Pankaj Mishra recently reviewed Martha Nussbaum’s new book, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future in the New York Review of Books. The review gives some tantalizing hints as to Nussbaum’s arguments, but Mishra also spends a considerable amount of time rehashing his own views (rather than Nussbaum’s) on the subjects of communalism and India’s evolution as a free market economy.
A better introduction to Nussbaum’s ideas about India can be found in a good-sized extract from the new book that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education last month. (Also check out Ramachandra Guha’s review here. And finally, there’s an MP3 Podcast of Nussbaum’s lecture at the University of Chicago you can download here; listen especially to Nussbaum’s prefatory comments on what led her to this project.) For those who are unfamiliar with Nussbaum’s interest in India, she has collaborated closely with Amartya Sen in the past, and also published a book called Women and Human Development that dealt with gender issues in India.
A few quotes from the extract at the Chronicle and some thoughts of my own on Nussbaum’s ideas after the jump.Nussbaum is clear from the start that the main goal of her book is to help American readers see India’s communalism problems in a global context. She wants to debunk Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis, and suggest Gandhi as an alternative:
The case of Gujarat is a lens through which to conduct a critical examination of the influential thesis of the “clash of civilizations,” made famous by the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington. His picture of the world as riven between democratic Western values and an aggressive Muslim monolith does nothing to help us understand today’s India, where, I shall argue, the violent values of the Hindu right are imports from European fascism of the 1930s, and where the third-largest Muslim population in the world lives as peaceful democratic citizens, despite severe poverty and other inequalities.
The real “clash of civilizations” is not between “Islam” and “the West,” but instead within virtually all modern nations — between people who are prepared to live on terms of equal respect with others who are different, and those who seek the protection of homogeneity and the domination of a single “pure” religious and ethnic tradition. At a deeper level, as Gandhi claimed, it is a clash within the individual self, between the urge to dominate and defile the other and a willingness to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality, with all the vulnerability that such a life entails.
This argument about India suggests a way to see America, which is also torn between two different pictures of itself. One shows the country as good and pure, its enemies as an external “axis of evil.” The other picture, the fruit of internal self-criticism, shows America as complex and flawed, torn between forces bent on control and hierarchy and forces that promote democratic equality. At what I’ve called the Gandhian level, the argument about India shows Americans to themselves as individuals, each of whom is capable of both respect and aggression, both democratic mutuality and anxious domination. Americans have a great deal to gain by learning more about India and pondering the ideas of some of her most significant political thinkers, such as Sir Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Gandhi, whose ruminations about nationalism and the roots of violence are intensely pertinent to today’s conflicts. (link)
What’s interesting about this is the way Nussbaum — by training a philosopher — keeps a philosophical (rather than a political) idea at the center of her argument. She is not talking about competing political systems or the ideologies of individual political parties so much as she is trying to suggest competing ways of understanding the “self” in a world full “others.”
That said, Nussbaum does get into some specific details, and outlines a version of the rise of the Hindu right starting with the arguments of Savarkar and Golwalkar, and ending in Gujarat 2002. (Some readers will agree with her version of events, some may disagree. I think she is substantially correct.)
For Nussbaum, the rhetoric of Hindutva is to a great extent a rhetoric of masculinity under threat:
The creation of a liberal public culture: How did fascism take such hold in India? Hindu traditions emphasize tolerance and pluralism, and daily life tends to emphasize the ferment and vigor of difference, as people from so many ethnic, linguistic, and regional backgrounds encounter one another. But as I’ve noted, the traditions contain a wound, a locus of vulnerability, in the area of humiliated masculinity. For centuries, some Hindu males think, they were subordinated by a sequence of conquerors, and Hindus have come to identify the sexual playfulness and sensuousness of their traditions, scorned by the masters of the Raj, with their own weakness and subjection. So a repudiation of the sensuous and the cultivation of the masculine came to seem the best way out of subjection. One reason why the RSS attracts such a following is the widespread sense of masculine failure.
At the same time, the RSS filled a void, organizing at the grass-roots level with great discipline and selflessness. The RSS is not just about fascist ideology; it also provides needed social services, and it provides fun, luring boys in with the promise of a group life that has both more solidarity and more imagination than the tedious world of government schools.
So what is needed is some counterforce, which would supply a public culture of pluralism with equally efficient grass-roots organization, and a public culture of masculinity that would contend against the appeal of the warlike and rapacious masculinity purveyed by the Hindu right. The “clash within” is not so much a clash between two groups in a nation that are different from birth; it is, at bottom, a clash within each person, in which the ability to live with others on terms of mutual respect and equality contends anxiously against the sense of being humiliated.
Gandhi understood that. He taught his followers that life’s real struggle was a struggle within the self, against one’s own need to dominate and one’s fear of being vulnerable. He deliberately focused attention on sexuality as an arena in which domination plays itself out with pernicious effect, and he deliberately cultivated an androgynous maternal persona. More significantly still, he showed his followers that being a “real man” is not a matter of being aggressive and bashing others; it is a matter of controlling one’s own instincts to aggression and standing up to provocation with only one’s human dignity to defend oneself. I think that in some respects, he went off the tracks, in his suggestion that sexual relations are inherently scenes of domination and in his recommendation of asceticism as the only route to nondomination. Nonetheless, he saw the problem at its root, and he proposed a public culture that, while he lived, was sufficient to address it. (link)
I think the threatened-masculinity point is interesting, as is Nussbaum’s proposed alternative. For her, the way to combat the hyper-virility of communal groups is not anti-masculinity, but an alternative conception of what it might mean to assert oneself as a man. I’m not sure the Gandhian idea of masculinity — which has always struck me as rather abstruse — is the best way to go, but this is still a provocative point.
The one point of disagreement I have with Nussbaum — at least from the extract I linked to — relates to whether the “clash within” is primarily a matter of Hindus/Muslim tension. As I’ve been watching Indian politics over the past few years, I’ve been struck, first, by the degree to which regional and state political considerations have come to dominate over grand ideology and national politics. Secondly, I’ve been struck by the continuing electoral fragmentation by caste — the Indian political system is not simply divided on a left/right diagram, but cut into a much more fragmentary array of caste-based political parties that can form (and break) alliances with the national parties at the will their respective leaders. Nussbaum may in fact be right about the principal problem in Indian politics (i.e., her philosophy of “the clash within”), but perhaps she needs to move beyond her current exclusive focus on Hindu/Muslim conflicts.
Wow, another Western academic writes about how all the problems of India can be traced to the emasculated Hindu male, and Amardeep agrees with her. How shocking.
Seriously, couldn’t you just write that you think all Hindu men are emasculated and that the only valid scholarship about India comes from white people, and save us all the time?
Yeah! Where’s Spoor Lam when you need him? Obviously, since Amardeep is not Hindu, he is against us!
Agreed! And the opposite is NOT true, i.e. if an Indian attempts valid scholarship about White people, it’s all good and not hypocritical to think that way. Why does everyonoe on this blog hate Hindu men? HUH? I feel persecuted!
Wow, another Western academic writes about how all the problems of India can be traced to the emasculated Hindu male, and Amardeep agrees with her.
G Unit, I’m not sure whether it’s worth engaging with you or not — the tone of your first comment isn’t promising — but you seem to have gotten it exactly backwards. Nussbaum’s point is that there is a perception of emasculation, that is exploited in communalist rhetoric.
She is far from the first person to have noted this. I think what’s interesting is her response to the problem.
By the way Amardeep, I think she basically brackets a lot of Indian politics and political economy. But I don’t think she can be really criticized on those grounds (as you appear to be doing, and as was my first reaction when I read her article some weeks ago), since strictly speaking, her book does not pretend to exhaustively explain political and economic fissures and the resulting dynamics in India. Her book is essentially about construction of identities and ideologies that are outcomes of all the processes she brackets. lest I sound too deterministic, I don’t mean to imply that the ideologies can be reduced or are supervenient on such processes. undoubtedly they are somewhat “autonomous” (though cognitive and social scientists still do not know why), and it is is precisely because they are autonomous that she is somehow trying to understand them, and if possible influence them (or at least the scholarly discourse about them).
Oh and ignorant twerps who know nothing about Nussbaum should be barred from offering their “wisdom”.
Gandhi once said: “I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshedâ€. Source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gandhi
I find it very hilarious that all of the linkage of Hindu Right to “fascist” ideology of Hitler or “European fascism of the 1930s” is a book called “We or Our Nationhodd Defined†… of which 99% of the RSS Swayamsevaks have never heard of the book let alone read it.
Just like Gandhi, Golwalkar was influenced by the propoganda coming from Germany. It was 1939! for god sake. He himself disawoned the book in 1947. 60 years have passed without publishing of a single copy of that book. Then how can it be considered such a influence on High Right, as claimed by Martha Nussbaum in her book.
I would invite everyone to read a rejoinder to Martha Nassbaum here http://cynical-nerd.nationalinterest.in/?p=86
Sigh, thanks for raising the bar a bit.
Her book is essentially about construction of identities and ideologies that are outcomes of all the processes she brackets.
Interesting — but couldn’t one still say that she might not have chosen the best set of “identities and ideologies” that have been produced in India’s experiment with pluralistic democracy? I’m beginning to think that the Hindu/Muslim version of communalism that dominated everyone’s radar between 1991 and 2002 might just be one epiphenomenon in a broader system of group-based conflict. The more correct/inclusive version should include caste, region, and language…
But perhaps this may turn to be yet another version of “I should have read the whole book before I opened my mouth” 😉
Perception is reality. By writing that Hindu males are perceived as emasculated, she is basically saying that they are.
I know that “anti-secular” comments are banned from this site, so I’m trying to walk the fine line. But the BJP are not Nazis. They are a democratically elected political party in India, and they clearly have the support of a significant portion of the country. Why is it OK to denigrate Hindus for supporting a political party that pursues their interests, while not pointing out that the exact same thing takes place here in America in the form of the GOP for evangelical Christians? I mean seriously, would gay rights, abortion, prayer in schools etc. even be political issues if they weren’t trying impose their religious values on this supposedly secular country?
Basically my problem is not with Nussbaum’s definitions of identity, it is with the condescending way she frames the Middle East and India as “backwards” because of their adherence to identity politics, when the West still employs the exact same pratices (and has done so for hundreds of years, after using them to systematically oppress the “Third World”). People here are just better about concealing their bigotry with “modernity”
Also, what justification does she give for the statment that Hindu Masculinity has significantly changed? Has she read the Ramayana or Mahabharata? I would say the masculinity represented in the great Hindu epics is pretty damn “warlike”.
The real problem is that it’s cool for Americans, Brits, Germans etc. to idolize the Army and Marines, glorify violence, propogate aggressive masculinity in their art, film and music. But as soon as the colored races of the world do it, they are “savages”, “gangsters” or “thugs”. There is a very simple and logical reason for this: aggressive individuals (and nations) are more apt to come out ahead. The two main forces that control the world are violence and capitalism, and in both to the aggressor go the spoils.
As enlightened as Gandhi was, his beliefs alone would have never liberated India. I for one am glad to see Indians become more assertive on the world stage. The deference and servility of previous generations are exactly the reason why a country with the oldest literature and culture still in practice is only now catching up on the global stage.
Thanks for the write up.
From the chronicle link,
“A nationally televised serial version of the classic epic Ramayana in the late 1980s fascinated viewers all over India with its concocted tale of a unitary Hinduism dedicated to the single-minded worship of the god Rama.”
–> Was Ramayana made that way to project hinduism as unitary ? I know it was juvenile even at that time but I thought it was telecast in late 80s(and early 90s) when congress was in full control while Nussbaum refers to it in the rise of BJP.
“The public schools in Gujarat are famous for their complete lack of critical thinking, their exclusive emphasis on rote learning and the uncritical learning of marketable skills, and the elements of fascist propaganda that easily creep in when critical thinking is not cultivated. “
–> I went to school in tamilnadu and each of those items she refers to in Gujarat applies to TN. Maybe, the fascist propaganda might be in reference to language, not religion as far as tamilnadu is concerned. I am not justifying what happened in gujarat but her analysis of root causes is confusing.
“Nonetheless, he saw the problem at its root, and he proposed a public culture that, while he lived, was sufficient to address it.”
–> Gandhi saw lots of problems and his solutions were weird and unworkable. Thankfully, he remained just a symbol, nothing more.
“Today’s young people in India, therefore, tend to think of religion, and the creation of symbolic culture in general, as forces that are in their very nature fascist and reactionary because that is what they have seen in their experience.”
–> The young people show some sense(in their perception of stupidity that is religion) and Nussbaum faults them for it, instead of crediting them ?
At least, now I know not to read the book.
Precisely, I guess you can question her choice of salient identity (or rather her definition of salience as it refers to identities). But in her defense, she has written about how sex and caste affect freedom (in Sen’s sense, i.e. the reduction of choice sets or even sets of sets). But insofar as the whole “hindu nation” theme has become a– what you lit profs (no disrespect intended; I used “supervenience”) call– “meta-narrative”, I guess its worth examining. As for the causal force of this ideology, I’m not so sure. I am instinctively suspicious of “cultural factors” that are not defined clearly (I should note that this is an aside. There is no evidence that Nussbaum actually does any of this. Like you I have only read the article).
Well said. Anyone who wathced the “Republican debate” would agree with you. 🙂
But the BJP are not Nazis.
this is surely true. but they are not the modern republican party either. implicit soft pedaling (on the national level implicit at least) of the killing thousands is not comparable to the planned genocide of the nazis of millions. but, neither is it fair (as a republican) to compare republicans to the BJP, which has been associated with pogroms within its own nation.
I am not defending Gujurat. But I would consider what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan to be every bit as bad as what happened under Modi, if not worse. At least the violence in India has (largely) stopped. Iraqis, Americans and Afghans will be killing each other for the next 50 years as a result of this, which in my view is just the latest in the 1500 year old tradition of Western Crusades.
Look, you should not comment without knowing anything about her work and her views. She is actually very consistent in her criticisms of similar politics in the U.S. I’m sure there are scholars like the ones you describe, but Nussbaum is not one of them (for example she is extremely anti-nationalist).
I am not defending Gujurat. But I would consider what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan to be every bit as bad as what happened under Modi, if not worse.
that is a fair enough point, if you value all human lives equally then a utilitarian calculus indicts the modern republican party (to forestall accusations that i’m a jingo, i’m pretty close to an isolationist, i don’t support the foreign policy of my party). but, in general it is more eyebrow raising when a political party foments violence upon the citizens of its own state. this may not be “right,” but it is how it is (just as the death of a relative or friend is more impacting than the death of a stranger).
Let me point out another logical fallacy: disapproval of P in A does not imply approval of Q in B (P and Q being similar or belonging to the same subset).
Wah Wah…
First Wendy. Then Martha. What’s this obsession by Chicago based female academicians to apply Freudian analysis to anything that Hindus do?
News: BJP protests high prices of onions. Wendy: Onions represent testicles, and the high price of testicles may render that other male organ ineffective, just like Ganesha’s limp phallus. Hence BJP is merely projecting is sexual insecurity on onions. Martha: Agreed. Onions also represent tears. And we all cry for milk when we are babies. BJP is simply project the lack of Hindu mother’s warmth with her male children, resulting in a desperate cry for the feminine as an adult, which I think America should look at and emulate.
Seriously, who takes this junk seriously? A bunch of tenured academics with nothing better to do than pontificate on a culture which they have very little understanding of, aided by sepoys like Sen.
Of course, rise of Hindu nationalism has nothing to do with deliberate coddling of non-Hindus by Congress, special laws for minorities, Article 310, the plight of Hindus in Khalistan movement, Kashmir, Nagaland, Mizoram etc, and of course, mounting evidence of multiple genocides and temple destruction that was deliberately covered up by successive Congress governments.
… by sleeping naked with minor girls to prove himself.
Good advice, Martha. But isn’t there a law against pracising psychiatry without a license in the state of Illinois?
M. Nam
Seriously, who takes this junk seriously? A bunch of tenured academics with nothing better to do than pontificate on a culture which they have very little understanding of, aided by sepoys like Sen.
normally i am pretty skeptical of this sort of psychoanalysis, but, early hindutva thinkers seemed to offer these narratives up themselves (since they lived in the early 20th century when freudianism was avante guarde it might not be that surprising). as an empirical matter i don’t think this model is really that informative, offering post facto rationalization. but nussbaum is not totally unfamiliar with the extant literature (her long term relationship with amatarya sen in the 1980s familiarized her with the brown, so to speak).
Let me just second what Sigh1 said in comment #15.
If you look carefully at even the extract I linked to, you’ll see that Nussbaum pays close attention to who is likely reading her essay (i.e., American readers), and what she wants them to get out of it. She repeats several times that her investigation of Gandhi’s philosophy and India’s communalism problem should have something to teach “us” as Americans — something that we may not have been paying attention to with the current centrality of the “war on terror”.
She’s also careful not to treat India’s “clash within” as a sign of backwardness or special irrationality (here I’m going back to G Unit’s comment #7 above). In fact she wants her arguments to be universally applicable — and universally necessary. In other words, the U.S. needs to study the Indian case not because it is above India, but because there are some real gaps between the American rhetoric of freedom and democracy and its application in fact.
In that sense, Gautham’s comment above is not that far from what she herself seems to be implying, though I personally think the closest application of these issues to the U.S. situation right now is probably the immigration debate. A disturbing number of Americans currently seem uncomfortable living with the (in this case Hispanic) “other”…
Oh it was me at #15. I did not press the shift down, so it came out as 1
C’mon dude, a little honesty. The article clears up the context:
“Background for the above quote: It was made in May of 1940, when the battles of World War II were just beginning, where the Germany’s blitzkrieg was indeed swift and relatively bloodless compared to the battle trenches of the World War One. Also at the time the persecution of the Jews in the eyes of the world was limited to lowered civil rights, concentration camps and ghettos. Just a few years before even so notable an adversary to Hitler as Winston Churchill, in his book Great Contemporaries (1937) had declared: “One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.”
Isn’t it the same the RSS / Hindutvadis are accused of ?. Of praising Hitler in the late 30s..
The following extract makes Amardeep’s point:
Right, as if other schools all over India are famous for encouraging “critical thinking”. But why the unnecessary reference to TN. I went to school in Tamilnadu in the 80s and early 90s. There is no propaganda like you mentioned. Are you talking about the 60s language agitation. It was in response to the real issue of “Hindi imposition”.
Interesting.
“For Nussbaum, the rhetoric of Hindutva is to a great extent a rhetoric of masculinity under threat”
this seems to be true of most, if not all, movements considered extremist or far right, no matter where you are in the world. and you don’t even have to look at movements like that. look at that guy ranting about being a scythian and the violence and testosterone in his statements. even in some people’s comments on sm on recent topics you see references and pride in supposedly being more tough, ready to fight, more martial than others etc., – there’s this desire to keep pointing out these qualities.
i haven’t read her book, but does she quote from books by rss members etc. to illustrate her above statements about them having a sense of emasculation or does she say it as a statement without a citation? it would be helpful to see the passages upon which she is basing those statements (since razib said they do exist).
“A nationally televised serial version of the classic epic Ramayana in the late 1980s fascinated viewers all over India with its concocted tale of a unitary Hinduism dedicated to the single-minded worship of the god Rama.”
does she mean that the serial was a distorted version of the ramayana or does she mean the ramayana itself is a concocted tale that overly emphasizes Rama? i was young when it was first televised so my memory is not that great, but i just remember it being a picturization of the ramayana. if the ramayana is not to be about Rama (as understood in its most common form), then what is it about? It doesn’t promote a unitary hinduism. not sure what she means here. or is she talking about the side effects of the serial on the viewing public?
sigh If only the professors at Penn understood this…
Martha’s application of AmEuro-centric views on Indian social landscape is so blantant, I am shocked nobody has called her out on this.
The American Conservative right rejects the feminine, so the Indian right must be doing that as well.
Those who show propensity to violence in America (serial killers, sexual predators etc) are sexually repressed, so those who show propensity to communal violence in India must be similiarly afflicted.
American right seeks the single-minded worship of only One true Divinity with the aid of one Book, so the Hindu right must be rallying for the single-minded worship of only one God Ram with one book Ramayana.
What was it they say about reaching conclusions and then fitting facts?
What do these folks get paid for? What value do they create for anyone?
M. Nam
Although, I agree with you that this partucular analysis looks to be extremely lazy it is unfair to compare Wendy and Martha. I do not plan on reading this book (unless I get it in the library and I had to kill some time) her earlier books on India (I forgot the title but it was about women’s empowerment) were very well researched.
paging Spoor Lam!
where are ye?????????????
Extra-Strength snark needed, stat!!!!
Ok, this is going to be a tangent – but there are (were) many versions of the Ramayana, some of them slightly different, but others so significantly different from the canonical version, that they could qualfy as complete antitheses (e.g. in some of them, Rama was the ‘bad guy’; in others, Sita is Ravana’s wife etc). The canonical version is, by definition, hegemonic – and this long preceded the TV serial. Still, the TV serial, broadcast just as TV began to be available near-nationwide – probably did reinforce the hegemony of the canonical version, and therefore also helped strengthen a perception of a unitary Hinduism.
And Amardeeep, congratulations on a fine post and excellent, thought-provoking links. I read through them all.
“to compare republicans to the BJP, which has been associated with pogroms within its own nation.”
I am not as erudite and informed as some of our SMers, but why is it that the BJP get spanked for Gujarat, but the Congress is brushed under the carpet for 1984 Sikh massacres, or the Communist parties’ role in the violent class warfare ignored? Is it because BJP openly espouses a religion based idealogy?
Hegemony implies a threat of force. Are you saying that the threat of physical force was used over the millennia for this version of Ramayana to be most accepted?
It’s a fairly recent trend to gain credibility by rallying against something or someone who is incapable of defending themselves, in order to curry favor for personal reasons. “I simply hate Modi and Gujarat and abhor violence. Can you please approve my loan application for my second mortagage?”
M. Nam
Of course, rise of Hindu nationalism has nothing to do with deliberate coddling of non-Hindus by Congress, special laws for minorities, Article 310, the plight of Hindus in Khalistan movement, Kashmir, Nagaland, Mizoram etc, and of course, mounting evidence of multiple genocides and temple destruction that was deliberately covered up by successive Congress governments.
Very true!! Having heard about the years from Nehru, Indira from my parents (and read later) and having seen the years of Rajiv there was always a growing sense of uneasiness among the hindus/jains. The appeasement of minorities which probably reached a high point with the Shah Bano case has always been there. I would agree that the minorities needed help from the govt to raise their standard of living, but the policies were not geared toward that.
The “threatened-masculinity” point is made with a misleading affect here.
chachaji, thanks. I know there are many interpretations of the ramayana, but it’s normal to assume that a mainstream tv program is most likely going to reflect the “canonical” (hate that term, but it works best here) version or most “mainstream” version, unless the maker had strongly different views. tv depictions about the life of jesus or standard stories in christianity always use the mainstream version of the story, even though there may be variations in different bibles or different sects. so while the serial may have reinforced the already widely known version of the ramayana, i don’t understand her use of the word concocted, as if that’s the first time this version of the story was seen. i also don’t think showing that version of the ramayana overtly promotes a unitary hinduism with single-minded worship of rama. it may have promoted one version of the ramayana over the other but not one hinduism single-mindedly focussed on rama.
WGiiA, it’s not the tale of the Ramayana or its canonical version that she refers to as ‘concocted’, it is the tale of a unitary Hinduism that worships Rama:
MoorNam, hegemony is a word used in many related senses, and while the implicit threat of force may be an essential element of how it’s used in international relations, in the realm of culture and ideas, this is not necessary. The wiki does quite a good job of explaining many of the nuances of the term.
G Unit: Why is it OK to denigrate Hindus for supporting a political party that pursues their interests, while not pointing out that the exact same thing takes place here in America in the form of the GOP for evangelical Christians? I mean seriously, would gay rights, abortion, prayer in schools etc. even be political issues if they weren’t trying impose their religious values on this supposedly secular country?
The day we see the Republican party drive away the Hare Krishnas, demolishing their temples like the BJP did with the Babri mosque at Ayodhya and start riots all over the US, we can start comparing the Republicans to the BJP.The BJP government under Narendra Modi was directly responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Muslims under police supervision in Gujarat.
Here’s a few gems from the Sangh leadership, for people with short memories…
http://www.defencejournal.com/2002/dec/reporters.htm
Vishwa Hindu Parisad (VHP), Bajrang Dal and Shiv Shena (Soldiers of the Hindu God Shiva similar to Hizbollah — The Party of Allah). These three organizations together with the BJP are so tight-knit and common in their agenda that they are often labelled as the Sangh Parivar (family of organizations) by the Indian Media. According to a recent commentary by a noted Indian Columnist Praful Bodwai (31 Oct, 2002), “an ugly contest has broken out in the Sangh Parivar over who can reach the lowest possible depths of abuse and vulgarity while pursuing the politics of communal hatred.†Mr. Narendra Modi, the BJP supported Chief Minister of Gujarat, has been known to publicly have threatened to “wipe Pakistan off the map of the world†through “Hindu militancyâ€. This comment however appears insignificant to Mr. Bal Thackeray (of VHP) going public with statements challenging the Prime Minister of India like “Why do you hesitate to declare the country a Hindu rashtra?†The tapes of Mr. Thackeray’s ‘finest speeches†have more statements recorded such as “all Indian Muslims are traitorsâ€, while his deputy, the VHP vice-president, Mr. Giriraj Kishore, had once cited the Hindu shastras as, “the life of a cow is higher than that of men — the five Dalits lynched in Jhajjar (Haryana, India).†In another speech on October 19, 2002, by the VHP general secretary, Praveen Togadia, his mass of zealot supporters listened with awe with statements like, “We are five crore, you (Indian Muslims of Gujarat) are just 50,000. You think Hindus can be suppressed with bomb explosions or violence? We are five crore Hindus. If 50,000 Hindus get killed in a terrorist attack, the five — crore figure will not get smaller. If you people who number 50,000 die, no one will be leftâ€.
From Wikipedia and Time Magazine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BJP
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977269,00.html
Amardeep,
outlines a version of the rise of the Hindu right starting with the arguments of Savarkar and Golwalkar,
Technically, Hindu revival began in the mid-1800s with the decline of the Mughal empire, the rise of the British and the failure of the 1857 revolution. This process began with education. Social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Jyotibha Phule, and countless others were at the forefront. Later, Dayananda Saraswati and Vivekananda led the reform movement. Tilak was part of it too. One cannot decouple the reformists from the history of Hindu revivial.
Golwalker and Savarkar did not have popular support. The Congress did. Additionally, the Hindu Mahasabha was included in the 1930 Round Table conference, but guess who came across as fascist? [link] Gandhi attended as the sole official Congress representative. Gandhi claimed that the Congress alone represented political India
The Hindu Mahasabha was also formed as a defensive measure. The other religions were represented rather well (e.g. Master Tara Singh, Jinnah and co)
The Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS pretty much faded away until the mid-1980s. The RSS had it tough what with the bans, the removal of bans and so forth. Do note that such bans were never implemented on other communal organizations like the Akali Dal or the Muslim League which, were very violent during many periods.
As Karmabyte has pointed out, the Hindu right came to the forefront as a political power only in the 1980s. I clearly recall, as a school/college student, wanting my cause to be represented, my voice to be heard. [i.e. a party that loved the free market and did not indulge in the blatant “minorityism” that the Congress indulged in]. I lived in Mumbai during that period and I can clearly state that very few voters knew who who Golwalker or Savarkar or what their political beliefs were. True, that the rise of the BJP in the 1980s owes much to a combination of Babri, Shah Bano, Sikh terrorism, Tamil terrorism, socialism, Assam, Syed Shahabuddin. More importantly, the BJP’s top echelon was seen as a squeaky clean alternative to the horrendously corrupt & inept Congress and Janata leadership. My vote, as a first-time voter, was certainly an anti-incumbent vote for these reasons alone.
The VHP & Bajrang Dal found their moorings during that period, but only in selected states, and among selected communities. Unlike the RSS, these were run, not by the so-called ‘elite’ (e.g. Brahmins and Kshatriyas), but by Vaishyas and the like. [I recall Outlook Magazine or The Week doing a write up on this topic.]
I haven’t read Nussbaum’s book, but if the review by you is a hint of what is in it, I will be very disappointed.
Hate speech from the Sangh and Bjp leadership:
http://www.hrdc.net/sahrdc/hrfchr59/Issue2/hate%20speech.htm
The BJP chief minister of Gujarat, Mr. Narendra Modi, called for an early poll to cash in on the religiously polarised electorate. In the run-up to the Gujarat election that finally took place in December 2002, the BJP and VHP unleashed hate speech with unprecedented ferocity. Sample what a prominent VHP leader, Mr. Ashok Singhal, is widely reported to have said at a public meeting in September 2002: “Godhra happened on February 27 and the next day, 50 lakh (five million) Hindus were on the streets. We were successful in our experiment of raising Hindu consciousness, which will be repeated all over the country now.” He gloated over entire villages having been “emptied of Islam” and Muslims having been dispatched to refugee camps, terming that as “a victory for Hindu society.” Spewing more venom a month later, Singhal said during a press conference: “What happened in Gujarat will happen in the whole of the country. Hindus were not born to be cut like carrots and radishes, and that the Hindukaran (a term to denote the process of the re-baptism of Hinduism into a militant Hindu identity) of the people of Gujarat was the direct result of the jehadi mentality of Muslims.” The reference to the Muslim notion of jehadi is a recurring theme in the right-wing Hindu rhetoric, whether the context is communal riots or terrorism or Pakistan or anything undesirable. It is as if the Hindutva adherents are feeding on the jehadi groups. Anybody who does not subscribe to their thinking runs the risk of being branded “Musharraf ki aulad” (literally, ‘progeny’ of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, a pejorative in India today).
The lead provided by Singhal in violating all norms of civilized discourse has been followed by the rising star of the VHP, Dr. Praveen Togadia, a medical professional specialising in cancer. Pointing out to his doctor status, Togadia said he had a medicine to deal with anti-national and anti-Hindu elements, whom he called “modern-day Ghaznis” (after Mohammad Ghazni who was ruler of a small Afghan principality called Ghazni who repeatedly led forays into India to loot and pillage). He said there were three types of Ghaznis: “jehadi Ghaznis, secular Hindu Ghaznis and political Ghaznis.” And for each, he said – urging the audience to repeat after him – there was a prescription: “Hang the jehadis, ostracise the secular Hindus and snatch the chair from political Ghaznis.”
One obvious feature of the hate speech spewed out by the VHP is its uninhibited use of unparliamentary or abusive language regardless of the stature of the persons it is targeting. The manner in which Togadia attacked Sonia Gandhi, India’s main Opposition leader, for condemning the killing of Muslims in Gujarat was clearly outside the norms of any codes of behaviour in a democratic society. He said: “First, the local pups started barking (against Hindus). They were then joined by dogs from other parts of the country. And last, came Italy ni kutri (a b**** from Italy).” The reference to Italy is because Sonia Gandhi is Italian-born and acquired Indian citizenship a decade after marrying into the Nehru political dynasty.
The accident of the Opposition leader being a person of foreign origin has also given the hate speech in India a xenophobic edge. In the VHP’s worldview, Indian Muslims are largely native people who had converted because of pressure from a succession of Muslim rulers from abroad. But when it comes to foreign Christian missionaries or Sonia Gandhi, the VHP is clearly xenophobic. “We believe that Sonia is an import, unlike Indian Muslims who have their roots here and whose forefathers were Hindus but had to convert to Islam because of their helplessness,” Togadia said, adding that “a genetic test would show that Indian Muslims had the blood of Lord Ram or Krishna (Hindu Gods), not that of Mohammad.”
Another judicial failing, which has allowed hate speech to rear its ugly head post-9/11, was in the context of the gruesome murder a couple of years earlier of Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons. The murder was the culmination of a vicious campaign launched by Bajrang Dal, the militant wing of the VHP, accusing foreign Christian missionaries of converting poor Indians to their religion on the strength of material allurements. But an inquiry conducted by a Supreme Court judge, Justice D P Wadhwa, said there was no evidence to suggest that Bajrang Dal had directed the main accused, Dara Singh, to murder Staines. That was a needlessly technical finding as it glossed over the Bajrang Dal’s concerted hate speech campaign that preceded the murder. (The census figures, incidentally, show that despite the alleged conversions the percentage of the Christian population has actually been dropping in recent decades.)
Mr Praveen Togadia has descended to the gutter level by calling Ms Sonia Gandhi “an Italian dog†(more accurately, “bitch†in Gujarati).
Narendra Milosevic Modi terms her “Italy ki betiâ€. He threatens to “wipe Pakistan off the map of the world†through “Hindu militancyâ€.
This comes on top of Mr Ashok Singhal’s threats to repeat Gujarat’s ethnic-cleansing “experiment†all over India. These have raised international concerns about the safety of India’s religious minorities.
Meanwhile, Mr Bal Thackeray appeals to Hindus to form “terrorist suicide-squads†against Muslims. He equates Hindutva with “the national weal†and rhetorically asks: “Why do you hesitate to declare India a Hindu rashtra?â€
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_30-10-2002_pg4_20
Nussbaum chaired a conference on this topic a year ago at the University of Chicago. A bunch of big desi intellectuals were featured, including sen, gurcharan das, and some prominent subaltern studies types. The conference was singularly focused on the gujurat pogroms (a term I believe is entirely appropriate and accurate) and the threat of hindu extremism. Nothing particularly new. What struck me, however, was the failure of everyone there to acknowledge any other evil that plagues the country. When someone stood up during the conference and inquired, “What’s with this unfettered praise of Congress and collective amnesia of the emergency and the massacre of sikhs at the hands of Congress in 1984?” no one had a satisfactory answer. I think it’s okay to write a polemic against hindu extremism. But if you’re writing a comprehensive account of the problems that plague india, I think you must at least acknowledge that hindu on muslim violence is only part of the problem. Otherwise you are being insincere and deserve as much attention as d’souza, ponnuru, horowitz, and other polemical hacks.
No Delhite, we may necessarily need to wait that long! The whole point of Martha Nussbaum’s piece is precisely that trends in America are quite disconcertingly similar in tone, even to Gujarat 2002. Here’s a quote:
And for people who don’t know defencejournal.com – that’s a Pakistani military propaganda mouthpiece. Sorry, but on this subject I don’t necessarily have to buy their spin.
Oops. I meant ‘we may not necessarily need to wait that long’
Delhiite, Its nice to bash the BJP etc on the issue of Babri Masjid and other issues. But, let us look at the hate speech of the “minority” organizations. The head of the Jama Masjid Shahi Imam Bukhari said ” ”We were rulers here for 800 years. Inshaallah, we shall return to power here once again”, he said to loud approval by the nearly 200 assembled men” and he also said “”I can say with authority that it is not any Muslim but the Shiv Sena, the RSS and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad who are responsible for the serial blasts in Mumbai,” Imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari told a gathering inside the historic mosque”
Ever heard of the Marad Massacre where a mob of Muslims massacred Hindus without provocation? http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2003/05/31/stories/2003053100621000.htm
Oh,and while every leftist cries about the innocent victims of Gujarat,why is nobody shedding tears about the 59 people burned to death in Godhra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godhra_Train_Burning
And,the Bhiwandi riots http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jul/06bhi.htm What abour hate speech by Bukhari and others? Why does no leftist condemn it. Leftists like you make me sick. It is jaundiced one-sided views like yours that give ammo to extremists VHP and Bajrang Dal. If the media and academicians took a more balanced view, VHP would vanish overnight,having lost their leverage. And Martha Nussbaum should just STFU,Hindutva is not masculinity under threat,is a backlash against the BS psuedo-secular and minority pandering policies of the govt. Then I guess the Isreali attack on Lebabon was also Jewish masculinity under threat as well? Since Nussbaum is Jewish,I guess someone should ask her this question
Wow !! This statement is breathtaking in its smugness besides it utter stupidity.
It may also be a work of genius.. damning the Hindu culture as innately sexually playful (thus winning support from the right wing christians) and damning the hindu right as the ones who are now suppressing this innate sexual playfulness due to their feelings of humiliated masculinity, no less (now getting the left wing liberals into her camp).
This is beyond silly..
“WGiiA, it’s not the tale of the Ramayana or its canonical version that she refers to as ‘concocted’, it is the tale of a unitary Hinduism that worships Rama:”
but she specifically links the word to the Ramayana or the televised serial of the Ramayana. she says the tv serial fascinated viewers “with its (emphasis on its) concocted tale of a unitary Hinduism.” so either she’s saying the serial was concocted and corrupted the story of the ramayana for nefarious ends or that that version of the ramayana which was televised is concocted and promotes a unitary Hinduism based on singular worship of Rama. in that reading, which is the only one since she doesn’t separate the concocted tale of a unitary hinduism bit from the ramayana or the televised version of it, i don’t think that’s the case. in any case, it’s a confusing sentence.
Ponniyin Selvan: “But why the unnecessary reference to TN. I went to school in Tamilnadu in the 80s and early 90s. There is no propaganda like you mentioned. Are you talking about the 60s language agitation. It was in response to the real issue of “Hindi imposition”.”
–> The reference to TN was to point out uncritical thinking and rote learning in public schools was not restricted to Gujarat within India. The reason I brought up the language issue is that the atmosphere in TN is poisonous to any language other than tamil and that is encouraged by the government there. After all, TN is one place I can refer to given I lived there. The use of fascist term might be a stretch on second reading.
Stop psycho-analysing our balls!
All assertive nation men with onions!
We need to tea-bag Nussbaum and all other Chicago lefto-fascists tickling us and taunting us and psycho-raping us!
Enough is enough, we are close to the destruction of all Hindus, immediate counter-attacking manoevure is needed. All saffron men have to destroy this lefto-fascist Abrahamic provocation and forthcoming attempted apocalypse by asserting our very secure manhood now. Urgent action is needed — BALLS MUST BE DANGLED IN THEIR FACE.
Every hero that has bravely stood up to the evil and hypocrisy on this thread (you know your names! I lick you!), who are fully secure and not thin-skinned, standing up against the genocidal policies of Sepia Mutiny and Pankaj Mishra who are aiming to do genocide of Hindus in conjunction with minorities who are about to rape us and genocide our asses, before our balls are genocided by Lefto-Chicago Hindu eating cannibals abetted by minorities and Christian missionaries on a mission to do genocide, genocide and more genocide, and then even more genocide of us, then do genocide on our genocided remains, and then genocide the remains of our genodiced Hindu remains after they rape our women and then our asses — all saffron men send photographs of your balls and surrounding visuals to me at this address:
SaffronBallsRising@spoorlam.com
By compiling photographic evidence we can disprove all Nussbaumist genocidal theories and save Hinduism from destruction by University of Chicago. There is no insecurity or doubt at all. I await your evidence, salivating and trembling. Saffron balls are rising. Fear us you leftist-cabal scum!
Death to Chicago!
Death to minorities!
Hail Mogambo!
Ok, this is going to be a tangent – but there are (were) many versions of the Ramayana, some of them slightly different, but others so significantly different from the canonical version, that they could qualfy as complete antitheses (e.g. in some of them, Rama was the ‘bad guy’; in others, Sita is Ravana’s wife etc). The canonical version is, by definition, hegemonic
There is no canonical version of the Ramayana, unlike the Bible, whose canonical books were decided by a committee of mostly white men with an agenda; the “gospels” not expressing that agenda being consigned to apocryphia, hence the English word “apocryphal.” Many were destroyed and their proponents persecuted or murdered, though some of the banned gospels have been recovered in fortuitous discoveries, like the one at Nag Hamadi in Egypt.
The Valmiki Ramayana is entirely inaccessible to everyone who knows no classical Sanskrit. Tulsidas’s version is perhaps the principal devotional text in the Hindi belt, but Ramcaritmanas is a transcreation, hardly a translation. In the South the Kamban Ramayana is regarded as a rare poetic achievement, but it does not enjoy ritual status. Then there are Kashmiri Ramayanas, Gujarati Ramayanas, Indonesian Ramayanas, Bollywood Ramayanas, Sitayanas, etc.
It is a work of genius – she cannot get where she is today without bending issues intelligently.
The thread that seems to run commonly to such Freudian analysis in American academia is that it is mostly used against Hindus. They dare not say that the Khalistani movement was due to sexual impotency of Sikhs, or that the SriLankan majority is conducting a genocide of Tamils because of lack of sexual freedom under Buddhism. They would lose their jobs/tenureship etc etc if they attempted this line of thought against anyone except Hindus.
Kashmiri issue – that’s a land/political issue. Muslim fundamentalism issue – because of American policy. SriLankan conflict – because of historical reasons. NE Indian insurgency – because of lack of opportunities.
But Hindutva! Ahhaa!! It’s got to be because of Hindus’ sexual inadequacies! Now, let’s go and find some facts to corroborate that.
It’s not going to stop soon, though.
M. Nam
The thread that seems to run commonly to such Freudian analysis in American academia is that it is mostly used against Hindus. They dare not say that the Khalistani movement was due to sexual impotency of Sikhs, or that the SriLankan majority is conducting a genocide of Tamils because of lack of sexual freedom under Buddhism. They would lose their jobs/tenureship etc etc if they attempted this line of thought against anyone except Hindus.
Why do they hate us? (us as in hindus)