While Hinduism is a religion, Hindutva is an identity. Though the origins of Hindutva are diverse, its foremost early expositer and formulater, Vinayak Sarvakar, was an atheist. So while the vast majority of Hindutva adherents are religious Hindus, being a religious Hindu is not a necessary precondition.
Rather, Hindutva may best be thought of as an personal identity with India and Indian culture, and a mass movement attempting to unite the diverse strands of native Indian identity into one. Like many 21st century ideologies, including Islamic and Protestant fundamentalism, Hindutva’s origins date back to the rise of European colonial hegemony in the 19th century.
While Nehru and Jinnah were inspired in their anti-colonial politics by the very traditions of liberty and self-determination pregnant within Western nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, Chinese and Japanese nationalism, and Hindutva, all fuse deep-rooted indigenous identities with the modern yearning toward self-determination. Hindutva cannot be understood except in the context of its reaction to the West, and to Islam, but it asserts its deep continuity with the native traditions of the subcontinent.
It is in its attitude toward Islam that contemporary Hindu nationalists are most striking in their dissent from the orthodoxies of the post-colonial Indian secular elites. Though Nehru and his successors all averred a civilisational Hindu identity, they also asserted that in contradiction to Pakistan their project was not confessional, but religiously pluralistic. They argued that Indian nationalism by necessity and choice was a multi-religious project, and that Pakistan’s establishment was predicated on a misunderstanding of the nature of the relationship between Muslims and Hindus, which had been defined by a certain level of amity before the British. Nehruvian socialists and India’s secular English-speaking elite aimed to establish in India a society and culture which rebuked Pakistan’s descent into religious sectarianism.
This project was fundamentally post-colonial, attempting to paper over divisions which had ripened during the British Raj, ultimately fracturing the subcontinent into two states. The early Hindu nationalists had a different vision, one where India’s Hindu identity became central to its self-conception, in the same manner that Pakistan’s Islamic identity was etched into its founding DNA. Rather than Hindu-Muslim unity fractured by the British, the historiography favored by Hindu nationalists argues for two colonialisms, first by Muslims, then by the British. Proponents of Hindutva see in India a wounded civilisation which must be healed, revived, and allowed to take its place vigorously in the congress of nations.
Whatever legitimacy Hindu nationalists had at the founding of India was obliterated by the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Godse, an activist in the RSS. It took them generations to rehabilitate themselves. This let independent India’s 20th century political and cultural elite have a free hand in shaping Western perceptions. Though the vast majority of Indians were conservative Hindus, Hindu nationalism was long a stillborn political movement hamstrung by its connection to the killing of the beloved Gandhi.
The election and popularity of Modi, and the reorientation of much of Indian popular culture toward Hindutva, means that the 20th century cultural monopoly of the secular Left is now firmly in the rearview mirror. The new reality can be illustrated by the complex dance of Priyanka Chopra, an internationally-renowned Bollywood actress married to a white American pop singer, who nonetheless has good relations with Hindutva cultural elites. Chopra has attempted to depict herself as a progressive, supporting Black Lives Matter. Whatever her personal beliefs, Chopra is clearly attempting to navigate the reality that to be acceptable in the Indian market she cannot be seen as oppositional to the dominant political and cultural ethos, while in the American context she cannot be seen to be reactionary
Yet more broadly the global Left is not positively inclined toward Modi and his Hindutva government, despite the reality that it has not enacted the neoliberal reform they oppose. The Indian novelist, Arundhati Roy, who is fundamentally a global Leftist activist, is deeply opposed to Hindu nationalism. At the other end of the cultural spectrum, the former American adult film actress Mia Khalifa tweeting in support of farmers in Punjab only makes sense in light of the fact that they are protesting in opposition to the Modi government. Meanwhile, Hindu nationalists have been courting allies against their Leftist antagonists, which sometimes results in strange connections to Western white nationalists. Whatever its economics, Hindutva’s plainly anti-Islamic stance falls afoul of the de facto global Left popular front, and wins strange admirers in Europe.
As we proceed in the 21st century India and the world will confront two simultaneous dynamics: modernisation of the nation-state and the rise of indigenous non-Western cultural and political movements, and further international global connections and coalitions. Instead of a homogeneous world dominated by Western “Davos Man,” what we will see is a world with difficult to define texture and protean affinities which might seem ideologically nonsensical.
The rise of Hindu nationalism and its political dominance in India seems here to stay. This will result in a native cultural ascendancy, and will lead to a negative response from the global Left, which has a substantial presence in the English-speaking middle and upper-class of the subcontinent. None of this speaks to the substance of what Hindu nationalism is. It simply speaks to the natural reaction of those with power who no longer have it.
Instead of the great mass of the population being Westernised by the brown-skinned Englishmen, the great mass have thrown up their own leadership class, which has marginalised the Macaulay men. And the responding rage of the secular class has been heard round the world.
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SubscribeThank you for a thoughtful essay. Mr Kodak has eloquently described the hypocritical and morally dubious approach of the western elite to Modi. I will point out a different aspect missing from your comparison.
you contrast rural India with its Fabian lefty classes. The correct comparison for India is neighbours that became independent at the same time- Pakistan and Bangladesh. The latter was rescued by the former from a brutal genocide by India. India has more Muslims than Pakistan but the level of Hindu Muslim conflict in India is, given the sheer numbers involved, a kindergarten rift as compared to internecine killing of Muslims within Pakistan. Indian Army is politically neutral, the judiciary is free, and the Press raucous. Unlike large proportions of parliamentary seats being considered safe in the UK or simply bought by landlords and army in Pakistan, rural uneducated non lefty voters in India routinely topple governments in safe seats.
I detest the rise of Hindutva. But as compared to its neighbours shenanigans and the impact of militant Islam on the world, it is playground stuff. When idiots from Bajrang Dal claim that Vedic India had aeroplanes, they remind me of a pitiful classmate I had in junior school who claimed his father had met Tarzan. After hundreds of years of brutality of murderous raiders from the Middle East and then the sheer duplicity of the East India Company, India with its 300 ethic groups and 22 national languages is trying to determine what it is to be an Indian.it is a necessary step. Think of it as an adolescent search for identity.
india will be fine. Indians, including its minorities, will be fine.
india is like Jazz. If you think you understand it, you don’t.
We know, we all know.
so tell me Mr well-informed, how many Hindus and Sikhs have been killed in Kashmir. in the last three decades. Your figure will tell me the sources of your information and then I can judge whether you really know anything or you just read the Guardian.
Just some selective statistics by the left media disguised as information.
I’ve always thought that coverage of India in the West is ridiculously negative compared with that of Pakistan. The woke left’s strange islamophilia has created a total loss of perspective.
The Western left are also making the same mistake that the US govt is making in trying resurrct the old order based on US /Russian rivalry. In those days India was on Russia’s side to some extent. Time has moved on. The MSM, the left wing ideologues and the dinosaurs in the US State Depth haven’t.
You talk more like the same patrician, elite class that you claim to speak against. Why does every tirade about Hinduism starts with the variation of “I detest Hindutva/I don’t identify as Hindu/I am an atheist”. Why is it not possible for Hindu-born person to present an argument about Hindusim without stressing your secular credentials. Why?
Wherever conservative Hindus went they preserved their Hindu identity without ever triggering a conflict with another creed, or color. They respected their neighbors, prospered, and maintained peace. So why is there a subliminal tendency among diaspora and cosmopolitan Hindus to sound like theosophical tutor when speaking of their religion or culture?
You cannot be politically correct and simultaneously explain the reason why westernized-elite class detests Modi or people who look and talk like him- which is basically 90% of Hindus. But once you go beyond that political correctness you would realize that India is absolutely not Jazz, it’s a linguistically, culturally, politically diverse state which is united, and managed to stay united, by just one thread- Hindusim. Today, in India, wherever Hindus are demographically weak sounds of separatism are proportionally loud.
Assertion of Hindu identity is not a modern phenomenon. It was always there which explains why 1000 years of Abrahamic rule could change the religious demography of the entire world except India’s. It’s just that advent of the Internet and minimization of world allowed birds of feather to watch each other’s back and express their voice without fear.
I would like to add one more thing. Average westerner detests hindus. They are disgusted by us. Dont believe them if they say otherwise. No matter how radical the muslim is, that is what they are familiar with as christianity was similarly rabidly fanatic a few hundred years back. Kudos to the west for reforming Christianity so much that it is almost free of violence. But the cultural affinity of christianity to islam is undeniable. The “pagan” practices of hindus like vegetarianism, reverence of cow, idol worship, not having a single all authoritative book on religion, disgusts westerners. It deeply saddens them that how such “primitive” people even exist today. Added to it, the average hindu is darker (skin color) than the average muslim. They (christians) are told for centuries, just like muslims, that pagans are worst of humans who only deserve mass genocide without an iota of mercy. The pagans in europe, south america, north america, south of africa and Australia were taken care of (read annihilated) by christians and the pagans of middle east, west asia, central asia, north of africa, and large parts of south and southeast asia were taken care of (read destroyed) by muslims. The Christian’s even with their reformed religion will be absolutely disgusted to see a pagan hindu nation be successful in modern day. It goes against centuries of brainwashing. All prominent personalities in the aftermath of world war 2 like Winston Churchill, FDR, Reagan, Kennedy etc loved the muslims and Pakistand and hated hindus and india to the core. The westerners will never ever like hindus no matter what we do to them. The left secular bias against india is only a part of the piece. Ask a conservative westerner about what he/she thinks of hindus and india. The answers will shock you. Their disgust towards hindus will far outweigh that of left liberals. The fact is that for the rest of the non pagan world, we are an unfinished part of their global mass pagan genocide project. They will not settle until they convert us or eliminate us hindus. The faster hindus understand this, it is better. Our biggest mistake is that we survived. If we hindus think of prospering in this modern world, they will come after us with all their might.
“…broadly the global Left is not positively inclined toward Modi…”
Fine essay. In fact the global left starts from an automatic stance of hostility to Modi, and a peculiarity I have noticed over the years is that they will apply quite different and often mildly conciliatory or chiding responses to actual authoritarian outrages by the Chinese leadership, compared with whatever manuvering Modi engages in, which is in fact more often than not, fairly bog standard politics, instead of the dastardly authoritarianism it is often portrayed as. I have the distinct sense that distaste for Modi in left-leaning western circles stems from his non patrician background, neither anglicised (not Oxbridge/LSE) nor Americanised (not Harvard/Ivy League), his thick Indian accent from non English-medium schools, his entirely Indian antecedents lacking any of globalisations’ language of suaveness. Someone who was actually villainous but ticked those boxes would be treated a lot more forgivingly by the western left. The simplest proof is the quite different reactions by the western left to Rajiv Gandhi re the pogroms against Shikhs in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s murder, versus the reactions to Modi re the killing spree in Gujarat. Nor will they acknowledge the quite spectacular levels of bribe taking, corruption and money siphoning engaged in by Congress Party politicians over decades, compared with the genuine, albeit unsuccessful attempts by Modi to stomp out corruption. Don’t get me wrong, I have no axe to grind and absolutely no reason to champion Modi, and the BJP push Hindu religious values which are quite frankly, ludicrous, and I have absolutely no truck with them. But Modi is far from a standard populist/authoritarian demagogue the left typically paint him as.
I agree and often get feeling India is presented to us by that narrow elite he mentions who are anti Modi. In the present world configuration of power away from America and the West I would have thought we were better aligned to India rather than China and India’s surrounding muslim countries,whom our rulers seem to favour.
I can see the serious possibility of another geopolitical schism caused by realignment in Asia Pacific: the US, UK, Japan, S. Korean, Australia and India aligning on one side, of necessity, because China (legitimately) scares the pants off each of those countries, and China, Russia and the EU aligning on the opposite side, because for some reason not clear to me, China doesn’t frighten the various nations of Europe. If that happens, it would be a disaster for UK – EU relations.
China doesn’t frighten them but I think Russia does… or maybe that just left wing media types echoing the US Drmocrats and their obsession with re-fighting the US/USSR Cold War battles. The world has moved on. Turkey ,India China Russia are developing their own separate cultures. This century will most assuredly not be an American century.
UK – EU relations are already a disaster – largely because of a fanatical Brexity government in London that wants decisions of UK’s courts to be recognised throughout the EU but doesn’t want to recognise the courts of the EU. See Lugano Convention on mutual recognition of decisions of courts in other jurisdictions.
Yeah, the Lugano Convention stuff came out of the blue at the end of the week, when the EU decided behind closed doors to oppose the UK joining the Lugano Convention, when the expectation all along was that the UK would join. If the EU prevent the UK from joining it has a big impact on services – but the UK has a nuclear option in reverse too: if UK courts don’t accept EU judgements in retaliation, all those deals where European businesses have borrowed via London based institutions would be stuffed – and there are a lot more of those than the other way round. I suspect the EU will back-off after a bit, but if they don’t it will be pretty bad for both sides.
My understanding is that when negotiations break down it’s usually the creditor that gets stuffed.
The purpose of Lugano C is to minimise legal costs when disputes between entities in different jurisdictions arise – in comparision to using international courts which are extremely slow and extremely expensive. I think you may find most businesses across the EU and the EEA will prefer to do business under Lugano. Since the UK doesn’t want to recognise courts within the EU their application to join Lugano is void – as it’s all about mutual recognition. Businesses in the UK can, of course, continue to have access to the international courts and good luck with that!
The issue is all sorts of countries recognise each others judgements for commercial law (regardless of whether they are signed up to EU law), otherwise as you say disputes go to full trial and are expensive for both disputants. The EU are not presumably planning to say they won’t recognise for example US judgements, so I would say they are on pretty thin ground when attempting to exclude the UK specifically. I mean they probably can, but these things have a habit of backfiring – that would have the effect of dampening the amount of business done in the EU going forwards and that won’t help them in the long run. That is not to say the UK wouldn’t be damaged too.
I know very little about Modi except the fact that the Guardian absolutely detests him.
More that they detest Boris Johnson. Possibly even more than Priti Patel.
I therefore infer that he must be an OK guy.
Haha that’s funny
And the Guardian lefties know sweet FA about India thinking that their culture is like the UK. It isn’t.
The best bit is few Guardian readers have any idea who Unherd readers are. All your insults echo around the one chamber.
The Al Guardian and NYt get their news of India from the likes of Dr Priyamvada Gopal, Arundhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra.
It’s like getting all UK news through the collective prism of Aaron Bastani, Ash Sarkar and Owen Jones.
One of the BBC ‘big cheese’ when she returns home to India is involved in a movement to remove statues of Victoria- part of protest movement of the young rich strongly anti British, which seems to be a way of avoiding dealing with the real problems in their country.
You should have ended your sentence at the letters FA.
Interesting article. A point people miss is that politics in India is based deeply on identities. Every Indian navigates atleast 3 identities; religion, language and caste. A point on caste here, people mistake caste to be a uniquely Hindu phenomenon. All religions in India have an aspect of caste and beyond hierarchies it has evolved into a sort of tribal identity.
Elections in India have seen three phases, post independence for 20-25 yrs the Congress largely won everything as it was the only organised party with clout.
There was a second phase when agrarian middle castes and lower castes began splitting away from the Congress and started creating their own parties and empowering leaders from those communities. This created a fracturing of the Hindu electorate. In this scenario most ‘secular’ parties like the Congress, evolved a simple formula, you either ally with such parties and co-opt them or ensure that you get the Muslim vote and pick up votes from specific caste groups in this fractured Hindu electorate. In a first past the post system you win. This provided a strong electoral veto with specific communities. (A western should go through India’s minoritarian legislation)
Combine this with large scale proselytization in South, Central and East India as well as the rise Islamic fundamentalism in the 80s, there was a deep impact on the psyche of Upper caste Hindus. They saw themselves as an isolated Hindu people in a world surrounded by Muslims and Christians who were bent on pushing their faith either by carrots or sticks.
Hindutva is political reaction by these concerns. On one hand you recognise the evils of caste within, so you minimise discrimination, push backward caste leaders (like Modi) and at the same time ensure unity by creating the bogey of the other, I. E. Muslims. Hindutva in that sense is not as much about Muslims but about reforming Hindu society without decimating it. Thus the BJp has now become largely the party of middle and lower castes by pushing them as leaders, at the same time it has solid support of upper castes cause it isn’t Goin to result in a large scale upheaval of Hindu society.
The way the opposition reacts in India is quite interesting. Religion eliminates the other two axes of identity (Caste and Language). So, they are trying to create those fissures now, like the farmer agitation which was essentially a Jat plus Sikh agitation or the Patel agitation.
Politics now is essentially language + Caste vs Religion in India
good post
I am glad that you pointed out that caste is an issue in Christian ,Sikh and communities as much as hindu ones. Hindutva asa “hindu” nationalism has very little to do with actual hindu doctrine. The cries of Ramrajya are invented nonsense. There are many internal consistencies within it. It is led by upper caste grievance mongers who at the same time preach castelessness. It is deeply motivated by centuries of deep shame and resentment against Islamic conquest and yet it apes Islamist rhetoric and would like to be the macho thuggish religion with one god (Ram), one book (the Mahabaratha), one holy language (sanskrit) and one law. There simply isnt one hinduism.
What Razib’s analysis misses out on is the fact that the hindutva political juggernaut faces strong challenges from regional parties and regional identities, in the north east and south, are very strong and quite capable of seeing off the BJP. Even in the cowbelt, the indian electorate’s vote cannot be relied on indefinitely. Modi hasn’t delivered on his economic promises and if the BJP holds on, it is because the opposition is so weak.
Hindutva movement does not propogate for only single god to be revered. Ram Janmabhumi did become mascot of hindutva movement beacuse of its peculiar history. Hindutva seeks to protect all indigenous methods of following one’s faith by fighting for them under one single umbrella.
Why should hindus not have yearning to rise again after millennia of humiliation. We are more aware than you about the ill effects of caste. The hindutva movement seeks to eradicate it. BJP had substantial voteshare among all main castes in the general elections. It has highest percentage of SC-ST ministers since 1947. And yet BJP is castiest and people who seek to divide India on basis of caste are called progressives.
And you are forgetting the fact that bjp is making inroads into south albeit slowly. TN and Kerala alone does not make south. And this time bjp will improve in both states. If they screw up (a big chance) by 2024 they may lose. But bjp will continue being the centre of gravity till other parties keep following their politics of appeasement.
You really have no clue about Hindus. Hindutva is a call for self-respect and dignified living for all Hindus (they may worship Ram, Krishna, Shiv, Durga, be Warkaris, Nath sampradaya, Lingayats etc) and other Dharmic peoples like Jains, Sarna, Santhal, Sikh to live in harmony without fear of predatory proselytising faiths. Th plight of Hindus in Bangladesh and Pakistan is not hidden anymore, and the Christian missionary mafia’s deep intrusion and games are also getting more attention. Yes, hindu-haters like you should be worried, very worried
If you think Islamism is an ‘invented bogey,’ I suggest a two week immersion program in Mewat, or Kairana (West UP) to clear your mind.
What puzzles me greatly is quite why the global left appear to have aligned themselves with Islam on so many issues, from the Palestine question to Modi. I would like some explanation for this, since on any objective analysis, Islam should be anathema to the left, for its homophobia, misogyny and disregard of any of the left’s most favoured human rights.
I know what you mean. On India and Palestine it might be because the Indian Government excluded Muslims from the Indian Citizenshp Act of 2019 and Israeli Government’s nation state law of 2018 declared self determination in Israel was a right unique to Jews. At the same time, Israel and India are regarded by most Western Governments as being friendly democratic countries. Agree that Islam, like all organised religions, is misogynist and homophobic but most Islamic countries (apart from Gulf States) are considered enemies rather than allies of the West. So, it’s the hypocrisy of Western Governments in supporting regimes that are essentially religiously illiberal that the left gets agitated about. No one expects Iran to be a bastion of freedom of belief and the country is treated accordingly but we do think better of India and Israel.
\ Indian Government excluded Muslims from the Indian Citizenshp Act of 2019 \
You have not understood the nuances of the historical background or even the law. The law applies to religious minorities fron neighbouring countries i.e. Pakistan, Afghanistan and bangladesh. i.e. Christians, Buddhists, animists and Hindus They were formed out of undivided India with the express purpose as islamic states and the percentage of minority population has come down from about 30% to 2% in pakistan. The law did not excluded Muslims from these countries, it simply did not mention them s elegible for “Fast track citizenship” . They are still eligible for normal process of citizenship. there is nothing in the law which will exclude Muslims from other countries. I can visualise new provisions added by a future govt for persecuted Muslims like Uyghurs.
Even the USA had a law for quick citienship for Christians in the former USSR
The left want power. To get power in white majority countries, the way to do this is with victim politics/identity politics. Creating a majority out of minorities of ‘victim’ and ‘oppressed’ groups. So women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, gender based minorities etc.
In europe especially, but also the usa, canada and australia they see islam and their expanding numbers as a way to power. That’s it. Power is their primary goal.
It also explains why they are keen to create victims out of successful asians in the usa. The left needs the asian vote. They need every individual apart from white males to be in the ‘oppressed’ class.
Also islams use of intimidation and violence appeals to the left. Most muslims are bullied and controlled in their behaviours by a small number of radicals and fundamentalists who threaten the rest of the population into stricter adherence to their religion. The left, uses very similar tactics of intimidation, street mob tactics and cancel culture to do the same. The pure left rarely win elections, they are rejected time and time again. It’s why they have to hide their true intentions from the electorate and temper what they say. And they are forced down the route of bullying, intimidation and threats of violence to push their agenda.
They see in islam an ally. An expanding minority group who are adept at using violence and threats of violence to make the majority fall into line.
‘My enemies enemy is my friend’.
Couple this mantra with a dose of self loathing, mix with a generous amount white privilege, season with trite sentiment for the ‘oppressed’, and allow to simmer in a pot of half baked political illiteracy. Check the recipe regularly on social media platforms and hey presto, this is the result. Serve lukewarm while reading the Gruaniad.
Palestine is simpler, it is an occupied nation and people, denied human and civil rights by their European colonial oppressors.
You might want to spend a bit of time in India gaining understanding of its treatment of homosexuals and its misogyny which is vastly worse than orthodox Islam.
A good article – when I teach the History of Indian nationalism and Partition I point out to my students that the goal of both Congress and the Muslim League was not to destroy the British colonial state but to capture it. Pakistan continues to be more dominated by English-speaking elites (Imran Khan – Keble College, Oxford; Bilawal Bhutto Zardari – Christchurch) and by the army, which still has a lot in common with its colonial predecessor – but in India the decline of Congress is really a decline in the automatic authority that was once accorded to English-speaking Indians. I heard Modi speak once, when he was visiting Kazakhstan (it’s a long story), and two things struck me. The first was that he laid stress on the common Persianate, Islamic heritage that linked India and Central Asia, in the form of Sufi poetry – not something one associates with his statements to domestic audiences, to put it mildly! The second was that he was clearly very uncomfortable speaking in English, and while that shouldn’t have surprised me, it did – even previous BJP leaders such as Atul Bihari Vajpayee, who was Prime Minister for a while when I first went to India in 1998, spoke English fluently and comfortably as a mark of their elite status. Much of Modi’s appeal lies in this simple fact.
That said, I don’t think the article does full justice to Nehru and his generation – they could easily have chosen to govern as the British did, undemocratically, as an elite of brown sahibs, and instead they engaged in the greatest experiment in mass democracy the world has ever seen, with a constitution drawn up by a Dalit lawyer (Ambedkar) which has done a pretty good job of reconciling the interests of India’s many different cultures, languages and religions, at least until recently. Most observers at the time thought it would be a disaster, but actually I think we have to acknowledge its success and resilience – it survived Indira Gandhi’s emergency, and hopefully will survive Modi’s attempts to manipulate it. At the most basic level, India’s masses have the power to throw out their rulers. It is a particularly impressive achievement when compared to the sorry mess in Pakistan (a consequence of Jinnah’s early death, but also of the heavily militarised nature of that part of the British Raj) or still further the dystopian nightmare that is emerging in China. I also think we should not gloss over Modi’s own crimes – he was responsible for the Gujarat pogrom; Muslims and Christians are threatened and killed by mobs under his rule; the future for India’s minorities if Hindutva seals its grip as the state ideology will be very dark indeed, though not as dark I think as what is currently happening to the Uyghurs in China.
“…he was responsible for the Gujarat pogrom; Muslims and Christians are threatened and killed by mobs under his rule…”
Like you I too was going to India regularly on business through the latter part of the noughties, to Gandhinagar in fact while he was chief minister there, and I spoke to plenty of people both wealthy and poor, and also to muslims, and none of the narratives doing the rounds in western left circles tally with what Modi’s actual perception was. Modi has plenty of faults but I would say it is unlikely he is a murderer who oversaw a massacre by deliberate policy. I mean, I cannot know this for sure, but absolutely nothing he has said or done since, even when under pressure, tallies with someone who did that, and such characteristics have a habit of coming out again as a politicians power increases. And notwithstanding that he is reviled in left circles as a kneejerk, he is very likely gay, and gay rights have in fact advanced more under him in India than in seven decades of Congress rule.
The definition of a pogrom is not that the state deliberately organises it, but that it stands by or encourages the violence once it has broken out spontaneously. I don’t think Modi organised the Gujarat pogroms, but there is plenty of evidence that the police not only did not intervene, but actively encouraged the rioters and helped them navigate Muslim neighbourhoods in Ahmedabad and elsewhere. He clearly bears responsibility for this. The mob violence that targets Christians and Muslims is also winked at or encouraged by the police, and the knowledge that the state will not stop them and tacitly approves of what they are doing is what encourages these goondas. The RSS, which is key to Modi’s popularity and the mobilisational ability of the BJP, is a deeply sinister paramilitary organisation with a long history of organised violence. As I hope I made clear, I don’t think Modi should be demonised, and I appreciated this article’s thoughtful attempt to understand the wellsprings of support for him and for the BJP, which do not simply arise from bigotry. But we have to be clear-eyed about what is happening, and also acknowledge that while secularism is a much more difficult path to tread than anchoring Indian identity in Hindutva, Nehru was right that it is the only humane and viable one in a country with so many different religions, languages and cultures. My hope is that the self-correcting mechanisms of Indian democracy will reassert themselves once again, but only time will tell.
What deeply sinister things have RSS done?
Mr.Morrison, I shudder to think that impressionable minds of your students are being influenced by your poorly informed views. We live in India and I know the realities better than you do. It appears to matter little to people like you in the West that a legitimate Supreme Court instituted inquiry found Modi blameless. The hypocrisy of your kind is shocking, extolling free judiciary but denigrating its findings….
Modi gay!!?? I don’t know about that. Brahmachariya is a common and noble thing in India if it can be practised without slipping.
Everything indicates he is celibate – stories would have come out by now otherwise, and I would have heard of them. But under what other circumstances would a young man, in India at that, walk away without consummating his marriage, and throw himself into religio-politics?
The BJP keeps throwing up its “celibate” leaders – Modi, Vajpayee, the godman CM of Uttar Pradesh. I am as sceptical of their celibacy as I was of the Saibaba who was celibate but liked to apply lingam massages to pretty white boy devotees. The TN’s chief minister, Jaya Lalitha, was widely believed to be in a same sex relationship with her protege; oddly this was something that was joked about openly but never mentioned in writing.
LOL. So the Hindu sannyasi (renunciate) Yogi Adityanath who happens to be the UP CM is dismissed as a ‘godman’. What about Bishop Franco Mulakkal undergoing trial for raping a nun? All the thousands of Christian clergy responsible for children sexual abuse, many whom were protected by the highest occupants of the Vatican and Protestant hierarchy, should also be called ‘Godmen’ then?
Without resorting to whataboutery, perhaps you should get it into your head that celibacy is practiced successfully since ancient times and a few exceptions (uncorroborated) should tar all with the same brush. Is their some victimhood here?
Have you read the Tehlka report?
\though not as dark I think as what is currently happening to the Uyghurs in China.\
That is a very poor comparison. India is still a multi-party democracy in which future tenure of BJP is not guaranteed. BJP has to constantly justify it’s rule to the people. The tragedy of India is the abdication of Indian National Congress who are stuck with a dynasty. When they kick out the dynasty and energise it’s leaders and workers , that will pose a challenge to BJP . You are making the mistake of ‘presentism’ bias – i.e. whatever happens now will continue to happen
\we should not gloss over Modi’s own crimes \
The extent of what is referred to as ‘communal clashes’ i.e. generally violence between Hindus and Muslims is no higher under Modi than under other govts i.e. of Indian national Congress. Perhaps it may even be less. . OTOH there are issues centered around temple destruction by Muslim rulers which Hindus strongly feel they want some kind of restitution i.e. convert them back to temples which were pulled down. Even thouigh hundreds of temples , great and small, were pulled down in favour of mosques, restitution of just a hndful of temples will go a long way in taking the wind off the sails of BJP. Unlike westerners Hindus are deeply religious and conservative who are just fo the last 70 years coming out of centuries of Turco-Mongol and English rule and these foreeigners despised Hindus, their religion, their Culture and were highly racist. Hindus were too black for the central asian rulers to be considred as equals
India was invaded by Muslims in the 10th and 11th centuries. They tried to suppress Hinduism, which had allowed both Christians and Jews to live in peace since the 1st century. Their rulers were intermittently brutish, repressive or benignly corrupt. Aurangzeb, in particular, was especially brutal; while his father, Akbar was tolerant towards Hindus. Overall, they brought nothing culturally valuable to India as far as I can tell other than a few Masjids (mosques) and tombs like the Taj Mahal and some poems, but destroyed many more indigenous works of art as being offensive to Allah.
The British easily defeated a chaotic collection of rajputs, some Muslim some Hindu, that could be played against one another, populated by helots unwilling to fight.
Akbar was great grandfather of Aurangzeb. They had Jahagir and Shah Jahan in between…
And the Taj Mahal.
I would add to your comment by saying that perhaps one of the most despicable acts of the invading muslims was the burning of the Libraries of Nalanda where thousands of manuscripts of great philosophical import and collective human though were torched. I would say that this act was even more despicable than any genocide. Luckily, a small fraction of that huge repository of knowledge was saved for posterity by a few dedicated Tibetan and Chinese monks.
Yes, we should certainly make the political decisions of today on the basis of the behavior of those living in the 10th and 11th centuries. Brilliant. Just brilliant.
I am an outsider. I have worked in India three times, totalling about two months.
What strikes everybody ( I think) is the huge difference between the rich and the poor – probably caused by the caste system. Twice I have seen the results of this personally.
Once I was picked up at the airport and the driver was not there when I arrived, so we were about 30 minutes late arriving at the factory. I found out the next day that the driver had been sacked. He didn’t actually know the way to the point where he was due to pick me up and got lost. He was frightened to say that he didn’t know the way because he would have been sacked anyway.
Again, I was queuing behind a rich Indian in the airport. He hadn’t filled out a form to allow him out of the country and the man on the barrier said he couldn’t go through without filling out the form. The rich man exploded, demanded to see the boss, shouted for about five minutes and was finally let through without the form. He shouted back that he would get the man on the gate sacked. I went to see the boss and wrote out (longhand) a statement that the man on the barrier had been polite and had not be to blame. The boss thanked me but said that the man would still lose his job.
The poverty in India is unbelievable, even though you see it every day. It needs to be tackled. Religion, especially Hinduism, is not the way to do this. The Hindu religion teaches that (effectively) you are fated to go through your life and you can’t work to change anything.
If anything, the extreme Left would be jus the same as Hinduism. A mild sort of Left could be the answer, though.
I’ve worked briefly in India and had similar experiences… The opulance of the rich, contrasted with the utter poverty of the poor is shocking.
yes, that is because most deracinated elites have forgotten the roots of our civilization which teach ‘earn with 100 hands, and give with 1000’. kings and rich merchants of yore used to give it all up and head off into the jungle in the last stage of life – vanaprastha. What is looked down upon as ‘Hindu nationalist revivalism’ in the West is actually an impulse to reconnect with that civilizational core, fuse it with modern technology and urbanisation, to create a new model for society – the current blind consumerism and nihilistic individualism will lead us nowhere. it has to be balanced with culture, family, roots.
A friend who worked for a while in a bank branch in the Home Counties in England described exactly the same sort of “entitled” threats to get people sacked for doing their jobs from some of their (English) customers.
Abuse of power knows no boundaries of race or religion.
Yes , except how many times does the sacking actually happen? I can think of several occasions where the person doing the shouting was the one to lose their position, if it was publicly funded. Usually when these incidents are written up, it’s the shouter who is reviled and mocked.
Yes, very true but some are more extreme than others!!
The case of rich to overpowering the poor can also be easily found in dozens of christian countries that colonialists founded in Europe and South America. In fact it is true for Europe and North America. What is ‘white previledge’ exactly if not the advantage of ‘haves’ over have nots. Why single out India for this. Just beacuse a heathen faith is still stong over here?
And no hindus dont want to be fated to suffering. Some never come out of it as no means are available. But an overwhelming majority of people want to? We believe in karma wherein fate can be changed if we put an effort. That’s why hindu parents put all effort in getting their kids educated as it is the most sureshot way of breaking the cycle of poverty. That also explains the success of Indians/Indian kids overseas where better resources are available.
Being wedded to fate is essentially a Christian concept wherein every difficulty is a punishment from God that you have to suffer.
If poverty in India is unbelivable then how can we be held responsible. Wedid not collect our wealth and hid it in a place where others can’t find. It was stolen from us. First by islamic warriors in medeival period and then perfected by Brits who killed us with famines to fill their coffers and left us penniless The so called secular leaders who ‘guided’ us post independence also set up our communist and socialist leaning economic policies. Which means we failed to catch up post world war industrialization.
What is ‘white previledge’ exactly if not the advantage of ‘haves’ over have nots.
What is white privilege? An utterly racist term. It prejudges an entire group, and negatively so, on the basis of skin color. By number, there are more poor whites in America than blacks. The difference lies in proportion; a greater percentage of blacks is in poverty vs. whites, and as with whites, it has far more to do with individual choices as anything else.
Then how tf are you people generalizing entire religion because rich are having their way, an universal fact?
Who is ‘you people,’ because I have done no such thing. Rich is not a condition that exclusive to any single race.
You really need to read up on white privilege as you don’t understand what it means. Here is a simple and easily found definition: ‘White Privilege is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances.’
That does not pre-judge an entire group of people negatively on the basis of skin colour. It says people in ‘some societies’ benefit from being white – it does not say they are responsible for that fact or blame them for it.
If white privilege meant ‘In some societies all white people deliberately discriminate against non-white people to keep non-white people at a social, political or economic disadvantage’ you would have a point. But that isn’t what it means.
Its racist becusae it uses an immutable characteristic to define its theory. Here’s an idea. How about swap the term white with black in that sentence and apply it to modern day South Africa. How does that work for you?
Defining groups of people by an immutable characteristic is the very root of racism. Science and anthropology tells us clearly that there no such thing as “races”. There is but one race…the human race.
It’s not describing an immutable characteristic of anyone or any group. It’s describing the outcome of a characteristic of some societies – societal characteristics can be changed. The whole point of the theory is that those social characteristics can be changed.
I agree totally the concept of race is a construct. A construct created by the powerful to justify and maintain social, economic and political inequality.
Purposeful ignorance. White privilege doesn’t mean a white person’s life hasn’t been hard, it simply means that racism hasn’t made their life more so. America’s social structures were constructed with whites as the norm, and as a result its naturally easier for whites to operate in them than blacks.
I sort agree with that ..except for the “white privilege” nonsense. That just racism.
I lived in India as a child.and revisited a couple of years ago. We got the distinct impression that indians lower in the pecking order got bullied terribly. We saw it in restaurants and in hotels. We saw one young man get hit by his superior. Until.India sorts out its population and poverty and caste problems, introduces workers rights (and I’m.no socialist but i believe in dignity) it can never take its place as a proper functioning nation.
you are right, we are not a functioning nation yet because a lot of us have internalized the kind of traits your ascribe to us – oppressive, casteist society. Many of our institutions – bureaucracy, judiciary and education – still carry the colonial legacy designed to shame and seed inferiority in the subjects. Fuedalism took deep root when the nation was sucked dry ($45 trillion was siphoned out by the British as per one estimate) by colonial looters and survival became paramount. Poor people do get taken advantage of, but poverty cuts across social boundaries and poor from a ‘higher’ social class can also get a raw deal from our semi-colonised state. In a way, the issues we see with child labour, workers rights etc are all classic attributes of post-colonial redeveloping countries. Honestly, we need rooted, strong, decisive leadership to solve many of our issues, and less of the bickering-coalition type politics that West labels as ‘robust democracy’
Your understanding of Hinduism is very crude. It is not you are fated to go through your life. It says that what happens to you is the result of your own karma and if you want to get out of it then do good karma, then you will get good results
I am sure you are right. However, as you know, in all religions the message is passed to the poor by an intermediary – this passed message is the important one.
I worked in a factory in Haridwar and outside the gates were many ‘religious’ men who tried to stop the employees from working saying that there was no point in work because it would not overrule karma. This, unfortunately, is the Hindu religion for illiterate people.
I worked for two weeks near to Pune in a factory owned by Jains. The owners were careful not to step on insects but they were cruel to their employees. I believe that Jainism is a form of Hinduism.
haha. Chris, come out in the open mate, reveal your true identity. Stop writing bollocks about Hindu religious men asking people not to work. One of the biggest entrepreneurs in Haridwar is a Hindu yogi called Baba Ramdev, who established the hugely popular line of Patanjali Ayurvedic and FMCG goods. You should try some of their Amla juice – will wash away some of the anti-Dharmic poison in your system!
That “rich man” you saw at an Indian airport was probably a mid-level politician. In my experience, really rich Indians actually keep a low profile in public. They do not attract attention to themselves. It is the wannabes (politicians or government bureaucrats) who throw their weight around: “Do you know who I am?”
Yes advertising your position and wealth attracts kidnappers!!
I lived in India for two years with a middle class Bengali family in rural West Bengal. There are many cultural differences from the west. I think some basic knowledge of an Indian language helps, maybe Hindi but I lived in Bengal so learned Bengali. Once you overcome that and accept India for what it IS rather than what you think it should be to fit your mind set then life is pretty good and alive. Oh and don’t use your left hand for eating!!!
woah! no rich idiot shouting at an immigration control officer can get them sacked. Such employees have strong unions, and even a rich politician would get flak if he tried some stunt like that. The driver getting ‘lost’ and sacked because he wasn’t on time to pick you up also doesn’t ring true. Routes to the airport are so well known these days, and most drivers have smartphone GPS to help them. Honestly, what you are saying sounds a lot like the atrocity literature dished out by colonial Brits to run Indians down.
Huge difference between rich and poor is not due to ‘caste’, but because we had a statist, anti-business economy which kept us ALL poor for many decades, and even after economic liberalization, our electoral democracy necessitates balancing all kinds of vote banks with subsidies and other gibs leaving little for infra build up that drives economic growth. Modi is addressing things left untouched till now – toilets for all, piped water, electricity, improving roads and railways, defence indigenization, bankruptcy code, farm reforms. A fractious multi-party democracy and a self-appointing, unaccountable judiciary means decisions are often over-turned or put into limbo…if Hindu ‘caste’ or religion was the reason for our poverty, why are Pakistan and BD more or as poor as us?
Your view of Hindu Dharma (aka Hinduism) makes me believe you are either suffering from a colonial hangover or are a Christian missionary looking to ‘save Hindu souls’ – Dharma teaches that we are all in control of our destinies by performing good deeds that generate good karma and propel us forward in the spiritual journey. Human life has 4 goals – artha (earn wealth), kama (fulfill desires, raise a family), dharma (give, fulfil your duty towards society), moksha (work for self-realization, spiritual liberation by breaking cycle of life-death-rebirth).
Ehat happened with the driver was unfortunate and it shouldn’t have happened but unless one knows his caste you can’t attribute the situation to his caste, there are a zillion drivers from the so called upper caste.
India’s tryst with left(indian) has been a poor one, consider this, a WHO report in 2012 showed that showed that about 65% Indians were forced to defecate in the open and that was because the left leaning govts till then hadn’t been able to provide even toilets to the poor n this was a major health hazard.
the Modi govt gets elected in 2014 n starts a program to build toilets for every poor family in the entire country n by the time he faces elections in 2019 India became almost open defecation free. now the left in India might cry hoarse that there is this problem n that problem with the toilets but the poor electorate saw actual delivery of promises for the 1st time.
same was the case with banking, about 70% of the country wasn’t connected to modern banking, today most of them are. similar with cooking gas, rations, guaranteed employment schemes.
Now about the caste issue, Modi himself isn’t from the so called upper caste, moreover his party has most number of lower caste MPs n MLAs n also gets the largest % of lower caste votes. so by the logic of this article you might call them Hindu Nationalists.
In reality things are not as straight forward as people in the west think they are, besides 2 months isn’t time enough to understand the complexities of this country.
as far as your airport story is concerned I’m afraid I’ll have to say that’s a blatant lie, depending on which airport you are talking about, this attendent you talk about was either a govt servant or employed by the pvt airport operator, in either cases unlike the driver, who most likely was on contract, this airport attendent was an employee n thus had far more job security.
1 suggestion though before you form your opinion about a people(hindus in this case) you ought to study them a bit. Hinduism has no such principle where you can’t change your conditions, there are tons n tons of scriptures teaching just the opposite, so again I’m afraid that’s a load of bull.
Cheers!
The relative economic failure of Congress and it’s refusal to move on from reheated Laskism is part of why the BJP are in power. China’s skyrocketing grow over the last 30 years hasn’t been matched in India. The failure of nice comfortable fabians to produce policies to unlock the economic potential that is clearly there only leaves the BJP as a nationwide party offering a platform economic reform. The British public just overwhelming rejected Corbyn’s reheated Laskism why shouldn’t the Indians
Order is one word for it. There could be others.
“China’s skyrocketing grow over the last 30 years hasn’t been matched in India.”
I think that may be because the US elites chose to give all their wealth and power to China rather than India. Right now…that looks like a bit of a mistake
Correct, the Chinese appeared slightly less corrupt than the Indians, but it was a close run thing.
Modi is winning because he’s been able to keep the economic ship under control while leaning into Hindutva identity politics. Congress and the Indian left are corrupt, visionless fools who need new leadership. But it’s difficult to see Modi’s rise as a backlash against the left more than the right wing capitalizing on relatively widespread degree of passive bigotry among the public to beat a weak opposition. As Mr. Khan notes, most Indians are not particularly interested in politics, and few are ideological. They look for stable governance and are stirred by overtures to national identity, but at this point, there is little more in Indian politics than that. Congress won on the back of its name recognition and the popular belief that it stood for nationalism and independence. Modi is now doing the same thing. Mr. Khan seems to imagine a glorious new generation leading India into a golden age of theocratic rule, where the Muslims finally get whatever it is he thinks they deserve. That couldn’t be further from the truth – Indians are increasingly western, increasingly educated, and increasingly liberal, though just as apathetic about politics and exercised about religion and culture. They are simply displaying the same political tendencies they always have.
You are aware that more non-hindus voted for Modi in the 2019 election (by a very big margin) than did in the previous one. Why do you think that is?
They didn’t like the opposition.
That said Mody’s promises of structural economic reforms are way behind.
That’s true. It’s not so easy in India: change has happened fast in China since they flipped to running a command economy ‘with Chinese capitalist characteristics’, a single party state can do that. India cannot – nothing moves quickly because every single change requires buy-in from groupings affected by any change and the politicians who represent them, especially large infrastructure changes like building road or rail for example requires turfing out huge numbers of very poor shack-dwellers and so on, and India, even under Modi, won’t do that. Question is, should they?
You do realise that currently upto 35km of highways are being constructed everyday…one of the good things under current government…
Thats strikingly similar to the hispanic US citizens voting for the “waycist” Trump isnt it?
This is a very thoughtful and thought-provoking essay. Thank you, Mr. Khan. And thank you to the contributors to the comments thus far. I read them all with interest.
“This project was fundamentally post-colonial, attempting to paper over divisions which had ripened during the British Raj, ultimately fracturing the subcontinent into two states.”
I take Mr. Sharma’s point about India and jazz (I really liked that simile!). So, with some trepidation and much humility, I have to disagree with Mr. Khan’s central thesis. This project goes back at least as far as Veer Savarkar, possibly even to the Arya Samaj.
Imagine that you are an educated Indian during the colonial period. You want to persuade the rural masses that the British are past their sell-by date. You also want to persuade people that their fundamental identity is that they are Indians. How do you do that? Gandhi and Congress emphasised the foreignness of the British – so identity was forged on who you were _against_. This worked well when the British were around. Once the British left, it generated diminishing returns; hence the arguments about language in the 1950s (which is why English was retained), and the boundaries of states within India. The Nehruvian appeal of anti-Britishness as the defining national identity of Indians, has run its course.
With what do you replace it? The only possibility is a cultural Hinduism. There is nothing else that links all, or even most, Indians together. I hope Mr. Kotak is right, and we do misunderstand Mr. Modi. Unfortunately, there are signs that the Muslims are being lined up to be the ‘enemy within’.
> Muslims are being lined up to be enemy within.
A few days ago, hindu priest dared to criticize PBUH. Now hundreds and thousands of muslims are taking to marches demanding ‘gustakhe rasool ki saza kya, sar tan se juda, sar tanse juda’ ( what is the punsihment for insulting mohmmed, head off the body, head off the body). And clearly law enforcement is quite afraid of these mobs asnothing has been done to diffuse the situation. There has been spate of incidences of killing of hindus by muslims in recent month, the most famous being killing of young hindu activist Rinku Sharma by a mob of 25 muslims. Then just 3 days ago, a hindu policeman was lynched in Bengal at order of local mosque.
Muslims are not being lined up to be enemy. It is hindus being lined up for wholesale slaughter.
A very informative article. India is a huge and diverse nation, although actually it has little in common with the relatively homogeneous countries usually described with that word. It is, however, certainly a very distinct civilisation.
We should understand that India is at least as diverse as Europe. Had it not been for the East India Company and the British, the sub-continent would almost certainly have broken into a number of separate states, often with their own languages, as it was well on the way to doing following the collapse of the Mughal Empire.
Unlike Congress, Modi and the BJP are at least consistent in their opposition to the Islamic conquest, which was often extraordinarily brutal and destructive, as well as the British!
One of the most ludicrous and patronising Western misapprehension about India is our often gushing reaction to its ‘spirituality’. The caste system is so deeply rooted and pernicious with far longer lasting effects than any Western racial prejudice.
Ah yes, having travelled widely in India I was struck more than anything at how non-spiritual it is. Religious perhaps, spiritual no. The sheer inhumanity to man …men, women and children, not forgetting the appalling treatment of animals, even the sacred cows, reveal that India lacking any sense of the spiritual as most would understand it.
The doe-eyed tourists expecting to find the spiritual certainly do manage to invent it as they are ripped off by gurus and seeking to survive the horrors, by projecting onto it, something which does not exist.
Yes, I am sure one can find something spiritual in a gang of children picking through the much and stink of a mountain of garbage, but it takes high levels of denial to do so.
And how many times do we read,”but, even in their poverty they are all smiling. They have a happiness in their poverty we do not have in our wealth.”
Utter bollocks of course. Hire a car in India for travelling and the first thing you see are tinted windows. It is hard to see a smiling face looking through such windows because you remain unseen. As in many cultures, making eye to eye contact, is likely to bring a smile. In India, it is partly instinct but also because, as a Westerner, you might be useful.
Poverty is misery for everyone which is why Indians are even more ruthless than most. They see everyday what they do not want to become and because of Hinduism, despise the poor because they are only suffering due to evil actions in their past life.
It is a fascinating place, but even more ghastly on so many counts. As Gandhi woefully said, and I paraphrase, ‘true freedom for India is to ensure everyone has a flushing toilet.’
I would be very curious to know why my comment Awaits Approval. Perhaps when such conditions are imposed, the moderators might explain why it is so.
When India was conquered by Britain it had 23% of world GDP and when it left this was decreased to less than 2%. The leaders who were selected by Britain to take over the reign after independence were western educated and had no grass root experience of an ordinary Indian. As a conquering power Britain divided India. In the colonial census of India, the question on religion, caste and race was introduced for the first time in the census which began in 1872, and religion and caste were used as a fundamental category. The divided society coupled with post-independence socialist policies of the government kept the population poor. The appeasement of minority muslins for vote bank politics by political parties did not help in forging a cohesive society.
With the arrival of the present government after the previous governments which were involved in major corruption scams has been a welcome relief for common man and left can not win elections, hence the bogey of Hindutva will be the tool of the left to beat the current government. The people of India are fed of corrupt politicians and their appeasement politics and want a non-corrupt government, which works for progress of all segments of society, where the divisions are thrown to dustbin and unity and progress are the by word. India’s 64% population is of working age.
A self-confident and self-sustaining India is an emerging superpower, which has the potential, but requires execution and political will. Most of the population are for development agenda and not for divisive agenda, which was followed by left leaning political parties earlier. People know that the next century is of Asia, where China and India will play a major role in the world.
Everywhere fell behind the west’s gdp wise because of the rapid economic development of the west, including the rise of America. This explains much of the reduction in world gdp share.
It’s also why Christian communities are being attacked in some parts of India, despite existing for many hundreds of years.
No they are not being attacked. They are multiplying courtsy the gracious donations that people like you send to harvest souls.
If anything the Christians are now very politically strong. They have captured the state of Andhra and are now burning down Hindu temples on daily basis. They are also close towards capturing another important state of TN.
Absolutely everything you have said, is of course, outright nonsense.
No, I am not…what is happening in Andhra and TN is for everyone to see.
I am from Tamil Nadu and I live in Chennai. You obviously have no knowledge of what is happening here. So, I would say that outright nonsense applies to your comment. Statistically, the rise in numbers of Christians, the activism of the Church, simply the growing number of churches as opposed to temples and mosques are realities that you know nothing of.
Unmitigated bullshit. This is why no one likes the roving bands of hindutva warriors online, least of all other hindus.
Christians have been attacked in a few sporadic incidents but most live in peace and security. The rhetoric of the typical hindutva cadre about conversion does create a hostile atmosphere and Indian christians remain wary of such blindly stupid and hateful people.
Here is a Christian organization telling how good Covid has been for its operations…
https://t.co/vRwpR8b3Aw?amp=1
Here is another video of one foreign organization talking about how they plan to plant 1000 churches in a single district.
https://youtu.be/j-Zk3UYFsAA
If you get time, go to Joshua project site and read about their plans for India.
Large scale conversions on back of foreign funding is real. Hindus are also harassed by Christians. Most famously they objected to bharat mata idol in kanyakumari. Somtimes, temples are descrated. Somtimes, revered pastors say that hindus must be punched, some times crosses are planted in temples, somtimes temple lands are usurped. In Andhara recently a shrine of goddess Sita was usurped and church was planted. Hindu seer Sadhguru has been constantly harassed as he attempted to halt the tide of conversion.
This is reality. Whether you believe it or not, I don’t care. Waise bhi abrhamics don’t really like pagans.
Many people conflate general lack of law and order in India with communal conflicts. I can literally point out several more instances where hindus are attacked specifically for religion. This problem can go away with good policing reforms
Thanks to the author and to the (informed) comments for information about things I know very little of and clearly should do some reading on.
A fanatic is a person who never changes the subject.
When India got its independence, leaders like Nehru, as the author mentions, leaned on Western/Communist ideals more. The envisioned an India that was more like an European state with socialistic ideals. They did not understand the roots of Indian culture and its depth. As time went on, the elitist, feudalistic control of the country slowly began to crack apart and through those cracks native culture began to seep through. India’s economic liberalization brought in self confidence and hope for many Indians who had until then become very dejected with the way things were going. While most politicians were focused on cashing in on backwardness, caste divisions, mutual hatred between religious communities, the RSS and its Hindu leaders focused more on restoring lost pride and confidence that was wiped out by centuries of dominance by powers belonging to Abrahamic faiths. Many of them still think of national pride, progress and restoration of respect to their culture. While there are many maladies like caste prejudice, these could have been resolved, had the corrupt leaders of the past not focused on using them divide the people more for their gains. Caste issue will die down with time as economy progresses and India slowly regains her economic prosperity she was known for centuries ago. Hindu culture is very adaptive and secular. India is secular because of Hindus and not because of the laws. Hindus are a persecuted people. They have suffered immensely at the hands of Muslim Sultans who treated them the way Taliban and ISIS treat the infidels. The British were even worse. Modi is admired for his incorruptibility, dedication and devotion to leading the country towards prosperity and merit. This work will take a few decades because the politicians of the post Independent India have marooned the nation with their asinine visions and policies. There is a lot of opposition worldwide because everyone wants to see India through the eyes of Spielberg and want India to be like the one portrayed in his Indian Jones movie. India is rich in spiritual traditions. It is facing severe onslaught from Islamic missions and Christian evangelical charities. Despite all this, the Hindu dominated India has given them more privileges than any secular country can give. Hindu temples are under government control while mosques and churches have their own autonomous management. Such is the state of affairs. If there is so much objections to Hindus restoring their rights in their own country, it comes from the desire to keep India live up to a colonial perspective. There are many Brown skinned westerners who have grown up in the elite schools and colleges of India who work with leftist organizations in powerful countries to derail Indians regaining their native culture, minus the drawbacks. People need to develop a live and let live attitude. India and its Hindu population will take care of itself. There is no need to control them or fear them becoming like Nazis. India’s Hindu culture gave Gandhi while the European tradition gave a Hitler and a Churchill. India will always be a spiritual leader for the world. Learn to accept them. None of the apprehensions that are projected are true.
Actually it was a British education and his time in South Africa which gave us Gandhi. He took up many of the trappings of a stereotypical India, but he was not made by India.
If India is a spiritual leader then the world is doomed and India more so. There is nothing remotely spiritual about India. Religious yes, backward, cruel, primitive and fascinating religion, but spiritual, no.
A spiritual culture could never do to other humans what Indians do. The treatment of females in India is horrific and worse than orthodox Islam. The treatment of lower castes, including children, is so barbaric that is is a travesty of anything remotely spiritual and a reminder of the worst that humans can be.
An interesting article that filled in a few gaps for me. I’m all in favour of the new ‘civilizational’ world order that Aris and others have outlined here. And if it annoys the upper class Indian and global Left. so much the better.
That said, Hinduism has always seemed to me to be just another awful religion, the awfulness in this case being the caste system. I don’t know how much this still applies. The other problem, as is the case always and everywhere, will be the muslims in their midst.
Caste is still (unfortunately) very pervasive across India, but is breaking down at an increasing rate due to urbanisation. It’s not musiims per se, it is, as alluded to by the author, the reaction of both hindus and muslims to modernity that is causing schisms in the mind. In fact, maintaining hooks into antiquity while simultaneously engaging with modernity is inherently unstable, and while such stances can be maintained for a while, modernity will increasingly force a choice between withdrawing back into antiquity or junking antiquity and embracing modernity. Not a comfortable position for those of a conservative temperament, but there you have it. I also suspect, globally muslims will hold on longer to the past compared to hindus, because my strong impression is that the attachment of hindu India to antiquity is skin-deep, and will melt away in the white heat of technology (to borrow a phrase from a pipe-smoking politician of old).
I wonder if postmodernity may be a more hospitable environment for religious thought and practice than modernity (with all of modernity’s reductionist scientific materialism and aspiration for complete mechanistic understanding)? It may not demand the same schisms of the mind PK mentions.
It has been persuasively argued that fundamentalism (even in Christianity, but also in other faiths) is a modernist heresy.
That’s an interesting idea, I guess a central thesis of postmodernity is a rejection of modernist historiography, so if it allows a rampant free-for-all, accommodating each individual on their own terms…
This comment makes no sense.
Hinduism is tricky. Caste system, Sati, etc.
…yet a tradition of self-reform that the British happily noted and made use of. The most progressive Keralean princes in the 19th century were quite devout. I would be interested to see if there is a causal link between those two aspects of their personalities.
On a bad day, Hinduism is as bad as Islamism. On a good day it actually can point to a civilising influence that matches Christianity in power and effect.
I won’t deny caste problems but I think you don’t realize that hindutva is a very progressive movement. It is inherently anti caste. Modi himself is from backward caste.
This, I think, is an article in which the commenters know way more than the writer.
Speaking as a bloody Brit born in India who is now an eevil Trumpist Yank I’d say that it looks from here as if all the upper-caste English-speaking Indians are coming to the US to wreck it (Sundar Pichai, how yer doin’). Or maybe they are getting out before it is too late.
Here’s the thing. Globalism is the tribalism of the educated class; nationalism is the tribalism of the middle class; racism and ethnic identity is the tribalism of the subordinate class.
Let’s set aside that the global western left is receding worldwide, even in the west. Hindutva might not be a good choice for the country, it is up to the Indians to decide that. However, the answer to Hindutva could not be an exogenous philosophy. The answer could only be another “relatively insular and inward looking” philosophy.
There are more than a billion Indians, this is such a big number that India is a civilization on its own, like China. It is impossible to fully adapt a foreign political philosophy to such a large and varied country. Up until now, like the author said, the elite simply ignored the masses.
The Indian people deserve a political class that speaks to them in a way that they can understand. They deserve a political class that can communicate and develop solutions that are catered to their needs and their reality. Hindutva is just the first ideology that is attempting to do that, and for that reason it deserves success. The Indians that do not like that ideology should develop a new one that speaks to the rest of their countrymen; trying to resurrect or adapt a foreign ideology will rightfully fail.
“Let’s set aside that the global western left is receding worldwide, even in the west”
Thats not what I see. I see it growing, particularly in the USA.
I am sorry William, Gabriele is right (no pun) – the pendulum is swinging.
Excellent content from Razib.
Good stuff as ever from RK.
Now India is emerging as a powerful global player. With its long history of invasions of assimilation and its own ideas of development, it is on the road to being like China providing it is not in a nuclear conflict with its neighbour Pakistan. While I lived and studied in India back in the late 1960s and early 70s there used to be a saying I would often hear, unity in diversity. I think that still applies.
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I reread many of these paragraphs twice – less jargon please!! – and still can’t identify why the author actually thinks that the global left hate Modi?
Anyone able to nutshell this for me please?
There’s nothing wrong with caste endogamy. We’re not white christians who were forced to forgo their tribal identities by a totalitarian church.
The rehit discourages marrying out of Jati. Christians are implored to mix in order to increase love & unity among humanity; how are there any pure whites left? If they can’t follow their religion, why trust them in grading our’s?
Abrahamic religion doctrine founded on one truth erasing another is cancer. Hinduvta is part of this problem, and Khalsa the solution.
Aryas keep their Kesh.
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।
“Arya’s keep their Kesh”. If that means what I think it means, good for you. If only we all valued our racial and cultural identities similarly.
I actually have sympathy for non-Hindutva Indian voters. On one side they have a kleptocratic dynasty that treats power like inheritance, on the other side they have a bunch of medieval grudge holders.
In South Asia, secularism has been incontrovertibly tied to socialism, which is largely a function of the Cold War. Pakistan’s most secular leader in the 1970s nuked his own economy by nationalizing all industries. He also folded spectacularly to pressure from religious parties, in the process making Pakistan the only country in the world to constitutionally enshrine the persecution of Muslims. Since then no leader has dared to be secular or socialist The closest they got to secular was Musharraf, who spent half his time protecting the Afghan Taliban.
In India, Nehruvian politics held the country together from linguistic and religious divisions for a few decades (and the mere fact that India never Balkanized is an achievement often overlooked), but they also secured India’s status as the world’s worst managed economy till the liberalization of the ’90s.
So while it may be true that Modi won 2014 largely on the promise of pro-market reforms, by 2019 he had transformed into the most dangerous kind of populist: someone who’s vote bank is not dependent on the economy. As long as there is a political dynasty to fight, another mosque to destroy and another city name to decolonize (i.e. de-Islamize), Modi will keep chugging along.
A pretty shameless panegyric on the current Indian government. The repression in India which has been unleashed by Modi and the BJP (and associated thugs) is horrific and unprecedented in the nation’s independent history. From Dalits to Muslims in the Kashmir, an assault on the secular constitution, persecution of Christian communities, etc.
Moreover, the way in which Indian farmers are being trampled on by a government which looks to turn over agriculture to Western multinational corporations seems very much to be a promotion of “Davos Man”. Unlike many of the nationalisms of old, this article fails to acknowledge that Modi is a cheerleader for unbridled neoliberalism. In that, he is thoroughly of the West.
Finally, this article seems to be conceptually imprecise. Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie, for instance, are very much against the “Western ‘Davos Man'”: why are Davos and the “global Left” uttered in the same breath? Does Dr. Khan mean to distinguish between liberalism and the left (you can have right-wing liberalism, after all).
The homogenization of “the Left”, of course, elides the fact that Modi, like far-right populists across the globe, is offering cheap cultural tricks to mask escalating economic injustices. In that, the contours of the BJP’s ideology are very well-defined.
The left isn’t opposed to Hindutva because they’re whiny snowflakes upset at losing power; they’re fighting against what they’ve always fought against – the murderous and fascistic ideologies that are the fountainhead of all right wing thought. Mr. Khan and his right wing buddies may find it easy to shrug aside Modi’s involvement in the Gujarat pogroms, but I certainly don’t, and neither does the global left. Modi is India’s Netanyahu, fundamentally bigoted, grossly corrupt, and all too comfortable perverting freedom and democracy. Cynical fools like Mr. Khan don’t mind putting their morals and common sense aside when given the opportunity to oppress Muslims, liberals, and the poor, and alas, the majority of Indians feel the same way. Modi’s found a quick path to victory with his Hindu nationalism and appeals to identity, but the right wing ‘intellectuals’ who support him now won’t be laughing when a real deal fascist comes along. Along with Modi, they are enabling the destruction of Indian democracy.
Unfortunately, in what might be an attempt to shoehorn Indian politics into The Discourse of authentic indigenous populists to be admired vs rootless globalist elites to be condemned, this article gives a somewhat misleading picture of the nature of the BJP and Hindu nationalist politics in general. There’s quite a lot to unpick/refute, so here goes:
Firstly, to describe the origins of the BJP as somehow more authentically Indian than the ‘western’ Congress party ignores the extent to which the RSS, the thuggish sectarian paramilitary group from which the BJP developed (and which, as the article rightly notes, was a key formative influence on Modi himself), emerged in the 1920s and 30s as a deliberate attempt to emulate the violent fascist street movements of interwar Europe. So when opponents describe the BJP and the RSS as ‘fascist’, they are not simply making an analogy, but are in fact accurately describing their origins. The ‘strange admirers’ the article describes amongst western white nationalists are therefore, in the proper historical context, perhaps not so strange after all.
Secondly, whilst the European idea of ‘secularism’, being more along the lines of the French Laïcité and implying a complete separation between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ affairs, is indeed quite alien to India, this is not what the concept of ‘secularism’ is generally understood to mean in an Indian context. Instead, it implies more of an even-handedness between religions, and this kind of governance has been practiced in what is now India for millennia. Whilst various Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim rulers may well have looked more favourably upon the practice of their own religions, and whilst some instances of intolerance and religious conflict no doubt took place, it is nevertheless the case that the established norm for thousands of years before the British arrived on the scene was for rulers of all backgrounds to build, fund, sponsor and protect the buildings, organisations and practices of religious traditions other than their own. This norm was followed even by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who despite his current status as a historical bogeyman amongst Hindu nationalists was in fact a notable patron of Hindu temple-building.
In fact, the idea of ‘Islam’ and ‘Hinduism’ in the Indian context as referring not to two fluid, internally diverse and often overlapping religious ecosystems, as was historically the case, but instead to a binary and totalising tribal identity, is itself a product of the colonial era and of modernity in general, emerging from a toxic combination of colonial orientalist categorising schema, cynical divide-and-rule tactics by colonial administrators, and the development of wider ‘imagined communities’ beyond the boundaries of village or jati fostered the by political unity and new forms of communication and exchange that developed under the Raj. Although not quite as ridiculous as the attempts by revisionist Hindu nationalist historians to claim that the archetypically Islamicate Taj Mahal was originally a Hindu temple, or that ancient Vedic civilisations built spaceships and nuclear missiles, their attempt to project their own very modern brand of poisonous religious identity politics back into the historical record is certainly more insidious. In fairness, the article does acknowledge the more recent roots of Hindutva, but the claim that ‘Hindutva may best be thought of as a personal identity with India and Indian culture, and a mass movement attempting to unite the diverse strands of native Indian identity into one’ is a fairly dubious way to describe a fascistic ideology devoted to denying, suppressing and violently uprooting those diverse strands wherever it can find them.
Furthermore, much as it would be nice if the article was correct in its core assertion that the Macauelyite westernised elite are currently in the process of shuffling off the historical stage and making way for a governing class more in tune with the needs and aspirations of their people, it is unfortunately far from the mark in this respect as well. Ever since the neo-liberal reforms enacted under the Congress party in the early ’90s, dismembering the social and ecological fabric of the country in service of the interests of large multinational corporations has been a bipartisan concern, and if anything, has been pursued even more aggressively by the BJP in the years since, even if there have been some setbacks and false starts. Whilst the sectarian rabble-rousing may well be the aspect of the BJP that most animates their base and most horrifies their foes, their economic policies almost entirely reflect the ideologies of neo-liberal economic globalisation. This can be seen in, for example, the ongoing farmer’s protests against the subordination of agricultural policy to corporate interests by the Modi government, as well as the wider support by BJP governments for a development agenda that destroys communities and ecosystems across the country in pursuit of corporate profits in mining and industry. Modi himself may well come from humble origins, but the technocratic, westernised (and still frequently western-educated) elite and their economic attitudes are nevertheless extremely well represented amongst BJP officials and supporters, whilst it is the humblest Indians of all who suffer most when their waters are polluted, their forests bulldozed, or their farms seized for development, leaving them little option but to join the impoverished masses scraping a living on the streets of the big cities. To imply that the indigenous popular movements amongst farmers, Adivasi peoples and others opposing such ‘development’ are somehow inauthentic avatars of a global activist left, as the article comes close to suggesting, is, again, deeply misleading.
Finally, the phrasing “He was Chief Minister of Gujarat during the 2002 communal riots when over 1,000 died” implies a much more passive role for Modi and his cronies in the atrocity than was actually the case. The BJP government in Gujarat was not an innocent bystander. It was not even a passive enabler. Instead, the evidence suggests that the organs of the government were actively involved in the incitement and prosecution of what was not a not a riot but a targeted pogrom, and the violent and dehumanising language used more recently by extremely senior BJP figures (Yogi Adityanath and Amit Shah are deserving of particularly dishonourable mention here), along with the astonishing intensity of sectarian hatred amongst many parts of the population, means that the possibility of similar horrors being perpetrated on a wider scale in the near future now that the BJP are tightening their grip on both the centre and the states is a very real possibility.
None of this is to excuse the aristocratic arrogance, incompetence, and corruption of the Congress party, or to minimise the responsibility of the rest of India’s political and business elites for the negative consequences of the neo-liberal and technocratic systems of development they too have fostered, or the instances of sectarianism they too have enabled (Congress’ record is not exactly spotless in this regard either). However, the specifics of the article are not only widely misleading, but when put together imply a dangerously misguided view of Indian history and politics in general.
Agree 100%.
Mr.Peter Butler-Way gets his facts from an alternate universe of his wishful thinking. Aurangzeb was a noble patron of Hindu temple building? Who re-introduced the hateful Jiziya? I don’t get what your agenda is. Anyway, inconsequential , as we Indians will decide for ourselves and do no longer rely on fake histories created with agendas
Living in India, Bombay to be precise, during the late Eighties and early Nineties, I can only say nationalism has always been alive and well in India. Attacks on Muslims and Christians were and remain a regular thing and common statements were: Hindustan for Hindoos and they don’t call it the Indian Ocean for nothing.
Indians, like the Chinese, have an inflated sense of their own importance and a belief in their superiority, based on an ancient history. The fact that many others have equally ancient histories is ignored. Indian exceptionalism makes the Americans look humble.
Perhaps this is because in terms of day to day living, they have achieved so little and in fact their world worked vastly better under British colonial rule than it has done since independence, as more than one Indian would quietly remark, the older ones anyway, who remembered when efficiency was common, when I lived there.
The viciousness of the current nationalism is sourced deep in Indian culture and was always going to emerge with independence. I am not saying independence was wrong, it was indeed, right, but just as any powerful leader, think Tito, who, when gone, takes with them the last capacity to hold together disparate groups, so that is India.
The fact is that India was created by the British, who cobbled together the many kingdoms to create the country we see today. The peoples of the north and south were always very different and indeed frequently hated each other and spoke different languages and had different histories. Without the British India would never have existed as one country and without someone controlling the fanatical nationalism encouraged by the Hindus, it will not last.