple with its own fiscal crisis.  

Some speculated that the repeal was a calculated move made by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as it was sensing a loss of ground in states such as Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, which were coming up for state elections.

Punjab was a write-off. The one good thing is that the BJP has shaken off the Badals. Kejriwal is in a better position to do reform because there is no AAM Trade Union or Farmers Wing. The BJP's hands are tied by its past. 

While this electoral arithmetic has to be taken seriously, especially given the cynical politics of the BJP and its government, which is forever and only in ‘election-mode’,

India is a big country. There is always an election campaign in some State.  

it would be simplistic to believe that this calculation was the sole guiding factor.

All decisions made by responsible people involve a calculation of costs and benefits.  

This moment of rupture not only disclosed the highly charged affective fault lines in the political landscape

The BJP has its own farm wing which wasn't happy. This affective fault line existed in all older parties. 

but also laid bare new fields of conflict and cracks in the visage of power that had hitherto been deemed invincible.

Nothing of the sort occurred. The big question was whether there would be Jat consolidation and how big a role would go to Tikait and Ajith Singh's respective sons.  

Most of all, it made visible the diverse people who inhabit this landscape of politics, the many agents of politics forged in the new antagonisms of post-liberalization India.

Not really. For older people, there was a sense of deja vu.  

As the farmers’ protests refused to dwindle and, instead, new outposts of it popped up in different parts of India, we heard many ask: ‘But who are these people?’

The answer tended to be 'grandson or great nephew of such and such guy who had once commanded headlines;. What nobody saw coming was the cunning Bania, Kejriwal, scooping the pot.  

This question was not altogether new. Similar rhetorical questions had been posed of the myriad protesters who came out against the evil trinity of the CAA–NPR–NRC over 2019,

It was the Supreme Court which had set all that in motion. The CAA, like the Farm Bill, didn't really mean very much. But the anti-CAA agitation helped the BJP. Muslims were saying they didn't want Kaffirs to gain security from Islamic persecution even though this had been the law since 1948.  

before the toxic mix of the authoritarian state, a pogrom in Delhi

Congress conducted two pogroms in Delhi- one against Muslims in '47 and one against Sikhs in 1984. There was no pogrom under Kejriwal though some Muslim AAM politicians did run amok. But, in a new party, that is excusable. Kejriwal quickly distanced himself from the nutters.  

and the pandemic shut down these protests. Similar questions had been asked then too: ‘Who are these people?’

The answer was elderly fools or student activists or other such cretins.  

Tellingly, Modi had dubbed them andolanjeevis or those who live— parasitically it was assumed—off protest movements.

That label stuck. Protests can succeed if they are about money. People understand that money matters. Protests fail if they are merely 'woke' or involve virtue signaling.  

The subtext was apparent: those who protested against the government were subverting the national interest, even tarnishing the image of the government and the nation on the world stage.

Unless what motivated them was money. The farm protests were like the yellow vest protests. Fiscal policy matters. Fantasies about Fascism don't.  

In this scheme of things, the government and the nation were inseparable,

coz the President of America would feel silly if he tries run the Government from the bottom of the Indian Ocean. 

and any opposition to the government was taken as an opposition to the nation.

but some opposition to government was explicitly so. 

Andolanjeevis was the 2021 edition of the category of ‘anti-nationals’, a scornful term popularized by Modi government supporters to accuse dissenters of treachery.

Mrs Gandhi's minion, Buta Singh, was more explicit. He called various Gandhian organizations CIA fronts bent on destroying the country. But then, under Manmohan, there was the canard that 'Hindu Terrorism' was a big threat to India.  

It’s a theme that appears to be inexhaustible, reappearing in ever new forms. The most recent iteration was the identification of activists and the civil society as the ‘new frontier of war’, the enemy within the nation—a war that required techniques of ‘fourth-generation warfare’ to be deployed against those citizens who oppose the government.

But it was Manmohan who targeted not just Naxals but even Christians protesting against Nuclear Plants and other such people as anti-national entities or a Trojan Horse funded by foreign NGOs to damage the Indian economy. But these ideas have a long history in the Indian National Security establishment. Don't forget, even after the 1962 War, there were plenty of nutters at Presidency College, Calcutta, who were shouting 'China's Chairman is our Chairman.' 

What we witness here is an unsettling, and unsettled, terrain of the new Indian politics and the many people who forge it.

We have been witnessing this continually in every decade for a hundred years.  

Three key features of these new antagonisms can be identified.

These cretins can't identify shit.  

First, the politics of protest has become the staging ground for conflicts between the state and a diverse range of peoples,

Where? Kerala? The Church and the fishermen are opposing a Communist CM intent on Deng Xiaoping like growth. I can think of no other site of protest at the moment.  

and this especially when the opposition parties are weakened and faced with a dominant government at the centre and hyper-nationalist majoritarian politics.

This is nonsense. The opposition can win States- e.g. Himachal- or break up coalitions- e.g. Bihar. Politics is the art of the possible and in Indian politics, anything is possible. 

Second, the push towards centralized governance—

occurred under Nehru and was ratcheted up by Indira. But there has been increasing 'subsidiarity' since. The question is whether the Center can continue to redistribute money. This is particularly important in the context of seat redistribution in 2026. 

the ubiquitous ‘one’ model: one nation, one market, one tax, for example—

The creation of an internal market, if not fiscal harmonization, is an economic necessity. Sheikh Hasina might integrate Bangladesh into such a 'common market'.  

and an authoritarian style has created a strong state as well as frictions within the federal structure of the Indian union.

Not yet. The States were cushioned against the GST transition. What will happen now? I don't know. Nor do andolanjivis or academics from shite departments. The 2024 elections are very important because seat redistribution is supposed to happen in 2026. States which stand to lose need to stand together. Stalin needs to get over his fixation with Rajiv and get behind somebody electable. Why are people so complacent about this? I suppose we assume that the can will be kicked down the road. But why should it be? The BJP may lose its one foothold in the South and thus double down on the cow-belt. Why should they deny themselves more Parliamentary seats?

The signature style of Modi’s strongman politics is to conjure spectacles: sudden big-bang policy decisions, often announced on live television broadcasts.

Every country had 'big-bang' announcements re. COVID and so forth. Modi is in fact a strong leader. So is Zelensky. That's a good thing. 

If the element of surprise keeps the public enthralled—or petrified, as the case maybe—and ensures undivided media coverage, it simultaneously upstages political opponents.

Why don't Prime Ministers piss themselves on TV? Instead of trying to upstage your opponent, why not take off all your clothes and stick a radish up your bum?  

This hegemonic control of the media

If you control something you are its hegemon. Gramscian hegemony, however, has nothing to do with control rights.  

is crucial in shaping the field of politics within, and against, which the popular protests have emerged

Nonsense! Popular protests differ from campaigns whipped up by Press Barons. Consider the 'Tea party movement'. It was 'astro-turf' not 'grass-roots'.  

Third, connected to this are the ideological moves to reset the nation as an enclosure of global capital aligned with Hindu nationalist culture.

Only Rahul mentions 'vichardhara' or ideology. That is because he- like the authors- is a fucking cretin.  

This ongoing capitalist-cultural shift is evident in a number of signature laws passed in the past two years

these silly people didn't update this to reflect the publication date.  

—from the revocation of the special status of Kashmir and CAA/NRC

it was the Bench which decided that J&K had no shred of sovereignty. Similarly it was the Bench which set up detention centers and ordered the compilation of the Nationality Register in Assam.  

to the farm laws and the labour code—that seek to open up new markets within the national territory even as the nation itself is rearranged in the framework of Hindu nationalism.

Hindu nationalism triumphed in 1947. India opened up to global markets in the 1990s. Why do these guys not know this? 

The shift was accelerated during the pandemic, a deployment of crisis-as-opportunity approach to draw investors looking for alternatives to China.

Not really. There was some talk, but talk was all it was. Some existing projects may have been accelerated- that is all. Vietnam, on the other hand, has done very well.  

The appearance of the people on the streets is more than an expression of dissatisfaction.

Where? Nowhere I can see. 

It is taking matters in one’s own hands or what was dubbed ‘street veto’, a political action akin to showing a red card

something the umpire does 

when the rules of the game are broken

and a player is sent of the field.  

or remade without due agreement.

Nonsense! The rules were set long ago by foreigners in some distant country. They don't depend on agreement. These guys know shit about sport

The term ‘street veto’,

has not gained currency. It doesn't exist. Governments withdraw laws if they think they will lose elections. Otherwise, if they think they will win, in Westminster style democracies, they dissolve Parliament and seek a fresh mandate.  

invoked following the repeal of the farm laws, was used to convey disapproval of both an unceasing out-of-control protest as well as the abject about-turn of the Modi government.

States which wanted to implement reform were welcome to do so. Procurement would continue to shift away from the places where protest was most intense.  

If at all, the criticism of street politics opened up an inherent paradox in mass democratic politics:

these guys can't reason worth a demand. Everything is a fucking paradox for them.  

the raw potentiality of crowds is at the heart of mass democratization,

Nope. Crowds only have any fucking political potential in big cities. But their actions aren't likely to lead to 'mass democratization' because then the rural masses- who are religious and conservative- gain the whip hand. The Paris Commune was crushed by young conscripts from the countryside.  

and yet it is only by imposing discipline and control that political energy can be harnessed.

Political energy means money and labor power. Harnessing them does not necessarily involve 'discipline' or 'control'. Forming a stable administration may do so but administrations don't harness power. That has already been done. Thus the new leader doesn't have to create an Army or Bureaucracy from scratch. He takes over what already exists.  

The democratic politics is renewed by subjects who are simultaneously active but also disciplined.

This is an ungrammatical and meaningless statement. Democratic politics features citizens some of whom are politically active. Discipline is not a sine qua non more particularly if an 'overlapping consensus' exists regarding what needs to be done.  

It is this kind of constant tension upon which many people, the figures of politics, emerge.

Again an ungrammatical and foolish sentence. The 'figures of politics' first must have economic and social existence. They may rise or fall politically. I suppose what these cretins mean is something like 'new political movements emerge in constant tension with some shite or the other' but such a statement simply isn't true. New political movements can emerge without any tension purely because of Tardean mimetics- i.e. imitating a superior- or because boring but ambitious people need an outlet for their urge to competitively bore the pants of everybody else.